Lecture: Money and politicS

Dan Schnur

Dan Schnur is the Director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, where he works to motivate students to become involved in politics, government, and public service and teaches popular classes in politics, communications and leadership. He also is the founder and Director of the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences/Los Angeles Times poll series.  

A veteran political reformer, in 2010, Dan was appointed Chairman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). During his tenure, he implemented groundbreaking campaign finance disclosure requirements for independent committees, appointed a bipartisan task force to update California’s 1978 Political Reform Act, and worked to assure the disclosure of campaign finance and spending practices, fair elections, and government transparency.  Dan also was a founder and co-chairman of the Voices of Reform project, the bi-partisan statewide effort whose work laid the foundation for California’s landmark redistricting reform.

In addition to his position at USC, Dan is an Adjunct Instructor at the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, and he has held the post of Visiting Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics at Harvard and taught an advanced course in political campaign communications at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.

Nathaniel Persily

Nathaniel Persily is an award-winning teacher and nationally recognized constitutional law expert, Professor Nathaniel Persily focuses on the law of democracy, addressing issues such as voting rights, political parties, and campaign finance.  He served as Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, a bipartisan commission created by the President to deal with the long lines at the polling place and other administrative problems in the 2012 election.

Persily has published dozens of articles in both scholarly publications and popular media on the legal regulation of political parties, on issues surrounding the census and redistricting process, on voting rights and on campaign finance reform. Prior to joining the faculty at Stanford Law School in July 2013, Professor Persily was the Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia Law School, and prior to that he was Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Persily has been a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Melbourne.