Moynihan Center Fellows
Bold thinkers. Bridge Builders. Problem Solvers.
The Moynihan Center supports heterodox thinkers with diverse perspectives and promising students from diverse backgrounds. Fellows engage in the open exchange of ideas as part of a 21st century hub for academic excellence and leadership development within New York City’s flagship public college.
Through two signature fellowship programs and a rich slate of public events, the Center works to ensure that the next generation of public scholars and public servants reflects the diversity of viewpoints and lived experiences represented at City College and beyond.
Fellows Alumni Fellows
Sohrab Ahmari's Bio
Public Scholar
Sohrab Ahmari
US Editor, UnHerd
Sohrab Ahmari is the US Editor of UnHerd and cofounder of Compact magazine. He previously spent nearly a decade at News Corp, serving as an editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal opinion pages in New York and London, and as the op-ed editor of the New York Post. In addition to those publications, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Statesman, The Spectator, The New Republic, Times Literary Supplement, Commonweal, and Dissent, among many others.
Ahmari is the author of Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What To Do About It (2023) and The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos (2021), both published by Penguin Random House, as well as The Triumph of Normal, forthcoming from HarperCollins.
Frank Barry's Bio
Distinguished Practitioner
Frank Barry
Leader-in-Residence 2025–2026
Frank Barry is a Bloomberg Opinion Columnist and Editorial Board Member covering national affairs, with a special focus on polarization. He served as Chief Speechwriter on the Bloomberg 2020 presidential campaign after having been Director of Speechwriting and Public Affairs for New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, where he also helped design and implement a variety of government reform initiatives. He is the author of two books: Back Roads and Better Angels: A Journey Into the Heart of American Democracy (2024), and The Scandal of Reform: The Grand Failures of New York's Political Crusaders and the Death of Nonpartisanship (2009).Â
Elmira Bayrasli's Bio
Public Scholar
Elmira Bayrasli
CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Interruptrr
Elmira Bayrasli is an entrepreneur, writer, editor, and former U.S. diplomat whose work sits at the intersection of foreign policy, democratic governance, and global innovation. She is the CEO and editor-in-chief of Interruptrr, a weekly newsletter elevating female expertise in global affairs, and the author of From the Other Side of the World: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs, Unlikely Places.Â
Bayrasli served as a presidential appointee in the U.S. State Department from 1994 to 2000, working for Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke, and later as Chief Spokesperson for the OSCE Mission in Sarajevo. Her analysis has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Reuters, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and she has been featured on CNN, NPR, BBC, and Al Jazeera. She serves on the boards of Our Secure Future, Turkish Philanthropy Funds, and the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative.
Eleonora Bottini's Bio
Academic Freedom Fellow
Eleonora Bottini
Professor of Public Law, University of Caen Normandy
Eleonora Bottini is Professor of Public Law at the University of Caen Normandy, where she has taught since 2018, after serving as Associate Professor at the Sorbonne Law School (2015–2018). She has been Martin-Flynn Global Law Professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law and visiting professor at Fordham Law School, and is a research fellow at the Georgetown Center for the Constitution and at the University of Texas at Austin’s Constitutional Studies Program. She is the inaugural co-chair of ICON-S France.
Her research focuses on the comparative study of constitutional systems, both in their institutional organization and in the protection of fundamental rights. She adopts a critical perspective on the role of courts in shaping democracies, with special attention to France, Italy, and the United States, as well as to the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. Her work engages in particular with states of emergency, presidential immunity, the right to vote, and judicial reasoning.
Professor Bottini has authored numerous articles and conference papers in English, French, and Italian. Her book, Constitutional Sanction: Analysis of a Doctrinal Argument (Dalloz, 2016), is based on her doctoral dissertation and reflects her long-standing interest in the doctrinal foundations and limits of constitutional adjudication.
