Joseph A. Califano, Jr. was President Lyndon B. Johnson’s chief aide for domestic affairs from 1965 until 1969 and Secretary of Health Education, and Welfare in the Carter Administration from 1977 to 1979.

On President Johnson’s White House staff, he was responsible for coordinating the legislative program and economic policy and for handling domestic crises.  The New York Times called him “Deputy President for Domestic Affairs.”

He was born in Brooklyn and received his BA from Holy Cross College in  Worcester, Mass., and his LLB from Harvard Law School.  He is author of 13 books, including The Triumph and Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years, originally published in 1991, and which is being republished in February 2015 with a new 7500 word introduction by Mr. Califano.  The New York Times Book Review wrote, “What makes this memoir stand out is its vividness.  Johnson leaps out of the pages in all his raw and earthy glory,” and historian Stephen Ambrose wrote in the Washington Post, “A joy to read…Oh what anecdotes. Johnson leaves you breathless, disbelieving, aghast… This book is recommended without reservation.”  The New York Review of Books called it, “An insider’s view of the inside, [this] memoir spares no aspect of its complex subject…readable, forthcoming and shrewd.” 

Bryan Cranston, Tony Award-winning actor who portrayed LBJ in the Tony Award-winning hit, All the Way, wrote, “This book helped me shape the role…[with its] insightful and honest details of this larger-than- life character, and allowed me to see the greatness of his impassioned hope and the agony of his troubled soul.  Thanks, Joe, for bringing him to life for me.”

As Secretary of HEW, Mr. Califano started the nation’s first anti-smoking campaign, issued the first regulations to give women equal opportunity under Title IX, to provide and equal opportunity to the handicapped, and to make Medicare reimbursement available for hospice care.

Prior to serving as President Johnson’s chief Domestic aide, Mr. Califano served as General Counsel of the Army and Secretary Robert McNamara’s special assistant and chief troubleshooter.

His book, Inside: A Public and Private Life, published in 2004, was called a “vivid and frank memoir of his remarkable life” by the New York Times and “the most revealing political memoir by a Washington insider since Katherine Graham’s Personal History” by Publisher’s Weekly.

He is Founder of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University which he started in 1992, and has practiced law in Washington, D.C. and New York City.

He and his wife Hilary are parents of five and grandparents of nine.  They live in Westport, Connecticut.

Jonathan F. Fanton is President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College from 2009 to 2014. He previously was President of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1999 to 2009, and for seventeen years was President of The New School for Social Research. Earlier, he was Vice President of Planning at The University of Chicago. He taught at Yale University and was Special Assistant to President Kingman Brewster. He is past Chair of Human Rights Watch, Security Council Report, The Union Square Local Development Corporation, and The Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in New York, and was also a Trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. He is currently Chair of Scholars At Risk and on the Board of the Asian Cultural Council. He is the author of Foundations and Civil Society, volumes I and II(2008) and The University and Civil Society, volumes I and II (1995, 2002). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999.