Niall Ferguson
Keynote Speaker
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of sixteen books, includingThe Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, Empire, Civilization and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize. He is an award-winning filmmaker, too, having received an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. His 2018 book, The Square and the Tower, was a New York Timesbestseller and was also adapted for television by PBS as Niall Ferguson’s Networld. He is a trustee of the New York Historical Society, the London-based Centre for Policy Studies, and the newly founded University of Austin. His latest book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, was published last year by Penguin and was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize.
Hon. Daniel Kolkey
Taube Family Freedom Prize Recipient
The Hon. Daniel Kolkey has served as an Associate Justice on the California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, and as Counsel to Governor Pete Wilson. Dan also acted as Governor Schwarzenegger’s lead negotiator for tribal-state compacts and as an advisor for two Florida governors. A retired partner in the San Francisco office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Mr. Kolkey was chair of the firm’s California Appellate Law Practice Group, a member of the firm’s national appellate and constitutional law practice group, and a member of the Litigation Department. Dan was also awarded the prestigious Clay award as an attorney of the year for extraordinary achievement multiple times in multiple fields, including appellate law, international arbitration, and public policy. He is President of the California Supreme Court Historical Society and chairman of the Board of Directors of California Arbitration, Inc. He is a Pacific Research Institute board member, and chair of its California Reform Committee and Finance Committee.
Peter Robinson
Peter M. Robinson is the Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, edits Hoover’s quarterly journal, the Hoover Digest, and hosts Hoover’s video series program, Uncommon Knowledge™.
Robinson is also the author of three books: How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life (Regan Books, 2003); It’s My Party: A Republican’s Messy Love Affair with the GOP, (Warner Books, 2000); and the best-selling business book Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA (Warner Books, 1994; still available in paperback).
Robinson spent six years in the White House, serving from 1982 to 1983 as chief speechwriter to Vice President George Bush and from 1983 to 1988 as special assistant and speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan. He wrote the historic Berlin Wall address in which President Reagan called on General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”
