Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees. In 1967, it became Carnegie Mellon University through its merger with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, founded in 1913 by Andrew Mellon and Richard B. Mellon and formerly a part of the University of Pittsburgh.
Condoleezza "Condi" Rice is an American diplomat and political scientist serving since 2020 as the 8th director of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 66th United States secretary of state from 2005 to 2009 and as the 19th U.S. national security advisor from 2001 to 2005. Rice was the first female African-American secretary of state and the first woman to serve as national security advisor. Until the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, were the highest-ranking African Americans in the history of the federal executive branch. At the time of her appointment as Secretary of State, Rice was the highest-ranking woman in the history of the United States to be in the presidential line of succession.
The Hoover Institution is an American public policy think tank which promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and limited government. While the institution is formally a unit of Stanford University, it maintains an independent board of overseers and relies on its own income and donations. It is widely described as conservative, although its directors have contested the idea that it is partisan.
The Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, also known as Heinz College, is the public policy and information college of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It consists of the School of Information Systems and Management and the School of Public Policy and Management. The college is named after CMU's former instructor and the later U.S. Senator John Heinz from Pennsylvania.
Elliott Abrams is an American politician and lawyer, who has served in foreign policy positions for presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Abrams is considered to be a neoconservative. He was a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as the U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela from 2019 to 2021 and as the U.S. Special Representative for Iran from 2020 to 2021.
Lenore Carol Blum is an American computer scientist and mathematician who has made contributions to the theories of real number computation, cryptography, and pseudorandom number generation. She was a distinguished career professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University until 2019 and is currently a professor in residence at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also known for her efforts to increase diversity in mathematics and computer science.
The Department of Social and Decision Sciences (SDS) is an interdisciplinary academic department within the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. The Department of Social and Decision Sciences is headquartered in Porter Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is led by Department Head Gretchen Chapman. SDS is known for research and education programs in decision-making in public policy, economics, management, and the behavioral social sciences.
Jendayi Elizabeth Frazer is the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, heading the Bureau of African Affairs. She was a Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and Department of Social and Decision Sciences.
Peter Berkowitz is an American political philosopher and legal scholar. In 2019–2021, he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the United States Department of State. He currently serves as the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and as director of studies for The Public Interest Fellowship. He is also a columnist for RealClearPolitics.
Robert L. Suettinger is an American international relations scholar currently serving as a senior advisor at The Stimson Center and an advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). He was national intelligence officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council (NIC) from 1997 to 1998 during the Clinton administration. While there, he oversaw the preparation of national intelligence estimates for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. His areas of specialty are the People's Republic of China and the North Korean nuclear weapons program.
Richard Allen "Ric" Grenell is an American political operative, diplomat, TV personality, and public relations consultant. He served as Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) under President Donald Trump in 2020, becoming the first openly gay holder of a cabinet level position in the history of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, Grenell served as the United States Ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020 and as the Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations from 2019 to 2021.
George Pratt Shultz was an American economist, businessman, diplomat and statesman. He served in various positions under two different Republican presidents and is one of the only two persons to have held four different Cabinet-level posts, the other being Elliot Richardson. Shultz played a major role in shaping the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration, and conservative foreign policy thought thereafter.
Kori N. Schake is an American international relations scholar currently serving as the Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She has held several high positions in the U.S. Defense and State Departments and on the National Security Council. She was a foreign-policy adviser to the McCain-Palin 2008 presidential campaign. Schake is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She serves on the board of advisors of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Alexander Hamilton Society. Schake is a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee.
Brian H. Hook is an American diplomat, lawyer and government official. In 2021, he joined Cerberus Capital Management as vice chairman for global investments. He is an adjunct professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.
Kathleen M. Carley is an American computational social scientist specializing in dynamic network analysis. She is a professor in the School of Computer Science in the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University and also holds appointments in the Tepper School of Business, the Heinz College, the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, and the Department of Social and Decision Sciences.
Mark DeSantis is an American tech entrepreneur and CEO of Bloomfield Robotics and an adviser to MIR Ventures in Palo Alto. He was CEO and cofounder of RoadBotics, an AI-based product that monitors and manages roadway infrastructure. Prior to that, he cofounded and was Executive Chairman of kWantix, an energy hedge fund and cofounded and was CEO of kWantera, a GE Ventures backed energy predictive analytics company. Previously, Mark was CEO of Think Through Learning, a venture-backed online tutoring company and US Managing Director of ANGLE Technology, PLC, a UK-based venture capital firm and consultancy. Mark co-founded and serves as a director to several other venture-backed tech firms. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was also a Republican mayoral candidate in the 2007 Pittsburgh election.
Sarah E. Mendelson is an American diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Mendelson was confirmed by the Senate on October 8, 2015, and sworn into her post on October 15, 2015. In 2017, Mendelson was named Distinguished Service Professor and head of Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College's program in Washington, D.C.
Stephen Edward Biegun is an American businessman and diplomat who served as the United States deputy secretary of state from December 2019 to January 2021 and United States Special Representative for North Korea from August 2018 to January 2021, vice president of international governmental affairs for the Ford Motor Company, staffer on the National Security Council, as well as national security adviser to Senator Bill Frist.
The Commission on Unalienable Rights was a commission created under the U.S. State Department in July 2019. It released its final report in August 2020.
