The Aspen Institute announced last week that Dan Porterfield will succeed Walter Isaacson as president and CEO of the think tank. Porterfield is currently the president of Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
"I’ll bring an educator’s sensibility," Porterfield said. "I think that literature, culture, history makes a real difference in the quality of a culture and community."
Porterfield said that some of the most important work he’s done at Franklin and Marshall has been to expand the budget for need-based financial aid and to recruit students from a wider range of backgrounds.
“Whenever in American life, we reach out to include more people, to validate the perspectives and life histories and cultures and experiences and talents of more people, and bring them together, we are sort of living the American story,” he said.