Description
A year after the historic 2020 election, USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future (CPF) panelists asses Joe Biden’s first year in office, how the COVID-19 pandemic tested the Biden administration and consequences of the withdrawal of U.S troops in Afghanistan. Reflecting on a turbulent year that involved a violent transfer of power and growing COVID-19 variants, the panelists discuss the achievements and fumbles of the Biden administration.
This seminar, which is part of CPF’s annual Warschaw Conference, features Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro (Dean’s Professor and Chair of Political Science and International Relations at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences); Juan Rodriguez (campaign manager for Gov. Gavin Newsom and partner at Bearstar Strategies); Charles Sykes (founder and editor-at-large of The Bulwark); Ben Tulchin (pollster, strategist for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign and Eric Adams’ mayoral campaign, president and founder of Tulchin Research). The panel is moderated by Christina Bellantoni, professor of professional practice at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and director of USC Annenberg’s Media Center.
Who Will Benefit
– Young voters seeking deeper insights into the successes and problems with the Biden administration
– Those looking to know how candidates are shaping up for the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election
– Strategists exploring the political tactics used by opposing parties ahead of the 2022 midterms
About Our Featured Faculty
Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro is Dean’s Professor and Chair of Political Science and International Relations at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. She is a globally recognized scholar of intersectionality theory, the world’s leading analytical framework for analyzing and resolving inequality. She has written numerous articles and three books on the intersections of categories of difference like race, gender, class, sexuality and citizenship and their impact on policy: the award-winning The Politics of Disgust and the Public Identity of the Welfare Queen (2004), Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide to Ending the Oppression Olympics (2011) and Intersectionality: An Intellectual History (2016). The applied forms of her research focus on diverse donors in philanthropy, partnerships between funders and nonprofits for social change, and cross-sector training of leaders to implement intersectionality. In 1993, under the mentorship of NBA Hall of Famer Tom “Satch” Sanders, Hancock Alfaro conducted the original survey research and designed the business model for the Women’s National Basketball Association. The only women’s professional basketball league to succeed in the United States, the WNBA began its 21st season in May 2017. She sits on four boards: the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU SoCal), Community Partners, LAAWPPI, and Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Political Empowerment (SCOPE-LA). Her current work includes new research projects on asylum requests for survivors of domestic violence, empirical applications of intersectionality and the free speech-hate speech debate.
Christina Bellantoni is a professor of professional practice, the director of USC Annenberg’s Media Center and the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy faculty fellow. She also is a contributing editor with the independent nonprofit newsroom The 19th News, which focuses on gender, politics and policy. Bellantoni joined USC Annenberg in 2018 after serving as a member of the masthead at the Los Angeles Times. Over her more than 20 years in journalism, Bellantoni has worked as a reporter and editor, behind the camera as a producer and in front as an analyst on national television. She has covered local, state and federal government, along with four presidential campaigns and the White House. At the Los Angeles Times, Bellantoni was an assistant managing editor focused on politics. Under her leadership, the California politics team expanded and earned statewide recognition for innovative coverage of politics and for hard-hitting sexual harassment investigations that prompted two Assembly resignations and brought more transparency to California’s state capital. She joined the newspaper after spending 12 years as a journalist in Washington, D.C. She served as editor-in-chief of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call until moving to Los Angeles in 2015. Before taking over Roll Call, Bellantoni was the political editor and an on-air analyst at the PBS NewsHour. She oversaw presidential campaign, congressional, White House and Supreme Court coverage.
