Global Dimensions

News and notes from across NYU's Campuses and Sites

NYU London’s Environmental Volunteering in Wales

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NYU London is committed to community service and to the environment and thus each term NYU London students have the opportunity to do some environmental volunteering. Every semester, the students alternate between going to Snowdonia (Spring) and Brecon Beacons (Fall), the two major National Parks in Wales. The tasks are usually similar but sometimes vary depending on the location. This semester, on October 19-20th, the NYU London students volunteered at the top of Pen-y-Crug and helped cut down gorse bushes that are taking over the landscape and making it difficult for native plants to survive. Some students helped cut and pull out the gorse while another team were tasked with burning them in one bonfire spot as they went along. Both trips are also great for students because they have an opportunity get to visit Welsh historic and cultural sites along the way. On the Brecon Beacons trip the students visit Chepstow Castle and on the Snowdonia trip they visit Conwy Castle. Students find it a gratifying experience to help the environment in this beautiful part of the country while also having the chance to learn about Welsh history and culture.

NYU London student Laura Zhang had this to say about the experience: Growing up in a suburban area and then going to school in NYC, I never really experienced the countryside. And when I signed up for the volunteer trip, I had little knowledge of Wales itself and pictured the national park to be similar to what I had seen before back home. (Which was probably Central Park/Letchworth State Park if we wanna up the stakes a little) So on the first afternoon in Wales when we all hiked up this massive mountain with steep hills and muddy paths, I was dying. But everything was so worth it when we got to the top and the view was amazing. It was a completely different world up there and I think the best way to sum up the whole trip is that crazy feeling of seeing and knowing you’re on this hill, in Wales, in the UK, a million miles from home but still not believing it. And of course the purpose of the trip was the volunteer experience as well, which was incredibly rewarding and definitely character-building; I don’t think many people can say they’ve taken down massive gorse bushes in Wales. Overall, I personally felt that this trip was and is a defining part of my study abroad experience in London.

NYU Paris Director Alfred Galichon Awarded Prestigious European Commission Grant

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Photo of Alfred GalichonNYU Paris Director and Courant Professor Alfred Galichon was recently awarded a substantial grant from the European Commission for a research project on dynamic pricing at the intersection of economics, mathematics, and computer science. This prestigious award is very competitive and this will be a five-year project. Professor Galichon applied for the grant through Sciences Po, one of NYU Paris’s partner institutions, and is sole Principal Investigator on the project. Therefore many activities related to the project will be done in collaboration with NYU. 

Professor Galichon’s award demonstrates that you can keep researching at the highest level while being a site director. His access to this opportunity was only possible due to his presence in Paris, which is wonderful both for NYU Courant and NYU Paris. 

Here are some further details about the project:
 
This project seeks to build an innovative economic toolbox (ranging from modelling, computation, inference, and empirical applications) for the study of equilibrium models with gross substitutes, with applications to models of matching with or without transfers, trade flows on networks, multinomial choice models, as well as hedonic and dynamic pricing models. While under-emphasized in general equilibrium theory, equilibrium models with gross substitutes are very relevant to these problems as each of these problems can be recast as such.
 
Thus far, almost any tractable empirical model of these problems typically required making the strong assumption of quasi-linear utilities, leading to a predominance of models with transferable utility in applied work. The current project seeks to develop a new paradigm to move beyond the transferable utility framework to the imperfectly transferable utility one, where the agent’s utilities are no longer quasi-linear.
 
The mathematical structure of gross substitutes will replace the structure of convexity underlying in models with transferable utility.
 
To investigate this class of models, one builds a general framework embedding all the models described above, the “equilibrium flow problem.” The gross substitute property is properly generalized and properties (existence of an equilibrium, uniqueness, lattice structure) are derived. Computational algorithms that rely on gross substitutability are designed and implemented. The econometrics of the problem is addressed (estimation, inference, model selection). Applications to various fields such as labor economics, family economics, international trade, urban economics, industrial organization, etc. are investigated.
 
