Tom Tom Founders Festival: The Presidency at a Crossroads

John D. Negroponte is the Vice Chairman of McLarty Associates. Negroponte has had a distinguished career in diplomacy and national security, holding government positions abroad and in Washington between 1960 and 1997 and again from 2001 to 2008. He has been Ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq. In Washington he served twice on the National Security Council staff, first as Director for Vietnam in the Nixon Administration and then as Deputy National Security Advisor under President Reagan. He has also held a cabinet level position as the first Director of National Intelligence under President George W. Bush. His most recent position in government was as Deputy Secretary of State, where he served as the State Department’s Chief Operating Officer.

William (Bill) Kristol is the editor at large of The Weekly Standard, is a regular on ABC’s This Week and on ABC’s special events and election coverage, and appears frequently on other leading political commentary shows. Before starting the Weekly Standard in 1995, Mr. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory. He served as editor for 21 years.

Neera Tanden is President and CEO of the Center for American Progress, the largest progressive think-tank in our nation. Before joining CAP, she worked as a key member of the health reform team of former President Barack Obama, where she helped to develop and pass the Affordable Care Act. She also managed all domestic policy initiatives during Obama’s first presidential campaign, and has served in several leadership roles for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At CAP, Tanden is focused on building the grassroots opposition to Donald Trump’s agenda, and on developing an alternative agenda that will expand opportunity for all Americans.

William Antholis serves as director and CEO of UVA's Miller Center. From 2004 to 2014, he was managing director at the Brookings Institution. He has served in government, including at the White House’s National Security Council and National Economic Council, and at the State Department’s policy planning staff and bureau of economic affairs. He has published two books, as well as dozens of articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces on US politics, US foreign policy, international organizations, the G8, climate change, and trade. He has earned his Ph.D. From Yale University in politics (1993) and his B.A. from the University of Virginia in government and foreign affairs (1986).

As an assistant professor in presidential studies at the Miller Center, Nicole Hemmer works in the Presidential Recordings Program, focusing on the Nixon administration and its media relations. Her broader scholarship focuses on the history of conservatism and media. Hemmer’s first book, Messengers of the Right, charts the history of conservative media activism in the United States; her current work-in-progress is a history of conservatism in the 1990s.

Blackmon, senior fellow at the Miller Center, is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II," and co-executive producer of the acclaimed PBS documentary of the same name.