Distinguished Voices Lecture Series

Ibram X. Kendi is Professor of History and International Relations and the Founding Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. His second book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction. At 34 years old, Kendi is the youngest winner of the NBA for nonfiction. 

Kendi has been a visiting professor at Brown University, a 2013 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow, and postdoctoral fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. He has also resided at The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress as the American Historical Association’s 2010-2011 J. Franklin Jameson Fellow in American History. A frequent speaker and contributor of op-eds, Kendi has written for Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, The Root, Salon, The New York Times, New York Daily News, Signature, The Huffington Post and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is the associate editor of Black Perspectives, the most popular online platform for public scholarship on Black life and thought. 

Chris Cox is a partner in the international law firm of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius LLP and president of Morgan Lewis Consulting LLC, its global strategic consulting business. He advises multinational companies on strategic issues, corporate governance, securities regulation and general business matters worldwide.

During a 23 year Washington career, Chris was a White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan, chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the US House of Representatives and the fifth ranking elected leader in the House. In Congress, in addition to his role as chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, Chris was chairman of the Select Committee on US National Security and a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Financial Services Committee. 

This lecture is co-hosted by UNF and the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville

Afshin Molavi is a fellow at the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, where he writes broadly on emerging markets. Particularly on themes related to 'The New Silk Road,' South-South trade, global hub cities, new emerging market multinationals, global aviation, the geopolitics of energy, and the intersection of Middle East states and the global economy. Molavi is also a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation.

A former journalist, his dispatches from the Middle East and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Businessweek, The Journal of Commerce, National Geographic and dozens of academic and specialty publications. 

This lecture is co-hosted by UNF and the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville.

Gillian Tett explains how capital markets and politics created the European financial crisis. An award-winning journalist and preeminent authority on capital markets, she is widely credited with being the first to cover the credit crunch in the mainstream press. Tett has won many prestigious journalism awards for her coverage of capital markets.

Beginning in 2004 — three years before anyone else — she began building a team at the Financial Times to cover capital markets, correctly anticipating the need to watch an industry growing uncommonly fast. By 2007, a year ahead of the curve, she began issuing her news breaking warnings of a looming financial crisis. She is currently the Managing Editor (US) and columnist at the Financial Times. In her previous role at FT, she oversaw global coverage of the financial markets. 

This lecture is co-hosted by UNF and the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville.

Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice, was born in San Francisco, California, August 15, 1938. He married Joanna Hare in 1967, and has three children - Chloe, Nell, and Michael. He received an A.B. from Stanford University, a B.A. from Magdalen College, Oxford, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Arthur Goldberg of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1964 Term, as a Special Assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Antitrust, 1965–1967, as an Assistant Special Prosecutor of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, 1973, as Special Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, 1974–1975, and as Chief Counsel of the committee, 1979–1980.

He was an Assistant Professor, Professor of Law, and Lecturer at Harvard Law School, 1967–1994, a Professor at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, 1977–1980, and a Visiting Professor at the College of Law, Sydney, Australia and at the University of Rome. From 1980–1990, he served as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and as its Chief Judge, 1990–1994. He also served as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 1990–1994, and of the United States Sentencing Commission, 1985–1989. President Clinton nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat August 3, 1994. 

This lecture is co-hosted by UNF and the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville

General Michael Hayden is a retired four star general who served as director of both the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. As head of the country’s premier intelligence agencies, he was on the front lines of global change, the war on terrorism and the growing cyber challenge. He speaks on the delicate balance between liberty and security in intelligence work, as well the potential benefits and dangers associated with the cyber domain. 

In addition to leading CIA and NSA, General Hayden was the country’s first principal deputy director of national intelligence and the highest-ranking military intelligence officer in the country. In all of these jobs, he worked to put a human face on American intelligence, explaining to the American people the role of espionage in protecting both American security and American liberty. Hayden also served as commander of the Air Intelligence Agency and Director of the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center and served in senior staff positions at the Pentagon, the U.S. European Command, the National Security Council and the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. He was also the deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command and U.S. Forces in South Korea. 

This lecture is co-hosted by UNF and the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville

 Stephen Sestanovich is the George F. Kennan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis professor of international diplomacy at Columbia University. His areas of special expertise are Russia and the former Soviet Union, Caucasus and Central Asia and U.S. foreign policy.

From 1997 to 2001, he served as special advisor to the secretary of state and ambassador at large for the New Independent States. In this capacity, he was the State Department's principal officer responsible for policy toward Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union. Prior to joining the State Department, Ambassador Sestanovich worked at two of Washington's leading public policy research organizations. From 1994 to 1997, he was vice president for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 1987 to 1994, he was director of Soviet and East European studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 1984 to 1987, Ambassador Sestanovich served as senior director for policy development at the National Security Council. He was a member of the State Department's policy planning staff from 1981 to 1984 and senior legislative assistant to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from 1980 to 1981. 

This lecture is co-hosted by UNF and the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville

Felipe Calderón served as President of Mexico from 2006 to 2012. He is internationally recognized as a President who strengthened the rule of law and made possible the economic recovery of Mexico after the world economic crisis. Previously, he was Secretary of Energy (and as such chaired the boards of PEMEX and CFE) and director of Banobras (National Bank of Public Works and Services). He was both a local and federal congressman, leader of the National Action Party (PAN) in the Federal Congress and General Secretary and National President of PAN.

He has been named "Statesman of the Year" by the World Economic Forum and "Champion of the Earth" by the United Nations. He has received the Teddy Roosevelt Award for the Environment, the GLOBE Award from the Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment, the International Star of Energy Efficiency award, among other important awards as a world leader on environmental issues. 

This lecture is co-hosted by UNF and the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville