Public Programs: Forums for Learning
One of the liveliest hubs of public discourse in New York City, Milano provides the forum where global leaders join with local policy makers to find solutions to pressing urban issues. Students are strongly encouraged to engage in our programs, where they are entertained and challenged as a critical part of their academic, personal, and professional growth.
Prominent leaders, policy makers, foundation directors, and opinion makers are the featured speakers in Milano's host of lectures, conferences, and seminars. High-profile guests also meet informally with students at the Dean's coffees, breakfasts, lunches, and popular roundtables, in what is often the beginning of rewarding professional relationships.
Milano organizes its public programs around vital issues relevant to our academic programs and mission – and to our communities and the world. Milano forums explore subjects such as disaster planning and recovery, housing affordability, social welfare, poverty, family policy, philanthropy, politics, and urban management from myriad perspectives.
Just a few examples are:
- Our Urban Conversations series regularly convenes the prominent mayors and governors in the U.S. with journalists, academics, foundation officials, and opinion leaders to discuss pressing issues of urban governance. Response to urban catastrophes, innovative leadership, and urban governance across “red” and “blue” states were recent topics, featuring speakers such as Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Kirtzman of CBS TV, and Brian Lehrer of WNYC Public Radio, among many others. The series is underwritten by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Altria Group, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and UBS.
- The Nathan W. Levin Lecture on Public Policy, established in 1989 in honor of the late Nathan Levin, former chair and Acting President of New School University, explores the issues of race, poverty, and public policy. Speakers have included David K. Shipler, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Working Poor: Invisible in America; Jerold S. Kayden, the Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design and the Director of the Master in Urban Planning Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; and Theda Skocpol, Professor of Government and Sociology, Harvard University, and author of Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, and States and Social Revolutions.
- Big Ideas, Big Gifts, Big Impact is a new series that focuses on charitable giving, convening prominent philanthropists for a candid discussion about their work. The November 2005 inaugural panel included Lewis Cullman, president of Cullman Ventures and the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Foundation; Tim Gill, founder of the Gill Foundation and former Chairman of Quark, Inc.; Sheila Johnson, CEO of Salamander Hospitality Group and co-founder of Black Entertainment Television; and Peter B. Lewis, Chairman and CEO of Progressive Corporation.
- In a wide range of additional public programs, Milano students and faculty meet with leaders from the business, government, and nonprofit arenas. Recent speakers at the school include Tom Bernstein of Chelsea Piers Management; Kenneth Cole, U.S. Representative John Conyers of Michigan; former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich; Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu of Louisiana; actress and AIDS activist Judith Light; U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow; and Jonathan Tisch of Loews Corp.
- The Center for New York City Affairs, a nonpartisan institute based at Milano, is dedicated to advancing innovative public policies that strengthen neighborhoods, support families and reduce urban poverty. The Center’s public programs are designed to foster cross-fertilization of ideas across sectors and promote productive conversations between top government officials, executives of non-governmental organizations, citizens of New York and the university community. In 2005-2006 our public forums addressed many critical policy issues facing New York City, including Family Court reform, young women of color and HIV/AIDS, the city’s fiscal future and New York State’s Rockefeller drug laws, to name a few. Recent speakers have included NYC Administration for Children’s Services Commissioner John Mattingly, then-Department of Homeless Services Commissioner (now Deputy Mayor) Linda Gibbs, Abyssinian Baptist Church Pastor Reverend Calvin O. Butts, Kings County Family Court Judge Lee Elkins, UFT President Randi Weingarten, NYC Independent Budget Office Director Ronnie Lowenstein, Kathryn Edin, co-author of Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage.