University of Pennsylvania alumna Andrea Mitchell, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, and her husband Alan Greenspan, the former chair of the Federal Reserve Board, have made a generous donation to the university to establish the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy.
The Andrea Mitchell Center will support academic and public programs organized around yearly themes. The academic and public programs will also engage undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows, and workshop and conference materials will be captured in a book series published in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, stated that “the Andrea Mitchell Center will engage students and faculty across disciplines in essential research and dialogue. It also will be a premier public forum for reasoned discourse about democracy.”
“Penn has a unique capacity to promote democratic discourse about civic life,” said Mitchell. “The University’s home in Philadelphia, with its heritage of constitutionalism, combined with Penn’s academic resources, creates the perfect environment to consider complex experiences of citizenship and nationhood. Thoughtful inquiry is deeply important to me personally, and I believe it is of the utmost importance for our nation and, indeed, for all democratic nations. I am grateful that Penn is offering us this opportunity and that my husband and I are able to help make the Center a reality.”