Our Families, Our Country, Our World

The Brookings Institution and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs both mark important anniversaries this year. To celebrate the public policy efforts of both institutions and the ongoing partnership between these organizations, a Washington, DC event will examine some of the nation’s most critical problems at home and abroad. Brookings President Strobe Talbott will open the session and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School, will provide closing thoughts at the end of the three panel discussions.

Carlos Pascual, former Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the State Department and now Vice President of the Foreign Policy Studies program at Brookings, will join Jennifer Widner, Professor of Politics and International Affairs the Woodrow Wilson School and director of Princeton’s Reconstruction Partnership, to discuss lessons and best practices in post-conflict settings and fragile states.

Brookings senior fellow Ron Haskins will moderate a second panel discussion on children. He will be joined by Isabel Sawhill, Vice President of Economic Studies at Brookings; and Sara McLanahan, professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University; who will discuss policy options for encouraging marriage, reducing poverty and inequality, and improving the future of children.

This third panel discussion brings together Princeton’s Larry Bartels and Brookings senior fellow Thomas Mann on American electoral politics. Bartels and Mann will discuss how the current political environment and the structure of competition are likely to effect the November midterm elections and the extent to which the polarized political climate will shape the 2008 presidential sweepstakes.