Speaker Biographies

Alan I. Abramowitz is the Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University. He has authored or coauthored four books, contributed to many edited volumes, and written more than forty articles in political science journals dealing with political parties, elections, and voting behavior in the United States. His most recent book, Voice of the People: Elections and Voting Behavior in the United States, was published in 2004 by McGraw-Hill.

Michael Barone is a resident fellow at AEI, where he studies politics, American government, and campaigns and elections. The principal coauthor of the biennial Almanac of American Politics (National Journal Group), he has written many books on American politics and history, including, most recently, Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers (Random House/Crown Forum, 2007). Mr. Barone is also a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and a Fox News Channel contributor.

Bill Bishop is a writer living in Austin, Texas, and is the coauthor with sociologist Robert Cushing of The Big Sort: Migration, Community and Politics in the United States of “Those People” (Houghton-Mifflin, 2008). Mr. Bishop has worked as a reporter at the Mountain Eagle in Whitesburg, Kentucky; as a columnist at the Lexington, Kentucky, Herald-Leader; and as a special projects writer at the Austin American-Statesman. He and his wife, Julie Ardery, previously owned and operated the Bastrop County Times, a weekly newspaper in Smithville, Texas. They now coedit The Daily Yonder, a web-based publication covering rural America.

Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow at AEI. Her research areas include public opinion and polls, American politics, and the media. She regularly updates her AEI Public Opinion Studies on terrorism, the Iraq war, taxes, the environment, abortion, economic insecurity, and other topics. Ms. Bowman writes regular features on public opinion for The American and its online edition.

Ronald Brownstein is the political director for Atlantic Media Company, with responsibility for coordinating overall political coverage at its publications, which include The Atlantic, National Journal, the Hotline, and Congress Daily. He writes a weekly column on politics and policy that appears simultaneously in National Journal and the Los Angeles Times, as well as articles in National Journal and The Atlantic. From 1990 through 2007, he was the national political correspondent and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Brownstein has twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his coverage in the Times of the 1996 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Mr. Brownstein has appeared frequently on Meet the Press, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos and previously appeared regularly on Face the Nation, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Washington Week in Review.

E. J. Dionne Jr. is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University. He is the author of Why Americans Hate Politics (Simon and Schuster, 1991)—winner of the Los Angeles Times book prize and a National Book Award nominee—They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (Simon and Schuster, 1997), and Stand Up, Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge (Simon and Schuster, 2004). Mr. Dionne is the editor or coeditor of many other books, including the Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion and Public Life.

William H. Frey is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program and a research professor in population studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Mr. Frey specializes in issues involving state and regional populations, migration, immigration, race, aging, political demographics, and the U.S. Census. He has authored or coauthored over 150 articles and books, including America by the Numbers: A Field Guide to the U.S. Population (New Press, 2001) and The Allyn & Bacon Social Atlas of the United States (Pearson, 2008). Mr. Frey has been a contributing editor of American Demographics magazine. He frequently discusses demographic trends in national media venues.

David Frum is a resident fellow at AEI. A former special assistant to President George W. Bush for economic speechwriting (2001–2002), Mr. Frum’s last two books—The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush (Random House, 2003 and An End To Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (with Richard Perle; Random House, 2003)—were New York Times bestsellers. He is also a contributing editor to National Review, and he writes a blog for National Review Online. In his latest book, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again (Doubleday, 2008), Mr. Frum analyzes why a generation of young people has turned its back on the Republican Party; why Republicans can no longer win elections on taxes, guns, and promises to restore traditional values; and what new approaches are needed to regain lost ground.

John C. Green is a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. He is also the director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics and a distinguished professor of political science at the University of Akron. Mr. Green has done extensive research on American religion and politics, political parties, and campaign finance. He coauthored The Faith Factor: How Religion Influences American Elections (Praeger, 2007), The Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Changing Role in American Politics (Brookings Institution Press, 2000), The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy (University Press of Kansas, 1997), and Religion and the Culture Wars (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). He has also edited ten collections of essays, the best known of which are The State of the Parties (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), now in its third edition, and Financing the 1996 Election (M. E. Sharpe, 1999). Mr. Green has published more than sixty scholarly articles and some thirty-five essays in the popular press. 

