Pulte Platform for Policy
Established in 2022 by a generous gift from the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation, the Pulte Platform for Policy deepens and expands the policy-relevant research, teaching, scholarship, and practice of the Keough School of Global Affairs.
Professorships at the core
Through its Global Policy Initiative, the Keough School strives for a high level of integration among the work of academic researchers, policy experts, and practitioners for the purpose of generating new knowledge and eliciting practical insights and solutions to the world’s most challenging problems. The gift from the Pulte Family Charitable Foundation makes possible the appointment of three senior professors.
By ensuring the presence of world-class thinkers on the Keough School faculty, the Pulte Platform significantly enhances the scale and scope of the Global Policy Initiative — and extends the global reach of policy solutions centered on the protection of human dignity.
The first of these policy experts is Andrés Mejía Acosta, the Kuster Family Associate Dean for Policy and Practice. Mejía Acosta’s scholarly work has gained recognition for its policy-relevance. He has been consulted as a thematic and regional expert to international development organizations such as the British Department for International Development, the Carter Center, Freedom House, and the Inter-American Development Bank, among others.
The Policy Platform will support two more policy professorships in order to deepen academic expertise and policy relevance in areas that are critical to the Keough School’s strategic plan, such as environmental justice, climate change, poverty, and inequality.
A partnership for excellence
The Pulte Institute and other units of the Keough School will continue to collaborate to advance the Global Policy Initiative by hosting senior global policy fellows: internationally renowned political, social, and economic leaders who will spend time each year on Notre Dame’s campus and in the Keough School’s Washington Office, to teach and interact with students, researchers, and other policy experts.
The inaugural senior global policy fellow is Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia from 2010 to 2018. During his time in office, the historic Colombian Peace Agreement was signed on November 24, 2016 celebrated as a significant turning point in ending the country’s 52-year armed conflict.
Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for unprecedented achievements in transitional justice. In fall of 2022, Santos taught courses in the Master of Global Affairs and undergraduate programs at the Keough School. In spring 2023, he was the principal speaker and received an honorary degree at Notre Dame's Commencement Ceremony.
Before entering government, Santos was a deputy publisher and journalist with the Colombian publication El Tiempo. He won the King of Spain Prize for Journalism for a series of articles examining corruption amid the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua.