Seminars at Steamboat

Professor Samuel Issacharoff is a leading figure in the development of constitutional law. He has written extensively on the structure of constitutional democracy and the limits of judicial intervention in the political process, and his scholarship is widely regarded for its clarity, depth and insightful analysis. He is currently the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University Sch...

Environmental, Social and Economic Impacts of Green Energy Technologies, and the Need for Public Policy Ricardo Hausmann is the founder and Director of Harvard University’s Growth Lab and the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Under his leadership, the Growth Lab has become one of the most important centers for economic research i...

Ted Mitchell is an experienced educator, innovator and policy maker. His long career in education has included roles in academia, federal education policy and organizational leadership, with a special focus on access to high-quality outcomes for all students. He is currently President of the American Council on Education (ACE).

Bruce Hoffman is a leading authority on terrorism, insurgency, and political violence, with a career that spans more than four decades of groundbreaking research, scholarship, and advice to governments and international organizations. He is currently a tenured professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and has been the director of the university’s undergraduate Center for...

Ivo Daalder is a prominent global affairs expert with a career spanning academia, public service and policy analysis. He is retiring this year after 12 years as president and chief executive officer of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, an influential organization that convenes leaders and experts for discussions about the world’s most pressing issues. He also hosts the weekly podcast World Re...

Nancy Reid Gibbs is an author, speaker, presidential historian and commentator on politics and values in the United States. She joined TIME magazine as a part-time fact checker in 1983 and rose to become its Editor-in-Chief in 2013, the first woman to hold the position. She was one of the most published writers in the history of the magazine and wrote more cover stories than anyone else at TIME. U...

When Andrew Selee became president of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) in 2018, his predecessor noted that Selee “has a distinguished track record not only as a serious policy scholar but a leader who has thought deeply about think tank strategy and administration.” Those qualities are especially apt for the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan body working with a wide range of stakeholde...

Nathaniel Keohane has been called “one of the most original thinkers and inspirational leaders in the climate community.” He is president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), an independent, non-partisan, nonprofit organization known nationally and internationally for its effectiveness in bringing stakeholders together to develop innovative, effective and durable climate policies...

Craig Fugate is the former administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), during which time he organized recovery efforts for a record eighty-seven disasters in 2011 alone.  Before that, as director of the Florida Emergency Management Division, he coordinated the state’s response to Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne (the “Big 4 of ’04”), and Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina...

Heather Tanana is highly trained in environmental law and public health, and as a member of the Navajo Nation is dedicated to promoting indigenous rights. She has been asked to contribute to the water chapter for the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), which will analyze the effects of global change on the world’s natural environment, resources and socia...

Matthew Rojansky is one of the country’s pre-eminent Russia scholars.  In early 2022 he became President and CEO of the U.S.-Russia Foundation, a private grant-making foundation established to promote the development of the private sector and the rule of law in Russia.  Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he has leveraged his deep knowledge base, extensive personal contacts and the foundation’s fun...

Wendy Weiser directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a nonpartisan think tank and public interest law center that works to revitalize, reform, and defend systems of democracy and justice.  Her program focuses on voting rights and elections, money in politics and ethics, redistricting and representation, government dysfunction, rule of law, and fair cou...

Jamie Metzl “R/Evolution: Recasting Life in an Age of Radical Biotechnology” Technology Futurist, Geopolitics Expert, Entrepreneur, Sci-Fi Novelist Jamie Metzl is one of the world’s leading technology and healthcare futurists and author of the non-fiction bestseller, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity. He has appeared regularly on national and international media progra...

American notions of liberty, property, and the role of government have shaped where we live, who succeeds, and what we must to do to achieve a new ‘American Dream’. Part of that dream for many families is a home of their own. Christopher Ptomey is the Executive Director of the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Housing, which works to promote residential development and housing affordab...

Cryptocurrencies have come of age holding the potential for faster and cheaper financial transactions than traditional payment models, creating alternative decentralized asset markets and driving significant innovation via the underlying networks that they run on. However, valid concerns exist and range from criminal activities such as money laundering and tax evasion to the safety of digital asse...

Seminar: U.S.-China Strategic Competition China’s economic competitiveness and international ambitions often pose a direct challenge to the United States and its global interests. Dr. Kennedy’s long experience in China and his expertise in economics and global governance inform his unique insights into the public policy implications of this strategic competition. Scott Kennedy is a leading authori...

Seminar: Deeply Divided & Closely Divided: Why the Temperature has Been Rising in American Politics The substantive disagreements between the political parties have been deepening for half a century. In the late 1980s, moreover, we entered an era of closely contested elections in which control of Congress and the White House has shifted back and forth several times. Dr. Galston will discuss wa...

Camille Busette, PhD is the Director of the Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative, Brookings Intitution’s cross-program initiative focused on issues of equity, racial justice and economic mobility for low-income communities and communities of color. Busette is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies with affiliated appointments in Economic Studies and the Metropolitan Policy programs at Brookin...

Ambassador Eric Edelman served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Clinton and Bush Administrations and was Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs. He has been Chief of Staff to Deputy Secretary of State, special assistant to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and special assistant to Secretary of State George Shultz....

John D. Leshy is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. He was Solicitor (General Counsel) of the Interior Department throughout the Clinton Administration. Earlier, he was counsel to the Chair of the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, a law professor at Arizona State University, Associate Solicitor of Inte...

Maya MacGuineas is the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Her areas of expertise include budget, tax and economic policy. As a leading budget expert and a political independent, she has worked closely with members of both parties and serves as a trusted resource on Capitol Hill. She testifies regularly before Congress and oversees a number of the Committee’s pr...

Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations. An epidemiologist by training, her work focuses on global health...

The Foreign Intelligence Threat to the U.S.: Russia, China and Other Bad Actors James Bruce, Ph. D., is a former senior executive officer at CIA, an adjunct researcher and former Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown and Florida Atlantic Universities. He also taught as an adjunct at Columbia and American Universities and as a full-time faculty m...

Teaching Democracy: Civics and Civility in the Classroom and Beyond Originally from the South Side of Chicago, Deval Patrick came to Massachusetts at the age of 14, when he was awarded a scholarship to Milton Academy through the Boston-based organization A Better Chance. After Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal appellate judge and then launched a career as an attorney...