Tatiana Carayannis's Bio
Senior Visiting Fellow
Tatiana Carayannis
Global Affairs and Technology Advisor, Institute for Advanced Study
Dr. Tatiana Carayannis is the Global Affairs and Technology Advisor at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton NJ). Previously, she served as program director at the Social Science Research Council, where she directed a suite of international programs on the UN, conflict prevention, frontier issues, and China. She has had visiting appointments at LSE, NYU, and City College and has been research director for several international research collaborations. A leading scholar of international organizations, conflict management, and Central Africa, her current research focuses on the global governance of AI and the intersections of technology, natural resources, and security. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from The City University of NY Graduate Center.
Jonathan Derbyshire's Bio
Public Scholar
Jonathan Derbyshire
US Opinion Editor, Financial Times
Jonathan Derbyshire is currently the Executive Opinion Editor of the Financial Times. At the beginning of March, he moved to New York to take up the position of the FT's US Opinion Editor. He joined the paper in 2016, having previously served as Managing Editor of Prospect magazine and Culture Editor of The New Statesman. In addition to editing the FT's opinion pages, he regularly contributes book reviews, columns, and obituaries. Before becoming a journalist, he pursued graduate work in philosophy, spending two years on a Leverhulme Study Abroad Studentship at the École des Hautes Études in Paris. He has also taught at several British universities.
Victoria Diaz Garcia's Bio
Public Scholar
Victoria Diaz Garcia
Inter-Agency Coordination Specialist, UN Women
Victoria Diaz Garcia is an Inter-Agency Coordination Specialist at UN Women, where she has spent fifteen years shaping international norms on gender equality and translating them into institutional practice. Her work involves engaging governments, civil society, and UN entities on issues of governance and accountability, often in complex contexts, where she facilitates dialogue among policymakers from diverse ideological perspectives.
She holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from Dublin City University, where her research focused on institutional effectiveness in advancing women's rights. Her career at UN Women has included assignments at headquarters in New York, regional offices in Latin America and Africa, country offices in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, and at a joint office serving Tunisia and Libya. She has also worked in public administration, at Amnesty International, and in the NGO sector, experience that enables her to analyze accountability from both institutional and community perspectives.
Joseph Dorman's Bio
Distinguished Practitioner
Joseph Dorman
Leader-in-Residence 2025–2026
Joseph Dorman is a documentary filmmaker whose work explores historical and political ideas. He is currently working on a film about the 1873 Colfax Massacre. His film Arguing the World, about four eminent New York intellectuals, won a Peabody Award. Other films include Moynihan (2019) on the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Colliding Dreams (2016) about the history of the Zionist idea, and Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness (2011). He wrote the script for The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Journey, which was named the best documentary of 2001 by the National Board of Review.
Joseph has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and published two books: Arguing the World (2001) and When Ideas Mattered: The Nathan Glazer Reader (2017). He is an adjunct professor of film at New York University and a practicing therapist in New York City.
Dmitry Dubrovskiy's Bio
Academic Freedom Fellow
Dmitry Dubrovskiy
Research Fellow and Lecturer, Charles University
Dr. Dmitry Dubrovskiy is a research fellow at the Department of Social Sciences and lecturer at the Boris Nemtsov MA in Russian Studies at the Department of Philosophy, Charles University. Dr Dubrovskiy, an alumnus of St Petersburg State University and European University in St Petersburg, founded and directed the Ethnic Studies Programme at the European University in St Petersburg in 1999-2005. He was also the founder and lecturer of the Human Rights program at Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Science at St Petersburg State University (2004-15). He was a Galina Starovoitowa Fellow at the Kennan Institute (2007-08), a visiting lecturer at Bard College (New York) and Witwatersrand University (Johannesburg), a Kone Fellow at Helsinki University in 2011 and 2020, and an adjunct assistant professor at Harriman Institute at Columbia University (2015-17).Â
Until March 2022, Dr Dubrovskiy was an associate professor at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow). In early April 2022, he was declared a "foreign agent" in Russia and left the country. Dr Dubrovskiy is currently working at Charles University in Prague, with his research interest focusing on academic rights and freedoms, freedom of speech and minority rights.