The project touches upon other disciplines. It will propose new ideas in applied mathematics, offer new algorithms of interest in computer science and machine learning, and provide new methods in other social sciences (like sociology, demography and geography).
 
For more information about Professor Galichon’s work or this project, please visit his website here.

Revealing Traces of a Forgotten Diaspora

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Next week, James D. Fernández, site director of NYU Madrid and professor of Spanish Literature and Culture, and Luis Argeo, a journalist and filmmaker from Asturias, Spain, will launch a fascinating multi-media exhibit that takes the viewer on the personal journeys of emigrants who settled in the US generations ago.

From the 23rd of January to the 12th of April, the Invisible Emigrants exhibit will be on hosted at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain. Read more in excerpts from the brochure below, on the exhibit’s blog, Spanish Immigrants in the United States, and Facebook Group (also titled Spanish Immigrants in the United States).

Out of invisibility: about the project

Tens of thousands of working-class Spaniards emigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Their story is largely unknown, invisible, in both Spain and the US. For the last ten years, [Fernández and Argeo] have been struggling to make this story visible, before it disappears for good. They’ve knocked on doors all over Spain and the US, gaining permission to digitize and analyze family archives, and rescuing from rusty cookie tins and crumbling family albums, the primary sources that chronicle the quiet heroism of the protagonists of this forgotten diaspora.

The project

Now, with the support and leadership of the Fundación Consejo España – EE. UU., Fernández and Argeo are embarking on their most ambitious project to date: serving as the curators of a major, multi-media exhibition, which will open in Madrid in January, 2020 at Madrid’s Centro Cultural Conde Duque, before traveling around Spain and the US. The exhibition will use the photographs, documents, film footage and objects they found in the homes of the descendants of immigrants, in order to reconstruct the textures and trials, the spirit and sentiment, of this fascinating but almost lost chapter in the history of immigration and in the history Spain-US relations.

Enlarge

Jim-and-Luis
Luis Argeo (left) and James Fernández (right)

Photo by: Juan de la Fuenta

 

Behind the scenes: about the producers

 

The Fundación Consejo España – EE. UU. was created in 1997 to strengthen links between Spanish and American society and institutions, to promote mutual understanding and joint ventures of all sorts between the two countries.

Diseñar América: El trazado español de los Estados Unidos–Designing America: Spain’s Imprint in the US was the first major exhibition project created and promoted by the foundation. This prestigious show, which opened at the National Library in Madrid and has traveled to Washington D.C., Houston (TX), Santa Barbara (CA) and San Antonio (TX), allowed the foundation to consolidate experience and “know how” in managing cultural exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic.

With this experience under our belt, the Fundación – in collaboration with Madrid City Council – has now assumed the production, management, and seed sponsorship of the exhibition Invisible Emigrants, with the firm conviction that this new project will make visible a fascinating and unknown shared history, and advance the core mission of our organization.

To date, the exhibition is sponsored by New York University and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center Foundation of NYU; the Spanish companies Técnicas Reunidas and Navantia; the United States Embassy in Spain and the Franklin Institute of the University of Alcalá de Henares (University Institute for Research on North America).

NYU Sydney Student Saul Shukman Publishes Article: How Indigenous Burning Could Address the Extreme Bushfires of our Changing Climate

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Saul Shukman, a CAS anthropology major in the class of 2022, studied at NYU Sydney in Fall 2019. While there, he was encouraged by NYU Sydney journalism instructor Fran Molloy to submit an article to Journalism Junction, a publication for selected university student journalism from Australia and the Pacific, published by the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia. Saul’s published article, How Indigenous bring could address the extreme bushfires of our changing climate, is timely and also has the distinction of being the first bushfire-related article published in Journalism Junction this year. Moreover, the expert anthropologist cited by Saul, Petronella Vaarzon-More, teaches two anthropology courses at NYU Sydney and works closely with Indigenous people in central Australia.

