Ken Auletta

Ken Auletta

American writer, journalist, media critic

Ken Auletta is an American journalist and media critic at The New Yorker. He has worked in government and on several political campaigns along with having taught and trained Peace Corps volunteers. In 1974, Auletta became the chief political correspondent for the New York Post. Following that, he was a staff writer and weekly columnist for The Village Voice, and then a contributing editor at New York Magazine. He started contributing to The New Yorker in 1977. Between 1977 and 1993, he wrote a weekly political column for the New York Daily News.

Auletta has been writing his column, the Annals of Communications, since 1992. He has written twelve books, including five bestsellers —Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed and Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It. His most recent book, Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (and Everything Else), was published in June of 2018.

Before becoming a journalist and author, Auletta trained Peace Corps volunteers, served as Special Assistant to the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce, and worked on Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign. 

Auletta has served as a Pulitzer Prize juror and a judge for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. In 2001, his profile of Ted Turner won the National Magazine Award for best profile. The New York Public Library chose him as a Literary Lion. He was also a board member for PEN, a worldwide association of writers, and a trustee of The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival. 

On July 28, 2021 Ken Auletta participated in A Conversation with American's Police Commissioner, Bill Bratton

Twitter: @kenauletta

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Read more:

Leah Graham & Amara Shaikh, ‘Ronan Farrow and Ken Auletta talk #MeToo’, value of investigative journalism’, The Michigan Daily, 19 March 2019

Michael Bernick, ‘Ken Auletta, The Underclass: “A Firebell In The Night”’, Forbes, 11 December 2018

Ken Auletta, ‘The Rise, Reign, and Fall of W.P.P.’s Martin Sorrell’, The New Yorker, 17 April 2018

Clarissa Ward

CLARISSA WARD

Journalist

CNN’s chief international correspondent, Clarissa Ward, is a multi-award winning American journalist who's been reporting from front lines across the world for more than 15 years. Ward's career in journalism started in 2002 as an intern at CNN's Moscow bureau. She has since been named Reporter of the Year by the Gracies in 2019 and published her own memoir: 'On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist', detailing her career as a conflict reporter. 

This year, Ward will collect the Ted Sorensen Award from Network 20/20 in recognition for "adeptly crafting the first draft of history and providing original insight into the people and events of our time."

Clarissa Ward participated in The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards, on March 4, 2021.

Rick Hertzberg

RICK HERTZBERG

Award-winning journalist

Rick Hertzberg is an award-winning journalist, best known as the principal political commentator for The New Yorker magazine. He is credited with helping to redesign and revitalize the magazine. He is an accomplished writer and believes that America’s system of winner-take-all elections, federalism, and separation of powers is out of date and damaging to political responsibility and democratic accountability.

He previously served as the editor of The New Republic where under his editorship the magazine twice won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, the magazine world’s highest honor. He went on to serve as the chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter where he wrote speeches that at one point increased the president's approval rating by 11 points. Forbes credited Hertzberg as " one of the "25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media." 

Rick Hertzberg participated in Should the People Pick Our President? With Jesse Wegman and Rick Hertzberg, on January 25, 2021.

Jesse Wegman

JESSE WEGMAN

Journalist and Member of the New York Times Editorial Board

Jesse Wegman serves on the editorial board for The New York Times where he has written about the Supreme Court and legal affairs since 2013. He was previously a senior editor at The Daily Beast and Newsweek, a legal news editor at Reuters, and the managing editor of The New York Observer.

His recent book has been heavily praised with Publishers Weekly saying "Wegman combines in-depth historical analysis and insight into contemporary politics to present a cogent argument that the Electoral College violates America’s ‘core democratic principles’ and should be done away with…" The New York Times wrote, "People have been arguing against the Electoral College from the beginning. But no one… has laid out the case as comprehensively and as readably as Jesse Wegman does.”

Jesse Wegman participated in Should the People Pick Our President? With Jesse Wegman and Rick Hertzberg, on January 25, 2021.