Stefan Eich's Bio
Public Scholar
Stefan Eich
Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University; Fellow, Remarque Institute
Stefan Eich is Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University. His research is in political theory, intellectual history, and the history of political thought, especially the political theory of money and the politics of financial capitalism. He was the 2022/23 Richard B. Fisher Member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS).Â
He is the author of The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes (Princeton University Press, May 2022), which was awarded the David and Elaine Spitz Prize as well as the APSA Foundations of Political Theory Best First Book Prize. His work has appeared in Political Theory, American Journal of Political Science, Modern Intellectual History, History & Theory, Finance & Society, Review of International Political Economy (RIPE), and Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics. With Martijn Konings, he co-edits a book series at Stanford University Press on "Currencies: New Thinking for Financial Times."Â
Prior to Georgetown, Stefan was a fellow at the Princeton Society of Fellows and received his doctorate from Yale University. Having grown up in Germany, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford and received a masters in Political Thought and Intellectual History from the University of Cambridge.
Amana Fontanella-Khan's Bio
Public Scholar
Amana Fontanella-Khan
Opinion Editor, The Guardian US
Amana Fontanella-Khan is the Opinion Editor at The Guardian US and the author of Pink Sari Revolution. Her work has appeared in The Financial Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, Slate, Christian Science Monitor, Conde Nast Traveller and other outlets.
Emily Greenhouse's Bio
Public Scholar
Emily Greenhouse
Editor, The New York Review of Books
Emily Greenhouse is the editor of the New York Review of Books, a magazine of politics, literature, art, and ideas founded in 1963. She is the first woman to be sole editor of the magazine, and when she was appointed was the youngest editor in its history. During her tenure, she has broadened the magazine's contributor base, bringing in more women writers, and writers of color, expanding across generations all while holding to the editorial standards and commitments of the Review's founders. Greenhouse has also built a paid internship program, now in its sixth year, that brings CUNY students into the magazine's editorial work, widening the entry door into publishing. Many have gone on to full-time jobs in the field. Previously, Greenhouse worked as an editorial assistant at Granta Magazine, The New York Review, and The New Yorker. Before returning to The New York Review, she worked as a politics reporter at Bloomberg and then as the managing editor at The New Yorker.
Howard Husock's Bio
Distinguished Practitioner
Howard Husock
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Howard Husock is a senior fellow in domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where his work focuses on municipal government, urban housing policy, civil society, and philanthropy. Before joining AEI, he was vice president for research and publications at the Manhattan Institute, director of the case studies program in public policy and management at Harvard's Kennedy School, and a member of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He began his career as a journalist and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker.
Husock is the author of The Projects: A New History of Public Housing (NYU, 2025), The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It (Encounter, 2021), Who Killed Civil Society? The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms (Encounter, 2019), and Philanthropy Under Fire (Encounter, 2013). He is a contributing editor at City Journal.
Youbin Kang's Bio
Postdoctoral Fellow
Youbin Kang
The City College of New York
Youbin Kang is a Moynihan Postdoctoral Fellow at The City College of New York. A sociologist by training, they earned their Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where their dissertation examined the historical evolution of public transportation funding and labor relations in New York City and Seoul from the mid-1970s to 2022. Their research, supported by the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council broadly explores urban infrastructure, labor policy, and the political economy of mobility.Â
Kang’s work has been published in academic journals as well as in public-facing outlets such as Jacobin Magazine and N+1 Magazine. They are also an award-winning educator recognized for teaching excellence in sociology. Born in South Korea and raised in New Delhi and Cairo, Youbin’s global upbringing informs their perspective on class mobility and transnational labor. They completed their undergraduate studies at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design, obtained their masters at the University of Cambridge, and were a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell.
Felix Kaputu's Bio
Academic Freedom Fellow
Felix Kaputu
Faculty Member in Literary and Social Studies, Bard College at Simon’s Rock
Felix Kaputu is an accomplished and versatile academic with expertise in history, anthropology and cultural studies, human rights, comparative literature, and interdisciplinary education. He is adept at delivering undergraduate and graduate instruction in diverse settings, including in-person, hybrid, and online formats. Kaputu is recognized for mentoring master's and doctoral candidates in research and writing. A prolific author and presenter, he has a distinguished record of publications and contributions to global academic discourse. Kaputu is passionate about fostering cross-cultural understanding and advancing knowledge of human rights, gender studies, and global conflicts.
