Seminars at Steamboat: Recent Episodes
KUNC
Seminars at Steamboat was founded in 2003 to bring experts on a wide range of public policy topics to the Steamboat community. The seminars are non-partisan and free to the public.
The typical format is a 45-to-50-minute presentation followed by a question and answer session.
Seminar topics have included the economy, foreign affairs, national security, immigration reform, health care, the media, drugs and sports, the environment, climate change, education, the 9-11 Commission and more.
Craig Fugate is the former administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), during which time he organized recovery efforts for a record eighty-seven disasters in 2011 alone. Before that, as director of the Florida Emergency Management Division, he coordinated the state’s response to Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne (the “Big 4 of ’04”), and Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina and Wilma in 2005.
At FEMA, Fugate emphasized a “whole community” approach to emergency management; spearheaded the effort to build capacity to stabilize catastrophic events within 72 hours; incorporated “Thunderbolt exercises” using fake disasters and lightning inspections to train emergency operations centers and helped develop smart phone apps for citizens to use to report problems to FEMA.
On a somewhat lighter side, he is also known for the unofficial “Waffle House Index” that FEMA still uses to help determine how much attention a specific disaster area requires. He explains: “The Waffle House has a very simple operation philosophy: get open.” So if the local Waffle House is up and running in the wake of a disaster, that’s probably not the most hard-hit area. If it’s open but with a limited menu, power outages have probably knocked out freezers. If it’s still closed, the situation there is really bad and needs immediate attention.
Fugate’s interest in combatting disasters goes back a very long way. He trained as a volunteer firefighter while still in high school, attended fire college and paramedic school at Santa Fe College, and gradually rose through the ranks of Florida fire and rescue organizations until tapped by Florida Republican governor Jeb Bush in 2001 to become director of the Florida Emergency Management Division. He was then appointed FEMA Administrator by President Obama, with bipartisan support in Congress, and served in that post throughout the Obama administration.
After leaving FEMA, Fugate founded Craig Fugate Consulting LLC. He also founded disastersrus.org, a website with disaster planning advice and resources, and is a licensed amateur radio operator. In November 2020, he was a volunteer member of the Biden presidential transition team for the Department of Homeland Security.
Heather Tanana is highly trained in environmental law and public health, and as a member of the Navajo Nation is dedicated to promoting indigenous rights. She has been asked to contribute to the water chapter for the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), which will analyze the effects of global change on the world’s natural environment, resources and social systems. The assessment, due in 2023, will be submitted to the President and Congress.
She is a visiting Professor at the University of California – Irvine School of Law and has become a nationally recognized researcher and educator specializing in the vexing questions at the junction of law, health and water policies. In 2021 she received an award from the American Bar Association for “distinguished achievement in environmental law and policy” for her work including the 2021 report Universal Access to Clean Water for Tribes in the Colorado River Basin, for which she served as lead author.
She is also an associate faculty member focusing on health policy at the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health. She holds a B.A. in Biology from Dartmouth College, a J.D. from the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law with a Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law, and a Master’s of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health with a Certificate in American Indian Health.
Introductory remarks will be provided by Luke Runyon, KUNC Managing Editor and Reporter on the Colorado River Basin.
Also featured during this Seminar is “Dividing the Waters: How the Colorado River Compact Transformed the Southwestern Frontier”: https://youtu.be/CDHUbyDqgOk
Researched, written and produced by Steamboat Springs High School Senior Wren Capra, this ten-minute film features experts on the Compact, a legislative frontier, that recently crossed its centennial and continues to create controversy today.
Winner of numerous state & national awards including National Park Service Outstanding Entry; National Honorable Mention–June 2023 at National History Day (NHD) National Competition at the University of Maryland, College Park campus; Best Senior Project on Western History from Brigham Young University Charles Redd Center for the Humanities–April 2023 at University of Colorado at Denver NHD Colorado State Competition; 1st Place in Colorado State for Individual Senior Documentary–April 2023 at University of Colorado at Denver NHD Colorado State Competition; 1st Place in Mountain Region for Individual Senior Documentary–April 2023 in Summit County, CO
Matthew Rojansky is one of the country’s pre-eminent Russia scholars. In early 2022 he became President and CEO of the U.S.-Russia Foundation, a private grant-making foundation established to promote the development of the private sector and the rule of law in Russia. Since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he has leveraged his deep knowledge base, extensive personal contacts and the foundation’s funding into far-reaching expertise and involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict “writ large” – its effects not only on Russia and Ukraine but also on NATO, the European Union and beyond.
