Elizabeth Goitein is senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program, which seeks to advance effective national security policies that respect constitutional values and the rule of law. A nationally-recognized expert on presidential emergency powers, government surveillance, and government secrecy, Goitein joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series during a week on “The Evolution of the Modern Presidency” to discuss the design and effectiveness of checks and balances among the three branches of government in the context of presidential emergency powers.

Goitein’s writing has been featured in newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs and The New Republic, and she has appeared frequently on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR; she is also the author of several book chapters. She has testified on several occasions before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

Before coming to the Brennan Center, Goitein served as counsel to U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. In 2021–22, she was a member of the inaugural class of Senior Practitioner Fellows at the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government.

Goitein graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Andrew H. Card Jr. is the second-longest tenured White House Chief of Staff and has served in senior government roles under three U.S. Presidents. It is this decades-long experience that Card will draw on for the Chautauqua Lecture Series week on “The Evolution of the Modern Presidency” as he shares how he’s seen the presidency change in his career and lifetime, traces shifts in how Congress interacts with the Executive Branch, and considers how we might think differently about the presidency going forward.

Card served as chief of staff to President George W. Bush from January 2001 to April 2006. In this capacity, in 2001, he led a government-wide reorganization to best allocate resources to deal with the aftermath of 9/11 and the new terrorist environment. Prior to that, he served as deputy chief of staff and then as a cabinet member for President George H.W. Bush as the 11th Secretary of Transportation, directing President Bush’s transition office during the transition from the Bush Administration to the Clinton Administration. Card also served as special assistant and later as deputy assistant to the president and director of intergovernmental affairs for President Ronald Reagan.

Since the White House, Card has been chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy; interim chief executive officer of the George & Barbara Bush Foundation; president of Franklin Pierce University; executive director of the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Texas A&M University; and acting dean of The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M.

Card is a graduate of the University of South Carolina, and attended the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1965 to 1967.

As the founding executive director of the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, Melody Barnes guides the organization on an action-oriented path to realizing democracy in both principle and practice. A public servant with more than 25 years of experience crafting public policy, Barnes served in the administration of President Barack Obama as assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. It is this experience she will draw on during the Chautauqua Lecture Series week on “The Evolution of the Modern Presidency,” offering insight into how the power and authority vested in the presidency and executive branch touch the everyday lives of Americans.

Earlier in her career, Barnes was executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress and chief counsel to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Her experience includes an appointment as director of legislative affairs for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and assistant counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. Barnes started her career in New York as an associate at Shearman & Sterling.

In addition to her role at the Karsh Institute, Barnes is the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, a distinguished fellow at UVA’s School of Law, and co-founder of the domestic-policy strategy firm MB2 Solutions. She is also the W.L. Lyons Brown Family Director for Policy and Public Engagement at the Democracy Initiative, an interdisciplinary teaching, research, and engagement effort led by the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at UVA.

Barnes earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated with honors in history, and her JD from the University of Michigan.