Ron Kassimir's Bio
Distinguished Practitioner
Ron Kassimir
Leader-in-Residence 2025–2026
Ron Kassimir has worked for over 30 years at the intersection of social science research, philanthropy, higher education, and knowledge utilization, assuming increasing levels of leadership and responsibility throughout his career. He dedicated a decade to the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), serving as a Program Director for its initiatives in Africa and a dissertation fellowship program. Following that, he transitioned to senior higher education administration at The New School, where he held the positions of Associate Dean and later Associate Provost for Research.
Kassimir was subsequently invited back to SSRC in a senior role at the organization-wide level, ultimately becoming Vice-President for Programs. His career has encompassed a blend of intellectual leadership, cross-disciplinary collaboration, organizational strategy, and fundraising. Most recently, he served as a Senior Advisor at Columbia World Projects and held the position of Interim Director of its Center for Political Economy. He has consulted for foundations and non-profits, and he is currently engaged in writing on the impact of research on policy decisions.
Nikhil Kumar's Bio
Public Scholar
Nikhil Kumar
Executive Editor, TIME
Nikhil Kumar is Executive Editor at TIME, where he oversees coverage across climate, health, news, and ideas while contributing to the magazine’s global editorial strategy. He is an award-winning journalist with extensive experience reporting on major political, economic, and social events from around the world.
Kumar rejoined TIME in January 2025, after helping launch the Washington-based news analysis startup Grid and reporting across Asia for CNN. Earlier, he served as TIME’s Deputy International Editor in New York and as South Asia Bureau Chief. His reporting has covered the Eurozone debt crisis, the Rohingya refugee crisis, the war in Afghanistan, and the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks in Sri Lanka—work that earned him an Emmy nomination. His debut novel, The Architect's Dream, was published in 2024.
Manjari Mahajan's Bio
Public Scholar
Manjari Mahajan
Associate Professor of International Affairs, The New School
Manjari Mahajan is Associate Professor of International Affairs and the Starr Professor and Co-Director of the India China Institute at The New School (New York City). Her research and teaching are on global health, politics of science and technology, international development, and philanthrocapitalism. Much of her empirical focus has been on India and South Africa, and on global organizations such as the Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization.Â
Manjari’s work, which lies at the intersection of the disciplines of Science and Technology Studies, Public Policy, and Anthropology, has appeared in a range of academic journals and also been featured in blogs and popular media such as The Nation, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She has recently co-edited Constrained Expertise in India and China: Knowledge and Power in Policymaking, published by Amsterdam University Press (2025), and the blog, Pandemic Discourses. She has held fellowships at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany, and the Social Science Research Council in the United States. Her papers have received prizes from the Society for Social Studies for Science and the American Anthropological Association. She holds a BA from Harvard University and a PhD from Cornell University.
Zachariah Mampilly's Bio
Public Scholar
Zachariah Mampilly
Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College
Zachariah Mampilly is the Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, and a member of the doctoral faculty in the Department of Political Science at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is cofounder of the Program on African Social Research.Â
He is the author of Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War (Cornell, 2011) and, with Adam Branch, Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change (Zed, 2015). He is co-editor of Rebel Governance in Civil Wars (Cambridge, 2015) with Ana Arjona and Nelson Kasfir, and Peacemaking: From Practice to Theory (Praeger, 2011) with Andrea Bartoli and Susan Allen Nan. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Jacobin, The Hindu, Africa Is a Country, N+1, Dissent, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post​, and The New York Times. He has held fellowships with the Institute for Advanced Study, the Open Society Foundations, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Fulbright Program.
Dan Mathis's Bio
Public Scholar
Dan Mathis
Senior Advisor for Policy and Sustainable Housing, NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development
Dan Mathis is currently the Senior Advisor for Policy and Sustainable Housing at the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development, where he provides advice and counsel on climate policy issues that impact the financed affordable housing sector as well as the broader housing market. He is a public servant and advocate focused on urban policy, environmental stewardship, and the impacts of climate change.Â
Dan is also a lecturer in Columbia University’s Sustainability Management program and was previously a policy fellow at Next100, a think tank where he focused on state and federal-level climate policy interventions aimed at protecting vulnerable communities. He is a graduate of Florida A&M University, the Hough Graduate School of Business at the University of Florida, and the University of Michigan Law School.