Prior to joining USRF, Rojansky served as Director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, the premier U.S. institution for research on Russia, from 2013 to 2021. Between 2010 and 2013, he was Deputy Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he founded Carnegie’s Ukraine Program. From 2007 to 2010, he served as executive director of the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA).
Additionally Rojansky remains a Distinguished Fellow at the Wilson Center and his Wilson Center biography notes that he is “as much a regular at Congressional briefings and on prime-time news shows as he is on the streets of Moscow, Kyiv, or Berlin.” He is also U.S. Executive Secretary for the Dartmouth Conference, a track-two U.S.-Russia conflict resolution organization begun in 1960, and member of the OSCE Cooperative Security Initiative and the Euro-Atlantic Security Leaders Group.
Rojansky is regularly interviewed on TV and radio, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Foreign Policy. He holds an A.B. from Harvard College and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Wendy Weiser directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a nonpartisan think tank and public interest law center that works to revitalize, reform, and defend systems of democracy and justice. Her program focuses on voting rights and elections, money in politics and ethics, redistricting and representation, government dysfunction, rule of law, and fair courts. She founded and directed the program’s Voting Rights and Elections Project, directing litigation, research, and advocacy efforts to enhance political participation and prevent voter disenfranchisement across the country.
She has appeared frequently in national print and broadcast media, authored numerous articles on voting rights and election reform, litigated ground-breaking voting rights lawsuits, testified before both houses of Congress, and provided policy guidance to federal and state legislators and administrators across the country.
In addition to her publications and articles, she is a frequent public speaker and media commentator and has appeared on Fox News, CNN, PBS, ABC, and CBS. She is often quoted in print media as well, and is an adjunct professor at the NYU Law School.
Before joining the Brennan Center, Weiser was a senior attorney at the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund; a litigation associate at the corporate law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; and a law clerk in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. She received her BA from Yale College and her JD from Yale Law School.
Jamie Metzl
“R/Evolution: Recasting Life in an Age of Radical Biotechnology”
Technology Futurist, Geopolitics Expert, Entrepreneur, Sci-Fi Novelist
Jamie Metzl is one of the world’s leading technology and healthcare futurists and author of the non-fiction bestseller, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity. He has appeared regularly on national and international media programs and his writings in science, technology, and global affairs are featured in publications around the world. He additionally earned the title of “the original COVID-19 whistleblower” for his leading role advocating for a full investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. During his career, Jamie has served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations in Cambodia and was a member of the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing from 2019 to 2021.
American notions of liberty, property, and the role of government have shaped where we live, who succeeds, and what we must to do to achieve a new ‘American Dream’. Part of that dream for many families is a home of their own.
Christopher Ptomey is the Executive Director of the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Housing, which works to promote residential development and housing affordability. The Center is a key part of ULI’s efforts to leverage its nationwide local networks and 42,000 members to promote responsible land use, build sustainable communities, and create effective partnerships with private and public sector organizations and leaders. Terwilliger’s programs include extensive research, local and national convenings and consultations, and the Jack Kemp and Robert Larson awards programs that highlight innovative and best practices for improving housing affordability.
Ptomey himself has long-standing expertise in housing and community development policies at the local, state and federal level. Before joining the staff of ULI, Ptomey led the U.S. government relations and advocacy team at Habitat for Humanity International, where he focused on improving federal, state, and local housing policies and systems. Prior to that, he was federal liaison for the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, and he served five years as a senior legislative aide to former U.S. Representative Michael “Mac” Collins of Georgia.
In addition to his work at ULI, Ptomey currently serves as a governing board member for the National Housing Conference. He is a former Board member of the Grounded Solutions Network.
He holds a B.A. from Haverford College, a J.D. from George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, and a law license in his native Tennessee.
Cryptocurrencies have come of age holding the potential for faster and cheaper financial transactions than traditional payment models, creating alternative decentralized asset markets and driving significant innovation via the underlying networks that they run on. However, valid concerns exist and range from criminal activities such as money laundering and tax evasion to the safety of digital assets in a currently minimally regulated online world to the impact growth in cryptocurrency adoption might have on the stability of our financial markets. Come hear Lee Reiners, the executive director of Duke Law’s Global Financial Markets Center, provide us with a current state of affairs on the world of cryptocurrencies, what the future has in store for us with such digital assets and the public policy that needs to be put in place to ensure safe and well-functioning markets.
