The Frank Church Institute hosts Fridays with Frank, a series of lectures on the timely theme: “How Do Democracies Survive and Thrive in the 21st Century?”
The biweekly lectures will stream at 10 a.m. on Fridays. Register here for Friday’s with Frank.
“Fridays with Frank represents the Frank Church Institute’s efforts to continue its
long tradition of offering speakers and programming at Boise State,” said executive director Garry Wenske, “and we invite all the Boise State community to join us.”
Three programs during the fall semester:
Nov. 13: Rising Inequality and Concentration: An Additional Push from the Pandemic with speakers Sylvain Leduc and Arthur (Skip) Oppenheimer
Leduc is executive vice president and director of economic research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. His research focus includes monetary policy, business cycles, and international finance. Oppenheimer is chairman and CEO of Oppenheimer Companies and President of Oppenheimer Development Corp. He is also president of the Frank Church Institute board of directors.
Nov. 20: This talk is part of the Frank Church Conference featuring Larry Diamond as the keynote speaker. Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He writes a monthly column for “The American Interest” and consults on policies and programs to promote democracy around the world.
Recommended reading: “Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacence” by Larry Diamond.
Recommended reading: A New Administration Won’t Heal American Democracy, by Larry Diamond.
Recommended reading: Controlling the Pandemic of Global Authoritarianism, by Larry Diamond.
Note: Former Boise State President Bob Kustra interviewed Diamond for Readers Corner broadcasts on Nov. 13 and Nov. 15.
The conference will include two panels on the theme of democracy: (8 a.m.) Hungary: A Case Study in Democracy with panelists Andras Simonyi, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States and at the George Washington University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, Melissa Hooper, director of the human rights and civil society program at Human Rights First, and Chase Johnson, a political consultant and former Research Associate at the Frank Church Institute.
A second panel, Cyber Security and Democracy (1 p.m.), will feature Zachary Tudor, associate laboratory director of Idaho National Laboratory’s National and Homeland Security directorate, Sin Ming Loo, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boise State, Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., and Thomas Beckwith, an international corporate consultant who has held executive positions with several transformative technology companies.
Recommended reading: “How to Tackle Europe’s Digital Democracy Challenges,” by Steven Feldstein.
Dec. 11: A talk with Brian Atwood, former director of USAID and the Hubert Humphrey School of Public Service and Peter Fenn, CEO of The Fenn group and a Frank Church Institute board member.