Anne Mishkind's Bio
Postdoctoral Fellow
Anne Mishkind
The City College of New York
Anne Mishkind is a Moynihan Postdoctoral Fellow at The City College of New York. Her research interests include the history of political thought, education policy, and civic education. Her research examines contestation over identity, political ideology, and American values through the lens of contemporary U.S. education discourse. Her dissertation investigates U.S. education discourse as a window into broader debates about liberal ideals and their role in the formation of democratic citizens. Â
Prior to joining CCNY, Mishkind was a Visiting Professor of Political Theory at Deep Springs College. During her time at Yale, she was a Prize Teaching Fellow and served as both the Program Coordinator and an instructor in Yale’s Citizens, Thinkers, Writers program. She has a background in educational policy research that includes work with the American Institutes for Research, where she contributed to projects ranging from adult education to state academic standards development. Her teaching invites students to examine their own educational experiences as sites of political formation while developing frameworks for understanding contemporary debates about schooling and citizenship. She will receive her PhD in Political Science from Yale University in May 2025.
Brittany N. Montgomery's Bio
Public Scholar
Brittany N. Montgomery
Senior Advisor of Special Projects & Initiatives, Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Brittany N. Montgomery is committed to making cities better places to live. She is an expert in urban mobility systems and governance, with over 18 years of leadership experience delivering complex, cross-functional policies, projects, and programs for governments, non-profits, and private sector clients in Latin America, the U.S., and East Asia. From strategy and policy making to infrastructure delivery, technological innovation, and behavioral change, she has broad and deep knowledge of urban systems. Her writing explores the links between anti-corruption policies, administrative oversight, bureaucratic behavior, and the ability of governments to deliver infrastructure.Â
Montgomery currently works to provide New Yorkers better commutes, as Sr. Advisor of Special Projects & Initiatives at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. She previously served as an Advisor to the Secretary of Mobility in Bogotá, Colombia under Mayor Enrique Peñalosa. As an Ambassador to the BCG Henderson Institute, Montgomery wrote Untangling Conflict: An Introspective Guide for Families in Business, published with Penguin Random House in 2022, becoming an Amazon India Business bestseller. She holds a PhD in Political Economy of Development from MIT, a Master of City Planning and M.S. in Transportation from U.C. Berkeley, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from MIT. She is an alumna of CORO Leadership NYC and the Boston Consulting Group.
Seyed Masoud Noori's Bio
Academic Freedom Fellow
Seyed Masoud Noori
Founder and Executive Director, Roya Institute for Global Justice
Dr. Seyed Masoud Noori is the founding Executive Director of the Roya Institute for Global Justice, a New York-based human rights NGO. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, NYU Arts & Science.
He serves as a member of the Streeting Committee of US Section of Scholar At Risk Network (SAR), and as Co-Chair of the Communications Committee of Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE), a global alliance of individuals committed to achieving justice through education.
Before leaving Iran, Dr. Noori was a faculty member at Mofid University Law School in Qom, where he held several leadership roles at the Center for Human Rights Studies.
His professional experience includes working with UNICEF, UNDP, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Prior to joining NYU’s Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, he was an Affiliated Scholar at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law. Before that, he served as a Visiting Scholar at Trinity University (San Antonio, TX), where he taught courses related to current issues in the Middle East.
He also previously served as Research Director of the Center for the Study of Islam & the Middle East (CSIME), a Washington, D.C.-based NGO.
Dr. Noori was a recipient of the MESA Global Academy Fellowship for the 2021–2022 academic year.
His other academic affiliations have included posts at Emory Law School (Atlanta, Georgia) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
His research interests include Islam and Human Rights, Academic Freedom, Environmental Rights, Legal Clinics and Clinical Legal Education (CLE), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Interfaith Dialogue.
