MEDIA ADVISORY
Inauguration analysis from ‘Agents of Change’
Live remote opportunity: Cal State L.A. students to offer
perspectives on presidential history, new administration
What: Political Science students to discuss historic inauguration and change ahead
Who: Professor Taylor Dark and his students
When: 9:50 - 11:30 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009
Where: Call CSULA Public Affairs office at (323) 343-3050 for class location
With the official theme of the presidential inauguration as “Renewing America’s Promise,“ do college students see president-elect Barack Obama as an effective agent of change?
Cal State L.A. elections expert Taylor Dark III and students in his “Agents of Change in American Politics: Parties, Interest Groups, and the Presidency” class (PoliSci 490) will discuss the presidential inauguration Tuesday, Jan. 20, beginning at 9:50 a.m.
What are the students’ perceptions of and outlook for an Obama administration? How was the media coverage of the swearing-in and inaugural address? What policy changes or political reform would students like to see in the next four years?
Media interested in interviewing students or academic experts on the historic presidential inauguration in “real time” should contact the Cal State L.A. Public Affairs office at (323) 343-3050 in advance to make arrangements.
Dark, whose research focuses on the nexus between labor and politics in presidential campaigns, is an assistant professor of political science at Cal State L.A. He explains, “In this course we examine the possible strategies for success that President Obama and his congressional allies may utilize, and in particular the degree to which the current environment of strong partisanship will help or hinder the new administration.”
Dark is author of The Unions and the Democrats: An Enduring Alliance and of a chapter in The Making of the Presidential Candidates, 2004. He has also published widely in labor and political science journals. He formerly taught at the Graduate School of American Studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. He earned a Ph.D. in political science at UC Berkeley.
# # #
Working for California since 1947: The 175-acre hilltop campus of California State University, Los Angeles is at the heart of a major metropolitan city, just five miles from Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. More than 20,000 students and 205,000 alumni—with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds—reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations. Six colleges offer nationally recognized science, arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education and humanities programs, among others, led by an award-winning faculty. Cal State L.A. is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Jazz Orchestra and to a unique university center for gifted students as young as 12. Programs that provide exciting enrichment opportunities to students and community include an NEH- and Rockefeller-supported humanities center; a NASA-funded center for space research; and a growing forensic science program, housed in the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. www.calstatela.edu