"Enhancing the U.S. Role Around the World" was a program organized with the 2008 Rocky Mountain Roundtable, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver Boettcher Concert Hall- International Leaders Forum
Bio
Madeleine K. Albright
Madeleine Albright is the first woman to become a United States Secretary of State. She was appointed by U.S. President Bill Clinton on December 5, 1996, and was unanimously confirmed by a U.S. Senate vote of 99-0. She was sworn in on January 23, 1997.
Albright now serves as a Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. In addition to her PhD from Columbia University, she also holds Honorary Doctors of Laws from the University of Washington in 2002, Smith College in 2003, University of Winnipeg in 2005, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 and Knox College in 2008. Secretary Albright also serves as a Director on the Board of the Council on Foreign Relations
Tom Brokaw
Tom Brokaw is an American television journalist and author best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. He is the author of The Greatest Generation (1998) and other books and the recipient of numerous awards and honors. He is the only person to host all three major NBC News programs: The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and, briefly, Meet the Press. He now serves as a Special Correspondent for NBC News and works on documentaries for other outlets.
Richard N. Haass
Richard Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Until June 2003, Haass was director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State, where he was a principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell on a broad range of foreign policy concerns.
Amb. Richard C. Holbrooke
Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs from 1994 through 1996, during which time he led the Bosnian peace talks, which resulted in the Dayton Peace Accords.
Prior to becoming Assistant Secretary of State, he was U.S. Ambassador to Germany. He is currently responsible for business development in Europe and the Far East for Credit Suisse First Boston. He also acts as President Clinton's special envoy to Cyprus, and consults with the White House on foreign policy issues.
Ambassador Holbrooke is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Citizens Committee for New York City, and the Economic Club of New York. Prior to assuming his current post, he was a Director of the Council on Foreign Relations, the America-China Society, the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and the International Rescue Committee. He is Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin.
He is co-author of Counsel to the President, the memoirs of Clark Clifford, as well as numerous articles and columns on foreign policy.
Jessica Mathews
Jessica Tuchman Mathews was appointed president of the Endowment in 1997. Her career includes posts in the executive and legislative branches of government, in management and research in the nonprofit arena, and in journalism.
She was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 1993 to 1997 and served as director of the Council's Washington program. While there, she published her seminal 1997 Foreign Affairs article, "Power Shift," chosen by the editors as one of the most influential in the journal's seventy-five years.
From 1982 to 1993, she was founding vice president and director of research of the World Resources Institute, an internationally known center for policy research on environmental and natural-resource management issues.
She served on the editorial board of the Washington Post from 1980 to 1982, covering energy, environment, science, technology, arms control, health, and other issues. Later, she became a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, writing a column that appeared nationwide and in the International Herald Tribune.
From 1977 to 1979, she was director of the Office of Global Issues of the National Security Council, covering nuclear proliferation, conventional arms sales policy, chemical and biological warfare, and human rights. In 1993, she returned to government as deputy to the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs.
Mathews is a director of Somalogic Inc. and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Century Foundation, and the Nuclear Threat Initiative. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Philosophical Society, and the Trilateral Commission.
She has previously served on the boards of the Brookings Institution, Radcliffe College, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Surface Transportation Policy Project, and the Joyce Foundation, among others.
Vin Weber
Vin Weber is managing partner of Clark & Weinstock, where he provides strategic advice to institutions with matters before the legislative and executive branches of the federal government and advises clients on issues pertaining to mergers and acquisitions, crisis management, and strategic communications. Weber serves on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations.
A former congressman, Weber represented Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District in the US House of Representatives from 1981 to 1993. He is former chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy and a former member of the US secretary of defense's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and the US secretary of state's Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion. He is a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota and serves as a board member of several private-sector and nonprofit organizations, including the Aspen Institute.
Some the the comments here from Jessica Matthews are particularly interesting; her assessment of the situation of the US rings true, but also run totally contrary to the ground on which Obama is fighting his campaign and (to a lesser degree) the ground on which the entire presidential election is taking place.
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