Democracy and Its Opposites

Damon Wilson is President and CEO of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a nonprofit grantmaking foundation supporting freedom around the world. Prior to joining NED, Mr. Wilson helped transform the Atlantic Council into a leading global think tank as its executive vice president. He previously served as special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council. Mr. Wilson also served at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as the executive secretary and chief of staff, where he helped manage one of the largest U.S. embassies during a time of conflict.

Michael I. Kotlikoff is the 15th president of Cornell University and professor of molecular physiology. The Cornell Board of Trustees appointed him president on March 21, 2025, following eight months as interim president.

Previously, Kotlikoff was Cornell’s longest-serving provost, holding that office from August 2015 to June 2024. Concurrently with his administrative duties as department chair, dean, and provost, Kotlikoff also oversaw an NIH-funded laboratory comprising senior scientists, postdocs, and graduate and undergraduate students, studying cardiovascular biology and heart repair.

Throughout his tenure at Cornell, President Kotlikoff has overseen numerous initiatives and landmark changes to advance the university’s excellence in teaching, scholarship, and outreach, and to enhance academic collaboration across Cornell’s disciplines, colleges, and campuses.

Under Kotlikoff’s leadership as provost, Cornell created the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, and SC Johnson College of Business; multi-college departments of computational biology, design technology, economics, psychology, sociology, and statistics and data science; and the cross-college Paul Rubacha Department of Real Estate.

Kotlikoff’s signature strategic initiative, Radical Collaboration, has enhanced Cornell’s academic excellence and interdisciplinary collaborations by bringing together world-leading expertise from across widely divergent fields. The initiative has recruited faculty in artificial intelligence, design technology, digital humanities, nanoscience, sustainability, and other areas; led investments in university centers such as the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source, or CHESS; the Society for the Humanities; and the Cornell Center for the Social Sciences; and given rise to the Academic Integration initiative, which deepened collaboration across the Ithaca and Weill Cornell Medicine campuses.

During Kotlikoff’s time as provost, significant advances were also made across Cornell in teaching and learning and in student and campus life, with the development of the Center for Teaching Innovation, the Gateway Courses project, the Community-Engaged Learning Initiative through the David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement, the rapid expansion of eCornell, and the construction and opening of the North Campus Residential Expansion project. He also developed policies to facilitate greater faculty diversity and dual-career hiring across Cornell’s colleges, and initiated broad, high-impact investments in the university’s academic facilities, including the construction of Atkinson Hall, the renovation of McGraw and Phillips Halls, and the renovation and expansion of Thurston Hall.

Cornell successfully navigated the COVID-19 pandemic under Kotlikoff’s leadership, developing and implementing rigorous, evidence-driven public health measures that enabled it to safely continue in-person residential instruction and research activities throughout the 2020-21 academic year.

Kotlikoff was recruited to Cornell in 2000 as the founding chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences and chair of the Mammalian Genomics Life Science Initiative, and served as the Austin O. Hooey Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine from 2007 to 2015. His laboratory’s work is internationally recognized in cell signaling and heart repair and was continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for over 35 years. He has received numerous awards, served on and chaired several editorial boards and NIH councils, and was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from City University of Hong Kong in 2019.

Kotlikoff received his B.A. (literature) and V.M.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. in physiology from the University of California, Davis.

Rachel Beatty Riedl is the Director of Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies as well as the Einaudi Center’s John S. Knight Professor of International Studies and a professor in the Department of Government and Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. Professor Riedl’s research interests include institutional development in new democracies, local governance and decentralization, and authoritarian regime legacies in Africa. Her most recent book, “From Pews to Politics: Religious Sermons and Political Participation in Africa,” coauthored with Gwyneth McClendon, was published in September 2019. “Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Party Systems in Africa” (2014), her previous book, won the African Politics Best Book award. Professor Riedl also cohosts the Ufahamu Africa podcast about life and politics on the African continent. Most recently,  Professor Riedl was a fellow at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study and a Fulbright scholar. Previously, she was director of the Program of African Studies and an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University.

Thomas E. Garrett is Secretary General of the Community of Democracies, a global intergovernmental coalition of the Governing Council member states that support adherence to the Warsaw Declaration’s common democratic values and standards. Mr. Garrett previously worked for the International Republican Institute for 12 years overseas in Ukraine, Mongolia, and Indonesia, returning to Washington, D.C., in 2005 as director of Middle East programs and then as vice president for global programs.