Fleishman to Give Inaugural Lambeth Lecture on Public Policy

Posted on Sept. 27, 2007

Joel Lawrence Fleishman ’55, founding director of the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University, will deliver the inaugural Thomas Willis Lambeth Lecture in Public Policy on Oct. 11 in Chapel Hill.

Fleishman, who holds three degrees from Carolina, will speak at 5:30 p.m. in Chapman Hall, room 211. The lecture is free to the public.

Fleishman is the director of the Sanford Institute’s Heyman Center for Ethics, Public Policy and the Professions. He is considered a founder of the academic field of public policy analysis. He previously served as a legal assistant to former North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford ’39, as senior vice president of Duke, as president of Atlantic Philanthropies, and as chair of the board of trustees of the Urban Institute. Fleishman also was prominent in the creation of the N.C. School of the Arts.

A Fayetteville native who also has a master’s degree in law from Yale University, he is a recipient of UNC’s Order of the Golden Fleece and the GAA’s Distinguished Service Medal. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration.

The Lambeth Lectureship honors Thomas Willis Lambeth ’57, who served as administrative assistant to Sanford and to U.S. Rep. Richardson Preyer and later for more than two decades as executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. During Lambeth’s tenure, the foundation awarded grants totaling more than $260 million to address many of North Carolina’s most pressing policy issues, particularly social justice and equity, governance  and civic engagement, community-building and economic development, education, and protection of the state’s natural environment.

Lambeth has had a strong personal impact on many key public policy issues in North Carolina and nationally, including leadership of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, Leadership North Carolina, the North Carolina Rural Center, and a task force of the national Institute of Medicine on the problems of people who lack medical insurance. He also has been a national leader in improving the management and effectiveness of family philanthropic foundations themselves.

He is a recipient of the GAA’s Distinguished Service Medal, the University’s Distinguished Alumnus Award and the Davie Award for service to UNC. He chairs the GAA-sponsored Tar Heel Network, which supports the University’s goals and priorities through advocacy with legislators.

The lectureship was endowed in 2006 to bring to the campus distinguished speakers who are practitioners and/or scholars of public policy, particularly those whose work touches on the fields of education, ethics, democratic institutions, and civic engagement.

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