The first in-person event of the Academic Forum for the New Constitution in Chile. To register, click here.
Speakers: Claudia Bobadilla, ALI Fellow 2022, Founder Puente Social Foundation; Pablo Eguiguren, MPA-ID & MBA Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, Rubenstein Fellow; Patricio Fernández Chadwick, journalist and writer, former member of the Chilean Constitutional Convention; Claudio Fuentes, Professor, Political Science, Universidad Diego Portales; David Landau, Dean for International Programs, Mason Ladd Professor of Law and Associate, Florida State University; Ximena Rincón, Senator of Chile; Cristián Rodríguez-Chiffelle, DRCLAS Luksic Visiting Scholar 2022-2023; Sol Serrano, Professor Institute of History, Universidad Católica de Chile; Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard University; Rodrigo Vergara, Senior Researcher CEP, Fmr. President Central Bank, Chile and Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government; María Elisa Zavala, Associate, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP
Moderated by: Steven Levitsky, Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, Harvard University
Chile's constitutional process has been closely followed across the world. The reform offered Chile a potential path out of its deep crisis of legitimacy and gave Chileans an opportunity to build a more inclusive, participatory, and responsive system. Chileans elected a highly inclusive constituent assembly. However, the absence of a broad societal consensus around the draft constitution that emerged has resulted in much uncertainty about the future. Since December 2020, DRCLAS and its Chile Regional Office has run an academic dialogue on Chile's constitutional reform process, consisting of 11 webinars with 51 national and international speakers and more than 1600 attendees from 60 countries, and 5.281 views on Youtube.
Throughout Chilean Constitutional Forum Day, we will reflect on where we come from, where we are going, social unrest in Chile, the plebiscites, and the country's constitutional process through discussions in the following panels:
12:00 PM Coffee
12:10 PM First Panel, Student Reflection: Harvard Association of Chilean Students
2:00 PM Second Panel, Academic Reflection: Advisory Committee Members from the Academic Forum for the New Constitution in Chile
4:00 PM Third panel, Institutional Reflection
5:30 PM Reception
Mini-bios
Claudia Bobadilla
Claudia Bobadillahas served as Executive Vice President of AccesoTV, the Chilean cable and satellite TV trade association, as Chief Legal Officer of Terra Chile, an internet provider, and as a board member of both Santander Bank Chile and energy producer AES ANDES. She is the founder of both Puente Social, a corporate social sustainability initiative, and Comunidad Mujer Chile, an advocacy initiative for women in the workforce. Claudia also serves on various boards, including: Fundación Imagen de Chile, a nonprofit promoting Chile abroad, Fundación Encuentros del Futuro, a science and technology advocacy nonprofit, the Chilean National Council of Innovation for Development, steel manufacturer Cintac SA, electricity utility distributor ENEL Distribucion, and CSIRO Chile.
Pablo Eguiguren
Pablo Eguiguren is an economist who worked for four years in the government of Chile. During that period, he was Chief of Staff to the Minister of Economy (2018-2019) and served as Advisor to the President (2019-2022). As Advisor to the President, Pablo spearheaded efforts in Chile to analyze data and international evidence for decision-making related to the COVID-19 pandemic. After working in the public sector, Pablo worked as a Private Equity Advisor at Southern Cross Group, a Latin American Private Equity Fund. Pablo holds a Master in Economics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where he graduated with the highest distinctions and was elected President of the Business Administration and Economics Student Council.
Patricio Fernández Chadwick
Patricio Fernández is a journalist, political analyst, writer and currently a delegate to the Constituent Assembly of Chile. After the approval of the regulations of the Chilean Convention in October 2021, he joined the thematic commission on Fundamental Rights. Patricio is the founder and former editor of The Clinic newspaper. His latest books are: Cuba, Viaje al fin de la Revolución, and Sobre la Marcha: Notas acerca del Estallido Social en Chile. His work shows a new relationship between elites and citizens, but, above all, about a new normality.
Claudio Fuentes
Claudio Fuentes is a Professor of Political Science at Universidad Diego Portales, an Advisory Committee member of the Academic Forum for the New Constitution in Chile, the Constitutional Laboratory Coordinator, and was the Universidad Diego Portales Luksic Visiting Fellow at DRCLAS in 2010-11. He is also a Research Associate at the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies, CIIR. His academic interests are oriented towards the study of political processes in Chile and Latin America. His latest publications include The Unfinished Transition: The Chilean Political Process 1990-2020 (Editorial Cataluña, 2021), La Erosión de la Democracia (Editorial Cataluña, 2019), El Pacto (Ediciones UDP, 2012), El Fraude (Hueders, 2013), and, as editor together with R Castiglioni, Comparative Policy on Latin America (UDP, 2015). He holds a Doctor of Political Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
David Landau
David Landau has been awarded a Fulbright specialist grant in Chile for 2022 during the country’s ongoing constitution-making process. His recent work has focused on a range of issues with contemporary salience both in the United States and elsewhere around the world, including constitutional change and constitution-making, judicial role and the enforcement of rights, impeachment, and the erosion of democracy. In 2011, he served as a consultant on constitutional issues for Honduras’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Since 2012, he has been a founding editor of ICONnect, the International Journal of Constitutional Law blog, and serves on the Scientific-Advisory board of the same journal. He has published several other books and edited volumes with Oxford University Press and Edward Elgar Press. David Landau has a PhD in Political Science, as well as a JD and AB from Harvard University.
Steven Levitsky
Steve Levitsky is the Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Professor of Government at Harvard University. His research focuses on democratization, authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions. He (with Daniel Ziblatt) is the author of How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), a New York Times Best-Seller that has been published in 25 languages, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge, 2010), and Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2003), and co-editor of Informal Institutions and Democracy in Latin America (with Gretchen Helmke) and The Resurgence of the Latin American Left (with Kenneth Roberts). He has written frequently for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Vox, The New Republic, The Monkey Cage, La República (Peru), and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil). He is currently writing a book (with Lucan Way) on the durability of revolutionary regimes. Levitsky received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Ximena Rincón
Ximena Rincón is a Chilean lawyer and politician. She was formerly Chile's Labor Minister and Minister Secretary-General of the Presidency under President Michelle Bachelet. Between 2005 and 2006, she was the intendant of the Santiago Metropolitan Region under President Ricardo Lagos’ administration. In 2017, she was elected Senator, representing the Maule Region. In 2021, Ximena was elected President of the Senate of Chile, replacing Yasna Provoste. In the professional field, she has consulted on social and labor security issues, the environment, and mining law. She chaired the board of the Center for Development Studies (CED) and was a member of the Women's Community Council.
Cristián Rodríguez-Chiffelle
Cristián Rodríguez-Chiffelle is a Luksic Fellow (2021-2023) at DRCLAS, and board member at Start-Up Chile, CORFO´s ecosystems committee, and the global Climate Governance Initiative. Previously, he served as the Executive Director of InvestChile, the Nation’s foreign investment promotion agency, as Senior International Consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank, as Head of International Trade and Investment Policy at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Geneva, and as Trade and Environment Lead Negotiator for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. Cristián holds an LL.B from the University of Concepción, Chile where he is qualified to practice law. He also holds an LL.M from Harvard Law School, an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School–where he was an Edward S. Mason Fellow–and an executive Masters in Global Leadership from the World Economic Forum.
Sol Serrano
Sol Serrano is a historian that holds an MA from Yale University and PhD from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Sol is a specialist in political history, education and secularization, 19th and 20th century Chile, and state-building. Sol was a Luksic Fellow at DRCLAS in 2009. Sol is the Vice-Dean of Investigations at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Sol is also the recipient of the 2018 National History Award.
Mark Tushnet
Mark Tushnet is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School and served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall. He specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law. His research includes studies of constitutional review in the United States and around the world, and the creation of other “institutions for protecting constitutional democracy.” His writing takes a particular interest in constitutional history, with works on the development of civil rights law in the United States and a history of the Supreme Court in the 1930s.
Rodrigo Vergara
Rodrigo Vergara is a tenured professor at the Institute of Economics of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Senior Economist at Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP). He was President of the Central Bank of Chile between 2011 and 2016. In 2012, he was elected Economist of the Year by the national newspaper El Mercurio and a year later was nominated by the magazine Global Finance as one of the top five best presidents of central banks and number one in the Americas. In 2013, he received the Business Award from the Economics and Business Faculty Foundation of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In May 2018, Mr. Vergara became an Associate Researcher at Harvard’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. He has Economics and Business degrees from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and a Doctorate Degree in Economics from Harvard University.
María Elisa Zavala
María Elisa Zavala is an Associate at Cleary Gottlieb in their New York City office. Her practice focuses on international litigation and arbitration with an emphasis on Latin America. She has published various academic articles on international law and dispute resolutions. Elisa joined Cleary Gottlieb in 2020. Prior to joining Cleary, Elisa was an Associate Attorney at Claro & Cia in Chile where she practiced complex litigation and arbitration. She was also a professor within the International Law department at the Universidad Católica de Chile. Elisa received her law degree in Chile before completing her LLM at Harvard Law School.
In Collaboration with / En colaboración con:
Facultad de Gobierno, Universidad de Chile
Instituto Milenio Fundamentos de los Datos
Laboratorio Constitucional, Universidad Diego Portales
Facultad de Derecho, Pontificia Universidad Católica
Instituto de Ciencia Política, Facultad de Historia, Geografía y Ciencia Política, Pontificia Universidad Católica
Escuela de Gobierno, Pontificia Universidad Católica
Harvard Association of Chilean Students