Lee Reiners joined the Duke Global Financial Markets Center as executive director in 2016. At Duke Law, Reiners teaches FinTech Law and Policy as well as seminars relating to financial policy and regulatory practice. His broad research agenda focuses on how new financial technologies fit within existing regulatory frameworks (here). His work has examined the risks associated with cryptocurrency derivatives (here), the rise of digital investment advice, and corporate governance failures within the financial industry (here and here). He writes frequently on FinTech and other financial regulatory matters on The FinReg Blog and speaks with financial policy experts on the Global Financial Markets Center’s podcast, The FinReg Pod.
Prior to joining Duke Law, Reiners worked for five years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), first as a supervisor of systemically important financial institutions and then as a senior associate within the executive office. In the latter capacity, he helped coordinate the FRBNY’s engagement with international standard-setting bodies, such as the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board. While at the FRBNY, Reiners worked closely with other federal and state regulatory agencies.
Reiners has previously taught corporate finance and managerial economics in the MBA Program at Saint Peter’s University. In 2004-2005, Reiners served as a U.S. Army communications specialist in Baghdad, Iraq.
Reiners received a BSc in business economics, summa cum laude, from the University of St. Thomas and a MPP with a global policy concentration from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Reiners holds the chartered financial analyst designation.
Seminar: U.S.-China Strategic Competition
China’s economic competitiveness and international ambitions often pose a direct challenge to the United States and its global interests. Dr. Kennedy’s long experience in China and his expertise in economics and global governance inform his unique insights into the public policy implications of this strategic competition.
Scott Kennedy is a leading authority on China’s economic policy and its global economic relations. He has been traveling to China for over 30 years and has interviewed thousands of officials, business executives, lawyers, nonprofit organizations, and scholars. His specific areas of expertise include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, multinational business challenges in China, global governance, and philanthropy.
He is currently at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., where he serves as senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics and is Director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy,
His articles have appeared in a wide array of policy, popular, and academic venues, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, China Quarterly, and the Journal of Contemporary China. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled The Power of Innovation: The Strategic Importance of China’s High-Tech Drive. He is also the author of China’s Risky Drive into New-Energy Vehicles (CSIS, November 2018), The Fat Tech Dragon: Benchmarking China’s Innovation Drive (CSIS, August 2017), and The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, 2008). Reviewing the latter book, the Far Eastern Economic Review observed that “Tucked away in this well-researched, carefully reasoned piece of scholarship are fresh, insightful observations on both economic and political trends in Chinese society…”
Prior to joining CSIS, Kennedy spent 14 years as a professor at Indiana University (IU), where he established the Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business and was the founding academic director of IU’s China Office.
Kennedy received his Ph.D. in political science from George Washington University, his M.A. in China Studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and his B.A. from the University of Virginia.
Seminar: Deeply Divided & Closely Divided: Why the Temperature has Been Rising in American Politics
The substantive disagreements between the political parties have been deepening for half a century. In the late 1980s, moreover, we entered an era of closely contested elections in which control of Congress and the White House has shifted back and forth several times. Dr. Galston will discuss ways in which this combination of deep division and close division has intensified the passion and bitterness that permeate our politics today.
William A. Galston has written 10 books and more than 100 articles in the fields of political theory, public policy, political and moral philosophy, and U.S. politics. He is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Governance Studies Program. He also writes a weekly column on Politics & Ideas for the Wall Street Journal.
Before joining Brookings, Dr. Galston had served as founding director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE); executive director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal; Saul Stern Professor and Acting Dean at the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland; and director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. He has also held positions at the University of Texas in Austin, Yale University, and the Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies. He has been involved in six presidential campaigns including those of Walter Mondale and Al Gore, and served from 1993 to 1995 as Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy.
Dr. Galston’s books include Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (Yale, 2018), Public Matters (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), and The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge, 2004),
He holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago and a B.A. from Cornell University, where he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. His career also includes service in the United States Marine Corps with the rank of Sergeant.
The Foreign Intelligence Threat to the U.S.: Russia, China and Other Bad Actors
James Bruce, Ph.D., is a former senior executive officer at CIA, an adjunct researcher and former Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown and Florida Atlantic Universities. He also taught as an adjunct at Columbia and American Universities and as a full-time faculty member at the National War College.
Teaching Democracy: Civics and Civility in the Classroom and Beyond Originally from the South Side of Chicago, Deval Patrick came to Massachusetts at the age of 14, when he was awarded a scholarship to Milton Academy through the Boston-based organization A Better Chance. After Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal appellate judge and then launched a career as an attorney and business executive, becoming a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a partner at two Boston law firms and a senior executive at two Fortune 50 companies.