The Future of Democracy

William Jefferson Clinton, the first Democratic president in six decades to be elected twice, led the United States to the longest economic expansion in American history, including the creation of more than 22 million jobs. After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the Clinton Foundation in order to continue working on the causes important to him. Since its founding, the Clinton Foundation has endeavored to help build more resilient communities by developing and implementing programs that improve people’s health, strengthen local economies, and protect the environment. In addition to his Foundation work, President Clinton served as the top United Nations envoy for the Indian Ocean tsunami recovery effort and the U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, and he has partnered numerous times with Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush to support relief efforts for communities devastated by natural disasters. President Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. He and his wife, Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, have one daughter, Chelsea, and three grandchildren: Charlotte, Aidan, and Jasper. They live in Chappaqua, New York.

Steve Israel U.S. Congressman 2001–2017, directs the nonpartisan Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University. He has published two critically acclaimed satires of Washington: The Global War on Morris (2014) and Big Guns (2018). As a member of Congress, Israel served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (2011–2015).

Israel is a regular political commentator on MSNBC, and his insights appear regularly in the New York Times, The Atlantic magazine, the Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. He was profiled on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and has appeared on CBS’s Sixty Minutes.

Bob Harrison is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Cornell University. He served as Chief Executive Officer of the Clinton Global Initiative from 2007 to 2017 and worked for the Clinton Foundation since 2005 in two prior roles: Executive Director of the Foundation’s childhood obesity initiative and chairing a task force on access to water and sanitation in the developing world.

Before joining the Clinton Foundation, Mr. Harrison spent over 20 years on Wall Street as an investment banker and attorney. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1987, where he became a partner in the firm’s Investment Banking Division and global co-head of its Communications, Media, and Entertainment Group. From 1981 to 1987, Mr. Harrison practiced corporate law in the New York and Paris offices of Davis Polk & Wardwell.

In addition to serving on the Cornell Board of Trustees, Mr. Harrison is a director of the Clinton Foundation and the Association of American Rhodes Scholars, a director and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Henry Street Settlement, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received a B.A. in Government from Cornell University; an M.A. in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a J.D. from Yale Law School.