In the program listings below, you'll find links after the speakers' names. If you'd like to explore and learn more, by all means click away – each link taking you to a page that introduces you more fully to one of the Summer Institute's featured guests.
July 11
Arthur Caplan
Would You Want to Know? The EthicsOf Genetic and Neurological Risk Testing
Arthur Caplan is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City, and the media’s preeminent go-to expert for bioethical perspectives. He has served on national and international committees for agencies including the National Cancer Institute, the United Nations, the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services and the International Olympics Committee. He recently served as co-director of the Joint Council of Europe/United Nations Study on Trafficking in Organs and Body Parts, and he is the ethics advisor to the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on synthetic biology.
He is the author or editor of thirty books and more than 550 journal papers. His most recent books are Smart Mice Not So Smart People (2006) and The Penn Guide to Bioethics(2009). He writes a regular column on bioethics for NBC.com, is a monthly commentator on bioethics and health care issues for WebMD/Medscape, and appears frequently as a guest and commentator on various national and international media outlets.
Professor Caplan, who holds seven honorary degrees, has been named a Person of the Year by USA Today, as one of the 10 most influential people in science by Discover Magazine, and as one of the 10 most influential people in America in biotechnology by the National Journal.
Essay: The Moral Tragedy of Chronic Illness
Essay: The Attack of the Anti-Cloners
July 18
James Steinberg
Crafting a Long-Term StrategyFor the US in the Middle East
James Steinberg is an American academic and political advisor, and former Deputy Secretary of State. He is currently Dean and Professor of Social Science, International Affairs, and Law at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Dean Steinberg is an expert on a range of foreign policy issues, including national security, international relations and intelligence gathering.
Prior to becoming Dean in 2011, he served as the principal Deputy to Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton. From 1996 to 2000, he was deputy national security advisor to President Bill Clinton, and the president’s personal representative to the 1998 and 1999 G-8 summits. Following his tenure as national security advisor, he was vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. In 2006 he served as Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas until he was appointed U.S. Deputy Secretary of State in 2009.
Dean Steinberg’s most recent book is Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential Power (2008) with Kurt Campbell. He received his B.A. from Harvard and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Book Review in Foreign Affairs
New York Times on Steinberg: Key Member of Obama's Team
July 25
Lawrence O'Donnell
The Lost Art of PoliticsLawrence O'Donnell is an American political analyst, journalist, actor, producer, writer, and hostof "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, a weeknight MSNBC opinion and news program. He joined the network as a political analyst in 1996. He is an Emmy Award-winning executive producer and writer for the NBC series “The West Wing” and creator and executive producer of the NBC series, “Mister Sterling.”
From 1989 through 1992, O’Donnell served as Senior Advisor to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1992, he was Chief of Staff to the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. From 1993 through 1995 he was the Chief of Staff of the Senate Finance Committee.
A writer prior to entering politics and government, O’Donnell published the book Deadly Force(1983), which was adapted as a CBS movie in 1986. He has written for several news organizations including The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, People, Spy, and Boston Magazine. He has also appeared on NBC News’ “Today,” “Good Morning America,” “Nightline,” “Charlie Rose,” and several other programs. Suffolk University awarded him an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, in 2001.
Born in Boston, he is a graduate of Harvard College.
On MSNBC: The Last Word
LA Times: A Conversation with Lawrence O'Donnell
August 1
Joseph Stiglitz
The Price of Inequality: How Today'sDivided Society Endangers Our Future
Joseph Stiglitz, awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, and named by Time Magazine in 2011 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, is a University Professor at Columbia University and co-chair of the University’s Committee on Global Thought. He was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
Professor Stiglitz served during the Clinton Administration as a member of the Council of Economic Advisors from 1993 to 1995, and as the Council’s chairman from 1995 to 1997. For the United Nations, he has chaired the Commission of Experts on Reform of the International Financial and Monetary System.
His textbooks and journal articles have been translated into more than 35 languages. He founded one of the leading economics journals, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, and his book, Globalization and Its Discontents (2001) has sold more than one million copies. His latest book, a New York Times bestseller in 2012, is The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future.
New York Times essay: Inequality and the Economy
Vanity Fair essay: The 1 Percent's Problem
August 8
Mara Liasson
Panel Discussion: Reluctant Bedfellows:The Media and Politics
Mara Liasson, tonight's panel moderator, is the national political correspondent for National Public Radio, and a regular contributor and panelist for Fox News. Her reports can be heard regularly on NPR’s award-winning news programs, All Things Considered and Morning Edition, and she has been a panelist on the WETA-TV program, Washington Week. For public radio, she has served as White House correspondent from 1992 to 2001, covering five presidential election cycles from 1992 through 2008. She received the White House Correspondents Association’s Merriman Smith Award for daily news coverage in 1994, 1995 and 1997.
