ASIS Seminar Keynote Speakers
Condoleezza Rice | P.J. O'Rourke
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| Ben Stein | Michael Josephson
Secretary of State and National Security Advisor in George W. Bush Administration
Condoleezza Rice is the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and professor of political science at Stanford University.
From January 2005 to 2009, she served as the 66th secretary of state of the United States. Before serving as America's chief diplomat, she served as assistant to the president for national security affairs (national security advisor) from January 2001 to 2005.
Rice joined the Stanford University faculty as a professor of political science in 1981 and served as Stanford University's provost from 1993 to 1999. She was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1991 to 1993 and returned to the Hoover Institution after serving as provost until 2001. As a professor, Rice won two of the highest teaching honors: the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.
She has authored and coauthored several books, including Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995), with Philip Zelikow; The Gorbachev Era (1986), with Alexander Dallin; and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984).
Rice served as a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron, Charles Schwab and Transamerica corporations as well as the International Advisory Council of JPMorgan. She was a founding board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, Calif., and was vice president of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula. In addition, she has served on several local and national boards of foundations and charitable organizations.
She currently serves as a member of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In addition, she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.
Best-Selling Author and Political Satirist
With more than a million words of trenchant journalism under his byline, and more citations in The Penguin Dictionary of Humorous Quotations than any living writer, P.J. O'Rourke has established himself as America's premier political satirist. He is the best-selling author of 11 books, including Give War a Chance, Eat the Rich, and The CEO of the Sofa. Both Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal have called him "the funniest writer in America." His latest book is On the Wealth of Nations: Books That Changed the World.
Since 1982, O'Rourke has traveled as a foreign correspondent to more than 50 countries. He visited the Dome of the Rock mosque disguised as "P.J. of Arabia." In "Among the Euro-Weenies," he was the first reporter to realize "how much our NATO allies hate us." And he foresaw the tragedy of post-war Iraq, when in Baghdad with the U.S. Army, he tried to buy beer and got cheated. O'Rourke was the foreign editor for Rolling Stone for 15 years and has written for such diverse publications as Automobile, House and Garden, Foreign Policy, The New York Times Book Review, and Forbes FYI. He is currently a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. He is also an H.L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute, and a frequent panelist on National Public Radio's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!
O'Rourke attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and graduate school at Johns Hopkins (Woodrow Wilson Fellow). After receiving a master's in English, he worked at small newspapers in Baltimore and New York, before joining The National Lampoon in the 1970's as editor-in-chief; it was here that he and Doug Kenny created the now-classic 1964 High School Yearbook Parody.
Whether dealing with the inner workings of Washington bureaucracy or the shifting sands of the new world order, O'Rourke proves himself to be a savvy guide to national and world affairs. His razor sharp insights never fail to inform and entertain. O'Rourke is known as a hard-bitten, cigar-smoking conservative, but in fact, he bashes all political persuasions. As he puts it, "giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
Actor, Author, Economist, and Pop Culture Icon
Ben Stein (Benjamin J. Stein) was born Nov. 25, 1944 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in nearby Silver Spring, Md. He graduated from Columbia University in 1966 with honors in economics. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1970 as valedictorian of his class by election of his classmates. He also studied in the graduate school of economics at Yale. He has worked as an economist at the Department of Commerce, a poverty lawyer in New Haven and Washington, D.C., a trial lawyer in the field of trade regulation at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., a university adjunct at American University in Washington, D.C., at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. At American University he taught about the political and social content of mass culture. He taught the same subject at UCSC, as well as about political and civil rights under the Constitution.
In 1973 and 1974, Stein was a speechwriter and lawyer for Richard Nixon at the White House and then for Gerald Ford. (He did NOT write the line, "I am not a crook."). He has been a columnist and editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and King Features Syndicate, and a frequent contributor to Barrons.
He has been a regular columnist for Los Angeles Magazine, New York Magazine, E! Online, and most of all, has written a lengthy diary for 20 years for the American Spectator. He currently writes a column for the New York Times Sunday Business section and has for many years, a column about personal finance for Yahoo!, is a commentator for CBS Sunday Morning, and for FOX News.
Stein has written, co-written, and published 30 books, including seven novels, largely about life in Los Angeles, and 21 nonfiction books, about finance and about ethical and social issue in finance, and also about the political and social content of mass culture.
He is also a well-known actor in movies, TV and commercials. His part of the boring teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off was recently ranked as one of the 50 most famous scenes in American film. From 1997 to 2002, he was the host of the Comedy Central quiz show, Win Ben Stein's Money. The show has won seven Emmy Awards. He was a judge on CBS's Star Search, and on VH-1's America's Most Smartest Model.
He lives with his wife, Alexandra Denman (a former lawyer,) six cats, and three large dogs in Beverly Hills. He is active in pro-animal and pro-life charitable events.
Foremost Ethics Consultant
Michael Josephson, founder and president of Josephson Institute, is one of the nation's foremost ethics consultants to major corporations and government officials. Having led more than 1,000 ethics programs for more than 100,000 leaders in business, government, the media, law enforcement and education, Josephson possesses unmatched expertise in the practical application of ethics and a uniquely engaging presentation style.
Business clients include Johnson and Johnson, Biosense Webster, Janssen-Ortho, DePuy Orthopaedics, Proctor Gamble, 3M, Avery Dennison, Viacom, Tyco, Halliburton, Kaiser Permanente, PacifiCare, Tenet Healthcare, Abbott Laboratories, Premier Credit Union, Holder Construction, RBF Consulting and Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
He has worked with the state legislatures of Iowa and Connecticut, the State of Michigan's Administrative Officers Association, California and Colorado Judiciary Conferences, the Texas Municipal League, the New York State Division of the Budget, the FBI, the IRS, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force Academy and hundreds of city and county public administrators and law enforcement professionals who have attended his customized training seminars.
Other clients include national media organizations such as the American Newspaper Editors Association and top law firms.
Through the Institute, Josephson has launched two successful national youth initiatives: CHARACTER COUNTS! and the Pursuing Victory With Honor sportsmanship campaign.
For his achievements in character education and ethics, Josephson received the America's Award in 1995 from President Ronald Reagan. In 2000, he was named to the Bush-Cheney Transition Advisory Committee as a nonpartisan character education expert.
A popular commentator and author, Josephson speaks to listeners daily through his award-winning radio spots, which air on select stations as well as on the worldwide American Forces Radio network. He regularly contributes articles to The Bench, the journal of the California Judges Association. His books include The Best Is Yet to Come, You Don't Have to Be Sick to Get Better!, Making Ethical Decisions, and Becoming an Exemplary Peace Officer. He is also co-author of Parenting to Build Character in Your Teen.
