This month’s spotlight is with Tower Scholars Program Director Victoria Farrar-Myers. Victoria sits on Arlington’s City Council and teaches classes within the Tower Scholars Program on public policy. Her research focuses on the democratic process and the separation of powers. We sat down with her to see what it’s like to wear two hats–one as a policymaker and another as a professor.
The SMU Tower Center Sun & Star Program hosted the conversation “President Trump, NAFTA and the Future of US Trade Policy” featuring Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, April 27. HCM Tower Scholar Visakh Madathil wrote about what he learned at the lecture in his essay below, “A Failure to Adjust.”
For this month’s spotlight the SMU Tower Center interviewed Fellow Jesus Canas, a senior business economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Canas analyzes regional economic growth, specializing on the border economy. He talked to us about the NAFTA renegotiation and the looming presidential election in Mexico.
The SMU Tower Center hosted Dr. Victoria DeFrancesco-Soto, lecturer at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, to discuss her insights regarding the second flood of female candidates–Year of the Woman 2.0–and what this means for the future of political parity in the U.S.
Women were at the forefront of the 2016 presidential election not only with Hillary Clinton as the first female candidate of a major party, but also because of her opponent’s history of mistreatment toward women. The release of the Access Hollywood tapes made the issue viral. Candidate Trump responded to the uproar by bringing women who accused Bill Clinton of harassment back into the spotlight.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke at the SMU Tower Center April 18 on a panel with former U.S. Ambassador to Portugal Thomas Stephenson. Senior Fellow Jeffrey A. Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History and moderator of the talk, opened the discussion with memories of Barbara Bush, who passed away the night before.