Philadelphia, PA, USA (May 6, 2013) /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The National Constitution Center Board of Trustees announced today that it has appointed law professor, distinguished legal commentator, and former visiting scholar Jeffrey Rosen to serve as president and chief executive officer of the Center. Rosen succeeds David Eisner, who stepped down from the position in October 2012.
“We are extremely proud to announce a CEO and president of Jeffrey Rosen’s caliber as a constitutional scholar, journalist, and educator,” said National Constitution Center Chairman Jeb Bush. “I look forward to working in hand with Jeffrey to continue to elevate the Center’s national profile and unparalleled role as a museum, town hall, and civic educational headquarters.”
“I’m thrilled and humbled by the opportunity to lead the National Constitution Center, a great institution devoted to promoting bipartisan debate about constitutional issues,” said Rosen. “The Center is both a magnificent museum and America’s town hall, a national and international forum for constitutional debate and education. I Iook forward to working with the Center to host those debates in Philadelphia, on the Internet, and around the world.”
“As the Center looks towards its next decade, we are proud to welcome a leader and highly respected constitutional expert who will provide a fresh perspective on our important work of illuminating constitutional ideals and inspiring active citizenship,” said Doug DeVos, chairman of the Center’s executive committee.
“Jeffrey Rosen is a prominent Constitutional scholar and acclaimed author whose legal commentaries are widely read and respected,” said Dr. Amy Gutmann, a National Constitution Center Trustee and the president of the University of Pennsylvania. “His stature, passion, and vision are a perfect match for the National Constitution Center, which seeks to draw connections between the Constitution and current events and inspire lively intellectual exchange among people of all ages.”
Rosen is a professor at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 1997, and is the legal affairs editor of The New Republic , which covers politics and culture from an “unbiased and thought-provoking perspective.” He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he explores issues involving the future of technology and the Constitution. He has recorded a lecture series for the Teaching Company’s Great Courses on Privacy, Property, and Free Speech: Law and the Constitution in the 21st Century.
Rosen is a highly regarded journalist whose essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, on National Public Radio, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 best magazine journalists in America and a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times called him “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.” He received the 2012 Golden Pen Award from the Legal Writing Institute for his “extraordinary contribution to the cause of better legal writing.”
Rosen was an adviser to the National Constitution Center during its early planning phases and a visiting scholar at the Center during the summer of 2003. He has appeared on many panels at the Center, including a 2007 program about the Supreme Court with then-ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg.
Since 2000, he has served as a moderator at The Aspen Institute, an educational and policy studies organization with a mission to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues. At Aspen, Rosen moderates panels and conducts seminars on technology and the Constitution, privacy, and free speech and democracy.
He is the author of several books including The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America; The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America; The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age; and The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America. His most recent book, as co-editor, is Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change. Books about Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and President William Howard Taft are forthcoming.
Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School.
The National Constitution Center is the first and only nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to the most powerful vision of freedom ever expressed: the U.S. Constitution. Located on Independence Mall in Historic Philadelphia, the birthplace of American freedom, the Center illuminates constitutional ideals and inspires active citizenship through a state-of-the-art museum experience, including hundreds of interactive exhibits, films and rare artifacts; must-see feature exhibitions; the internationally acclaimed, 360-degree theatrical production Freedom Rising; and the iconic Signers’ Hall, where visitors can sign the Constitution alongside 42 life-size, bronze statues of the Founding Fathers. As America’s town hall, the Center engages diverse, distinguished leaders of government, public policy, journalism and scholarship in timely public discussions and debates. The Center also houses the Annenberg Center for Education and Outreach, the national hub for constitutional education, which offers cutting-edge civic learning resources both onsite and online. Join us at the museum of “We the People” as we celebrate our 10-year anniversary in 2013. For more information, call 215.409.6700 or visit constitutioncenter.org.