Laurence Pevsner's Bio
Visiting Fellow
Laurence Pevsner
Director of Programming & Riskgaming at Lux Capital
Bio:
Laurence Pevsner is the Director of Programming & Riskgaming at Lux Capital and was an inaugural Moynihan Public Scholar (2023-2024). Previously, he was the Director of Speechwriting for Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. In that role, he advised the Ambassador on messaging and policy, overseeing more than 250 speeches annually within the Executive Office of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
Before his time with Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, Pevsner served as a Director at West Wing Writers, a premier speechwriting and strategy firm. There, he provided counsel to CEOs, union leaders, foundation heads, and government officials on strategic messaging, helping to amplify their ideas across a range of platforms, from The New York Times to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and even to the White House. During the 2020 election cycle, Pevsner contributed to the Biden-Harris campaign’s writers room, scripting television ads for the largest political paid media operation in history.
Pevsner is an active member of Speechwriters of Color and the Foreign Policy for America’s NextGen initiative. He has been honored with the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award and holds a BA in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought from Amherst College, graduating magna cum laude.
Homeira Qaderi's Bio
Academic Freedom Fellow
Homeira Qaderi
Research Assistant and Lecturer, Yale University
Dr. Homeira Qaderi, a native of Kabul, is a celebrated Afghan writer and a fearless champion for women’s rights and the advancement of Afghan civil society. Her journey to becoming a prominent figure in Afghan literature and activism began with her pursuit of a Ph.D. in Persian literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University in India.Â
She has written seven books, including her acclaimed novel Noqra: The Daughter of Kabul River. She has written several books for the children of Afghanistan. Before leaving Afghanistan, Qaderi taught at several universities in Kabul and worked in two different Afghan government administrations earlier as a senior advisor to the minister of social affairs labor and, more recently, as a senior advisor to the minister of education.
Homeira Qaderi founded the Golden Needle Literary Society in 2021 and has taught and trained hundreds of young Afghans in Fiction Writing. Qaderi was also Editor-in-Chief of Rah-e Madaniyat Daily in Kabul from 2019 to 2021.
As a lifelong activist and staunch defender of women's rights, Homeira Qaderi was awarded the Malalai Medal, Afghanistan’s highest civilian honor, for exceptional bravery by the President of Afghanistan in 2015. She was also a writer in residence at the University of Iowa in 2015.
Homeira Qaderi’s first book in English translation, Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother’s Letter to Her Son (Harper, 2020), was excerpted by the New York Times and chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best nonfiction books of 2020. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books as well as TIME Magazine.Â
Following the fall of Kabul, Dr. Qaderi was appointed as a fellow at the prestigious Harvard University Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Currently, she serves as a Writer in Residence at Yale University, where she continues to inspire and educate through her literary works and advocacy.
Yadira Ramos-Herbert's Bio
Public Scholars
Yadira Ramos-Herbert
Mayor, City of New Rochelle
Yadira Ramos-Herbert is the Mayor of New Rochelle, New York, a practicing attorney, and a former higher education administrator who works at the intersection of research, policy, and lived experience. As mayor, she leads a politically and culturally diverse city where effective governance depends on listening across differences and building coalitions around shared goals. Her work focuses on housing, economic opportunity, infrastructure, and climate resilience, guided by data and grounded in constant public engagement.
Before entering elected office, Ramos-Herbert served as Dean of Students at Columbia Law School, where she worked closely with faculty and institutional leadership on curriculum and governance. She continues to teach and mentor, and brings to her public role a commitment to civic education, transparency, and the willingness to engage across ideological lines, a commitment shaped by the daily practice of governing.
Aaron Retica's Bio
Public Scholars
Aaron Retica
Editor-at-Large, The New York Times
Aaron Retica is an editor-at-large in the Opinion section of The New York Times, where he works with columnists, contributing writers, and occasional guest essayists, with a particular focus on American politics and history. He also occasionally serves as an informal podcast host for The Times. Retica has spent more than 20 years at The Times, primarily within the opinion section, where he previously served as politics editor.
Before joining the paper, Retica spent a decade at The New Yorker, where he began his career as a fact-checker. His professional background also includes work on political campaigns, the development of library collections, and the investigation of organized crime for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Noah Rosenblum's Bio
Public Scholar
Noah Rosenblum
Associate Professor, NYU School of Law
Noah A. Rosenblum is an Associate Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and faculty director of the Vanderbilt Scholars Program and Katzmann Symposium. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Department of History.
