What could be more pressing than the issues impacting the 2020 election? That is why Vice President of Research, Tom Piechota, Ph.D. invites you to the next Ask the Experts Virtual Town Hall. The event titled, Key Issues Impacting the 2020 Election will be moderated by Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Dean Jennifer Keene and will feature Political Science Professor Lori Cox Han, Ph. D.; Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science John Compton, Ph. D.; Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures Joel Kotkin; Associate Professor of History Charissa Threat, Ph. D.; and Professor of Sociology Chris Bader, Ph. D.

In line with the goal of Ask the Experts to bring together people from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines to discuss timely topics, this multidisciplinary group of faculty will use their expertise to discuss how issues such as the United States Supreme Court nominee, COVID-19 and racial relations will impact the 2020 election.

Today is National Voter Registration Day, and in that spirit, we invite you to join the Chapman community as we explore the critical issues facing our communities.

The entire Chapman community (staff, faculty, and students) as well as the broader community are invited to join. There will be a Q & A to follow.

Visit the Ask the Experts website to join the webinar on Friday, October 2, 2020 @ 3:00 PM

Expert Biographies

Jennifer Keene, Ph. D. is a professor of history and dean of the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. She is a well-published expert on American history and will moderate Ask the Experts Virtual Town Hall: Key Issues Impacting the 2020 Election.

Joel Kotkin is Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. He is the author of ten books, including most recently The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class (Encounter). Kotkin writes regularly for City Journal, Quillette, Tablet, the Los Angeles Times and the Daily Beast. He also serves as executive director of the website, www.newgeography.com . He has written widely on the social and political impacts of Covid, particularly about the impact on cities.

Lori Cox Han, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science. Her research and teaching expertise include the presidency, women and politics, and media and politics. She is the author of numerous books, including Advising Nixon: The White House Memos of Patrick J. Buchanan (University Press of Kansas, 2019); Presidents and the American Presidency, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2018); Women, Power, and Politics: The Fight for Gender Equality in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2018); and In It to Win: Electing Madam President (Bloomsbury, 2015). She is also the editor of several scholarly volumes, including Madam President? Gender and Politics on the Road to the White House (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2020); Hatred of America’s Presidents: Personal Attacks on the White House from Washington to Trump (ABC-CLIO, 2018); and New Directions in the American Presidency, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2018). Dr. Han is past president of Presidents and Executive Politics, an organized section of the American Political Science Association devoted to the study of the presidency. She received her Ph. D. in Political Science from the University of Southern California.

Charissa Threat, Ph. D. is Associate Professor of History at Chapman University where she teaches courses in United States and African American history.   Her research interests are in race and gender in twentieth century U.S. history, civil rights, community activism, and civil-military relations. Her first book, Nursing Civil Rights: Gender and Race in the Army Nurse Corps (University of Illinois Press, 2015), won the 2017 Lavinia L. Dock Book Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing for outstanding research and writing on the history of nursing. She is also the author of several book chapters, most recently, ‘“Patriotism is Neither Masculine or Feminine”: Gender and the Work of War” in the Routledge History of Gender, War and the US Military, Kara D. Vuic, ed. (Routledge Press, 2017).  She is currently at work on her second book, “Sweethearts and Pin-Ups.” It is a history that examines home-front activities, wartime participation, and investigates intimate relations among African American women and men in the context of the Second World War.

Christopher Bader, Ph. D. is a professor in the department of sociology and the Campbell Professor of Behavior Science.   He is one of the principal investigators of the Chapman University Survey of American Fears, an annual survey project that asks a random sample of Americans about their greatest fears.  He teaches courses on the sociology of religion and deviant behavior, and is an expert on pseudo-scientific beliefs, conspiracy theories, and panic.  He is the author of five books, including Paranormal America, America’s Four Gods, Fear Itself, Faithful Measures and Deviance Management.  Dr. Bader will discuss the extent to which Americans fear pandemics and how they react to them.

John Compton, Ph. D. is Associate Professor and chair of the Political Science department.  His teaching and research interests include American political development, constitutional law, and religion and politics.  In 2012, he was awarded the Law and Society Association’s annual dissertation prize.  His first book, The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution, was published by Harvard University Press in 2014.  In 2015, he received the Cromwell Book Prize for excellence in scholarship in the field of American legal history by a junior scholar (for Evangelical Origins).  Dr. Compton’s articles have appeared in the Review of Politics, American Political Thought, and the Journal of Supreme Court History. His most recent book is The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors (Oxford University Press, 2020).