One year into the Biden Administration how can we assess its performance? Which of the priority agenda items have seen progress? What have been the successes, failures and the reasons for these in the world he inherited? How has that landscape changed? Which areas are most meaningful for the health of our democracy, the health of the world that future generations will inherit? Join us as we attempt to unpack these questions and “score” Biden’s performance heading into midterms that are widely predicted to bring him a similar “shellacking” that President Obama acknowledged in his first midterm cycle.
Lara M. Brown, Ph.D., serves as a professor and the director of the Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM) at the George Washington University. A distinguished writer and dedicated scholar, Dr. Brown is the author of Amateur Hour: Presidential Character and the Question of Leadership (Routledge, 2020) and Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants (Cambria Press, 2010). She has co-edited and contributed to two other recent books: The Presidential Leadership Dilemma: Between the Constitution and a Political Party (SUNY Press, 2013) and Campaigning for President 2016: Strategy and Tactics, 3rd edition (Routledge, 2017). Dr. Brown has authored several book chapters in other scholarly volumes, such as The Presidency and the Political System (CQ Press, edited by, Michael Nelson) and Hatred of American Presidents: Personal Attacks on the White House from Washington to Trump (ABC/CLIO, 2018). She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as Congress and the Presidency, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and American Politics Research. Dr. Brown is a frequent presence in the media, appearing on dozens of television and radio programs, and serving as an expert on national elections and candidate strategies, political scandals, and presidential leadership for scores of print publications. She has written for op-eds and blogs for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, U.S. News and World Report, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Huffington Post. Before coming to George Washington University, Brown served as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Villanova University. Prior to returning to academia in 2004, she worked as an education policy and public affairs consultant in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. Dr. Brown served as a political appointee in President William J. Clinton’s administration at the U.S. Department of Education. Born and raised in California, Dr. Brown earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph. D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. She earned a M.A. in American politics and public policy from the University of Arizona. Her doctoral dissertation centered on the electoral fortunes of congressional incumbents tarnished by political scandals. Dr. Brown grew up racing sailboats on the San Francisco Bay and she is an avid college football fan. She is married and lives with her husband in Washington, D.C. Twitter @LaraMBrownPhD
David Paleologos is the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center (SUPRC), where he has worked since 2002 conducting statewide polls and bellwether survey analyses in Massachusetts and elsewhere. SUPRC presidential primary polls have predicted outcomes in many key battleground states. SUPRC's cutting-edge survey research has gained both national and international attention for its high degree of accuracy.
Dr. Adalja is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and an Affiliate of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. His work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity. Dr. Adalja has served on US government panels tasked with developing guidelines for the treatment of plague, botulism, and anthrax in mass casualty settings and for the system of care for infectious disease emergencies. He also served as an external advisor to the New York City Health + Hospitals Emergency Management Highly Infectious Disease training program and on a US Federal Emergency Management Agency working group on nuclear disaster recovery. He is a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America; he previously served on their public health and diagnostics committees and their precision medicine working group. Dr. Adalja is a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians Pennsylvania Chapter’s EMS & Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness Committee as well as the Allegheny County Medical Reserve Corps. He was formerly a member of the National Quality Forum Infectious Disease Standing Committee, where he currently serves on the Primary Care and Chronic Illness Standing Committee, and the US Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System, with which he was deployed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and was also selected for their mobile acute care strike team. Dr. Adalja’s expertise is frequently sought by international and national media. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Adalja has served as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association coronavirus advisory group; a consultant to various businesses, schools, and organizations; and an informal advisor to the International Monetary Fund. Dr. Adalja is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security. He was a coeditor of the volume Global Catastrophic Biological Risks and a contributing author for the Handbook of Bioterrorism and Disaster Medicine, the Emergency Medicine CorePendium, Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple, UpToDate’s section on biological terrorism, and a North Atlantic Treaty Organization volume on bioterrorism. He has also published in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Annals of Emergency Medicine, and Health Security. Dr. Adalja is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American College of Physicians, and the American College of Emergency Physicians. He is a member of various medical societies, including the American Medical Association, the HIV Medicine Association, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. He is a board-certified physician in internal medicine, emergency medicine, infectious diseases, and critical care medicine. Dr. Adalja completed 2 fellowships at the University of Pittsburgh—one in infectious diseases, for which he served as chief fellow, and one in critical care medicine. Prior to that he completed a combined residency in internal medicine and emergency medicine at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he served as chief resident and as a member of the infection control committee. He was a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine from 2010 through 2017 and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor there. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. He received an MD from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine and a BS in industrial management from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Adalja is a native of Butler, Pennsylvania, and actively practices infectious disease, critical care, and emergency medicine in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, where he was appointed to the City of Pittsburgh’s HIV Commission and the advisory group of AIDS Free Pittsburgh.
Steve Scully has interviewed every president since Gerald Ford. In his three-decade career at C-SPAN, he has served as political editor, host, and senior executive producer of C-SPAN’s programming, including the Washington Journal, Road to the White House series and its podcast ‘The Weekly.’ In addition to his work at C-SPAN, Scully served as adjunct faculty at the University of California-DC Program and completed his Terker Fellowship (2019-21) at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs last month. He previously served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Denver, Pace University and George Mason University. Scully chaired the Jefferson Educational Society Global summit in his hometown of Erie, Pa. for the past 11 years. Scully served nine years on the White House Correspondents’ Association, including as president from 2006-07. In 2019, he was named to the Pennsylvania Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Scully earned his Master of Science degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois, graduating magna cum laude. Prior to that, he received his Bachelor of Arts in communications and political science from American University.