Public Lecture: Navigating U.S. Presidential elections and Primaries

Speaker Dr. Thomas F. Schaller (Ph.D., North Carolina, 1997) is professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Now in his twenty-second year at UMBC, Schaller teaches courses in American government, including the American Presidency, Presidential Elections, Interest Groups & Lobbying, and Campaigns & Elections. He is the author of The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House, Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South, and co-author of Devolution and Black State Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-First Century. A former political columnist for the Baltimore Sun, he has published commentaries in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The New York Daily News, The American Prospect, Politico, Salon and The New Republic, and has appeared on ABC News, The Colbert Report, MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” “Morning Joe” and “Up with Steve Kornacki” programs, National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Talk of the Nation,” PBS’ The Tavis Smiley Show, and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. Since 2004, Schaller, 53, has given lectures on American politics and elections in 19 countries on behalf of the U.S. State Department. He lives in Washington, DC.

Moderator Nils Muižnieks is a Riga-based political scientist (Ph.D. UC Berkeley 1993, BA Princeton University 1986) and human rights expert. He served as the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights from 2012 to 2018.  Previously, he served as chairman of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance from 2010 to 2012, Director of the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute at the University of Latvia from 2005 to 2012, Minister of Social Integration in the Latvian government from 2002 to 2004, and head of the NGO Latvian Centre for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies from 1994 to 2002. He is the author of two books and many articles and book chapters on international human rights, Russia’s relations with its neighbours, and Baltic affairs.