Biographies

Jodie Allen, a panelist on Vox Populi: Democracy in Crisis, is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report covering the political economy. She came to U.S. News from Slate Magazine, Microsoft's online magazine of politics and culture, where she was the Washington bureau chief. Before joining Slate she was editor of Outlook, the Sunday commentary section of The Washington Post. She has also been an editorial writer and business columnist with the Post. Previously she held positions in government, including Dep. Asst. Sec. of Labor for Policy, as well as in various private organizations including Mathematica and the Urban Institute.

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, a panelist on Vox Populi: Democracy in Crisis, has worked a lifetime for the people of Connecticut.  She was first elected to Congress from Connecticut's Third District in 1990, and currently is serving her fifth term. Rep. DeLauro sits on the House Appropriations Committee and serves on the Labor-HHS-Education and Agriculture Subcommittees. In 1999, she was elected by her colleagues as Assistant to the Democratic Leader, making her the highest-ranking Democratic woman in the House of Representatives. Since coming to Congress, DeLauro has built a solid reputation for constituent service and hard work. In 1998, she was recognized as the House of Representative's top "Workhorse" by Washingtonian magazine, and was called a "hero for working families" by nationally syndicated columnist Tom Oliphant.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., a panelist on Vox Populi: Democracy in Crisis, is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for The Washington Post. He formerly served as a reporter and editorial writer for The Washington Post and a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. His expertise in elections, politics, public opinion and civil society have led to a number of books and major studies, including: Why Americans Hate Politics (Simon & Schuster, 1991); They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (Simon & Schuster, 1996); “Clearing the Rubble: American politics makes a new beginning” (Brookings Review, Spring 2000).  He is editor of the forthcoming book, What’s God Got to Do with the American Experiment?

Lawrence Jacobs, coauthor of Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (University of Chicago Press, 2000), received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Professor Jacobs specializes in Social Security and Medicare, and has conducted extensive research on public opinion and media coverage of social policies. He is the author of the book, The Health of Nations: Public Opinion and the Making of American and British Health Policy Making. Professor Jacobs has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Russell Sage Foundation, the McKnight Foundation and the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Email: LJacobs@polisci.umn.edu

Andrew Kohut is Director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which conducted the study, "Washington Leaders Wary of Public Opinion.” From 1979 to 1989, Mr. Kohut served as the President of The Gallup Organization. In 1989 he founded Princeton Survey Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey. He served from 1990 to 1992 as the survey director for the Times Mirror Center and was named Director in 1993.

Steven Kull, a faculty member at the School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland, is Founder and Director of the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) as well as the Program on International Policy Attitudes, a joint program of COPA and the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. He has conducted numerous studies of public opinion on wide range of public policy issues, with a special emphasis on international issues.  He has given briefings to Congress, the White House, the State Department, NATO, the United Nations and the European Commission and his articles have appeared in Public Opinion Quarterly, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post and Harper’s Weekly.  His most recent book is Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism (with I.M. Destler, Brookings, 1999). He is also the author of Minds At War: Nuclear Reality and the Inner Conflicts of Defense Policymakers (Basic Books, 1988) and Burying Lenin: The Revolution in Soviet Ideology and Foreign Policy (Westview, 1992) and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Ben Magliano, Vox Populi: Democracy in Crisis co-producer, is Vice-President of Programming for Quorum Television, Inc., a DC-based production house specializing in documentary projects and public affairs programs. Formerly, he was President of Georgetown Television Productions and Director of Program Administration at Baruch Television Group. His work in public television included WETA-TV as a coordinating producer from 1978 to 1980 and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) as Special Projects Director from 1976 to 1978. His recent credits include: the A&E Network’s four-hour Secret Service series on the history of the U.S. Secret Service; Somebody Cares: The Story of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America for PBS; and Cossacks in the Sky, a history of the Russian Air Force for The History Channel.

Benjamin I. Page is the Gordon S. Fulcher Professor of Decision-Making at Northwestern University and a coauthor of The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences (University of Chicago press, 1992). His interests include public opinion and policy making; the mass media; empirical democratic theory; political economy; policy formation; the presidency; and American foreign policy. He is author of a number of articles, including "Effects of Public Opinion on Policy" and "What Moves Public Opinion?" both in the American Political Science Review, and of seven books, including Who Deliberates? Mass Media in Modern Democracy. He is currently studying the mass media, as well as public policy and inequality in the context of globalization.

Email: b-page@northwestern.edu

Robert Shapiro is professor of Political Science and Associate Director of Columbia University's Center for the Social Sciences (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1982). He is the coauthor of Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and of  The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans' Policy Preferences (University of Chicago press, 1992). Mr. Shapiro specializes in American politics with research and teaching interests in public opinion, policymaking, political leadership, the mass media, and the applications of statistical methods. He has taught at Columbia since 1982 after receiving his degree and serving as a study director at the National Opinion Research Center. Professor Shapiro has published numerous articles in major academic journals and is coeditor of the series, “Research in Micropolitics: New Directions in Political Psychology” (with Michael Delli-Carpini and Leonie Huddy, JAI Press, 1994). He serves on the editorial boards of Political Science Quarterly and Public Opinion Quarterly (editor of the "Poll Trends") and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. His current research is examining presidential policymaking and public opinion from 1960 to the present.

Mark Sugg, Vox Populi: Democracy in Crisis co-producer, is the Director of Television for the Center for Defense Information's weekly series, America's Defense Monitor. After working for 6 years as an independent video producer, he joined CDI's staff in 1987 to oversee technical production and marketing of ADM; more than 315 episodes later, Mr. Sugg directs all aspects of the series' development, production and distribution.

Email: msugg@cdi.org