Insights & Impacts: Post-Election Debrief

Amy Binder is an SNF Agora Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. Her research concerns how politics and education collide, taking occasional detours into other aspects of educational, cultural, political, and organizational life. Binder is co-author of two books, "Becoming Right:  How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives" (2013) and "The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning and Losing in Campus Politics Today" (2022).

Binder earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University in 1998 and a BA in Anthropology from Stanford University in 1986. She held sociology faculty positions at the University of California San Diego from 2003 to 2023 and, before that, at the University of Southern California from 1998 to 2003. She has served the discipline and the university in many ways, including serving as chair of the Sociology of Education section of the American Sociological Association and as a member of the councils of three other ASA sections (OOW, Political Sociology, and Culture). She served as deputy editor for the journal Sociology of Education, and as a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. At the university level, among other positions, she served as chair of the Department of Sociology at UC San Diego from 2019 to 2022. In 2021, she was elected to the Sociological Research Association.

Steven Teles is Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University, and Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center. He is the author of The Captured Economy: How The Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth and Increase Inequality (With Brink Lindsey, Oxford 2017); Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration (With David Dagan, Oxford 2016), The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton, 2008) and Whose Welfare: AFDC and Elite Politics (Kansas, 1996). He is also editor of Conservatism and American Political Development (With Brian Glenn, Oxford, 2009) and Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and UK (with Glenn Loury and Tariq Modood, Cambridge, 2005). He has published widely in more popular outlets, from Democracy Journal, The Nation, and The American Prospect, to National Affairs, The Public Interest and National Review. He is currently working on a book, under contract with Oxford University Press (with Rob Saldin) on Republican opponents of President Donald Trump. 

He received his PhD in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia in 1995, and his BA in political science from George Washington University in 1989.

As a trained political historian, Leah Wright Rigueur's scholarship and research expertise include 20th Century United States political and social history, Modern African American history, with an emphasis on race and political ideology, the American Presidency and presidential elections, policies and civil rights movements, and protest and unrest in the United States. Rigueur’s award-winning book, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power, covers more than four decades of American political and social history, and examines the ideas and actions of black officials and politicians, from the era of the New Deal to Ronald Reagan’s presidential ascent in 1980.

Lilliana Mason is an SNF Agora Institute Associate Professor of Political Science.

She is co-author, with Nathan P. Kalmoe, of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2022), and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (University of Chicago Press, 2018).

She received her PhD in political psychology from Stony Brook University and her BA in politics from Princeton University. Her research on partisan identity, partisan bias, social sorting, and American social polarization has been published in journals such as American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Political Behavior, and featured in media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and National Public Radio.

Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the Facebook Research Integrity Group, and the Democracy Fund.

Eugene Scott is a host at Axios Live, where he travels the country interviewing political and policy leaders, and a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. He was previously a senior political reporter for Axios covering 2024 swing voters and voting rights.

An award-winning journalist, Scott has spent two decades covering politics at the local, national, and international levels. He was recently a national political reporter at The Washington Post focused on identity politics and the 2022 midterm election. Following the 2020 presidential election, he hosted "The Next Four Years," then Amazon's top original podcast. He also contributed to "FOUR HUNDRED SOULS: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019," which topped the New York Times' bestseller list. In addition to writing, Scott has regularly provided political analysis on MSNBC, CBS, and NPR. Scott was a Washington Correspondent for CNN Politics during the 2016 election. And he began his newspaper career at the Cape Argus in Cape Town, South Africa not long after beginning his journalism career with BET News' "Teen Summit." 

Scott received his master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and his bachelor's from the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media. He is a D.C. native and continues to live in the Nation's Capital.

Soren Dayton is the Director of Governance at the Niskanen Center. He focuses on developing and implementing institutional reforms and practices to deliver more effective government.

Soren previously led institutional reform efforts at Protect Democracy. Soren has testified to Congress on multiple occasions regarding how Congress can strengthen institutions, and his work has been covered in multiple media outlets including the Washington Post, New York Times, National Review, and others. In addition, Soren spent nearly a decade working in public affairs and issue advocacy for a variety of non-profits, corporations, and campaigns. Soren and his wife took a sabbatical to work for a year and a half with International Justice Mission in India fighting labor trafficking.

On the political side, Soren worked on John McCain’s campaign for President and has worked on multiple Republican leadership campaigns in Congress and in party organizations. Soren served as Executive Director of the Young Republican National Federation. He was also a legislative assistant for Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI).Soren also co-founded a software company in 1999 out of college that created a highly specialized database that has been used in enterprise storage solutions.

Soren graduated with an A.B. in Anthropology and Mathematics from the University of Chicago. He was a 2016-2017 Penn-Kemble Fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy.  And he is currently a 2023-2024 Democracy Fellow with the Center for Effective Government at the University of Chicago.