SIX WORLD LEADERS---BLAIR, CARDOSO, CLINTON, D’ALEMA, JOSPIN AND SCHROEDER---ATTEND GLOBAL SUMMIT IN FLORENCE, ITALY

---Event on Nov. 20 & 21 was co-sponsored by NYU School of Law

FLORENCE, ITALY -- New York University through its Law School’s Global Law School Program co-sponsored with the European University Institute of Florence the conference, “Progressive Governance in the 21st Century,” which was attended by six world leaders. The conference was held at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy, on Saturday, Nov. 20 and Sunday, Nov. 21, 1999.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema, French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder participated in the conference. Other attendees included First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Romano Prodi, president of the European Union.

The conference continued the conversation begun at the successful 1998 global forum, “Strengthening Democracy in the Global Economy,” held at NYU’s School of Law. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton, then Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and other global leaders from business, labor and academia attended. In a day of candid public discussion, the leaders focused upon the role of government in coping with the challenges of a global economy and the methods of maintaining prosperity, expanding opportunity, protecting liberty, and deepening democracy.

“Progressive Governance in the 21st Century” represented another leap for NYU’s Global Law School Program, widely considered the finest training ground for international law in the world. Created in 1994, NYU’s Global Law School Program presciently linked burgeoning globalization with the need for a trained leadership to meet the growing demands of the time. NYU Law School also committed itself to broadening the conversation about law by sponsoring and co-sponsoring initiatives that would include the world’s great leaders and thinkers. To meet this commitment, NYU Law School Dean John Sexton and Founding Faculty Director of the Global Law School Program Norman Dorsen reached out, as they did in 1998, to The White House and other world leaders.

“We strive to prepare our students for a world that is increasingly interrelated and interdependent,” said Dean Sexton. “One way to accomplish this goal is to bring the real world to our students. The conference is a continuum of initiatives sponsored by the Global Law School Program in which we engage and educate our students by persistently blurring the boundaries between the academy and the world they will enter.”

A group of NYU Law School students, chosen by lottery, traveled to Italy to witness the conversations and to participate in a Q & A with the world leaders. They then returned to the Law School and shared their experience with both faculty and students. In addition, television coverage of the conference will be broadcast in the University’s public meeting spaces and student resident halls, making it available to every NYU student.

Additional global events that have taken place at the Law School during the last few years include two summits on Constitutional Adjudication, which brought together for frank conversation faculty, students and several Justices from constitutional courts of the United States, Russia, Italy and Germany. Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court were among those in attendance.

NYU President Dr. L. Jay Oliva applauded the presentation of the conference and said that it “profoundly underscored the University’s global spirit.”

“NYU’s global vision is emphasized throughout the University,” said Dr. Oliva. “Indeed, ‘Progressive Governance in the 21st Century’ will take place just a short distance from NYU Villa La Pietra, the University’s 57-acre center. The addition of NYU Villa La Pietra has meant that NYU now has a center for international student study, a locus for global faculty inquiry and an anchor for our worldwide conference. Additionally, NYU Villa La Pietra serves as a base for the League of World Universities, an alliance of major metropolitan universities that meets regularly to address pressing educational, social, cultural and political issues.”

11/20/99