Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Richard Socarides in conversation with Jonathan Capehart, Nathaniel Frank and Winnie Stachelberg

Event Date

Thursday, November 11 2010 : 7:00pm – 8:30pm

Location

The Center

Description

Thursday, November 11, 2010
Program 7PM
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – Where Are We, And How Did We Get Here?
Richard Socarides in conversation with Jonathan Capehart, Nathaniel Frank and Winnie Stachelberg

Opening Remarks by West Point Graduate Brenda S.“Sue” Fulton.

The Center and its Young Leaders Council (YLC), Knights Out, The Service Member’s Legal Defense Fund (SLDN), The Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and LeGaL host a thought provoking and engaging program examining the military’s current Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy.

The Center conversation brings together four of the country’s leading experts on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy. Attorney and political strategist Richard Socarides, who served as White House Special Assistant under President Clinton, will moderate a conversation with award-winning Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, author of the definitive work on the policy (Unfriendly Fire) Nathaniel Frank, and Center for American Progress SVP Winnie Stachelberg. Opening Remarks by West Point Graduate Brenda S.“Sue” Fulton.

ISSUE: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Where Are We, and How Did We Get Here.” Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Richard Socarides is one of the most hotly debated public policy issues facing our nation. It poses challenges for the President, the Congress and the courts, and especially for the LGBT political community. We will examine all of these issues in a lively and informal conversation with four of the country’s leading experts and advocates.

MODERATOR
This program is moderated by Richard Socarides. Socarides is a political strategist and attorney. He was White House Special Assistant and Senior Advisor to President Bill Clinton, where he specialized in policy, legal and political issues. He served as chief advisor to Clinton on gay civil rights from 1997-99. He also worked as a strategist on Capitol Hill, as Special Assistant to Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), and in media (Time Warner), entertainment (New Line Cinema), and technology (AOL). He has held staff positions in several presidential campaigns and served as spokesperson for a Hollywood motion picture studio. His opinion pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Huffington Post and AMERICAblog. Socarides is frequently quoted in national publications and often appears as a political commentator and expert on television. A practicing attorney, he is currently with the New York law firm Brady Klein Weissman LLP.

Opening Remarks
The program will be introduced by Brenda S. “Sue” Fulton. Fulton is a 1980 West Point graduate, part of the first class to admit women. She was commissioned in the Army Signal Corps and served for five years in Germany. She commanded a Military Intelligence company before leaving the Army at the rank of Captain. Sue helped found Knights Out, an organization of LGBT West Point grads and their allies, in 2009, along with Lieutenant Dan Choi and others. She is also a Founding Board member of OutServe, the Underground Network of active-duty gay and lesbian service members. She serves as Communications Director for both groups.

More About Jonathan Capehart
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jonathan Capehart has been a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post since 2007. He is an MSNBC Contributor (“Morning Joe,” "The Dylan Ratigan Show" and near daily presence on MSNBC dayside) and has been a member of the Reporters Roundtable on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” and substitute host on “The Brian Lehrer Show” and “The Leonard Lopate Show” on WNYC. Capehart was deputy editorial page editor of the New York Daily News from 2002 to 2004, and served on that paper's editorial board from 1993 to 2000.

More About Winnie Stachelberg
Winnie Stachelberg is the Senior Vice President for External Affairs at the Center for American Progress. Prior to joining American Progress, she spent 11 years with the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay civil rights organization. In January 2005, Stachelberg was appointed to the newly created position of vice president of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation. Previously, she was HRC's political director, initiating and leading the expansion of HRC's legislative, political and electoral strategies. Before joining HRC, Stachelberg worked at the Office of Management and Budget.

More About Dr. Nathaniel Frank
Dr. Nathaniel Frank is author of "Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America," which won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award for non-fiction, and was a Lambda Dr. Frank Nathaniel finalist. He is the former senior research fellow at the Palm Center, and is known for breaking the story of the Army firing of gay Arabic linguists. An internationally recognized authority on "don't ask, don't tell," he has lectured at West Point, consulted with the Pentagon Working Group, and testified as an expert witness in two successful Constitutional challenges to the law in federal courts. Dr. Frank’s publications on gays in the military and other topics have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The New Republic, Slate, Huffington Post, and others, and he has been interviewed on numerous television and radio programs, including “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and the “Rachel Maddow Show.” He is currently a member of the adjunct faculty at NYU.