Honorary Advisory Board Member: Steven Brill

Steven Brill is an award-winning journalist, author, academic thought leader, and entrepreneur. He has founded a number of incredibly important and successful journalism ventures.

In 1979, Brill launched The American Lawyer, a magazine which covers the business of law firms and lawyers in the U.S. and around the world, and is highly regarded for its surveys, including the “Am Law 100”, an annual ranking of the 100 U.S. law firms. Brill went on to found Court TV (now TruTV), a channel focused on true crime documentaries and coverage of prominent criminal cases; Brill’s Content Magazine, a media watchdog publication; Journalism Online, which created a new, viable business model for journalism to flourish online; and NewsGuard which rates news sites as to how reliable and credible the news platforms and sites are..

 In support of future generations of journalism,  he and his wife Cynthia founded the Yale Journalism Initiative, which recruits and trains students to contribute to democracy in the United States and around the world by becoming journalists.

Brill, with fellow TCG Honorary Advisory Board Member Tom Rogers in 2001

Brill on Meet the Press

Brill’s most recent venture, NewsGuard, Inc, allows users to check the reliability of their online sources by reviewing the credibility of news and information websites and tracking online misinformation. NewsGuard recently launched a new “Responsible Advertising for News Segments” program which helps companies protect themselves from having their advertising unintentionally fund misinformation and hoax websites.

An exceptional author as well as a digital entrepreneur, Brill’s feature articles have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, TIME, Esquire, New York Magazine, and Harpers. His 2013 TIME cover story, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” won the National Magazine Award for Public Service; he expanded the story into a best-selling book, America’s Bitter Pill. Brill’s other books include Tailspin, a cogent narrative describing how America’s core values have come to power the nation’s decline, The Teamsters, a New York Times best-seller on the lives and leaders of American teamsters, Class Warfare, a clear breakdown on the American education system and the adults fighting over it’s reform, and AFTER, a sweeping narrative of the first year after September 11th.  

A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Brill is also an adjunct professor at Yale Law School.

Brill spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2017, and he currently serves as a member ofThe Common Good Honorary Advisory Board.

Twitter: @StevenBrill

Selected Media:

• New Tool Helps Ad Buyers Choose Sites That Reflect A Company's Values

• NewsGuard Launches "Responsible Advertising for News Segments" to Help Brands Stop Funding Misinformation

• Steven Brill is powering his newest company with humans, not computers

• NewGuard Co-founder Gordon Crovitz Op-Ed for Politico What I Learned on My Quest to Fix America’s Social Media Problem 

• Brill for Time Magazine, 2018 "Tailspin": How My Generation Broke America 

• Interview with Brill Combating Vaccine Misinformation 

• Interview with Brill on Law Talk podcast Steven Brill: Entrepreneur, Attorney, and Best-Selling Author  

Books:

• Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall—and Those Fighting to Reverse It. 2018

• America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System 2015

• Class Warfare : Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools 2011

•  After : How America Confronted the September 12 Era 2003

• Trial By Jury 1990

The Teamsters 1978

Andy Serwer

Andy Serwer

American journalist

Andy Serwer is the editor in chief for Yahoo Finance, where he oversees all editorial content from breaking news to in-depth stories to original video programming. He was previously the managing editor of Fortune and worked at Time Inc. for 29 years. He has been a regular guest on MSNBC’S Morning Joe and CNBC’s Squawkbox and many other TV and radio programs.

Serwer's daily online musings have earned him a reputation as one of the sharpest and most entertaining market commentators anywhere. According to an article in the May 22, 2000, New Yorker, "Achaea had Homer, the Spanish Civil War had Hemingway, California had the Beach Boys, and now our hyperactive stock market has its own poet-singer--Andy Serwer." He was named 2000 Business Journalist of the Year by TJFR, who called him "perhaps the nation's top multimedia talent, successfully juggling the roles of serious journalist, astute commentator and occasional court jester."

Serwer has also written for Sports Illustrated, Politico, SLAM Magazine, and TIME. He has appeared on CNN’s In the Money, NBC’s The Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN’s American Morning, and CBS This Morning.

