For three years, the Princeton SPIA DC Center has served as the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs’ policy nexus in Washington, a place for faculty, students, alumni, and policymakers from across the federal landscape to gather for dialogue, symposia, and networking.
Complementing the center’s focus on policy is a policy-adjacent cultural series. For the last two years, “Books & Cocktails” has brought faculty authors and other high-profile thought leaders to its Dupont Circle locale for stimulating conversations with Princeton SPIA faculty members, prominent journalists, and experts, followed by socializing on the building’s rooftop deck.
“The series is intentionally simple — an opportunity to debate big ideas in public policy,” said Center Director Zach Vertin. “Both those in the national headlines and those less visible but no less consequential. We’ve discussed indigenous rights in Brazil and sweeping changes in President Xi’s China, racial health inequalities, and the contentious national debate on free speech.”
Most recently, Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial writer with The New York Times and CNBC, discussed his critically acclaimed bestseller “1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How It Shattered a Nation” with Harold James, the Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies and a professor of history and international affairs at the School. The event, held May 7, drew a capacity crowd including reporters from leading national media outlets.
In December, Sanyu A. Mojola, the Maurice P. During Professor of Demographic Studies and a professor of sociology and public affairs, chatted with the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson, now a political analyst for NBC News and MS NOW, about her book “Death by Design: Producing Racial Health Inequality in the Shadow of the Capitol.” Mojola discussed how urban design, federal governance, and social policy have contributed to overlapping epidemics — from maternal and infant mortality to HIV/AIDS, drug addiction, homicide, and COVID-19 — producing stark disparities in life expectancy between Black and white residents in Washington, D.C.
Those featured include Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber, who headlined an October launch of his latest book, “Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right.” In a conversation with NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe, Eisgruber shared his motivations for writing the book, common misconceptions about free speech in academic environments, a variety of examples from Princeton, and growing pressures confronting American universities today.
Vertin’s mention of Xi Jinping was a reference to an appearance by the New York Times diplomatic correspondent Edward Wong, who spoke with NPR podcaster Rund Abdelfatah last spring about his book “At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China.” Wong, who was a Dean’s Leadership Series speaker in November 2024, talked about his immigrant family’s history in China and his own experiences reporting on China as the country’s role in the world continues to evolve.
A month earlier, Princeton SPIA’s own Arvind Narayanan, director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, sat with Razia Iqbal, the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor and Lecturer, to talk about his timely “AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference.” Narayanan and his co-author, Ph.D. student Sayash Kapoor, discussed the history of artificial intelligence, where AI technologies currently excel and where they don’t, and how the public should make sense of AI capabilities amid rapidly growing media attention on the topic.
Alex Cuadros, a climate reporter with ProPublica, visited the center in April of last year to discuss his book “When We Sold God's Eye: Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon.” In a conversation moderated by Vertin, Cuadros and Bruna Santos, the director of the Brazil Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, chatted about the Cinta Larga, the Brazilian indigenous people who are the subject of his book, as well as broader themes of Brazil past and present, from climate change and land management in the Amazon to indigenous peoples’ rights and contemporary politics.
The series launched in May 2024 with a pair of authors and New York Times journalists. Carlos Loazada, a Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, spoke about “The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians,” his collection of essays on how political figures reveal themselves and what it tells us about our politics. Katie Rogers, a White House correspondent for The Times, shared reflections from “American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden,” which examines the influence of modern first ladies on campaigns and policy, and the transformation of the role itself.
More “Books & Cocktails” events are planned for this fall, including one featuring Owen Zidar, a professor of economics and public affairs, whose “The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There” will be published in September.
“These evenings have brought an ever-widening and increasingly diverse audience here to the Center,” Vertin said. “The series has become one of our favorites among faculty, partners, and friends across Washington.”
Top photo: President Christopher Eisgruber is interviewed by NPR's Ayesha Rascoe on his book, Terms of Respect, at the Princeton SPIA DC Center in Washington.