Northwestern University hosted the former president of Mexico Vicente Fox Tuesday evening for the 29th annual Leopold Lecture. Fox served as president of Mexico from 2000-2006. A member of the National Action Party, he ran on a platform geared toward economic reform and ending government corruption. His election ended the 71-year reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Universidad Iberoamericana and a Top Management Diploma from Harvard Business School, Fox climbed the ranks of the Coca-Cola Company, and became its chief executive for both Mexico and Latin America. Mexico’s economic turbulence in the 1980s shifted his attention to politics, and he was elected governor of his home state of Guanajuato in 1995.
Today, Fox runs three philanthropic organizations, including Centro Fox. To reduce the incentive to migrate or join cartels, he works to inspire leadership in children and fight against poverty. Fox closed his talk with a call to enlightenment, humanism and progress.
Fox began the lecture with a broad discussion of global politics and what he perceives as the reversion of nations back to nation-states.
“Even democracy is being questioned today,” Fox said. “This trend now is taking us to the past.”
Fox discussed the rise of false prophets in Latin America’s recent history and how Trump’s ascent to power mirrors those dictators’ populist methodology and “uses democracy against itself.” Fox said that Mexico’s president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador […]
Read the full story: Former president of Mexico criticizes Trump, praises NAFTA in NU speech