Saul Shukman skydiving over Wollongong, a city near Sydney also in NSW.

Saul chose to study at NYU Sydney “because of the wonderful anthropology faculty there, and the country’s fascinating Indigenous history” and choose the article’s topic because of his interest in the relationship between the Australian landscape and traditional Indigenous groups. As the semester progressed, the importance of examining the wildfires for the environmental journalism class became abundantly clear to Saul. Although prior to NYU Sydney he had very little interest journalism as a profession, Fran Molloy’s class and her encouragement to publish the article illuminated that journalism can accommodate many interests. Saul found the anthropology classes deeply informative and appreciated how the faculty at NYU Sydney “took an interest in our lives and our learning.”

How Indigenous burning could address the extreme bushfires of our changing climate

Australia’s deadliest bushfire season started early, in September 2019, and with months still to go, there have already been 24 deaths, over two thousand homes burned, and more than 5.9 million hectares of scorched land.

The internet has been saturated with images of charred, sculpture-like animals, as the blazes swallow huge amounts of Australia’s wild animal population.

It rained ash in Sydney’s city streets in December and by January, the smoke from the fires had travelled more than 11,000 km across the Pacific, to Argentina and Chile.

“I have never witnessed fires or debris or smoke like this in my life and I have lived in Australia all my life,” says 82-year-old Sydney resident John Neeld.

There’s little doubt among scientists and fire experts that global climate change is a leading causal factor in Australia’s worst-ever bushfire season, triggered by years of extreme drought followed by several record-breaking national heat waves.

A growing chorus also points to the abandonment of traditional burning methods, in use in Australia for thousands of years, as also contributing to the crisis as fuel loads build up to excessive levels.

Extreme Fire Season

Australia is not alone in facing increased fires. A study of global fire trends between 1979 and 2013 published in Nature found that the fire weather season has lengthened by 18.7 per cent across a quarter of the Earth’s vegetated surface.

Fires are far more likely to start when the atmosphere is hot and dry. Wherever there’s fuel to burn and a spark for ignition, wildfires or bushfires can take hold in these hot dry conditions.

In late October experts were already predicting that Australia’s 2019-2020 fire season would be of an unprecedented size across southern and eastern Australia.

“The numbers, scale, and diversity of the fires is going to reframe our understanding of bushfire in Australia,” prominent fire ecologist and director of the Fire Centre of Tasmania in Hobart, David Bowman, told Science on November 22, 2019.

“What is happening is extraordinary,” he continued. “It would be difficult to say there wasn’t a climate change dimension. We couldn’t have imagined the scale of the current event before it happened. We would have been told it was hyperbole.”

Bowman said that even places which do not normally burn have caught fire: “We’re seeing recurrent fires in tall, wet eucalypt forests, which normally only burn very rarely. A swamp dried out near Port Macquarie, and organic sediments in the ground caught on fire.”

Scientists and traditional owners of the land are coming to some consensus on one major contribution to current extreme fires: fuel loads are too high.

Traditional practices help manage the fuel load

Darren Charlwood, a Wiradjuri tour guide at the Sydney Botanical Gardens, says the situation could be fixed with traditional burning: “We’ve stopped the environment from burning and it’ll bounce right back if you burn it.”

He goes on to say, “The decrease in burning is why the bushfires are happening now.”

“When things traditionally burn each year… the plants get the benefit from it because it is part of their biology and you clear the ground,” he says.

“When all the fuel builds up the fire burns things like banksias that will usually cope with it but can’t cope with it anymore, and lots of plants have mechanisms and buffers to stop them from completely dying due to these burnings, but when that fuel builds right up the fires are out of control and it just kills everything, it burns everything,” Charlwood adds.

There’s evidence that Aboriginal burning practices have been an effective means of fire management in the past, and as the wider community has begun calling on cultural burning experts to help fuel load management, there are now cases showing these practices remain still highly relevant today.

