In September 2009, Hofstra University President Stuart Rabinowitz announced the appointment of two senior presidential fellows at the university's Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency: Republican strategist and former presidential advisor Edward J. Rollins and former Vermont governor, presidential candidate and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. In October 2011, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced it had chosen Hofstra for its second on October 16, 2012, the "town hall" debate (between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney). Hofstra University hosted the first 2016 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on September 26, 2016.