Recent Forums
For a list of upcoming forums, please see our forum schedule. For a complete list of past Miller Center forums, please see our forum archive.
Monday, June 16, 2008
5:30 PM
Strobe Talbott
The successful 2007-08 Forum season will be celebrated with a wine and cheese reception immediately following the Forum. Attendance is limited to the first 200 people.
Strobe Talbott became president of the Brookings Institution in 2002 after his tenure as founding director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. He served in the State Department from 1993 to 2001, first as Ambassador-at-large and special adviser to the Secretary of State for the new independent states of the Soviet Union, then as Deputy Secretary of State. Talbott entered government after twenty-one years with TIME magazine, where as a reporter, he covered Eastern Europe, the State Department, and the White House. He also served as Washington bureau chief, editor-at-large, and foreign affairs columnist while there. Talbott's books include The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation (Simon & Schuster, 2008) and The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (Random House, 2002). He has written for Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, The Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Slate. A book signing will follow his Forum.
Friday, June 13, 2008
11:00 AM
Michael Scheuer
Bestselling author Michael Scheuer is the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit and has two decades of experience in national security issues related to Afghanistan and South Asia. After resigning from the agency in 2004, he revealed his authorship of Imperial Hubris (Brassey's, Inc., 2004) and Through Our Enemies' Eyes (Brassey's, Inc., 2002), both originally published under the byline "Anonymous." Scheuer is currently a news analyst for CBS News and a terrorism analyst for the Jamestown Foundation's online publication Global Terrorism Analysis. He also makes radio and television appearances, and teaches a graduate-level course on al Qaeda at Georgetown University. Scheuer's most recent book is Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (Free Press, 2008). A book signing will follow his Forum.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
5:00 PM
Susan Dentzer
Please join us for a very special Forum that begins with a screening of the Debate on Health Care, the fourth presentation of the Miller Center's National Discussion and Debate Series that occurred on April 9 at historic Fanueil Hall in Boston. Following the screening, Susan Dentzer the debate's moderator, will speak and lead a discussion with the audience.
Susan Dentzer is editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, a leading journal of health policy and research. Prior to starting that position in May 2008,she was an on-air correspondent with PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where she led a unit devoted to in-depth coverage of health care, health policy, and Social Security. She has also served as chief economics correspondent and economics columnist for U.S. News & World Report, and was a senior writer covering business news at Newsweek. She has appeared on ABC's Nightline, CNN, and PBS's The McLaughlin Group. Dentzer and her NewsHour unit received multiple awards, including the 2005 Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism from the Association of Health Care Journalists and the first-place Gracie Allen Award for Public Television News from American Women in Radio and Television.
Monday, May 19, 2008
11:00 AM
Helena Cobban
Helena Cobban is a veteran writer, researcher, and program organizer on global affairs. She is a contributing editor of Boston Review, where her recent articles have included essays on Lebanese and Palestinian issues as well as Rwanda. She has also written for the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, The Economist, and Salon.com, and she maintains the blog "Just World News." Cobban has published six books, including Amnesty after Atrocity? Healing Nations after Genocide and War Crimes (Paradigm Press, 2006) and The Moral Architecture of World Peace: Nobel Laureates Discuss Our Global Future (University of Virginia Press, 2000). She has worked as a journalist in the Middle East for the Christian Science Monitor and the Sunday Times of London and has led various non-governmental bodies. In addition to holding research fellowships at Harvard, Georgetown, and the Brookings Institution, she has taught at the Institut des Etudes Politiques and Eastern Mennonite University. A book signing will follow her Forum.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
11:00 AM
Evan Thomas
Evan Thomas, Newsweek's Editor at Large since 2006, is the magazine's lead writer on major news stories and the author of more than 100 cover stories and many longer features including special behind-the-scenes issues on presidential elections. He has been a regular panelist on the syndicated public affairs talk show Inside Washington since 1992, and has appeared on numerous television shows including Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Thomas is the author of six books, including Sea of Thunder (Simon & Schuster, 2006), Robert Kennedy: His Life (Simon & Schuster, 2000), and The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA (Simon & Schuster, 1995). A fellow of the Society of American Historians and a former trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, he began a five-year term at Princeton as Ferris Professor of Journalism in the fall of 2007.
Monday, May 12, 2008
11:00 AM
Frederick Hitz
Frederick P. Hitz is a Senior Fellow at the Center for National Security Law at the U.Va. School of Law. He has been lecturing at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University and at the U.Va. School of Law since 1998. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Hitz entered the Career Training Program at the CIA and served in the clandestine service in Africa. In 1974, he returned to law practice but re-entered government service in congressional liaison capacities with the State, Defense, and Energy departments before resuming his CIA career as Legislative Counsel to the Director of Central Intelligence. In 1980, he became Deputy Director for Europe in the Directorate of Operations. Hitz was appointed the first statutory Inspector General of the CIA by President George H.W. Bush. Among the many investigations he led at the CIA was the Aldrich Ames betrayal. He has written extensively about espionage and intelligence issues. A book signing will follow his Forum.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
11:00 AM
Cokie Roberts
Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News, where she has covered Congress, politics, and public policy for the past fifteen years, and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio. From 1996 to 2002, Roberts and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program This Week. She has won numerous awards, including two Emmys, in her more than thirty years in broadcasting. Roberts has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, and was cited by the American Women in Radio and Television as one of the fifty greatest women in broadcasting history. Roberts, along with her husband Steven V. Roberts, writes a weekly column syndicated in newspapers across the country by United Media. Two of her previous books, From This Day Forward (co-written with her husband), and We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, were New York Times bestsellers. A book signing will follow her Forum.
Monday, May 5, 2008
11:00 AM
Dee Dee Myers
Dee Dee Myers was the first woman and youngest person ever to serve as White House Press Secretary. After leaving the Clinton White House, Myers became a consultant to the NBC series The West Wing. Before joining the Clinton campaign in 1991, she worked on local, state, and national campaigns, including Senator Dianne Feinstein, Governor Michael Dukakis, Vice President Walter Mondale, and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. She is currently a Vanity Fair Contributing Editor, and is a frequent political commentator on NBC and MSNBC. Myers spent two years as the liberal co-host of the CNBC talk show Equal Time, discussing daily political developments with conservative co-hosts Mary Matalin and Bay Buchanan. A book signing will follow her Forum.
Friday, May 2, 2008
5:30 PM
Paul Verkuil
Paul Verkuil Professor of Law and former Dean (1997–2001) at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, has practiced at two leading New York law firms and served on the law faculty at the University of North Carolina, as Dean of Tulane Law School, and as President of the College of William and Mary. Verkuil was President and CEO of the American Automobile Association, visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Special Master in the case of New Jersey v. New York, involving the sovereignty of Ellis Island. A leading scholar of law and regulation, he is a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the American Law Institute, and co-author of Administrative Law and Process and Regulation and Deregulation (2004). A book signing will follow his Forum.
Monday, April 21, 2008
11:00 AM
Sandra Mackey
Sandra Mackey is an award-winning expert on Middle Eastern culture and politics. She has taught political science at George Washington University and has served as a visiting scholar at U.Va. Mackey's writings have appeared in periodicals including the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor. She has appeared on NPR, ABC, and BBC, and was a commentator on the first Gulf War for CNN. Mackey's book, Lebanon: Death of a Nation (Doubleday, 1989), was included on the New York Times list of Notable Books for 1989. A booking signing will follow her Forum.
