“The Nicolas Berggruen Institute is dedicated to exploring new ideas of good government.”
ABOUT THE INSTITUTE The NBI is an independent, non-partisan think tank and consultancy engaged in the comparative study and design of systems of governance suited to the new and complex challenges of the 21st century. Our efforts seek to integrate the new possibilities of the information age with the best practices of efficient, decisive and meritocratic administration in Asia with the democratic accountability of the West. The knowledge society both enables and requires intelligent community, intelligent democracy and intelligent governance.
THE INSTITUTE HAS TWO CORE TASKS: a) To develop fresh policy ideas by drawing on the best minds and most authoritative voices globally;
b) To be a resouce to apply these new policy ideas practically through direct consultation with governments and citizen movements worldwide.
Nicolas Berggruen is the Founder and President of Berggruen Holdings, a private company with operations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, as well as real estate and financial investments globally. The firm and related entities have made well over 100 direct investments during the last 20 years. Berggruen Holdings commits entirely its own capital across diverse industries, both public and private, and focuses on building long-term value. The firm has offices in New York, London, Berlin, Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Mumbai.
Prior to Berggruen Holdings, Mr. Berggruen worked for Bass Brothers Enterprises on the real estate side of this family-held investment firm, as well as for Jacobson and Co., Inc., a leveraged buyout company. In 1988, Mr. Berggruen co-founded the Alpha Group, a hedge fund operation, which was sold to Safra Bank in 2004.
Nicolas Berggruen is committed to leaving a legacy of art and architecture, as well as intellectual thought through the Nicolas Berggruen Institute. His investments are often socially and culturally driven. He sits on the boards of the Berggruen Museum in Berlin and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and is a member of the International Council for the Tate Museum in London.
Mr. Berggruen was born in Paris, where he studied at l’Ecole Alsacienne before attending Le Rosey in Switzerland. Mr. Berggruen obtained a Bachelor of Science in Finance and International Business from New York University in 1981. He is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and the Pacific Council on International Policy.
Nathan Gardels has been editor of New Perspectives Quarterly since it began publishing in 1985. He has served as editor of Global Viewpoint and Nobel Laureates Plus (services of Los Angeles Times (Syndicate/Tribune Media) since 1989. These services have a worldwide readership of 35 million in 15 languages.
Gardels has written widely for The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Harper's, U.S. News & World Report and the New York Review of Books. He has also written for foreign publications, including Corriere della Sera, El Pais, Le Figaro, the Straits Times (Singapore), Yomiuri Shimbun, O'Estado de Sao Paulo, The Guardian, Die Welt and many others. His books include,"At Century's End: Great Minds Reflect on Our Times" and "The Changing Global Order”. He is coauthor with Hollywood producer Mike Medvoy of "American Idol After Iraq: Competing for Hearts and Minds in the Global Media Age."
Since 1986, Gardels has been a Media Fellow of the World Economic Forum (Davos). He has lectured at the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) in Rabat, Morocco and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, China. Gardels was a founding member at the New Delhi meeting of Intellectuels du Monde and a visiting researcher at the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow before the end of the Cold War. He has been a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, as well as the Pacific Council, for many years.
From 1983 to 1985, Gardels was executive director of the Institute for National Strategy where he conducted policy research at the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow, the People's Institute of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, the Swedish Institute in Stockholm and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in Bonn. Prior to this, he spent four years as key adviser to the Governor of California on economic affairs, with an emphasis on public investment, trade issues, the Pacific Basin and Mexico.
Gardels holds degrees in Theory and Comparative Politics and in Architecture and Urban Planning from UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Lilly, and two sons, Carlos and Alexander.
Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center, is a research professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, where he holds the Norman Lear Chair in Entertainment, Media and Society.
He has been a White House speechwriter; a Washington journalist; a deputy presidential campaign manager; a Disney studio executive; a motion picture and television producer and screenwriter; and a radio host.
He graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude in molecular biology, where he was president of the Harvard Lampoon, president of the Signet Society, and on the editorial boards of the Harvard Crimson and Harvard Advocate. As a Marshall Scholar, he received a First in English from Cambridge University in England. As a Danforth Fellow, he received a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University.
He was a program officer at the Aspen Institute; executive assistant to U.S. Commissioner of Education Ernest L. Boyer; chief speechwriter to Vice President Walter F. Mondale; deputy op-ed editor and columnist for the Washington Star; visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution; and a regular commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and on the CBS Morning News. As deputy campaign manager of the Mondale presidential race, he was in charge of policy, speechwriting, issues, and research. Recruited after the 1984 election by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, he worked at Disney for 12 years, both as a studio vice president in live-action feature films, and as a writer-producer under exclusive contract.
He has credits on THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN, starring Eddie Murphy, which he wrote and executive produced; NOISES OFF, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, which he adapted for the screen; and MAX Q, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer for ABC.
He was the host of So What Else Is News?, a nationally-syndicated program on Air America Radio, which examined media, politics and pop culture. He has also been a regular commentator on the business of entertainment on the public radio program Marketplace. Today he is a regular featured blogger on The Huffington Post and a weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.
He is editor of The Harvard Lampoon Centennial Celebration. 1876-1973; co-author (with Ernest L. Boyer) of Educating for Survival; and editor of The Monday Morning Imagination, and What Is An Educated Person?
At USC he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Media & Politics, Campaign Communication, and Entertainment.
Before coming to UCLA in 2004, Bin Wong served as Director of the Center for Asian Studies at UC Irvine where he was also Chancellor's Professor of History and Economics. At UCLA he is responsible for overseeing and coordinating activities in five research centers and developing new initiatives in Asian Studies fields.
Wong's own research has examined Chinese patterns of political, economic and social change, especially since eighteenth century, both within Asian regional contexts and compared with more familiar European patterns. Among his books, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Cornell University Press, 1997) is the best known.
Japanese and Korean translations are under way. Wong has also written or co-authored some fifty articles published in North America, East Asia and Europe, published in Chinese, English, French and Japanese in journals that reach diverse audiences within and beyond academia. Recent publications include an essay "East Asia as a World Region in the 21st Century" in Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
A ten-page interview regarding his scholarship, intellectual background and vision appears in the August 2004 issue of Shehui kexue, published by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
A leading specialist in social choice theory and mathematical political science, Thomas Schwartz is Professor of Political Science at UCLA, but his doctoral degree is rather in Philosophy (University of Pittsburgh, 1969). He has also published research in American Politics and International Relations, and in moral philosophy and logic. He draws upon reasoning from philosophy, mathematics, and economics to study problems of collective choice, institutional design, and constitutional politics.
Dr. Schwartz’s articles have appeared in Social Choice and Welfare, Journal of Economic Theory, Constitutional Political Economy, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Choice, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Philosophical Logic, American Philosophical Quarterly, and other journals and anthologies of politics, economics, and philosophy. He is the author of The Logic of Collective Choice and The Art of Logical Reasoning. He helps governments and other organizations write constitutions.
Nicolas Berggruen is the Founder and President of Berggruen Holdings, a global private investment company, with over 100 direct investments made over the last 20 years. In 1988, Mr. Berggruen co-founded the Alpha Group, a hedge fund sold to Safra Bank in 2004. Mr. Berggruen is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He also is the founder of the Nicolas Berggruen Institute.
Born in Paris, Mr. Berggruen attended Le Rosey in Switzerland and obtained a B.Sc. in Finance and International Business from New York University in 1981.In addition to broad interests and a focus on contemporary art; Nicolas Berggruen is committed to leaving a legacy of art and architecture; he is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Museum Berggruen, Berlin, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and is a member of the International Council for the Tate Museum in London.