Rosenblum works primarily in administrative law, constitutional law, and legal history. His research takes a historical approach to the study of state institutions, seeking to understand how law can be used to promote democratic accountability. He is currently pursuing several projects on the history of the place of the president in the administrative state.
His academic writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and Yale Law Journal, among other venues, and has been awarded the Joseph Parker Prize in Legal History and the Fred C. Zacharias Award in Legal Ethics, among other honors. Rosenblum is also a frequent commentator on public law and New York state courts.
Ian Rowe's Bio
Public Scholar
Ian Rowe
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Cofounder, Vertex Partnership Academies
Ian Rowe is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on education and upward mobility, family formation, and adoption. Rowe is cofounder of Vertex Partnership Academies, a virtues-based International Baccalaureate public charter high school in the Bronx; chairman of the board of Spence-Chapin, a nonprofit adoption agency; and cofounder of the National Summer School Initiative.
In addition to serving ten years as CEO of Public Prep, Rowe held leadership positions at Teach for America, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the White House, and MTV, where he earned two Public Service Emmys. In Agency, Rowe argues that young people succeed when they embrace four core pillars of human flourishing: Family, Religion, Education, and Entrepreneurship (FREE).Â
Julie Sandorf's Bio
Distinguished Practitioner
Julie Sandorf
Retired President, Charles H. Revson Foundation
From 2008 to 2025, Julie Sandorf served as president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation, where she led efforts to strengthen the civic life, health, and welfare of New Yorkers and citizens of Israel. Under her leadership, the foundation advanced major initiatives, including the revitalization of New York City's public libraries, the bolstering of local journalism, the creation of a multi-faith Center for Pastoral Care, the expansion of civic service and community development movements in Israel, and the support of pioneering fellowships in biomedical research.
Before Revson, Sandorf was co-founder and executive director of Nextbook, an organization devoted to Jewish literature and culture, and from 1991 to 1999 served as founding CEO of the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a national organization she founded to create permanent solutions to homelessness. Her career began in the South Bronx with the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes Community Development Corporation.
Naomi Schaefer Riley's Bio
Public Scholar
Naomi Schaefer Riley
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focusing on child welfare as well as a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. She is a former columnist for the New York Post and a former Wall Street Journal editor, as well as the author of seven books, including No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives, (Bombardier, 2021). Her book, Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America (Oxford, 2013), was named an editor’s pick by the New York Times Book Review.
Harry Siegel's Bio
Public Scholar
Harry Siegel
Senior Editor, The City
Harry Siegel is one of the pre-eminent journalists covering New York City, presently working as a senior editor at the investigative news outlet The City, a columnist (since 2013) at the New York Daily News, and the creator and a co-host of the FAQ NYC podcast. He is also a contributing writer for the policy magazine Vital City, a founding member of the Flaming Hydra newsletter collective, and a member of the New York Editorial Board.Â
Siegel, who covered national politics in previous stints as a senior editor at Politico, Newsweek, and the Daily Beast, has written about urban affairs and much more for a wide variety of prominent outlets. He makes frequent national and local media appearances to discuss his work and areas of expertise starting with but by no means limited to New York City.
Alberto Spektorowski's Bio
Distinguished Practitioner
Alberto Spektorowski
Retired Professor of Political Science, Tel Aviv University
Alberto Spektorowski is a retired political theorist and former professor at Tel Aviv University. His most recent book, Intellectual Post-Fascism? The Conservative Revolution, Traditionalism and the Challenge to Liberal Democracy, was published in 2025 by Cambridge University Press in the Elements series.
He has written extensively on fascist ideology and the New Right, publishing widely in leading academic journals. He has also been a visiting scholar and lecturer at Columbia University (New York) and at several universities across Latin America.
Beyond his academic work, Spektorowski served as a member of the International Contact Group that negotiated the end of violence between the Spanish state and the ETA insurgent movement in the Basque Country. Earlier, he was a member of the advisory team of Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami during the failed Israeli–Palestinian peace process of 2000. He is currently continuing his research, and his new project focuses on what he defines as postcolonial fascism.
