By Donald Gilpin
Offering “unparalleled opportunities to engage with some of the world’s most influential leaders,” Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) will be hosting its Dean’s Leadership Series this fall, featuring visits and public lectures by trail blazers, “global change makers,” in various fields.
Among the policymakers, former policymakers, and institutional leaders presenting talks at 12:30 p.m. weekday sessions at the SPIA Robertson Hall will be former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Palestinian Authority Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Nasser al-Kidwa on October 27, former President of Poland Andrzej Duda and former Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba on November 13, and former Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Helga Maria Schmid on November 19.
Robert Bullard, often described as “the father of environmental justice” for his groundbreaking systematic research on race and exposure to pollution, will be speaking at a session on October 23. Former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Chiquita Brooks-LaSure will lead off the series on October 1; Roosevelt Institute President and CEO Elizabeth Wilkins will be presenting on October 21; and Rockefeller Brothers Fund President and CEO Stephen B. Heintz will preside at the November 4 session.
Olmert and Al-Kidwa have worked together to propose a framework for an end to the war in Gaza and a framework for a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict. A lawyer and politician, Olmert was Israel’s Prime Minister from 2006 to 2009. Al-Kidwa has been an activist in Fatah for many years as well as a member of the Palestinian National Council. From 1991 to 2004 he was PLO/Palestine Observer to the United Nations.
Kuleba, the youngest foreign minister in the history of Ukraine, was in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s cabinet during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Duda, Poland’s president from 2015 to 2025, was a member of the Parliament of Poland from 2011 to 2014 and was elected to the European Parliament in 2014.
Schmid, a German diplomat, served as secretary general of the OSCE from 2020 to 2024 and is currently president of the board of governors of the European Institute of Peace and vice president of the Foundation Council of the Munich Security Conference.
Bullard, a leader of the environmental justice movement in the battle against environmental racism, is the former dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University (TSU) and is currently Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy and Director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at TSU.
Brooks-LaSure, a 1996 Princeton University graduate, was the CMS administrator from 2021 to 2025, during the Biden administration. The CMS oversees more than $1.4 trillion in annual spending, provides health coverage to more than 160 million Americans, and monitors health, safety, and performance standards at more than 20,000 U.S. hospitals, nursing homes, and other health facilities.
Formerly chief of staff to the chair and director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission and before that senior advisor to the White House chief of staff, Wilkins, as Roosevelt Institute president and CEO leads an organization described on its website as “a think tank, a student network, and the nonprofit partner to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.”
Heintz has been president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund since 2001. The fund, a foundation with an endowment of about $1.2 billion, describes its mission as “advancing social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable and peaceful world.”
For more information and registration for these events, visit the Princeton SPIA’s Dean’s Leadership Series website at spia.princeton.edu.