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Election 2024: What's at Stake? Panel #2: Domestic Policy

  • Interchurch Center Sockman Lounge 475 Riverside Drive New York, NY, 10027 United States (map)

What’s at stake in the 2024 Presidential Election, both at home and abroad? This October, join leading political experts and scholars for a three-part panel series exploring key topics shaping this pivotal election, including voting behavior, domestic policy, and the global implications of U.S. foreign policy.


This series is hosted by The Academy of Political Science and Incite Institute with support from the Urban and Social Policy Program and Institute of Global Politics at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.


All events will take place at the Sockman Lounge at the Interchurch Center. Attendance is free and open to the public, but registration is limited. Light refreshments will be provided.


The 2024 Presidential Election and Domestic Policy: What’s at Stake?
10/09, 2:00–3:30 PM ET

  • Ester R. Fuchs is Professor of International and Public Affairs and Political Science and the Director of the Urban and Social Policy Program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She serves as Director of WhosOnTheBallot.org, an online voter engagement initiative for New York City. She served as Special Advisor to the Mayor for Governance and Strategic Planning under New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg from 2001 to 2005.

  • Alexis Grenell is the co-founder of Pythia, where she leads innovative issue campaigns for workers rights’, gender equality, climate policy, and small “d” democracy. Alexis is also a columnist for The Nation where she frequently writes about gender, politics and power among other issues. Her work has also appeared in the New York Daily News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Daily Beast, Newsday, the New York Post, El Diario, and City & State. In 2015, she earned her Masters in Public Administration from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

  • Basil Smikle Jr. is a Professor of Practice and Director of the M.S. program in nonprofit management in the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University. As an MSNBC Political Analyst, he regularly shares his insights on national media outlets. With 20 years in higher education and 30 years devoted to public service, his insights span a broad spectrum of contemporary issues including, civic engagement, nonprofit advocacy and communications, electoral politics and education policy.  He lectures at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and Teachers College at Columbia University. 

  • Moderated by Robert Y. Shapiro, who is Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government in the Department of Political Science and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is the President of The Academy of Political Science and Editor of its journal, Political Science Quarterly.  He specializes in American politics with research and teaching interests in public opinion, policymaking, political leadership, the mass media, and applications of statistical methods.


The World at Large: Foreign Policy in the 2024 Election
10/16, 2:00–3:30 PM ET

  • Amy L. Freedman is department chair and professor of political science at Pace University and adjunct associate research scholar at Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. Previously, she was professor of political science and international affairs at LIU Post.

  • Evan D. McCormick is Director of Research at Incite Institute at Columbia University. McCormick was an Associate Research Scholar on the Obama Presidency Oral History, for which he focused on the Obama administration’s foreign policies and the Obama presidency in a global context.

  • Gideon Rose is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, and an affiliate of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. He is the Mary and David Boies distinguished fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the former editor of Foreign Affairs.

  • Francesco Ronchi is an Adjunct Professor in International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He also serves as a European Union official, overseeing democracy support activities for the European Parliament. He is the former Deputy of the Cabinet of the President of the Socialists and Democrats Group. He has served the United Nations as a Member of the Cabinet of the UN Special Representative for Ivory Coast.