Anna Greenberg is a leading Democratic pollster and polling expert. She advises campaigns, advocacy organizations, and foundations in the United States. Ms. Greenberg has extensive experience polling for nonprofits and charitable foundations, focusing on religion, women’s health, and youth. She conducts research on religion and values in public life for PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly and Reboot and on women’s health for the National Women’s Health Resource Center and the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals. Prior to joining Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, Ms. Greenberg taught at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. A frequently quoted source on the topic of American politics, Greenberg has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, NBC, CNBC, NPR and the BBC. Her work has appeared in Political Science Quarterly, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Women and Politics, The American Prospect, The Nation, Blueprint, The Public Perspective, and The Responsive Community.

Scott Keeter is the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. He is the coauthor of four books, including A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen (Oxford University Press, 2008), The Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Changing Role in American Politics (Brookings Institution Press, 2000), What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters (Yale University Press, 1996), and Uninformed Choice: The Failure of the New Presidential Nominating System (Praeger, 1983). His other published research includes articles and book chapters on survey methodology, political communications and behavior, and health care topics. Since 1980, Mr. Keeter has been an election night analyst of exit polls for NBC News. He previously served as chair of the standards committee of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and is currently councillor-at-large for the Association. Previously, Mr. Keeter was a professor of political science and department chair at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Robert E. Lang is codirector of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, Virginia, and an associate professor of urban affairs and planning in Virginia Tech’s School of Planning and International Affairs. In 2007, Mr. Lang was named a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, he was director of urban and metropolitan research at the Fannie Mae Foundation. Mr. Lang’s research has been featured in USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News & World Report, and reported on by NPR, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, and ABC News. He is the author of Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis (Brookings Institution Press, 2003) and Boomburbs: The Rise of America’s Accidental Cities (Brookings Institution Press, 2007).

Reihan Salam is an associate editor of The Atlantic and a fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the coauthor of Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (Doubleday, 2008).

Tom Sanchez is an associate professor and chair of the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Utah. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on transportation, land use, residential location behavior, and questions of social equity in planning. Mr. Sanchez is currently the book review editor of the Journal of the American Planning Association and is on the editorial advisory board of Housing Policy Debate. His most recent books are The Right to Transportation: Moving to Equity (Planners Press, 2008) and The Social Impacts of Urban Containment (Ashgate, 2007).

Mark Schmitt is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He researches reform of the political process, campaign finance, Congressional procedure, state-level politics, budget and tax policy, and the history and role of ideas in politics. Since 2005, Mr. Schmitt has written a monthly column in The American Prospect. He has also written for The New Republic, the Financial Times, and many other publications, and has contributed chapters to numerous books. In 2003, he launched The Decembrist, which was named one of the five best political blogs in 2004 by Forbes. He also contributes to TPMCafe. Before joining the New America Foundation, Mr. Schmitt was director of policy and research at the Open Society Institute, and he was a speechwriter and policy director for then-senator Bill Bradley (D-N.J.). He was also a senior policy advisor to Bradley’s 2000 presidential campaign. He is working on a book on the emergence of strong political parties in the United States.

Tom W. Smith is an expert on survey research, specializing in the study of social change and survey methodology. He is director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Society at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Since 1980, he has been co–principal investigator of the National Data Program for the Social Sciences and director of its General Social Survey. He is also a cofounder and former secretary general of the International Social Survey Program, the largest international social science collaboration. Mr. Smith has taught at Purdue University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and Tel Aviv University. He was awarded the 1994 Worcester Prize by the World Association for Public Opinion Research for the best article on public opinion, the 2000 and 2003 Innovators Awards of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), the 2002 AAPOR Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement, and the Eastern Sociological Society Award for Distinguished Contributions to Sociology in 2003.

Ruy Teixeira is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a joint fellow at the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation. He is the author of five books, over a hundred articles (both scholarly and popular), and a weekly online column, “Public Opinion Watch.” His latest book is The Emerging Democratic Majority, (with John Judis; Scribner, 2002). Probably the most widely-discussed political book of the year, The Emerging Democratic Majority was praised by commentators on the left and the right and selected as one of the best books of the year by The Economist. Teixeira holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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