Duke in DC’s Beyond Talking Points

Duke letters with DC skylines in background.

Congress and the Biden administration have been working to fill key cabinet posts and settle on committee assignments. With the most recent COVID rescue package signed into law, their attention now turns to a set of other issues to focus on in the coming months.

Over the past few weeks, experts from across Duke University and the Aspen Institute linked up for Duke in DC’s Beyond Talking Points to discuss their top considerations on a range of policy issues facing the United States.

Beyond Talking Points is a regular briefing series exposing government officials, policy staff at think tanks, NGOs, media, and others in the federal policy community on Capitol Hill and the administration to in-depth discussions on critical issues facing America and the world. Each event features a complex and relevant policy topic to be discussed by a panel of experts from Duke and external organizations.

This recent iteration of the series took place over consecutive Friday mornings in mid-February through early March, bringing together an interdisciplinary group of panelists from across Duke University. The events included faculty from the Sanford School of Public Policy, Samuel W. DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the Duke Energy Initiative.

The first event, Rebuilding National Security Infrastructure and Improving Civ-Mil Relations, included Duke panelists Rubenstein Fellow Susan Gordon and professor Peter Feaver along with David Forscey from the Aspen Institute. The panelists for second conversation, Health Inequalities & Racial Injustice During COVID-19, were professors Keisha Bentley-Edwards and Anna Gassman-Pines from Duke and Tiffany Day from the Aspen Institute. Finally, professors Kate Konschnik and Brian Murray joined Greg Gershuny from the Aspen Institute for the third conversation, Energy & Utilities

In each of the conversations, the speakers explained their take on the current policy environment and provided their recommendations for the 117th Congress and President Joe Biden. You can watch a recording from each conversation on YouTube Live here and read a summary recapping each event by clicking on the titles’ hyperlinks.

The events were attended by a range of congressional staffers representing over 60 House and 20 Senate member offices, including 6 different offices representing North Carolina’s congressional delegation, as well as 5 Senate and 6 House committees. Other attendees included staff from nearly 20 different federal agencies.

Coming up later this spring, join Duke in DC for the next round of Beyond Talking Points conversations focused on environmental justice. Follow us on Twitter @DukeinDC for more announcements about this series.

By Lizzie Devitt, posted 3/18/2021