Speakers During the Past Three Years

Dr. Elizabeth Cleland

Dr. Elizabeth Cleland has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 2004. As Curator in the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, she is responsible for the curation, research and acquisition of the museum’s post- medieval European textiles. She co-curated, with Adam Eaker, the major loan exhibition The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England (on view at The Met until Jan. 08, 2023).

Previously, she was lead curator of the major loan exhibition Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry (The Met 2014-15), and curated Relative Values: The Cost of Art in the Northern Renaissance (The Met, 2018-21). With the Cleveland Museum of Art, she guest-curated Renaissance Splendor: Catherine de’ Medici’s Valois Tapestries (CMA 2018- 19). She lectures and teaches regularly, and has published widely on fifteenth-, sixteenth- and twentieth-century tapestries. In addition to the award-winning catalogue to Grand Design: Pieter Coecke van Aelst and Renaissance Tapestry, which has been translated into Dutch and French, her books include: Renaissance Splendor. Catherine de’ Medici’s Valois Tapestries (Yale, 2018), co-authored with Marjorie E. Wieseman; Tapestries from the Burrell Collection (Philip Wilson Publishers, 2017), co-authored with Lorraine Karafel; and Tapestry in the Baroque: New aspects of production and patronage (Yale, 2010), co-edited with Thomas P. Campbell.

She undertook her undergraduate and postgraduate studies (the latter as an Arts and Humanities Research Council scholar) at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. She has received awards from the Ohio Museums Association (2018) and Association of Art Museum Curators (2014), and was recipient of the Leo and Julia Forchheimer Research Fellowship in 2004, and the Patricia Fay Memorial Fund scholarship in 1997. She and her husband live in New York with their daughter.

PUBLIC DUTIES

The Duke of Gloucester carries out a significant number of public duties, many as Patron, President or Fellow of a number of charities with which he is involved. The Duke has an association with over 150 charities and organisations in total and in addition to this he holds honorary military appointments with The Royal Anglian Regiment, The Royal Army Medical Corps, The Royal Logistic Corps, 6th Battalion – The Rifles, The Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia) and Royal Air Force Odiham.

The Duke is Grand Prior of the Order of St. John. In addition to many other activities, he was appointed Chancellor of the University of Worcester and is Joint President of Cancer Research UK.

The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester live at Kensington Palace and have three children and six grandchildren.

Topic: Ukraine War

General Sir Nicholas Carter

General Sir Nick Carter is an accomplished strategic leader and advisor. He has over 45 years’ military experience culminating at the top of his profession as the Chief of the Defence Staff where he was the principal military advisor to the Prime Minister, Secretary of State for Defence and the National Security Council, and the Head of the UK Armed Forces. He also served as the Chief of the General Staff, professional Head of the British Army.

General Carter has commanded on operations at every level of command and in a variety of different contexts, including the Troubles in Northern Ireland, UN peacekeeping in Cyprus, NATO peace enforcement in Bosnia and Kosovo, and commanding the UK-led Brigade in Iraq in 2003-04. He has multiple years of experience in Afghanistan since 9/11 until the present day, designing approaches to counter insurgency and acting as the facilitator to build confidence between the Afghan and Pakistani governments.

Topic: Churchill and the Russians

Allen Packwood

Allen Packwood BA, MPhil (Cantab), is a Fellow of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge, the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was awarded an OBE for services to archives and scholarship in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours. His book, How Churchill Waged War, was published by Pen & Sword in 2018.

The Churchill Archives Centre is located in the grounds of Churchill College, and is home to the papers of Sir Winston Churchill, Baroness Thatcher, Sir John Major and almost seven hundred of their contemporaries: politicians, diplomats, civil servants, military leaders and scientists of the modern era. It is still collecting.

Topic: He spoke on his recently published book The Afghanistan File 1979 — 9/11/2001 and the return of Taliban rule as well as regional developments.

HRH Prince Turki al Faisal al Saud

Former Head of the Intelligence Services of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Former Ambassador to the United States
Former Ambassador to Great Britain and Ireland

Topic: Conversation will include remarks about Mr. Panetta’s time as CIA director, the special USA-UK relationship, what to expect from a Biden Administration, especially with regard to China and Russia

Leon E. Panetta

Former Secretary of Defense
Central Intelligence Agency Director, White House Chief of Staff,
Office of Management and Budget Director, Congressman from California

The Twenty-third Secretary of Defense, Leon E. Panetta has had a fifty year career in public service at the highest levels of government: as Secretary of Defense, 2011-2013, he established a new defense strategy; as Director of the CIA, 2009-2011, he successfully led the operation that brought Osama bin Ladin to justice

Secretary Panetta began his public service career in 1964 as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, receiving the Army Commendation Medal, and then served as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator from California, Tom Kuchel. In 1969, he was appointed Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare responsible for enforcing equal education laws.

Elected to Congress in 1976, Secretary Panetta represented the California Central Coast for sixteen years. In 1993, he was sworn in as Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, 1993-1994, for the Clinton Administration and later appointed White House Chief of Staff, 1994-1996, achieving a balanced federal budget.

In 1997, Secretary Panetta established The Panetta Institute for Public Policy, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit study center to inspire men and women to lives of public service.

He chronicled his life in public service in his best-selling memoir Worthy Fights, which was published by Penguin Press in the fall of 2014.

The Honorable Kevin Rudd AC served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister (2007-2010, 2013) and as Foreign Minister (2010-2012). He led Australia’s response during the Global Financial Crisis—the only major developed economy not to go into recession—and helped found the G20. Mr. Rudd joined the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York as its inaugural President in January 2015. In 2015-16, Mr. Rudd led a review of the UN system as chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism. He is Chair of the Board of the International Peace Institute, Chair of Sanitation and Water for All, and was recently appointed to the IMF Managing Director’s new External Advisory Group. He is a Senior Fellow with Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House in London and a Distinguished Statesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. Mr. Rudd is proficient in Mandarin Chinese. He also remains actively engaged in indigenous reconciliation.

Robert Bruce Zoellick is an American public official and lawyer who was the 11th president of the World Bank Group, a position he held from July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2012. He was previously a managing director of Goldman Sachs, United States Deputy Secretary of State (resigning on July 7, 2006) and U.S. Trade Representative, from February 7, 2001, until February 22, 2005. Zoellick has been a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs since ending his term with the World Bank. He is currently a Senior Counselor at Brunswick Group.

A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, Zoellick served as White House Deputy Chief of Staff under James A. Baker III from 1992 to early 1993.