Columbia World Projects (CWP) on Monday welcomed Eric Schmidt, the former CEO and Executive Chairman of Google, for the inaugural Campbell Leadership Lecture, at CWP’s home at the Forum on Columbia’s Manhattanville campus.

“Columbia World Projects is devoted to advancing connections between thinking and doing, between university based scholarship and large vexing problems in the world,” Columbia World Projects deputy director Ira Katznelson said in introducing the event. Working at the conjunction of “thinking and doing,” he added, has been central to Schmidt’s career.

Avril Haines, a deputy director of Columbia World Projects, and Costis Maglaras, the Dean of Columbia Business School, moderated the discussion. The Campbell Leadership Lecture, a new lecture series at Columbia University, provides a forum for leading voices—drawn from government, the social sector, and technology—to ask how we might renew democratic institutions and virtues in order to address our most consequential public problems. The aim of these lectures is to identify workable solutions in an era in which democratic procedures are under stress, and to find pathways for the implementation of these solutions. The lecture series has been generously endowed in honor of William V Campbell, Columbia College Class of 1962 and Teachers College Class of 1964. A former coach of the Columbia Lions football team who became “Coach of Silicon Valley,” Campbell was a prominent technology executive who became a key adviser to leaders at Apple, Google and Facebook, among other Silicon Valley companies, and served as chair of Columbia University’s Board Of Trustees. In the spirit of his work and commitments, this namesake lecture series assemble leaders who embody Campbell’s legacy of leadership and impact.

Video of the event is available here: