William Damon, Professor of Education, Director of the Center on Adolescence, and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Michael J. Petrilli, President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute; Cecilia Elena Rouse, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Katzman-Ernst Professor in Economics and Education, and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University; Moderated by Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program, Princeton University.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the typical flow of American education at every level, from K-12 schooling to collegiate and graduate studies. When the pandemic ends, will our educational institutions simply return to the status quo ante or will there be lasting effects? How will the “new normal” look? Our distinguished panelists will address the psychological, social, and economic dimensions of educating in the context of the COVID-19 crisis and consider the future of education from this point.

William Damon is Professor of Education at Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a leading researcher on the development of purpose in life and author of The Path to Purpose. Professor Damon's other books include Greater Expectations (winner of the Parent's Choice Book Award); Some Do Care: Lives of Moral Commitment; and Failing Liberty 101: How We Are Leaving Young Americans Unprepared for Citizenship in a Free Society. Professor Damon’s present research includes a study of purpose in the college years and a study of family purpose across generations. Professor Damon is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.A. from Harvard University.

Michael J. Petrilli is President of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Executive Editor of Education Next, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Education Commission of the States. An award-winning writer, he is the author of The Diverse Schools Dilemma, and editor of Education for Upward Mobility. Mr. Petrilli has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg View, and Slate, and appears frequently on television and radio. Mr. Petrilli helped to create the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement, the Policy Innovators in Education Network, and, long, long ago, Young Education Professionals. He serves on the advisory boards of the Association of American Educators, MDRC, and National Association of Charter School Authorizers. He lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland.

Cecilia Elena Rouse is Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Katzman-Ernst Professor in Economics and Education, and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Her primary research interests are in labor economics with a focus on the economics of education. Dean Rouse has served as an editor of the Journal of Labor Economics and is currently a senior editor of The Future of Children. She is the founding director of the Princeton University Education Research Section, is a member of the National Academy of Education and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 1998-99 she served a year in the White House at the National Economic Council and from 2009-2011 served as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. She also serves on the boards of MDRC, the National Bureau of Economic Research, Council on Foreign Relations, the Pennington School, and is an independent director of the T. Rowe Price Funds. Dean Rouse is also an executive committee member for the International Atlantic Economics Society. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Robert P. George holds Princeton University's McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence and is the Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He has served as chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and before that on the President’s Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST). He is a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds M.T.S. and J.D. degrees from Harvard University and the degrees of D.Phil., B.C.L., D.C.L., and D.Litt. from Oxford University.