Six fellows will join the USC Center for the Political Future this fall as part of the center’s Fellows Program.
The group includes Michael Donilon, a former senior advisor to President Joe Biden, Julianna Goldman, a former White House correspondent for Bloomberg News, Mike Madrid, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, Amy McIntosh, the former assistant secretary of education under President Barack Obama, Claudine Schneider, former Republican Congresswoman from Rhode Island and Jeffrey Toobin, a legal analyst.
“This year’s cohort is very much in line with that spirit of how can we make USC more prominent and relevant in the world of national politics, and how can we best serve our students to prepare them to be bigger parts of the political future,” said Kamy Akhavan, managing director of the USC Center for the Political Future.
The fellows individually teach “study groups,” which are non-credit extracurricular sessions capped at 15 students. They also hold office hours with students and engage in speaker events around campus.
Study group topics this semester include Democracy 2026, Life Skills in Political Journalism, The 2026 Midterms in Real Time, Changing Student Lives Through Educational Policy, Be the Change You Want to See in the World! and Law and Politics: What’s the Difference (If Any)?
Akhavan said having Donilon on campus during the midterm election campaign will be “enormously useful” since he helped run Biden’s campaign in 2020 “and knows elections inside and out at a state-by-state level but also by a electoral district to electoral district level.”
Akhavan also noted that Madrid is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on Latino politics, which he said will be particularly relevant when discussing the United States Senate race in Texas between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico.
He said that the fellows are intended to appeal to students with varying interests, which is reflected in the different professional experiences they hold.
“We wanted fellows who are really engaging and accomplished and committed to student success,” Akhavan said. “We found people who can do that from the world of political advisement, running campaigns, journalism, education, policy, climate policy, the intersection of the executive branch with the judicial branch, they’re covering a lot of ground.”