NYU Global Dialogues: The Global Impact of US Policy and Politics

Nicole Bacharan is a historian and political analyst, specialized in American society and relations between Europe and the United States. She is a keynote or featured speaker at major conferences, and the author of more than twenty books, including several bestsellers, on international politics, the United States, and transatlantic affairs, as well as several educational novels for children and young adults.

As a consultant on foreign affairs, she is an expert commentator for top-tier French TV and radio, and a frequent analyst on American, Belgian, Swiss, and Italian television and radio stations. She publishes op-eds in, and gives frequent interviews to regional, national and international newspapers and magazines.

On November 12, 2008, she was awarded the French Legion of Honor by President Nicolas Sarkozy. Full Bio.

Ron Christie is Founder and CEO of Christie Strategies LLC, a full-service communications and issues management firm in Washington, D.C. Christie is also the author of three books. His most recent title, Blackwards: How Black Leadership is Returning America to the Days of Separate But Equal was published in September 2012. His two previous books were Acting White: The Birth and Death of a Racial Slur (2010, St. Martin’s Press) and Black in the White House (2006, Thomas Nelson/Nelson Current). Christie served as a Resident Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government Institute of Politics for the Fall 2011 term at Harvard University. He served as a Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California (USC) Center for the Political Future for the Fall 2019 semester.

Christie serves as a Lecturer at New York University’s Washington D.C. campus where he leads a course entitled “The American Presidency.”  He also serves as an Adjunct Professor at the McCourt Graduate School of Public Policy and the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. In August 2015 he was named to the Board of Advisors for the inaugural Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Public Service. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the John Brademas Center at New York University. In April 2018 he was asked by the Aspen Institute to moderate a two-day Socrates Seminar entitled: “Learning to Lead & The Role of Congress” for emerging thought leaders.

Mr. Christie, a veteran senior advisor of both the White House and the Congress, brings years of government relations experience. Most recently, Christie served as Vice President of Navigators LLC – a strategic consulting and communications firm. He previously served as Executive Vice President and Director of Global Government Affairs at Ruder Finn and Of Counsel at the DC law firm of Patton Boggs, LLP. From 2002 to 2004, he was Acting Director of USA Freedom Corps and special assistant to President George W. Bush. He began service at the White House in 2001 as deputy assistant to Vice President Cheney for domestic policy, advising the Vice President on policy initiatives in health care, budget, tax and other policy areas.

Prior to joining the Vice President's staff, he briefly served as counsel to U.S. Senator George Allen (R-VA). He also served as senior advisor to former House Budget Committee Chairman and former Ohio Governor John Kasich from 1992 - 1999.

As a frequent commentator on current political events, Christie serves as a political analyst for BBC World in North America.  He first appeared on their global 2012 election night coverage and reprised this role to cover the 2014 midterm election cycle as well as the 2016 presidential cycle. On January 8, 2019 BBC4 Radio debuted Christie’s first documentary “The Trumped Republicans,” a look at the first two years of the Trump Administration.  https://bbc.in/2BJOWjq  BBC World Service aired the documentary on February 13, 2019.

Active in international affairs, he was elected as both a Term and Life Member to the Council on Foreign Relations. While serving in the White House, Christie was asked by President Bush to lead an American delegation to an international conference on volunteerism and civic engagement hosted by then Prime Minister Tony Blair in London, England. Subsequent to the volunteerism summit, Christie worked with then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to devise an expanded call for civic engagement in Great Britain.

A native of Palo Alto, California, he received his B.A. from Haverford College and his J.D. from the George Washington University National Law Center. SAG-AFTRA eligible as a background actor, you can catch Christie in the 2015 seasons of House of Cards and VEEP. He was commissioned as a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels in 2011.

Germán Feierherd is an Assistant Professor at Universidad de San Andrés in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received his PhD in Political Science (with Departmental and University Distinction) from Yale University. Before returning to Argentina, he was a fellow for the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale and a Pre/Postdoctoral Associate at Duke University. During Spring 2020, he was a guest professor in Mariano Tommasi's NYU Buenos Aires course "Political Institutions and Economic Policy." He conducts theoretical and empirical research on political development, with an emphasis on elections and policymaking in weak institutional environments. His  research has been published or is forthcoming at The Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and American Journal of Political Science.

Diana Fu is associate professor of political science at The University of Toronto and director of the East Asia Seminar Series at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.  She is a non-resident fellow at Brookings and has been appointed to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.

Her research examines popular contention, state control, civil society, and authoritarian citizenship, with a focus on contemporary China. She is author of the award-winning book “Mobilizing Without the Masses: Control and Contention in China” (2018, Cambridge University Press and Columbia Weatherhead Series). Based on political ethnography inside labor organizations, it uncovers how China’s migrant workers organized for rights without protesting en masse. It received best book awards from American Political Science Association Association, the American Sociological Association, and the International Studies Association.

Dr. Fu’s research and commentary on Chinese politics have appeared in BBC World Service, Bloomberg TV, CBC, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Reuters, US News & World Report, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Globe & Mail, and The New York Times, among others. She was a television host and scriptwriter for the TVO documentary series, “China Here and Now.” She holds a DPhil in Politics and an MPhil in Development Studies with distinction from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.  She is currently serving as National Co-secretary of the Rhodes Scholarship for China. She previously held fellowships at Stanford University and MIT. She enjoys Latin dance and creative writing.

Robert Kubinec is a political scientist who studies the influence of powerful business interests on policy outcomes in developing countries, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. In addition, he is involved in the development of Bayesian statistical methods for measuring difficult topics like corruption and political ideology. Previously, he was a fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University.