The Annual Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture Series

The Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture Series, more commonly known as the Eizenstat Lecture Series, is comprised of an annual, free public event featuring well-known speakers addressing current and thought-provoking issues.

The Eizenstat Lecture Series has featured national and international political, legal, and economic leaders such as Antony Blinken, Wolf Blitzer, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Shimon Perez, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Joseph Lieberman, Al Gore, Alan Dershowitz, Paul Dundes Wolfowitz, and Herman Wouk. Also featured were three Nobel Peace Prize winners, two Pulitzer Prize winners, two United States Presidents, two United States Vice Presidents, two United States Supreme Court Justices, and two Israeli Prime Ministers, among other national and international eminent guests. 2023 marks the 34th year of the Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture Series. 

2023 Guest

Jon Meacham

Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham is one of America's most prominent public intellectuals. With a depth of knowledge about politics, history, religion, and current affairs, Meacham has the unique ability to bring historical context to the issues and events impacting our daily lives.

The author of several #1 New York Times bestsellers, Meacham has written acclaimed books about Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, George H.W. Bush, and civil-rights icon John Lewis. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the Society of American Historians, Meacham is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University where he holds the Rogers Chair in the American Presidency. His latest #1 New York Times bestseller, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle, was published in October 2022.

Join us on Thursday, March 30, 2023, 6:30–9:00 p.m. for the 34th Annual Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Series Lecture, The Future of American Democracy, a discussion led by Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat featuring Jon Meacham.

Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat

Stuart Eizenstat, a native of Atlanta and lifelong member of Ahavath Achim Synagogue, currently heads Covington & Burling's international practice. He has practiced law more than 30 years in Atlanta and Washington.

Ambassador Eizenstat has held a number of key positions during his decades of government service. From 1977 to 1981, he was President Jimmy Carter's Chief Domestic Policy Adviser and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff. In the Clinton Administration, he was Deputy Treasury Secretary, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, as well as Ambassador to the European Union from 1993 to 1996. He received the highest departmental awards for his service from Secretary of State Christopher, Secretary of State Albright, and Secretary of the Treasury Summers.

Much of the recent interest in World War II issues and justice for Holocaust survivors and the memory of the Holocaust, is as a result of his work. In 1978, he recommended to President Carter the creation of a Presidential Commission of the Holocaust, chaired by Eli Wiesel, which led directly the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. During the Clinton Administration, he served as Special Representative of the President and Secretary of States on Holocaust Issues. In this capacity, he led two landmark U.S. reports on the role of Switzerland and other neutral countries during the War; and led negotiations that produced major agreements with the Swiss, Germans, Austrians, French, and Central European governments for bank accounts, slave and forced labor, insurance policies, Nazi-looted art, worth more than $8 billion to Holocaust victims and their families and other non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. He published a book on these events, "Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor and the Unfinished Business of World War II" (2003) which has been translated into German, French, Czech and Hebrew. He has also published a book, "The Future of the Jews: How Global Forces are Impacting the Jewish People, Israel and its Relationship with the United States" (2012). Ambassador Eizenstat is now working on a book on a comprehensive assessment of the Carter Administration, which will be published in 2018.

During the first term of the Obama Administration, he served as Special Adviser on Holocaust Issues to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, negotiating, among other things, the 47-nation Terezin Declaration of Looted Assets and a $50 million agreement with the Lithuanian government. During the second term of the Obama Administration, he held the same position for Secretary of State John Kerry, during which he successfully negotiated a $60 million agreement with the French government for deportees and their families on the French railway during World War II. Since 2009, he has led the negotiating team for the Jewish Claims Conference and has negotiated more than $2 billion in additional benefits with the German government, including for flight victims, home care for needy Survivors around the world, and a new Child Survivors program. He is co-chair of the Jewish People's Policy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank, dealing with strategic issues facing Israel, the U.S.-Israel Relationship and the Diaspora. HE also chairs the Defiant Requiem Foundation, which sponsors concerts in the U.S. and the world over honoring a Jewish prisoner chorus in the Theresenstadt concentration camp (Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin), and a new concert honoring Jewish composers who wrote original musical scores at Theresenstadt, called "Hours of Freedom". The Defiant Requiem documentary, recognizing the artistic revolution at Theresenstadt received Emmy nominations in 2014 as Best Full Length Documentary and Best Script.

He has received eight honorary doctorate degrees from universities and educational institutions, and some 75 awards and citations, including the Legion of Honor from France, and high civilian awards from Israel, Germany and Austria. A chair in his name has been created in modern Jewish History and Culture at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In May, 2017, he received Tel Aviv University's highest award.

Ambassador Eizenstat received his J.D. from Harvard University in 1967. He served as a law clerk for the Honorable Newell Edenfield of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Prior to entering law school, Mr. Eizenstat earned an A.B., cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He and his late wife, Frances Eizenstat, have two sons, and eight grandchildren from Jay and Jessica and Brian and Erin.

Past Lectures

The 28th Annual Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Memorial Lecture Series

The 26th Annual Fran Eizenstat and Eizenstat Family Memorial Lecture Series