Global Education in U.S. Schools

NEW YORK, May 31, 2007 - Developing Global Leaders: Bringing Our Schools Out of the 20th Century with Joel Klein, Robert Hormats, Orville Schell and William Gaston Caperton at Asia Society's Headquarters in New York. Discussion moderated by Vishakha Desai.

This panel precedes The Goldman Sachs Foundation 2006 Prizes for Excellence in International Education sponsored by The Goldman Sachs Foundation and the Asia Society.

The Prizes were established to identify effective and replicable models of international education that address concerns about the economic, social, and diplomatic costs of educational isolationism.

Joel Klein

Joel Klein is Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States with over 1.1 million students in over 1,420 schools.

Prior to his appointment to Chancellor in 2002 by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Klein was Counsel to Bertelsmann and served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States in charge of the Antitrust Division.

Klein may be best remembered for prosecuting the United States Department of Justice anti-trust case against Microsoft. Before heading up the Antitrust Division Klein was the deputy to Anne Bingaman, (the wife of Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico) in that office, and worked in the White House Counsel's office. He was in private practice for many years, specializing in appellate cases.

Klein received his B.A. from Columbia and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He served as a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

Robert Hormats

Robert D. Hormats is vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a managing director of Goldman Sachs & Co. Hormats has served as US assistant secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, ambassador and deputy US Trade Representative, and senior deputy assistant secretary for Economic and Business Affairs at the US Department of State. He was a senior staff member on the National Security Council and senior economic advisor to National Security Advisors Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Hormats has received the French Legion of Honor and Arthur Fleming Award. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Visitors of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the Dean's Council of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Orville Schell

The author of 14 books, 10 of them on China, Schell has been the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley for the past decade and a frequent contributor to such publications as The New York Review of Books, Time, Foreign Affairs, Wired, The New Yorker and Harper's.

Born in New York, Schell is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard University in Far Eastern History, and was an exchange student at National Taiwan University, in the 1960s. He did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, in Chinese History, worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, and covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, writing for such magazines as The Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic.

William Gaston Caperton

William Gaston Caperton III (born February 21, 1940) was twice elected as governor of the U.S. state of West Virginia and served from 1989 until 1997. He is currently (as of 2003) the president of the College Board, which administers the nationally-recognized SAT and AP tests. He is a member of the Democratic Party.

Vishakha N. Desai

Vishakha N. Desai is the sixth president of the Asia Society, assuming the position in July 2004. As chief executive officer, she is responsible for managing an international organization with offices throughout the U.S. and Asia. She sets the direction for the Society's programs in the diverse fields of arts, culture, policy, business and education, overseeing a budget of $22 million.