Ukraine Conflict in Context: A Presidential Pop-up Panel - March 7, 2022
President Davidson joins MSU Denver History faculty to help Roadrunners and the greater Denver community make sense of the conflict in Ukraine.
Watch >The President’s Speaker Series at Metropolitan State University of Denver brings local, national and international industry leaders, prominent alumni, innovators and trailblazers to campus for dialogue about the most pressing issues of our day. Hosted by MSU Denver President Janine Davidson, Ph.D., the ongoing series provides the greater campus community opportunity for additional exposure to a wide range of thought-provoking and conversation inducing ideas and topics. The President’s Speaker Series has brought such luminaries as former President of Mexico Vicente Fox, Vice Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Thomas Hoenig, Ph.D., and author Emerson Brookings to the MSU Denver campus.
Spring 2024 Guest
General Jim Mattis, USMC (Ret), 26th Secretary of Defense
During General Mattis’s more than four decades in uniform, he commanded Marines at all levels. He led an infantry battalion in the liberation of Kuwait; a naval task force in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001; 1st Marine Division in the initial attack and the following stability operations in Iraq in 2003 and 2004; and subsequently led all U.S. Marine Forces in the Middle East as Commander of I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Forces Central Command.
During his non-combat assignments, he served on recruiting duty; as the Battalion Officer at the Naval Academy Preparatory School; Executive Secretary to the Secretary of Defense; Director of Marine Corps Manpower Plans & Policy; Senior Military Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense; and Commanding General of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command.
In joint assignments he commanded U.S. Joint Forces Command; NATO’s Supreme Allied Command for Transformation; and U.S. Central Command. At U.S. Central Command he directed military operations of more than 250,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen, Marines, and allied forces in combat across the Middle East. Retiring in 2013, he was a Davies Family Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Subsequently, he served as the 26th Secretary of Defense from January 2017 through December 2018. Currently, General Mattis continues his work at the Hoover Institution.
