Global Perspectives on U.S. Higher Education Panelists Lisa Anderson

Global Perspectives on U.S. Higher Education Panelists Lisa Anderson was appointed president of the American University in Cairo in January 2011. A specialist on politics in the Middle East and North Africa, Anderson served as the university’s provost from 2008 to 2010. As the chief academic officer, she was responsible for shaping and implementing AUC’s academic vision and building the size and quality of the faculty. Prior to joining AUC in 2008, Anderson served as James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations at Columbia University and is the former dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia. She also served as the chair of the political science department at the university and as the director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute. Before joining Columbia, she was assistant professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. Anderson is the author of Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century (Columbia UP, 2003), The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980 (Princeton UP, 1986), editor of Transitions to Democracy (Columbia UP, 1999) and coeditor of The Origins of Arab Nationalism (Columbia UP 1991). Past president of the Middle East Studies Association and past chair of the board of the Social Science Research Council, Anderson is also a former member of the Council of the American Political Science Association and served on the board of the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs. She is member emerita of the board of Human Rights Watch, where she served as co-chair of Human Rights Watch/Middle East, co-chair of the International Advisory Board of the Von Humbolt Foundation and member of the International Advisory Council of the World Congress for Middle East Studies. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Anderson holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She earned a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, 1981, where she also received a certificate from the Middle East Institute. She was awarded an honorary doctor of laws from Monmouth University in 2002. Thomas Bender is University Professor of the Humanities and professor of history at New York University. His work has focused on the history of cities, intellectuals, and academic disciplines, and he has been honored with numerous awards over the course of his career, including the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize and fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim foundations. Currently, he is exploring ways of developing narratives of American history, the subject of the La Pietra Report (2000) and Rethinking American History in a Global Age (2002). Most recently, he is the coauthor of The Education of Historians for the Twenty-first Century (2004), author of A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History (2006), and coeditor of The Transformation of American Higher Education, 1945-2000: Documenting the National Discourse (2008) and Reassembling the City: How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies (2010). Bender has a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Davis, and has been at NYU since 1974. Peter Lange joined the Department of Political Science at Duke University in 1981 after a previous teaching position at Harvard University. Since arriving at Duke, he has been associate professor (1982-1989), full professor (since 1989), and chair of the Department of Political Science (1996-1999). He assumed his position as the provost of Duke University in July of 1999. Earlier, he served as the special assistant to the provost for international affairs (1993-1994) and as the vice provost for academic and international affairs (1994-1996). Lange also chaired the committee that produced the proposal for Curriculum 2000, the substantially revised curriculum for Duke Arts and Sciences undergraduates, which was implemented in the fall of 2000. Lange earned his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1967 and his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975. Lange has earned numerous fellowships including the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1967 and the Fulbright Research Scholar (Milan, Italy) in 1986. As a professor, Lange focused on the topics of comparative politics and political economy. His early work focused on Italian politics and the Italian Communist Party. He subsequently studied European trade union movements. In more recent years his research focus turned to the economic performance of the advanced industrial democracies and the effects of globalization and institutions on that performance. Lange has also trained numerous doctoral students, several of whom have won national awards for their dissertations and have gone on to distinguished academic careers. John Sexton, the fifteenth president of New York University, also is the Benjamin Butler Professor of Law and NYU School of Law's dean emeritus, having served as dean for 14 years. He joined the law school's faculty in 1981, was named the school’s dean in 1988, and was designated the university’s president in 2001. Sexton is chair of the American Council on Education, chair of the New York Academy of Sciences, and immediate past chair of the Commission on Independent Colleges and University of New York. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a past member of the Executive Committee of the Association of American Universities. He has served as the chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (2003-2006) and chair of the Federal Reserve Systems Council of Chairs (2006). He served as a board member for the National Association of Securities Dealers (1996-1998), and was founding chair of the board of NASD Dispute Resolution (2000-2002). He also serves on the board of the Institute of International Education. While dean of the law school he was president of the Association of American Law Schools. President Sexton received a B.A. in history (1963) from Fordham College; an M.A. in comparative religion (1965) and a Ph.D. in history of American religion (1978) from Fordham University; and a J.D. magna cum laude (1979) from Harvard Law School. He is an author of the nation’s leading casebook on civil procedure. He also is the author of Redefining the Supreme Court’s Role: A Theory of Managing the Federal Court System (a treatment of the Supreme Court's case selection process) in addition to several other books, numerous chapters, articles, and Supreme Court briefs. Sexton holds honorary degrees from Fordham University, Saint Francis College, Saint John's University, Saint Joseph’s College, University of Rochester, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The student editors of NYU’s Annual Survey of American Law dedicated their Volume 60 in his honor. He was named by Emory University “Outstanding High School Debate Coach of the Last 50 Years” for work he did from 1960-1975. He has been honored at the Harvard Law Review Annual Banquet, and has been named “Alumnus of the Year” both at Fordham and at his high school, Brooklyn Prep. In July 2008, he was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, the national order of the Legion of Honor of France. Before going to NYU, Sexton served as law clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger of the United States Supreme Court (1980-1981), and to Judges David Bazelon and Harold Leventhal of the United States Court of Appeals (1979- 1980). For 10 years (1983-1993), he served as special master supervising pretrial proceedings in the Love Canal litigation. From 1966-1975, he was a professor of religion at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, where he was department chair from 1970-1975. Sexton is passionate about teaching; indeed, he may be the only university president who teaches at least a full faculty schedule. In academic year 2010-2011, he is teaching four full courses. .

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