Mindy Romero
Morris Levy is an expert on race, ethnicity and politics; demographics; immigration policy and attitudes toward immigration in the U.S. and Europe; and voter ID laws and behavior. Levy is an assistant professor of political science at USC Dornsife.
Available for interviews in Spanish.
Contact: morrisl@usc.edu
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Kamy Akhavan is an expert on the origins of and solutions to political polarization, improving interpersonal communication, the power of debate, nonprofit leadership, digital marketing, civics education and how to teach controversial issues. Akhavan is executive director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future.
Contact: kakhavan@usc.edu
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Jeff Blattner, a Fall 2024 fellow at the USC Dornsife Center of the Political Future, is an expert on the U.S. Supreme Court’s powerful role in American politics and the role of politics in the decisions of the Court. Blattner is the former Judiciary Committee Chief Counsel for Sen. Edward Kennedy and the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Contact: raffio@usc.edu and uscnews@usc.edu
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Political Communications
Martin Kaplan is an expert in politics, journalism and entertainment whose research interests include campaign coverage on TV news; the use of narrative change to effect social and cultural change; and the impact of the attention economy on democracy.
In the Carter Administration, Kaplan was chief speechwriter to Vice President Walter Mondale. In Mondale’s 1983-84 bid for the presidency, Kaplan was a deputy campaign manager whose portfolio included issues, speechwriting and media strategy.
Since 2000, Kaplan has held USC’s Norman Lear endowed chair and directed the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center, a nonpartisan research and public policy center that has been studying the social, political, economic and cultural impact of entertainment and media for more than 20 years. Kaplan is also a research professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Contact: martyk@usc.edu
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Steve Caplan is an expert in digital media, political advertising and political communications strategy. An adjunct instructor at USC Annenberg, Caplan is also the founder of Message, an award-winning strategic communications and marketing firm based in LA. Before launching Message, Caplan was a partner at GMMB, one of the nation’s leading cause marketing firms and the agency of record for the Obama 2008 campaign.
Related article: Political advertising in the 2024 election: Q&A with USC’s Steve Caplan
Contact: scaplan@usc.edu
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Christina Bellantoni is an expert in political journalism, national politics, television punditry and partisan media. Over her more than 20 years in journalism, Bellantoni has worked as a reporter and editor, as a producer and as an analyst on national television. Bellantoni is a professor of professional practice at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Contact: christina.bellantoni@usc.edu
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