POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS AND DEBATES
Allan Louden, associate professor of communication
Louden is an expert on political advertising, presidential debates and political campaigns. He regularly analyzes political ads and provides commentary on political debates for national media outlets. "Debates are hugely important in this election," Louden says. "They are more high-risk for Obama. Experience does count for something and all it would take is a moment when Obama is caught flat-footed and McCain knows something. That would erase the age issue." Louden posts debate analysis on DebateScoop.org, a Web site devoted to encouraging lively analysis of political debates.
POLITICS AND RELIGION
Melissa Rogers, visiting professor of religion and public policy, School of Divinity
Rogers follows the increasingly prominent issue of religion in political campaigns. "For many years, the Republican Party was known for connection to religious voters," she says, "but in recent elections, Democratic candidates have begun talking more openly about their faith. So, perhaps for the first time, both major political parties are employing specific and sophisticated strategies that reach out to a range of religious communities as such." Rogers previously served as the founding executive director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in Washington, D.C. The forum serves as a clearinghouse and a town hall for the discussion of the ways in which religion shapes ideas and institutions. Rogers has also served as general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs based in Washington, D.C. She is the founder and director of Wake Forest's Center for Religion and Public Affairs, and serves as co-chair of the Religion Clauses issue group of the American Constitution Society on Law and Public Policy. Rogers is co-authoring a book on religion and law for Baylor University Press. She maintains a blog on religion's intersection with public life at melissarogers.typepad.com.
YOUNG VOTERS
Katy Harriger, professor and chair of the political science department
Harriger has a strong focus on political participation and voting among college-age people. She has been closely following the record turnout for young voters in the 2008 primaries and caucuses. "Overall, it more than doubled and in some states tripled past turnout numbers," she says. "We should expect that to continue in the general election and it should work to the advantage of Obama because voters in the 18-25 year age group are disproportionately Democratic identifiers." Harriger conducted a multi-year project, Democracy Fellows, which found that college students who participate in public deliberation feel more empowered to become active citizens.
BALLOT INITIATIVES
John Dinan, associate professor of political science
Dinan says controversial ballot measures could affect other 2008 races. Voters in several states will have a chance in November to vote directly on controversial issues such as same-sex marriage, affirmative action, abortion, and assisted suicide, and these ballot measures could in turn affect voter turnout in presidential and congressional contests. Dinan writes an annual review of state constitutional developments and is available to comment on ballot measures and their impact on the 2008 election. "Although political scientists are split on the ultimate impact of same-sex marriage ballot measures in 2004 and stem cell and minimum wage initiatives in 2006, activists are convinced that these sorts of measures boost voter turnout and have spill-over effects on other races," says Dinan. Same-sex marriage bans are on the ballot in California, Florida, and Arizona. Affirmative action bans are expected to be voted on in Colorado, Arizona, and Nebraska. Voters in California, South Dakota, and Colorado and perhaps other states will decide whether to restrict abortion. Supporters of assisted suicide are trying to qualify a legalization measure for the Washington state ballot.
NATIONAL SECURITY, TERRORISM AND THE LAWRobert (Bobby) Chesney, professor of law, School of Law
Bobby Chesney, a professor at the School of Law, is the former chair of the Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools, and an expert on legal issues associated with national security. He has written extensively about a range of issues relating to terrorism, including military detention at Guantanamo Bay, criminal prosecution of terrorists and civil litigation arising out of counterterrorism policies and actions. He is a member of the American Law Institute, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the owner and operator of both the National Security Advisors legal blog and the National Security Law Listserv. He is available to discuss current campaign issues relating to national security and the law, including legal policies relating to terrorism.
HEALTH CARE
Mark Hall, Fred D. and Elizabeth L. Turnage Professor of Law and Public Health,School of Law and School of Medicine
Hall is one of the nation's leading scholars on health care law and policy and is the author of 14 books. He has studied the structure and functioning of private health insurance markets for nearly two decades, starting with a 1991 fellowship at the Health Insurance Association of America and continuing through 15 years of empirical studies with insurers, agents, employers and regulators. In testimony to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee June 10, Hall explained why large employer groups remain the best-functioning part of the market and why reform must focus on placing people into large groups, whose membership is not tied to health risk. "The high concentration of most medical costs in a relative few people is the single most important fact for understanding the private insurance market," Hall testified. "Risk selection practices flow directly from the very nature of how competitive markets should and must respond to highly concentrated health risks. Therefore, these effects will never be eliminated unless the market is fundamentally restructured."
ECONOMY/BUSINESS ISSUES
Robert Bliss, Professor and F.M. Kirby Chair in Business Excellence, Calloway School of Business and Accountancy
Bliss is an expert on banking, financial market regulation and insolvency resolution. He joined the Wake Forest faculty in 2004 after serving five years as senior financial economist and economic advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and previous posts as a senior researcher at the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Commenting on reform proposals put forward after the recent Bear Stearns rescue, Bliss noted, "The U.S. financial regulatory system has long been overly complex with overlapping regulators and differing objectives. The structure of U.S. financial regulation is incompatible with the realities of the financial markets. The inevitable difficulties of dealing with the near failure of a major investment bank were predictable. The proposed reforms go some way to rationalizing the regulatory systems, but leave key problems unaddressed."
Frederick Harris, John B. McKinnon Professor of Managerial Economics and Finance,Babcock Graduate School of Management
Harris' research focuses on the application of capacity-constrained pricing models to pricing tactics, security market design and financial market price discovery. His expertise is applicable to current issues involving the oil industry, airlines and monetary exchange rates. Harris is the co-author of "Managerial Economics: Applications, Strategy, and Tactics" (11th edition, 2008) published by Thomson/ SouthWestern.
