Mark Nordenberg
Co-Board Chair, Eradicate Hate Global Summit; Chancellor Emeritus and Chair of the Institute of Politics, University of Pittsburgh
2021, 2022, 2023, Current
In a University of Pittsburgh career spanning more than forty-five years, Mark Nordenberg has held a succession of key leadership positions, including Dean of the School of Law and Chancellor of the University. During his nearly two decades of service as its Chancellor, Pitt achieved dramatically higher levels of quality and impact on virtually every front. During that same period, the higher education and healthcare sector played a critical role in the rebirth of the regional economy.
Nordenberg now serves as Chair of Pitt’s Institute of Politics and Director of its Dick Thornburgh Forum for Law & Public Policy and holds the special faculty rank of Distinguished Service Professor of Law. For more than thirty years, Pitt’s Institute of Politics has provided a non-partisan forum for elected officials and other civic leaders to address policy issues of importance to Western Pennsylvania. The Dick Thornburgh Forum for Law & Public Policy offers public programming on important global, national, and regional issues. The Institute also includes the Elsie Hillman Civic Forum, which conducts programs designed to nurture a commitment to civic engagement in Pitt students.
In the aftermath of Pittsburgh’s hate-fueled synagogue shootings, Nordenberg served on the small independent committee created by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh to fairly disburse millions of dollars of undesignated donations made to its “victims of terror fund.” As co-chairs of that group’s subcommittee on memorialization, commemoration, and education, he and CMU President Emeritus Jared Cohon laid the foundation for the Collaboratory Against Hate, a research initiative jointly launched by Pitt and Carnegie Mellon. At the same time, he accepted an invitation from Laura Ellsworth, a former student and now the partner-in-charge of global community service initiatives for the international law firm Jones Day, to co-found and co-chair the Eradicate Hate Global Summit.
Following the most recent census, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asked Nordenberg to chair the state’s Legislative Reapportionment Commission. Despite these highly polarized times, the group produced a plan that was approved by a 4 to 1 bipartisan vote within the commission itself, unanimously upheld by the state Supreme Court, and widely praised by good government organizations and groups representing minority communities.
The effort to eradicate hate requires the active participation of every component of our society, to include governments, the private sector, communities of faith and indeed every aspect of civil society. There is no more urgent task in front of us. The organizers of the Eradicate Hate Global Summit are doing the United States and the world an enormous service by tackling hatred and extremism with a focus on honest dialogue and conversation, genuine learning and practical solutions. This will not happen overnight, but the Pittsburgh community’s leadership in this effort is genuinely inspiring and motivating.
