Speaker Biographies
Michael Barone is a resident fellow at AEI, where he studies politics, American government, and campaigns and elections, as well as a political analyst and journalist. 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.
Chester E. “Checker” Finn Jr. is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and has been at the forefront of the national education debate for twenty-five years. During his career, Mr. Finn has served as a professor of education policy at Vanderbilt University, counsel to the U.S. ambassador to India, a legislative director in the office of former senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), and an assistant secretary of education for research and improvement. He serves on the board of numerous organizations concerned with primary and secondary schooling and has authored fourteen books and over 350 articles. His work has appeared in The Weekly Standard, The Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Education Week, Harvard Business Review, and the Boston Globe.
William A. Galston is a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program and College Park Professor at the University of Maryland. Previously he was director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy and founding director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. From 1993 to 1995, Mr. Galston served as deputy assistant on domestic policy to President Bill Clinton, in which capacity he had principal responsibility for education policy. He served as senior adviser to Al Gore’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination (1988) and subsequently to Gore’s presidential campaign (1999–2000). Mr. Galston has written more than a hundred articles on political theory and is the author of eight books, including Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2002), The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Public Matters: Politics, Policy, and Religion in the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at AEI and executive editor of Education Next. His many books include When Research Matters: How Scholarship Influences Education Policy (Harvard Education Press, 2008), No Remedy Left Behind: Lessons from a Half-Decade of NCLB (AEI Press, 2007), Tough Love for Schools: Essays on Competition, Accountability, and Excellence (AEI Press, 2006), Common Sense School Reform (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), and Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform (Brookings Institution, 1999). His work has appeared in both popular and scholarly outlets, including Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, Education Week, Phi Delta Kappan, the Washington Post, and National Review. Mr. Hess serves on the review board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education, as a research associate with the Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance, and as a member of the research advisory board for the National Center for Educational Accountability. He is a former high school social studies teacher and professor at the University of Virginia.
Marc Lampkin is the executive director of Strong American Schools’ ED in ’08 campaign, a national public awareness and action campaign aimed at raising education to the top of the nation’s domestic priorities during the 2008 presidential election and beyond. Mr. Lampkin has also been with Quinn Gillespie & Associates since 2001. Previously, Mr. Lampkin spent two years serving in a variety of roles, including deputy campaign manager, for George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. He later organized and ran Americans for Better Education, a coalition of educators, reform advocates, and corporations that supports President Bush’s education reform plan. Mr. Lampkin has also served as policy director for the late senator Paul D. Coverdell (R-Ga.) and general counsel for the House Republican Conference under then-chairman John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
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