Serwer participated in "The Economy in Crisis -- When the Worst Is Yet to Come" event in company with Glenn Hutchins.

Former Senator Jim Webb

Jim Webb

Politician

Jim Webb is the former Democratic Senator from Virginia. He wrote, introduced, and guided to passage the Post-9.11 GI Bill, the most significant veterans legislation since World War II, and co-authored legislation which exposed 60 billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan wartime-support contracts. A long-time advocate of fixing America’s broken criminal justice system, Mr. Webb was spotlighted in The Atlantic as one of the world’s “Brave Thinkers” for tackling prison reform and possessing “two things vanishingly rare in Congress: a conscience and a spine.” He went on to give a response to the State of the Union which has been regarded as one of the stronger State of the Union responses in recent memory. 

He previously served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan and is the recipient of the Purple Heart. Webb is also an Emmy Award winning journalist, a filmmaker, and the author of ten books. Since retiring, Webb has continued to be a prolific writer and has written for many national journals including USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

Jim Webb participated in The White Working-Class Political Revolution with David Kuhn, Charlie Cook, and Moderator Clyde Haberman on January 7, 2021. Kuhn, Webb, Cook, and Haberman discussed how the white working-class was driven away from the Democratic party and towards Republicans and how that schism continues to drive class conflict and political polarization today. The discussion also broached the Democrats inability to make inroads with this demographic and if white working-class voters support Republicans in spite of their own policy preferences.

Chris Whipple

Chris Whipple

Journalist & Filmmaker

Chris Whipple is one of the most accomplished multimedia journalists of our era: a writer, documentary filmmaker, and speaker. He is a multiple Peabody and Emmy Award–winning producer at CBS’s 60 Minutes and ABC’s Primetime. He is currently the chief executive officer of CCWHIP Productions and is a frequent guest on MSNBC and CNN. Chris served as the executive producer and writer of Showtime’s 2015 documentary film The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Politico, the Daily Beast, and many other publications. His last book, Gatekeepers, on White House Chiefs of Staff was a NYTimes bestseller. Whipple recently published his book “The Spymasters” which provided a remarkable, behind-the-scenes look at the world’s most powerful intelligence agency.

Friend of The Common Good and titan of TV and journalism, Tom Brokaw, described Whipple’s book, The Spymasters, this way:  “Fascinating…Whipple parts the curtains on the dark arts to show the triumphs and failures, the personalities and rivalries of those who work in the shadows of espionage.”

The Spymasters resonates with themes from today’s headlines. It is the story of how CIA directors have stood up to rogue presidents, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump. It was Director Richard Helms’s refusal to carry out the Watergate coverup that brought down Nixon; in the scandal over President Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine’s president, it was a CIA whistleblower who brought Trump to the verge of being removed from office. Most important, in times of national crisis, including deadly pandemics, the CIA director must be the president’s, and the nation’s, honest broker of information.

Chris Whipple participated in The Spymasters: How The CIA Directors Shaped History & the Future on December 17, 2020. Whipple and Bird discussed the CIA's innerworkings, successes and failures, role in American history, and ultimately its fundamental purpose.

Joe Hagan

Joe Hagan

Journalist

Joe Hagan is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair. He has written for New York, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Hagan recently interviewed author Kurt Anderson where they unpack his newest book Evil Geniuses  and unravels how the right helped create a wildly inequitable society—and how Americans could hold the government accountable for overlooking their economic interests.

His work includes long-form profiles and investigative exposés of some of the most significant figures and subjects of our time, including Beto O’Rourke, Hillary Clinton (her first post–secretary of state interview), Karl Rove, the Bush family, Henry Kissinger, Dan Rather, Goldman Sachs, The New York Times, and Twitter. In 2010, he discovered the diaries of singer Nina Simone and wrote about them for The Believer magazine. He lives with his family in Tivoli, New York.

Joe Hagan participated in Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History on November 18, 2020. Hagan and Anderson trace where America went wrong, what exactly happened and how we can get back to a more equitable, prosperous and ultimately more sane America.

