Political Science Blog Archive

Former Senator Robert F. Bennett addressed political science students and alumni at BYU's annual G. Durham Lecture, honoring the late Homer Durham, an American academic administrator and general authority for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the in the 1970's. This year's Durham lecture focused on reviewing Homer Durham’s personal search on political power, the nature of man and its relation to power, as well as applying those ideas to the 21st century.

Today, Professor Thomas Zeitzoff from the School of Public Affairs at American University and Professor Daphna Canetti of the University of Haifa spoke to BYU students and faculty about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with the theme of 'What's all the fighting about?'

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On Thursday, March 22, 2018, Frank Pignanelli gave students a brief look into his career as a lobbyist and also provided career advice and life lessons. Pignanelli is a founding partner in the law firm Foxley & Pignanelli, specializing in government relations and public affairs. Pignanelli served in the House of Representatives for ten years, as one of the youngest Utahns ever elected to state office. Currently he serves on the advisory board for the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute at the University of Utah and The University of Utah Venture Fund. He also writes a Sunday column on political activities in Utah for the Deseret News.

Royce Van Tassell, Executive Director of the Utah Association of Charter Schools, spoke on March 15 for the Public Affairs Lecture Series at BYU. He spoke about what life is like as a lobbyist, and director of Charter Schools. He said we have an extraordinary 135 Charter Schools in Utah, which give choice to students who do not prefer public schools.

On Thursday, March 8, 2018, Peter Valcarce spoke to students for another installment of the Public Affairs Lecture Series. Peter is the managing partner and founder of Arena Communications, a Republican-oriented direct mail company that has produced 8,500 unique pieces of mail sent to one billion mailboxes, bringing success to over 1,000 campaigns in forty-nine states. Arena Online has handled the web-based electioneering advertising as well.

Christina Tomlinson, Minister Counselor for Public Affairs for the U.S. State Department in Brussels, Belgium, came to speak at the BYU Political Science Public Affairs Lecture series on Thursday, March 1, 2018. She described her career path, beginning with growing up in Virginia, in the Mount Vernon Stake, and then through the State Department in Islamabad, Pakistan, Istanbul, Turkey, Budapest, Hungary, Guangzhou, China and Vientiane, Laos, finally landing in Brussels where she currently serves. She has worked with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary Condoleezza Rice, among many other U.S. Government officials and Presidents. She reminded us that the State Department was the first Department created by the U.S. Government, and that Thomas Jefferson was the first Secretary of State, from March 1790 through December 1793.

On Thursday, February 22, 2018, Sam Lyman, chief speechwriter for Senator Orrin Hatch, spoke about his experience working on Capitol Hill as another installment for the Public Affairs Lecture Series.

Neylan McBaine, Co-founder and CEO of Better Days 2020, and founder of the Mormon Women Project, delivered an inspiring presentation for the Public Affairs Lecture Series on Thursday, February 8, 2018, at the Kennedy Center conference room, 238 HRCB. She spoke about being raised by an opera singer and a Wall Street attorney in New York City, studying at Yale University, and working at Walmart.com in digital marketing. Currently she heads up the Better Days 2020 organization, which celebrates the 150th anniversary of women first voting in Utah (the first women to vote in the modern United States of America) and the centennial of the 19th Amendment, offering women the right to vote, and the culmination of the women’s suffrage movement in the US. She is helping pass legislation to send the statue of Martha Hughes Cannon, Utah’s first elected female State Senator (the first in the country), to Washington, DC to stand in place of Philo T. Farnsworth (the “father of television”) in the main National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill, not far from the statue of Brigham Young.

On Thursday, February 1st, 2018, Taryn Davis Holland spoke to us via video call as part of the BYU Public Affairs Society lecture series. Taryn is a senior associate at Development Gateway and manages several large-scale technical projects focused on aid information and financial and geospatial data.