One example comes from Phil Sheppard, who co-owns a property outside of Laguna, in the Hunter Valley of NSW, in an area hit hard by the Gospers Mountain fire in late December.

He told the Sydney Morning Herald on January 6, that his property had been saved by the Indigenous burning practices he and his co-owners had welcomed three years prior.

During the fires that swept across Sheppard’s property in December, the only building lost was the one hut which had not been ‘protected’ by the burnings.

Cultural burning is used to clean up country

Leading anthropologist Petronella Vaarzon-Morel has worked with many indigenous groups who still maintain burning practices. “An important part of Aboriginal burning practices is reducing fuel load, reducing that undergrowth,” says Vaarzon-Morel. “They call it cleaning up country.”

She also says that many plants need burning in order to regrow. “Their growth is tied to Aboriginal patch burning. So, burning countries at different areas creates different patches, which allows regeneration for different kinds of plants at different periods of time.”

When this burning is not done, the equilibrium of the ecosystem is thrown out of balance.

But it’s not simply a case of randomly burning different parts of the environment.

“You have to have knowledge of when to burn and when plants are going to come up, among other things,” Vaarzon-Morel says.

There are long and complex traditions and intricate knowledge which informs the burning practices, she adds. “This knowledge about fire is encoded in the stories and songs,” she says.

Vaarzon-Morel says that non-indigenous people in Alice Springs were doing hazard reduction burning to prevent fire, but they didn’t do it correctly. “They were burning at the wrong times and they were burning dangerously because they did not understand the winds necessarily, or how things work, or the plants. Warlpiri can look at plants and know what the burn’s going to be like, how it is going to act,” she says.

Governments not using knowledge

The deeper knowledge of burning that Aboriginal groups have, comes from a 70,000-year long relationship with the land – and is particularly useful for mitigating the intensity of bushfires.

Although not all Aboriginal groups retain this knowledge because so much traditional knowledge and history was lost during the colonial period, many groups in fire-prone areas still have very useful contributions and knowledge to share.

The government has yet to make use of this extensive knowledge.

Lack of government intervention is not limited to not supporting indigenous burning practices. In this out-of-control fire season, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison is still defending his decision not to hold a bushfire emergency summit, forcing fire chiefs to push for it themselves.

NYU Abu Dhabi J-Term 2020: Unique, Global Educational Experiences to Inspire Future Growth

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With 90 courses in 24 countries, NYU Abu Dhabi’s 10th January Term aims to enhance cultural knowledge exchange and globalization.

January Term at NYU Abu Dhabi is a distinctly impactful part of the NYU Abu Dhabi curriculum. Since the inaugural class matriculated in 2010 – thousands of students have discovered new things about the world and themselves. Courses include an exploration of the pervasiveness and impact of plastic in our world in the UAE and the Philippines, working with advocates for people of determination in Zambia, collaborating with Khaleeji musicians in Kuwait, and experiencing an on-the-ground view of the US presidential campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Washington DC.

All NYU Abu Dhabi students take one course full-time for approximately three weeks in January. These J-Term courses are designed as immersive, concentrated experiences in the UAE and abroad, going beyond the classroom to incorporate both theoretical and experiential learning. They are often site-specific, offering substantive cultural exchange by connecting students to the place where they study.

J-Term courses in 2020 are designed to explore crucial topics impacting the world around us today. Students can choose from a vast range of topics. For instance, a course titled Plastic Fantastic will look at the role of plastics in the modern world, exploring everything from the environmental impact of plastics – and plant-based alternatives – on the environment, to ethics in plastic surgery, all through the lens of how art, design, and technology can play a role in future problem solving. Students will also travel to Manila to study the plastic recycling industry.

