Thomas Donilon, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, and Barton Gellman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, will discuss “Foreign Policy and National Security” in a free talk Oct. 30 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Donilon and Gellman come to UNC as Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professors in the College of Arts and Sciences. Hodding Carter will moderate the discussion at 5:30 p.m. in the G-100 auditorium of the Genome Sciences Building on Bell Tower Road. Carter is the University Professor of Leadership and Public Policy and the former State Department spokesperson during President Jimmy Carter’s administration.
Donilon served as national security adviser to the president until June. He oversaw the National Security Council staff, chaired the National Security Principals Committee, provided the president’s daily national security briefing, and was responsible for the coordination and integration of the administration’s foreign policy, intelligence and military efforts, including the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Gellman was one of three journalists who interviewed and received documents from Edward Snowden in late spring 2013. Gellman’s stories for The Washington Post revealed the National Security Agency’s PRISM program and other aspects of government surveillance. He has a forthcoming book for Penguin Press on “the surveillance industrial revolution.” He spent 21 years at The Washington Post as a legal, military, diplomatic, foreign and special projects correspondent before leaving in 2010 to become a contributing editor at large for Time magazine.
College of Arts and Sciences contact: Dee Reid, (919) 843-6339, deereid@unc.edu