Barton Gellman

Barton Gellman is a highly respected and much-honored author and journalist, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation in New York. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy for documentary filmmaking, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

His recent articles from The Atlantic have been widely praised for the cogent look at the turmoil and chaos that could erupt from the 2020 election. 

Gellman is responsible for many important stories. He led The Washington Post's coverage of the U.S. National Security Agency, which was based in large measure on top-secret documents provided to him by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden. He published a book for Penguin Press on the rise of the surveillance-industrial state in May 2020.

Gellman joined TCG on Wednesday October 28th, 2020 for “The Election that Could Break America”, a discussion about what to expect after the 2020 Biden-Trump election. The event was moderated by Tom Rogers, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. 

Clyde Haberman

Clyde Haberman

American Journalist

Clyde Haberman has served as a journalist with The New York Times since 1977. His assignments included staff editor of The Week in Review; Metro reporter; City Hall bureau chief; and foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Rome, and bureau chief in Jerusalem. He is known and received tremendous praise for his coverage of the Attica prison rebellion, the fall of Ferdinand Marcos, the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians, the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the rise of Islamic terrorism in the Middle East. 

He was part of a Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, awarded for coverage of the prostitution scandal that led to Eliot Spitzer's resignation as New York governor. He continues to be a NYT columnist  and writes the Retro Report essays for The New York Times.

Clyde Haberman moderated our event, The White Working-Class Political Revolution with David Kuhn, Charlie Cook, and Jim Webb on January 7, 2021. Kuhn, Webb, Cook, and Haberman discussed how the white working-class was driven away from the Democratic party and towards Republicans and how that schism continues to drive class conflict and political polarization today. The discussion also broached the Democrats inability to make inroads with this demographic and if white working-class voters support Republicans in spite of their own policy preferences.

Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt

Michael S. Schmidt is an American journalist, author, and correspondent for The New York Times in Washington, D.C. and national security contributor for MSNBC and NBC News. He covers national security and federal law enforcement and has broken several high-profile stories. The Pulitzer-winning reporter broke news of Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email while secretary of state, and of James Comey authoring a memo that detailed the president ordering him to end the FBI investigation of Gen Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

All of these are detailed in his most recent book Donald Trump V. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President. Schmidt dives in to his experiences having that he describes as a “front row seat” as these pinnacle events came to fruition. This New York Time Bestseller offers one more startling dissections of the Trump presidency.

Click here for more.

Schmitt discussed his impromptu interview with President Donald Trump on the Late Night Show with Seth Meyers. Describing his interview with President Trump like “unzipping fog” as he unpacks with Meyers the experience. He details the extent of the work and how quickly he had to maneuver to keep up with the constant stream of news coming out day by day.

Michael Schmidt’s vast knowledge of the Trump presidency makes him an ideal panelist to discuss the highs and lows of the Final Presidential Debate. Join The Common Good Friday, October 23rd, 12:00pm EST to for a recap and discussion on the debate. Get your questions answered by Schmidt and our other expert panelists. Click the button to RSVP!

Sidney Blumenthal

Sidney Blumenthal

Journalist, Activist, Writer & Political Aide

Sidney Stone Blumenthal is an American journalist, activist, writer, and political aide.

He is a former aide to President Bill Clinton; a long-time confidant of Hillary Clinton, formerly employed by the Clinton Foundation; and a journalist, especially on American politics and foreign policy. Blumenthal is also the author of a multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln. Two books of the planned four-volume series are available now: A Self-Made Man and Wrestling With His Angel. Subsequent volumes were planned for 2018 and 2019.

Blumenthal has written for several publications, including the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and the New Yorker, and was Washington, D.C., bureau chief for Salon.com, for which he has written over 1800 pieces online. He is a regular contributor to openDemocracy.net and was a regular columnist for The Guardian. After 2000, he published several essays critical of the administration of President George W. Bush.

Blumenthal was a key speaker at our The Rise of Lincoln & US Divisions discussion event with co-speaker John Avlon on September 24, 2019.