Students taking American political consultant Frank Luntz’s Electing the President: An Up-close Look at How American Elections Really Work will hit the US presidential campaign trail and hear from some of the most influential figures in American politics on site at the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. Engaging Khaleeji Musical Heritage: An Introduction to Applied Ethnomusicology will take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the intersection of applied ethnomusicology and heritage studies to develop a deep understanding of both Khaleeji Arab music, and culture more broadly. Students will travel to Kuwait to work with the Mayyouf Mejally Folkloric Ensemble Boom Diwan.

J-Term courses in 2020 are designed to explore crucial topics impacting the world around us today. Students can choose from a vast range of topics. For instance, a course titled Plastic Fantastic will look at the role of plastics in the modern world, exploring everything from the environmental impact of plastics – and plant-based alternatives – on the environment, to ethics in plastic surgery, all through the lens of how art, design, and technology can play a role in future problem solving. Students will also travel to Manila to study the plastic recycling industry.

Students taking American political consultant Frank Luntz’s Electing the President: An Up-close Look at How American Elections Really Work will hit the US presidential campaign trail and hear from some of the most influential figures in American politics on site at the primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire. Engaging Khaleeji Musical Heritage: An Introduction to Applied Ethnomusicology will take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the intersection of applied ethnomusicology and heritage studies to develop a deep understanding of both Khaleeji Arab music, and culture more broadly. Students will travel to Kuwait to work with the Mayyouf Mejally Folkloric Ensemble Boom Diwan.

This post comes to us from NYU Abu Dhabi and the original can be found here.

 

NYU Prague Student Veena Murali on Redefining “Home” and Celebrating Thanksgiving Abroad

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We start off the new year with a beautiful Thanksgiving reflection from NYU Prague student Veena Murali. Wherever you celebrated Thanksgiving last November, her thoughts will resonate.

Redefining “Home”

Thanksgiving holds a special place in my heart- while most people eagerly anticipate Christmas, I’ve always preferred one special Thursday in November. Growing up, I looked forward to fulfilling my role as the designated potato-masher and table-setter alongside the rest of my family as we spent the morning in the kitchen together- cooking, bickering, laughing. Even after going to college, our family tradition of cooking Thanksgiving dinner together lived on, as I’m lucky enough that New York is a short two-hour plane ride away from my hometown near Chicago.

But this year is different. After 18 years of spending Thanksgiving beside my family eating home-cooked food and reflecting on our blessings, for the first time, our tradition will be broken. My family will be replaced by my friends, and we’ll be “celebrating” in a city that doesn’t really even recognize Thanksgiving as a holiday. While I’m blessed to be surrounded by people I cherish on this incredible adventure of studying abroad, a part of me still aches for the familiarity of home, especially during the holiday season.

Of course, I’ve wrestled with the legitimacy of my homesickness. Among the abundance of international students at NYU, I’ve tried to force myself to push aside my longing for familiarity by justifying that others have it harder, others spend four months away from home every semester, and others aren’t a simple two-hour flight away from NYC. And while studying abroad, aren’t we all in the same boat? Everyone is watching the days get shorter and holiday cheer surfacing while being thousands of miles away from their families, so what’s the point in me articulating my feelings?

In the whirlwind of a semester studying abroad, we feel so much pressure to make sure every moment is capitalized on and that we don’t waste any time. We only get four months to travel and experience new places, and why should any one second of those four months be spent wanting to be back in a place you already know? There’s an expectation that these are ‘some of the craziest and best times of our lives’- if that’s the case, is it right to feel a slight desire to return to routine and stability? 

I don’t know the answers to those questions, as they’re ones that have constantly circulated in my mind for the past couple weeks. But here’s what I do know. Missing your family is okay. Wanting to sleep in your own bed is okay. Craving routine is okay. Looking forward to a home-cooked meal is okay. And most of all, homesickness is okay.