For Fox News, she is a regular contributor to Special Report with Bred Baier and a panelist on the network’s national public affairs program, Fox News Sunday. A graduate of Brown University, she studied at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for a year with a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism.
Prior to joining NPR, she was a freelance radio and television reporter in San Francisco. She was also managing editor and anchor of California Edition, a California Public Radio nightly news program, and a correspondent for the Vineyard Gazette on Martha’s Vineyard.
Essay: CPAC and Candidates for 2016
August 8
Michael Isikoff
Panelist Michael Isikoff has been national investigative correspondent at NBC News since July 2010. Before joining NBC, he was an investigative correspondent at Newsweek magazine since 1994, and a reporter for the Washington Post beginning in 1981. He is the author of two bestselling books: Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, co-written with David Corn, and Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story, which chronicled his own reporting of the Monica Lewinsky story.Since the attacks of September 2001, Mr. Isikoff’s coverage of the U.S. government’s war on terror has won numerous journalism awards. His June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures preceding the 9/11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative magazine journalism. He was honored by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. He was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, for its coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In 2009, Washingtonian magazine named him to its list of the 50 “Best and Most Influential Journalists" in the nation’s capital.
Isikoff's scoop on U.S. drone policy
Reporting on state government cyber-attack
August 8
Jake Tapper
Award-winning journalist Jake Tapper is the Chief Washington Correspondent and anchor of the CNN news program, The Lead with Jake Tapper. Before joining CNN, he worked with ABC News as Senior White House Correspondent, three times winning the Merrimam Smith Memorial Award for broadcast journalism from the White House Correspondents Association. He was the Washington correspondent for Salon.com from 1999 to 2002, and previously worked for Handgun Control Inc., now the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.At ABC, his live coverage of the inauguration of President Obama won him an Emmy Award. He contributed regularly to "Good Morning America," "Nightline" and "World News with Diane Sawyer." He was host of ABC’s “This Week” for much of 2010, scoring exclusive interviews with CIA director Leon Panetta, Vice President Biden, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, retired Gen. Colin Powell, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, and others. His most recent book, "The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor," about the life and death of a U.S. combat outpost in Afghanistan, was published by Little, Brown & Co. in November 2012 and debuted at No. 10 on the New York Times Bestseller list.
A Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, he lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Jennifer, and two children.
August 8
Nicolle Wallace
Nicolle Wallace is a highly-regarded GOP strategist, a bestselling author, political analyst and contributor for ABC News. As communications chief for George W. Bush’s White House and re-election campaign, she was credited with “injecting a tremendous amount of realism” into White House deliberations. She joined the White House staff during President Bush’s first term, serving as Special Assistant to the President and Director of Media Affairs. She joined the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign as its Communications Director, and subsequently served as White House Communications Director. She served as a senior advisor for the McCain-Palin campaign in 2008, appearing frequently on news programs as the campaign’s top spokesman.A graduate of the University of California Berkeley and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, she lives in Connecticut with her husband, Mark, a former Ambassador to the United Nations. She is the author of two contemporary political novels, Eighteen Acres and It’s Classified.
TIME Magazine: Q&A with Nicolle Wallace
Washington Post essay
August 15
Andy Borowitz
The Borowitz Report: An Evening with Andy Borowitz-- Interviewed by Tony Horwitz
Andy Borowitz, a New York Times bestselling author and comedian, has written for The New Yorker since 1998. In 2001 he created The Borowitz Report, a satirical news column that has been read by millions around the world and for which he won the first National Press Club award ever given for humor. He has published two best-selling books in the past year: “The 50 Funniest American Writers,” which became the first title in the history of the Library of America to make the Times best-seller list; and his memoir, An Unexpected Twist,which Amazon named the Best Kindle Single of 2012.
As a comedian, he performs to sold-out theatres across the country and has made countless television and radio appearances, including on National Public Radio, VH1, and Comedy Central. He has been called a “Swiftian satirist” by the Wall Street Journal, “America’s satire king” by the Daily Beast, “the funniest human on Twitter” by The New York Times, and “one of the funniest people in America” by CBS News.
August 15
Tony Horwitz
Tony Horwitz, who will be interviewing Mr. Borowitz, won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting and wrote for the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker before becoming a full-time author, most recently of Midnight Rising, which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and won the 2012 William Henry Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography. He lives in West Tisbury with his wife, author Geraldine Brooks, and their two sons.New York Times book review