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Read More:

Sidney Blumenthal, “President Trump’s Revolutionary War quiz”, The Washington Post, 5 July, 2019

Daniel S. Levine, “Sidney Blumenthal: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know”, Heavy, 27 September 2016

Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff

American author

Michael Wolffe is an American journalist, author, columnist and internet entrepreneur. He’s the founder of the news aggregation website ‘Newser’. His books include Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (2018) and Burn rate: How I survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet (1998). He’s written columns for publications like The Hollywood Reporter and USA Today. Wolf was born on August 27, 1953 in Paterson, New Jersey. His father, Lewis, worked in advertising, while his mother, Marguerite, worked as a newspaper reporter. He attended Vassar College followed by Columbia University.

Wolff started out as a copy boy for The New York Times. His first article was published in Time magazine in 1974. It was a profile of Angela Atwood, one of the founding member of the Symbioses Liberation Army. Wolff later became a contributing writer for the news magazine ‘New Times’. The company ceased publication in 1979. Wolff released his first book ‘ White Kids’ in 1979. It was a collection of essays.

Wolff joined the management team at ‘Campaigns and Elections’ in 1988. Campaigns and Elections is a trade magazine based in Arlington, Virginia. Their areas of focus include political campaigns and political consulting. During his tenure, Wolff gave advise to the start-up magazine ‘Wired’. His book-packaging company ‘Michael Wolff & Company, Inc.’ was founded in 1991. Their early projects include the books ‘Where We Stand’ and ‘Net Guide’. The company attracted a handful of venture capital investment in 1995. It venture collapsed two years later and Wolff was ejected from the company.

Wolff’s first best seller ‘Burn Rate’ was published in 1998 by Simon & Schuster. He wrote a biography of Rupert Murdoch titled ‘The Man Who Owns the News (2006). His other published works include ‘Autumn of the Moguls’ (2003), ‘Television is the New Television’ (2015) and ‘Fire and Fury’ (2018). In addition to books, Wolff us a columnist editor of ‘Adweek’. He’s also written for The Industry Standard, Vanity Fair, USA Today and GQ (UK). Wolff launched the news aggregation website ‘Newser’ in 207. Their key staff include Patrick Spain (CEO), Kate Seamons (president), and Evan Gastaldo (Managing Editor).

Read more about the event

Twitter: @MichaelWolffNYC

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Read more:

James North, ‘Growing Israel/U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince isn’t just immoral, it’s foolish’, MONDOWEISS, 28 July 2019

Michael M. Grynbaum, ‘Michael Wolff Talks ‘Siege,’ Trump, Journalism and His Definition of Truth’, The New York Times, 30 May 2019

Oliver Darcy. ‘How should journalists treat claims in "Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff's new book? With some caution’, CNN Business, 29 May 2019

Mohamad Bazzi

Mohamad Bazzi

Journalist

Mohamad Bazzi is adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also an assistant professor of journalism at New York University, where he teaches international reporting. He was the 2007-2008 Edward R. Murrow press fellow at CFR. (1)

His articles and commentaries on the Middle East have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Newsweek, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Salon, Washington Times, Newark Star- Ledger, and The National (Abu Dhabi). (1)

Bazzi spoke at a Special Screening of “Letters from Baghdad” and Panel Discussion alongside Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum, moderated by Alex Witt, at The Common Good in 2018.

Twitter: @BazziNYU

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Read more:

Mohamad Bazzi, ‘Congress is Forcing a Confrontation with Saudi Arabia,’ The Atlantic, 11 October 2018.

Mohamad Bazzi, ‘The United States Could End the War in Yemen If It Wanted to,’ The Atlantic, 30 September 2018

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(1) Material from the Council on Foreign Relations website.

Christopher Ruddy

Christopher Ruddy

Businessman, journalist

Christopher Ruddy is the CEO of Newsmax Media, which publishes Newsmax.com and broadcasts the Newsmax TV network. Following Ruddy's work at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 1998, he started Newsmax with Richard Mellon Scaife, who owned the Tribune-Review. In April 2010, media-industry magazine Folio named Ruddy to its "FOLIO 40," an "annual list of magazine industry influencers and innovators".

A prominent conservative, Ruddy was an early donor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The Washington Post has referred to him as "the Trump Whisperer".

Ruddy spoke at The Common Good in 2017: The Press, Fake News and Politics: Chris Ruddy.

Twitter: @ChrisRuddyNMX

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Read more:

Cathy Burke, ‘Ruddy to Newsmax TV: Trump's NKorea Deal May Limit Nukes’, Newsmax, 1 July 2019

Callum Paton, ‘Trump family is “American Royalty,“ Trump friend Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy tells Brits: “They have their own ballrooms and palaces”’, Newsweek, 4 June 2019

Sally Quinn

Sally Quinn

Washington Post journalist, columnist, television commentator

Sally Quinn is a longtime Washington Post journalist, columnist, television commentator, Washington insider, and founder of the religious website On Faith from the Washington Post. She writes for various publications and is the author of The Party: A Guide to Adventurous Entertaining, Regrets Only, Happy Endings, Finding Magic: A spiritual memoir and We’re Going to Make You a Star, a memoir based on her experience as the first female network anchor in the United States. She lives in Washington, DC.

Quinn participated in The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards, 2019 on May 10, 2019. She spoke on the “Women & Power” panel alongside former Congresswoman Mia Love, Alessandra Stanley, and Kay Koplovitz, moderated by Juju Chang.

Twitter: @sallyquinndc

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Read more:

Evgenia Peretz, ‘Something About Sally’. Variety, 2 June 2010

Stephanie Sharis

Stephanie Sharis

Journalist, advocate

Stephanie Sharis is currently an Executive Strategist at Vaudeville Ventures. She previously served as Chief Executive Offer of DailyClout, a civic tech start-up that enables citizens to become political influencers through voter engagement tools. DailyClout was co-founded by Naomi Wolf, best-selling non-fiction author, and Lisa Thomas, founding CEO of Clif Bar.

In 2015, DailyClout secured a Knight Foundation Prototype Grant, one of only 20 winners from over 800 applicants, to help build its first government transparency product, BillCam. Before joining DailyClout, Stephanie served as Chief Operating Officer of SnagFilms, the pioneering digital distributor of independent film programming.

Sharis spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.

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William Shawcross

william shawcross

Author, journalist

William Shawcross is a distinguished journalist, broadcaster and commentator who has covered international conflicts and conflict resolution and has reported for the Sunday Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone magazine, among many other publications. He is the bestselling author of many books including biographies of Rupert Murdoch, the Shah of Iran and the official biography of the Queen Mother. In 2003, he was named New Statesman’s Man of the Year. He is a chairman of Article 19, a London based charity and pressure group which defends the rights of free expression enshrined in Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights; a board member of the International Crisis Group; and was a member of the High Commissioner for Refugees’ Informal Advisory Group from 1995–2000.

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Read more:

William Shawcross, ‘Kissinger and I Were Once at Odds, But Let Him Speak’, RealClearPolitics, 20 November 2018

Gail Sheehy

Gail Sheehy

Author, journalist

A world-renowned author, journalist, and popular lecturer, Gail Sheehy has interviewed thousands of women and men and written 17 books throughout her 50 years as a writer. Her earliest revolutionary book, Passages, was named by a Library of Congress survey as one of the ten most influential books of our times. Passages remained on The New York Times Bestseller List for more than three years and has been reprinted in 28 languages. Sheehy’s autobiography is called DARING: My Passages. It was published in September 2014 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Sheehy is also a journalist who has covered national and world leaders. She culminated a decade of following Hillary Clinton for Vanity Fair with the biography, Hillary’s Choice, exploring the personal ambitions and vulnerabilities that drive the world’s most public woman. She has written about the character and psychology of presidential candidates from Robert Kennedy to Barack Obama and world leaders from Margaret Thatcher to Saddam Hussein.

Sheehy convened The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama event at The Common Good in 2009.

Twitter: @Gale_Sheehy

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