2013 Socrates Program Dinner
This dinner is a benefit for the Socrates Program for Emerging Leaders. The discussion ”Breaking Borders in the Digital Age” features Jared Cohen, Founder and Director of Google Ideas, in conversation with Walter Isaacson, President and CEO of the Aspen Institute. Dinner chairs are Peter Hirshberg, Adib & Kerry Nasle, Marsha Ralls and Bill Resnick, and the honoree is Arjun Gupta.
Featuring Jared Cohen, Founder and Director, Google Ideas
Jared Cohen is the founder and Director of Google Ideas, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the coauthor with Eric Schmidt of The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations, and Business. Previously he served as a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and as a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.
Jared has conducted research in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and throughout Africa. As part of his research, he has interviewed members of Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the Taliban. In addition to The New Digital Age, Jared is the author of Children of Jihad and One Hundred Days of Silence. He is also coauthor with Eric Schmidt of The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power, which appeared in Foreign Affairs just a few months before the Arab Spring. Among his additional publications are Diverting the Radicalization Track (Policy Review), Iran’s De Facto Opposition: Youth in Post-revolutionary Iran (SAIS Review), and Passive Revolution: Is Political Resistance Dead or Alive in Iran (Hoover Digest).
In 2011, Vanity Fair named Jared as a member of the “Next Establishment,” The Washington Post and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government named him one of six “Top American Leaders,” and Foreign Policy listed him as one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”
He currently serves as a member of the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) Director’s Advisory Board. He received his BA from Stanford University and his M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He speaks Swahili.
Dinner wines from Charles Krug winery.