Bhaskar Sunkara's Bio
Public Scholar
Bhaskar Sunkara
President, The Nation
Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of The Nation and the founding editor of Jacobin. He is also the publisher of Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and Bookforum, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Foreign Policy. He is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality and has edited several other volumes.
Though he writes from a democratic socialist perspective, Sunkara has built his public work around engagement across political divides, sustaining ongoing dialogue with thinkers at Compact, Reason, and The Free Press. He serves on the board of the Center for Working-Class Politics and has contributed to several of its research surveys on class dealignment and working-class voting preferences.
Tevi Troy's Bio
Public Scholar
Tevi Troy
Senior Fellow, The Ronald Reagan Institute
Tevi Troy is a Senior Fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute, a Senior Scholar at the Straus Center at Yeshiva University, a former Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and White House aide, and a best-selling presidential historian. His latest book is The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between American Titans of Industry and Commanders in Chief, named by The Economist and The Week as one of the best books of 2024.
Cally Waite's Bio
Senior Research Fellow
Cally Waite
Professor Emerita, Teachers College, Columbia University
Dr. Cally L. Waite is a historian of American higher education with a specialization in historically black colleges and universities. She is professor emerita of history and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Waite is the recipient of the 2020 Spencer Foundation Mentoring Award. Her scholarly work includes a monograph as well as founding editorship of Oppositional Conversations, a multidisciplinary online journal. Dr. Waite was educated at the University of Chicago and New College of Florida and earned advanced degrees at Stanford and Harvard Universities. She is the former director of the Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program at the Social Science Research Council, where she worked closely with South African universities to produce PhDs. Dr. Waite is currently senior advisor at the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). She is also founder and principal of Waite and Associates, an academic and educational consulting venture.
Klaus Welle's Bio
Distinguished Practitioner
Klaus Welle
Leader-in-Residence 2023–2025
Klaus Welle is the former Secretary-General of the European Parliament, a role in which he served from 2009 to 2022. He Chairs the Martens Centre’s Academic Council. He is also a Guest Professor in practice at the London School of Economics and a Visiting Professor at KU Leuven.
After obtaining a Degree in economics from the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany, Klaus Welle worked at the CDU Central Office in Bonn, before coming to Brussels where he served as Secretary-General of the European People’s Party (EPP) from 1994 to 1999, Secretary-General of the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2003, Director-General for Internal Policies at the European Parliament from 2004 to 2007, Head of the Cabinet of the President of the European Parliament from 2007 to 2009, and Secretary-General of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2022.
Verónica Zubillaga's Bio
Academic Freedom Fellow
Verónica Zubillaga
Mellon Visiting Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago
Verónica Zubillaga is a Venezuelan Sociologist. She holds a Doctorate in Sociology from the Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium (2003). From 2007 to 2024 she was Professor at the Universidad Simón BolÃvar in Caracas. For the past twenty years, she has devoted herself to studying urban violence in Latin America; youth gang violence in Caracas; gender, State violence, Human Rights, Public Policy, and the Search for Justice, and qualitative methods. In 2016, with her colleagues in Caracas, she founded the Red de Activismo e Investigación por la Convivencia (REACIN), an association devoted to research on urban violence and activism on human rights and public policy for pacific coexistence. Her publications include the co-authored books: The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela (2022, the University of Pittsburgh Press) with David Smilde and Rebecca Hanson; and La muerte nuestra de cada dÃa. Violencia armada, y polÃticas de seguridad ciudadana en Venezuela (2021, Editorial de la Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá) with Manuel Llorens and Francisco Sánchez. Research grants include Fulbright Scholarship; The Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation; and CAF-Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina, among others. She has been Craig Cogut Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies at Brown University in 2014 and 2015; Santander Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University in 2016; Visiting Fellow at The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Notre Dame University (2018-2019); Visiting Fellow at Collegium de Lyon - Institut d’études avancées de l’Université de Lyon (2022-2023) and Tinker Visiting Professor at Columbia University (Spring 2024). Since Fall 2024, she has been Mellon Visiting Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago.