Story in the Public Square

Throughout American history, leadership has played an important role, and it continues to matter as we grapple with the lingering effect of the pandemic, intractable political disputes, and disputes about the integrity of American elections. Despite all this, David Gergen pins his hope on the public leaders who he believes can lead the country to a brighter future.

Gergen has worked as a political analyst for CNN, chief editor of U.S. News & World Report and a public affairs commentator at MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour. He has also served as a White House advisor, reaching across the political aisle working for Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton. He reflected on his experiences there in his 2011 New York Times bestseller, “Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton.” Gergen won two Peabody awards as part of an election coverage team and multiple Emmy Awards for his work on political analysis teams. A graduate of Yale, he has served on the boards of both his alma mater and Duke University, as well as the boards of several non-profits, including Teach for America, The Mission Continues, The Trilateral Commission and the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School. His most recent book is “Hearts Touched with Fire: How Great Leaders are Made.”

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In the summer of 2016, Seth Rich, a young employee of the Democratic National Committee, was murdered in Washington, D.C. His death became fertile ground for conspiracy theories peddled by some Americans and certain foreign intelligence services. Andy Kroll gives us the truth about what happened that night and what those conspiracy theories have cost us.

Kroll is an investigative journalist for ProPublica. A Michigan native, Kroll got his start at Mother Jones. While he was working there, he exposed a prominent law office that was profiting off of foreclosures and reported several stories on Donald Trump, which helped prompt multiple congressional investigations. In 2018, he reported on a series of cyber attacks on California’s elections for Rolling Stone, which led to a political operative’s indictment. Throughout his career, Kroll has received many accolades. While at Mother Jones, the magazine, which included his work, won the 2013 Izzy Award and 2010 National Magazine Award for general excellence. Mother Jones’ “Climate Countdown” package, to which Kroll was a contributor, won the James Aronson award for social justice journalism. He also was named as an outstanding emerging journalist by The Society of Professional Journalists-NorCal in 2012. Kroll’s newest project is his book, “A Death on W Street: The Murder of Seth Rich and the Age of Conspiracy,” which explores Rich’s life, death, and the conspiracy theories that followed his murder.

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The threats to American democracy seem to grow every day, not from some external threat, but from within: revelations about the January 6 insurrection, gerrymandered Congressional districts and even restrictions on voting rights proposed or in place across the country. Marc Morial helps document those threats to American democracy and offers lessons about how citizens can resist them.

Morial served as mayor of New Orleans from 1994-2002. After leaving office, he became President and CEO of the National Urban League. The League was founded in 1910 to aid Black migrants fleeing from the South to the Northern states. Since then, they have grown to serve 300 communities through their 90 affiliates. Morial says the goal of the League has always been “to bring voice to those who have been locked out and left out.” Over the past 15 years, he has expanded the reach of its services and assisted in creating a framework for policies that will continue to benefit communities of color. Morial earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics and African American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and his Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University. He is a recipient of the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Pro Bono Publico Award for his work with the disadvantaged and impoverished. Additionally, he has been listed as both one of Ebony Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Black Americans and one of the Nonprofit Times’ Top 50 Nonprofit Executives. During the pandemic, Morial played an integral role in bringing attention to the needs of Black Americans and addressing the fracturing of the United States before and after January 6th. In 2020, he published “The Gumbo Coalition,” a book that reflects Morial’s time as a public figure and the lessons he learned throughout.

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Too frequently, the captions flash across the lower third of the television screen: another mass shooting; more innocent lives cut short. The debate in the following days follows a well-worn script of hopeless resignation and incensed outrage. But Mark Follman says there are techniques and methods already in use that successfully prevent mass shootings.

Follman is the national affairs editor of Mother Jones Magazine, a publication that promotes “Smart, Fearless Journalism.” His main journalistic focus since 2012 has been gun violence and mass shootings. He has written several in-depth investigative pieces on child gun deaths, mass shootings and the impact of gun violence on the economy, all of which have received a myriad of awards and acclaim. Follman also created one of the first mass shooting databases on Mother Jones, cataloging mass shootings in the United States from 1982-2022. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times and on National Public Radio. In April of this year, Follman published “Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America.” His book chronicles the specialized teams that have been working toward the prevention of Mass shootings in the United States. “Trigger Points” has received rave reviews and gives hope to the despairing reality of mass shootings.

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Nowadays, science is often reduced to facts, data and analysis which can seem impersonal and cold. But science journalist Mark Johnson brings the human capacity for empathy to his reporting. He has become known within the industry as someone who brings great knowledge and great empathy to his scientific coverage.

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The evidence is overwhelming: the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color was out of proportion to the size of those communities in the overall American population. Dr. Yohuru Williams is among a group of scholars whose new book argues the experience with COVID is consistent with other difficult experiences in American history.

Williams is an accomplished writer, Distinguished University Chair, Professor of History and founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas. His published works include “Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven,” “Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement” and “Teaching beyond the Textbook: Six Investigative Strategies.” Along with his published books, Williams has had scholarly articles printed in the American Bar Association’s “Insights on Law and Society,” “The Black Scholar,” “The Black History Bulletin” and several other journals. Williams has also made television appearances in PBS documentaries like Ken Burns’ “Jackie Robinson” and Stanley Nelson’s “The Black Panthers” and as one of the hosts of “Sound Smart” on the History Channel. He has also served as a general editor on several projects, including “The Color Line Revisited,” “The Souls of Black Folks: Centennial Reflections” and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History’s 2002 and 2003 Black History Month publications. Williams’ newest project is “After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America,” of which he is a contributor and co-editor.

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Often, politics can feel like a thankless and often futile undertaking.  But White House chief speechwriter Cody Keenan tells his readers that occasionally, through long and sustained effort, the world moves.

Keenan began his political career as an intern and legislative aide to senator Edward M. Kennedy.  He earned a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he studied speechwriting and delivery.  After a speechwriting internship on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign working under White House Director of Speechwriting Jon Favreau, Keenan returned as a full-time staffer on Obama’s presidential campaign.  In 2013, Keenan took the lead in writing the State of the Union Address just prior to Favreau’s departure from the White House.  He became the White House Director of Speechwriting in March 2013.  Among his many notable speeches, Kennan wrote Obama’s speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in 2015.  An expert on politics, messaging, and current affairs, he now serves as a partner at leading speechwriting firm Fenway Strategies and teaches political speechwriting at his alma mater Northwestern University.

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For most of the last 20 years, the conversation about American national security has been focused on the threats posed by extremists.  With the death of al Qaeda Leader Ayman al Zawahiri, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and rising tensions with China, Javed Ali argues that conversation has swung back to great-power competition.

Ali is an associate professor of practice at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.  He spent 20 years of working with national security and intelligence issues in Washington, D.C. at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security before joining the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  While at the FBI, he also held senior roles on joint duty assignments at the National Intelligence Council and the National Counterterrorism Center, and the National Security Council under the Trump Administration.  Ali holds a JD from the University of Detroit School of Law, and an MA in international relations from American University.  He writes and provides commentary across a number of media sites and platforms, including MSNBC, CBS, CNN, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Hill, and Newsweek.

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People come from all over the world to access cutting-edge care in American hospitals.  But Linda Villarosa describes a different experience for Black Americans, who she says “live sicker, and die quicker” than their white compatriots.

Villarosa is a journalist, author, editor, novelist and educator.  A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, where she covers race, inequality and health.  Her 2018 cover story, “Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis,” was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. She has covered the toll Covid-19 has taken on black communities in America and the environmental justice movement in Philadelphia in 2020 and wrote about life expectancy in Chicago in 2021.  Villarosa previously edited the health pages for the New York Times, working on health coverage for Science Times and for the newspaper at large.  She was also a two-time executive editor of Essence Magazine where she wrote or edited a number of award-winning articles.  She is the author or co-author of three books, including “Body & Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being,” her first novel, “Passing for Black,” which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, and “Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation,” which was published in June 2022.  Villarosa was a journalism fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is an associate professor and journalist in residence at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.  She also teaches reporting, writing and Black Studies at The City College of New York in Harlem.

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Indigenous artists often straddle a space created by white anthropologists between art and craft. Cannupa Hanska Luger grapples with that dichotomy. Creating art from tradition that, in its time, was purely practical. And seeing his own contemporary activism viewed as art when it was, in fact, protest.

Luger is a multidisciplinary artist and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold—Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota.  Through installations and social collaboration, Luger communicates stories about 21st-century indigeneity with critical cultural analysis and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages.  He lectures and produces large-scale projects around the globe and his works are in many public collections.  Luger is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, recipient of the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft and was named a Grist 50 Fixer for 2021, a list which includes emerging leaders in climate, sustainability, and equity who are creating change across the nation.  He is a 2020 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, the recipient the 2020 A Blade Of Grass Artist Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art and the recipient of the Center For Crafts inaugural Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship for 2020.  He is the recipient of a 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants, a 2019 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Honoree and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize.

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