David R. Gergen is a Public Service Professor of Public Leadership and Co-Director of the Center for Public Leadership. Over the past three decades, he has served as a White House adviser to four presidents: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. In the mid-1980s, he began a career in journalism, becoming Editor of U.S. News & World Report and a television commentator. After his last governmental tour ended in 1994, he returned to journalism and began teaching at Duke University. He joined the Kennedy School faculty in January 1999 while remaining Editor at Large for U.S. News and a regular analyst on ABC News Nightline. In the fall of 2000 he published a best-seller, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton. He is also active on nonprofit boards, including the Yale Corporation, and chairs the National Selection Committee for the Innovations in American Government program co-sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the KSG. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School and holds six honorary degrees. He served three-and-a-half years in the Navy and is a member of the Washington, D.C. Bar. His wife, Anne, is studying at the Jung Institute in Boston.

David Gergen is the 123rd speaker in the Landon Lecture Series.