The definition of home has been widely confusing for me this year. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word ‘home’ as “the place where one lives permanently.” But I haven’t spent more than ten consecutive days in my own permanent home, in Naperville, IL, since last winter break. After living in Rubin freshman year, Alumni while completing a summer internship in NYC, and now Machova whilst studying abroad in Prague, my physical address has switched enough times for me to reject the notion of a permanent living space. Saying that I’m ‘going home’ at the end of the day really translates to “I’m going to the dorm that I’ll only be living in for 3-4 months.” 

With this, however, has come a shift to a new meaning of the word ‘home’. For me, the idea of home is no longer where I sleep at night, where I shower, or where I eat dinner. Instead, the word has evolved to be associated with people, love, family. Home isn’t just a place, it’s a feeling- a feeling that can be evoked simply by spending time with people I love. Jumping on the bed singing Hannah Montana in Weinstein with my best friends felt like home, exploring the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan with my dad felt like home, strolling Leicester Square in London with my mom felt like home. The Oxford English Dictionary also states that the word “home” has “feelings of belonging, comfort, etc.” associated with it, and this is the part of the formal definition I’ve learned to emphasize this year.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for all the change that has occurred this year. I’m grateful to have been able to finally feel at home in NYC, I’m grateful for the incredible opportunities studying abroad has brought me. But most of all, I’m grateful to have people in my life that will stay permanent, even if my physical ‘home’ may only be temporary. I’m not sure how my definition of home is going to change in the coming months or years. But I do know that embracing change is a lot easier to do when you have the people you love by your side, no matter what.Students posing with nature in the background

 

NYU Students Receive Record Number of Gilman Scholarships to Study Abroad in Spring 2020

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NYU has a record number of Gilman Scholarship Recipients for Spring 2020. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship is a grant program that enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad, thereby gaining skills critical to our national security and economic competitiveness. The Gilman Scholarship Program is open to U.S. citizen undergraduate students who are receiving Federal Pell Grant funding at a two-year or four-year college or university to participate in study and intern abroad programs worldwide.
 
 
This year, 22 NYU students will study at ten different NYU global academic centres with the support of a Gilman scholarship. The students will be in Accra, Abu Dhabi, London, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Paris, Prague, and Sydney.  This is the highest number of awardees that NYU has had for a single term. NYU also had the most Gilman recipients in the state of New York. Syracuse University had the next highest number of recipients in the state with 14 recipients. We couldn’t be more pleased to see these students begin their study abroad journeys next term. Congratulations to all the Gilman Scholarship Recipients! 

NYU Accra Students Help Rural Communities in the Volta Region

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NYU Accra recently collaborated with ADANU, a local NGO with the mission of helping rural communities to own and lead critical development activities that benefit them. Together, NYU Accra and ADANU organized a day build and rural homestay for NYU Accra students in Saviefe Gbedome, a village in the Volta Region.

Students participated in the construction of a three-unit classroom block. Both NYU Accra and the local community provided the materials and labor needed for this project. Activities included fetching water, mixing concrete, and carrying concrete to the construction grounds.

NYU Accra students also had the opportunity to volunteer at the community school the next day. Students took over classes with supervision from the resident teachers to help school children with colouring, word formation, and vocabulary building. The NYU Accra students were divided into three groups to work with the children. 

  • Kindergarten and Lower Primary: This group helped children in Kindergarten and Grades 1-3 with colouring. The children coloured vegetables and fruits. NYU Accra students helped them to cut the printed images and glue them to manila boards. The manila boards were pasted on the classroom walls to act as decorative pieces.
  • Upper Primary: Students who volunteered in this group were assigned to grades 4-6. They aided local children to complete word puzzles and exercises in word formation.
  • Junior High School: Students who volunteered in this group taught junior high school children English vocabulary by focusing on word formation and solving word puzzles.

The NYU Accra students had an amazing time helping, making connections, and gaining an understanding of rural life in Ghana.

