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51����’s academic community will come together for moments of learning and civic engagement this month during The Road to the White House: 51����’s 2024 Election Series, presented by the Office of the President and the Lampert Institute for Civic and Global Affairs.

President Brian W. Casey will interview former DNC Chair Donna Brazile and former RNC Chair Michael Steele on Wednesday, Sept. 4, at 4:30 p.m. Lampert Institute Director Chad Sparber, W. Bradford Wiley Chair in international economics and professor of economics, will interview Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush Karl Rove on Monday, Sept. 16, at 4:30 p.m. In the final installment of the series, Casey will interview New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd and New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent Carl Hulse on Tuesday, Sept. 24, at 4:30 p.m.

All events will take place in Memorial Chapel and will stream live from the University’s website. Please register to watch. 

Michael S. Steele

Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele was the first African American elected to statewide office in Maryland (2003) and the first African American to serve as chair of the Republican National Committee (2009).

Steele is currently a senior fellow at Brown University’s Institute for International and Public Affairs and a political analyst for MSNBC. He has appeared on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. In addition to his work in television, Steele co-hosted the daily radio program Steele & Ungar on the POTUS Channel on SiriusXM, and he is the host of the podcast The Michael Steele Podcast.

Steele’s writings on law, business and politics have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, TheHill.com, TheGrio.com, Politico.com, TheRoot.com, BET.com, Townhall.com, The Journal of International Security Affairs, and Catholic University Law Review, among others. He is the author of Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda and co-author of The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis.

Donna Brazile

Political strategist Donna Brazile has worked on every major presidential campaign since 1976. In 2000, she became the first Black woman to serve as the manager of a major party presidential campaign, running the campaign of former Vice President Al Gore. She has twice served as the interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Brazile is an ABC News contributor and the author of numerous articles and books, including the New York Times bestseller Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House. An adjunct professor at Georgetown University since 2002, she is the Gwendolyn S. and Colbert I. King Endowed Chair in public policy at Howard University. She is also the founder and director of Brazile & Associates LLC, a general consulting, grassroots advocacy, and training firm based in Washington, D.C.

Brazile’s work has been recognized with a variety of awards, including Harvard’s 2017 W.E.B Du Bois Medal. O Magazine chose her as one of its inaugural 20 “remarkable visionaries.” In addition, she was named among the 100 Most Powerful Women by Washingtonian magazine, placed among the Top 50 Women in America by Essence magazine, and received the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s highest award for political achievement. She is the recipient of more than 10 honorary doctorates. 

Brazile and Steele, were recently appointed by the Bipartisan Policy Center to lead its Election Legitimacy Initiative, a collaboration with public- and private-sector partners to undertake a nationwide public education campaign to help voters understand their rights, identify nefarious misinformation, help them register and cast ballots, and make sure their votes are accurately counted. 

Karl Rove

Political strategist Karl Rove served as senior advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000 to 2007 and deputy chief of staff from 2004 to 2007. At the White House, he oversaw the offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was deputy chief of staff for policy, coordinating the White House policy-making process. He was the architect of President Bush’s 2008 and 2004 White House victories.

Before the White House, he ran Rove + Co. a Texas based public affairs firm that consulted on more than 75 GOP campaigns for senator, governor, Congress, and statewide offices in 24 states.

Rove writes a weekly op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, appears frequently on the Fox News Channel, and is the author of the New York Times bestseller Courage and Consequence. His latest book is The Triumph of William McKinley. A Colorado native, Rove lives in Austin, Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas and serves on the Texas State History Museum and McDonald Observatory boards.

Carl Hulse

Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent of the New York Times and an acknowledged authority on the U.S. Congress and national political affairs. As a Washington journalist for nearly 40 years, he has covered seven presidencies and 20 congressional election cycles. He is the author of Confirmation Bias: Inside Washington’s War Over the Supreme Court, an account of the history-making partisan battle over the makeup of the high court and the federal judiciary. He appears regularly on televised public affairs programs and has also served as the Washington editor and chief congressional correspondent of The Times. He writes the  “On Washington” column and is also the drummer for the NativeMakers, a popular Capitol Hill garage band.

Maureen Dowd

Maureen Dowd started at The Washington Star in 1973, working as a clerk on the overnight shift, taking dictation from reporters covering the Watergate trial in the days before cellphones and laptops. Dowd became a city reporter in 1975. When The Star folded in 1981, Dowd went to TIME magazine for a couple years. Anna Quindlen subsequently hired her for the city desk of the New York Times in 1983. Dowd transferred to Washington, her hometown, in 1986, and covered the Bush I and Clinton White Houses before becoming a columnist in 1995. Dowd received the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for distinguished commentary and has written several books, including Bushworld, which covered the presidency and personality of George W. Bush, and Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide, about gender politics. She has also written for GQ, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, The New Republic, Mademoiselle, Sports Illustrated, and elsewhere.