Michael Lord, associate professor of management, Sisel Fellow in Strategy and director of the Flow Institute for International Studies, Babcock Graduate School of Management
Lord's teaching, research and consulting work focus on innovation-driven ventures such as start-ups, high-tech mergers and acquisitions, spinouts, and international expansion, particularly into emerging markets such as China. He is also an expert on strategic management of public policy, public affairs and corporate political strategy. Lord is the lead co-author of "Innovation That Fits: Choosing the Right Innovation Strategy for Your Business," published by Financial Times/Prentice Hall.
Alan Palmiter, professor of law, School of Law
Palmiter is an expert in business and comparative law (in Latin America) and can speak on the subjects of mutual fund reform, social security privatization and the Columbia free-trade agreement. His research interests lie in "corporate democracy," including investor participation in corporate voting, regulation of institutional investors (particularly mutual funds) and judicial protection of shareholder rights. He is the co-author of "Corporations Law & Policy: Materials and Problems" (6th edition, 2007) published by West Group.
POLITICAL SCANDAL
Michelle Roehm, associate professor and Board of Visitors Fellow in Marketing,Babcock Graduate School of Management
Roehm is an expert in brand management, consumer behavior and the dynamics of scandals, including how to recover from scandal and how to act when a competitor (or candidate) experiences scandal. "There's a natural inclination to think that a scandal for the competitor is good for your side," Roehm says. "However, my research shows that scandals can 'infect' close competitors and drag them down, too." For example, she says, if the McCain campaign ran into controversy because it became known that the candidate was biased against left-handed people, people might wonder if deep down Obama also harbors resentment against left-handers. Thus, rather than helping Obama win votes, McCain's problem may actually de-value Obama's brand as well. In the case of scandal, Roehm recommends both candidates should take a proactive approach.
LIBERAL POLITICS, HEALTH CARE REFORM, SOCIAL SECURITY ISSUES
David Coates, Worrell Professor of Anglo-American Studies
Coates recently published "A Liberal Tool Kit," which describes how liberals can respond to conservative arguments. Coates says this year's general election looks set to be a watershed one. "At stake are conservative and liberal answers to the health care crisis, to the resolution of the Iraq war, to the reform of social security and to the appointment of Supreme Court justices," Coates says. "If the Democrats win the White House in November and strengthen their position in Congress, 2009 could see a radicalism in public policy in the United States of the kind previously associated with the New Deal and the War on Poverty." Coates can also discuss health care form, social security issues, the social agenda and U.S. foreign policy.
MATHEMATICS OF VOTINGJason Parsley, assistant professor of mathematics
Jason Parsley's voting research studies the structure and geometry of weighted voting systems, where voters have different amounts of power (e.g., stockholders in a corporation). Parsley can explain the various voting systems in use, including plurality rule, instant runoff voting, approval voting, and the Electoral College. He says that mathematical theorems indicate that if three or more candidates are running, there is no 'fair' system for deciding a winner. He is available to talk about current topics such as electronic voting machines and felon disenfranchisement.
ENERGY
David Carroll, director of Wake Forest University's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials and associate professor of physics
Carroll is an expert on using nanotechnology to address the energy crisis. His laboratory has discovered two cutting-edge technologies—a novel design for solar cells aimed at achieving record efficiency regardless of the sun's angle in the sky, and a revolutionary lighting source that is lightweight, ultra-thin and energy efficient because it uses nanotechnology to produce visible light directly rather than as a byproduct of heating a filament or gas. "It looks like a sheet of Plexiglas that lights up," Carroll explains. "Together with the new high-efficiency solar cells, we are addressing the energy crisis from both the supply and demand sides." Nanoholdings, a Connecticut-based company that specializes in developing early-stage nanotechnologies has licensed both technologies, and formed two start-up companies, FiberCell and PureLux. They are working with Carroll to advance both technologies to the commercialization stage.
EDUCATION POLICY, NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND Scott Baker, associate professor of education
Baker is an expert on school desegregation, No Child Left Behind legislation, the racial achievement gap and high-stakes testing. Baker has commented for a variety of media outlets on these topics and is the author of "The Paradox of Desegregation." Since Congress has not reauthorized No Child Left Behind, Baker says it will be up to the new administration to set the direction for additional educational reform. "Threatening to fire teachers and close schools that do not make Adequate Yearly Progress has not been effective," Baker says. He suggests shifting the focus to rewards rather than punishments in any new K- 12 initiative. He also emphasizes the necessity for funding to match legal requirements. "If we think about the future of NCLB and we have thousands and thousands of schools failing and states don't have the capacity to help those schools improve, it undermines the credibility of the law."
SUPREME COURT NOMINEES
Katy Harriger, professor and chair of political science
Harriger is an expert on the Supreme Court and the U.S. Constitution. The next president will have the opportunity to make several appointments to the Supreme Court and the kinds of people likely to be appointed will differ significantly between the two candidates. "Supreme Court appointments are a very important power of the president and allow him to create a legacy well past his time in office," says Harriger. "Nonetheless, very few voters consider this as a significant factor in choosing a candidate. Those most motivated by it tend to be on the left and right of both parties and candidates are likely to try to figure out ways to reassure those voters without making a big deal out of it in the general election."
IMMIGRATION
Ana Wahl, associate professor of sociology
The impact of immigration on smaller towns has not been given adequate attention by the presidential candidates, says Wahl. She studies attitudes toward immigration and Latino newcomers in smaller towns. "Many smaller communities have witnessed a more significant increase in the size of the Latino population than traditional gateway cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and others," Wahl says. "In many smaller towns across North Carolina, for example, the Latino population has increased by more than 600 percent. For native-born residents of these communities, immigration will be a central issue in the way they vote in the presidential election."
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