NYU Washington, DC Hosts event on Constitutional Questions and Political Struggle

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Sidley Austin LLP, NYU School of Law and the Reiss Center on Law and Security are delighted to host the 4th annual Sidley Austin Forum at NYU Washington, DC on December 12, 2019.

At a moment of acute contest between the branches, the program will probe the views of leading policymakers on Congress’ powers, limitations and responsibilities in our constitutional system. This Forum will feature remarks and discussion with leading lawmakers and former executive branch officials.

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi was elected in November 2016 to represent the 8th District of Illinois, which includes the west and northwest suburbs of Chicago. Raja serves on the Oversight Committee, for which he is also the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, as well as on the House Intelligence Committee. In addition to this committee work, Raja was selected as an Assistant Whip and serves on the Steering and Policy Committee.

Raja’s policy platform focuses on growing and strengthening the middle class by supporting small businesses, rebuilding our infrastructure, and protecting Social Security and Medicare.  Raja knows our economy works best when it works for all of us, and that’s why he’s fighting to make college more affordable, expand access to paid sick and parental leave, and guarantee equal pay for equal work.

Raja is the child of immigrants and was reared in Peoria, Illinois.  He attended public schools in Peoria and was a valedictorian of his high school class.  Scholarships and student loans allowed Raja to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in mechanical engineering and a certificate from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy.  He then graduated with honors from Harvard Law School and clerked for a federal judge before practicing law in Chicago.

Raja pursued public service while practicing law and was appointed by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan as a Special Assistant Attorney General to help start the state’s Public Integrity Unit created to root out corruption in Illinois.  As a member of the Illinois Housing Development Authority, Raja chaired its Audit Committee, helping to provide thousands of low and moderate-income families across the state with affordable housing.  Raja also served as Illinois Deputy Treasurer.  There, he oversaw the state’s technology venture capital fund and helped revamp programs such as the state’s unclaimed property program to become leaner and more efficient.

After his time in the Illinois Treasurer’s Office, Raja returned to the private sector, serving as president of research-oriented small businesses developing technology in the national security and renewable energy industries.  Raja also served as the Vice-Chair of the Illinois Innovation Council and co-founded InSPIRE, a non-profit that provides inner-city students and veterans with training in solar technology.

Raja and his wife, Priya, a physician, live in Schaumburg with their two sons and baby daughter.

Elected in 2010 as Utah’s 16th Senator, Mike Lee has spent his career defending the basic liberties of Americans and Utahns as a tireless advocate for our founding constitutional principles.

Senator Lee acquired a deep respect for the Constitution early on. His father, Rex Lee, who served as the Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, would often discuss varied aspects of judicial and constitutional doctrine around the kitchen table, from Due Process to the uses of Executive Plenary Power. He attended most of his father’s arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, giving him a unique, hands-on experience and understanding of government up close.

Lee graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science, and served as BYU’s Student Body President in his senior year. He graduated from BYU’s Law School in 1997 and went on to serve as law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, and then with future Supreme Court Justice Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Lee spent several years as an attorney with the law firm Sidley & Austin specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, and then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Salt Lake City arguing cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Lee served the state of Utah as Governor Jon Huntsman’s General Counsel and was later honored to reunite with Justice Alito, now on the Supreme Court, for a one-year clerkship. He returned to private practice in 2007.

Throughout his career, Lee earned a reputation as an outstanding practitioner of the law based on his sound judgment, abilities in the courtroom, and thorough understanding of the Constitution.

Today, Lee fights to preserve America’s proud founding document in the United States Senate. He advocates efforts to support constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic prosperity.

Lee is a member of the Judiciary Committee, and serves as Chairman of the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee protecting business competition and personal freedom.

He also oversees issues critical to Utah as the Chairman of the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and serves on the Commerce Committee as well.

In 2019, Lee became the Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee where he is overseeing the Social Capital Project.

