"The Direct Line"- Spring 2008

Rockefeller Center Director Andrew Samwick provides commentary on a variety of issues in the Direct Line, which is published at the start of each term.

This edition of the Rockefeller Center newsletter celebrates the past and looks to the future. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Nelson Rockefeller's birth and the 25th anniversary of the Center's founding. The theme for our yearlong celebrations of these milestones is that Nelson Rockefeller's political and policy legacy is alive and well. John Hinderaker '71, a member of the Center's board of visitors, provides an overview in his essay. We demonstrate and honor this legacy through a Centennial Lecture Series, which continues this term with public programs featuring former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman, noted historian Richard Norton Smith, and chair and former CEO of Time Warner Richard D. Parsons, himself a veteran of Nelson Rockefeller's time in office. Looking ahead, the Center's staff and I will continue to carry out its mission of educating, training, and inspiring the next generation of public policy leaders through the programs that we highlight at the end of the newsletter. I invite you all to join us in our celebrations this year and our programs in the years ahead.Public Policy Internships. The Rockefeller Center awards grants to nearly 40 students each year to enable them to gain direct experience at nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies, or other public offices at the local, state, and national levels. These unpaid leave-term internships introduce students to the public policy process and offer them the opportunity to work on a variety of projects, each of which is intended to help them become better advocates for the causes about which they feel passionately.

Andrew A. Samwick is the Director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, the Sandra L. and Arthur L. Irving '72a, P'10 Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2003 and 2004, he served as chief economist on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.