Lee and his wife Sharon live in Alpine, Utah, with their three children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a two-year mission for the Church in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Don McGahn represents clients before government agencies, in enforcement matters, and in court disputes arising from government regulation or action. He handles litigation, crisis management, regulatory compliance, and political issues.

Prior to rejoining Jones Day in 2019, Don served as Counsel to the President of the United States, advising Donald J. Trump on all legal issues concerning the President and his administration, including constitutional and statutory authority, executive orders, international agreements, tariffs, trade, administrative law, and national security. Don also managed the judicial selection process for the President. During Don’s tenure, a historic number of judges were appointed to the federal bench, including two Supreme Court justices. In addition, he spearheaded President Trump’s deregulation efforts, which resulted in deregulation at record rates. Following Don’s departure from the White House, the President appointed him to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, a nonpartisan, independent agency dedicated to promoting improvement to administrative agency processes.

Don’s accomplishments have been recognized at the highest levels of government. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated that Don concluded his tenure “not only as the best White House Counsel I’ve seen on the job, but more broadly, as one of the most successful and consequential aides to any President in recent memory.”

Don was nominated by President George W. Bush in 2008, and confirmed in the Senate by unanimous consent, to serve as a member of the Federal Election Commission. He also served as outside Counsel to the Committee on House Administration during the 113th and 114th Congresses and as general counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Kathryn Ruemmler is the Global Chair of the White Collar Defense & Investigations Practice and a partner in the Litigation & Trial Department.

Ms. Ruemmler has broad experience advising individual executives and boards of directors in a wide range of matters, with a particular emphasis on government enforcement and regulatory matters and corporate governance. She has built a reputation as a formidable litigator with an unusual breadth of experience in crisis management, policy development, and regulatory and enforcement matters. She focuses on white collar criminal defense, SEC and other agency enforcement matters, and congressional and internal investigations. She is also an experienced first-chair trial lawyer. Known for her skilled representation of clients in both criminal and civil jury trials, clients in Chambers USA 2018 say Ms. Ruemmler is “a great strategic thinker” and “a real rare talent” and praise her as “a terrific advocate,” adding that “she has the judgment, legal skills and client management skills to represent her clients effectively.” Ms. Ruemmler rejoined the firm in 2014 after serving for almost six years in the Obama Administration, first in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and later as Counsel to the President. As President Obama’s chief lawyer, she was one of his most senior advisors, providing advice on all legal matters implicating domestic and foreign policy and national security. She advised on all significant litigation matters, including the most consequential cases heard by the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Ruemmler also managed the Administration’s response to congressional and other investigations and was responsible for the selection and nomination process of federal judges. President Obama has described her as having “an uncanny ability to see around the corners that no one else anticipates.”

Prior to her White House service, Ms. Ruemmler served as the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General at the DOJ, joining on the first day of the Obama Administration as its highest-ranking political appointee. In that role, she was the Deputy Attorney General’s primary advisor on a range of criminal policy, law enforcement, national security, and civil litigation matters. She worked closely with the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General in the overall management and supervision of the DOJ’s components, including the United States Attorney’s Offices.

Ms. Ruemmler has significant jury trial experience and has tried more than 20 cases to verdict both inside the government and in private practice. She worked for six years as a federal prosecutor, first as an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, D.C. and later as the Deputy Director of the Enron Task Force. Ms. Ruemmler was one of the lead prosecutors in the successful securities fraud prosecution of former Enron CEO’s Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. She delivered the closing argument in that case and received the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, the DOJ’s highest award, for her performance.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Ruemmler served as Associate Counsel to President Bill Clinton where she defended the White House and the Office of the President in independent counsel and congressional investigations. She began her career as a law clerk to Judge Timothy K. Lewis of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Bob Bauer is Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU Law, and Co-Director of NYU’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. He served as White House Counsel to President Obama, and returned to private practice in June 2011. In 2013, the President named Bauer to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which in January of 2014 submitted to the President its findings and recommendations in “The American Voting Experience: Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration.”