Robertson Hall with Freedom Fountain in foreground

Dean's Leadership Series - The 119th Congress

Date & Time Mar 27 2025 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Location Robertson Hall
Speaker(s)
U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (PA-02)
Fmr. U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes '84 (MD-03)
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell '86 (AL-07)
Frances E. Lee
Audience Open to the Public, Registration Required

 

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Biographies

U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (PA-02)

Congressman Brendan F. BoyleCongressman Brendan F. Boyle was born and raised in the city of Philadelphia. The son of an immigrant, Congressman Boyle’s father was a janitor for SEPTA and his mother was a school crossing guard.
 
The first in his family to attend college, he attended the University of Notre Dame and later graduated from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government with a master's degree in Public Policy.
 
He was elected to the Pennsylvania state legislature in 2008, becoming the first Democrat to ever represent his legislative district. Two years later his brother, Kevin, was also elected to the state legislature, making them the first brothers to serve together in the state House. In 2014, Congressman Boyle pulled off a major upset win over three better funded rivals to be elected to Congress.

Now in his sixth term, Congressman Boyle is the Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee. He is also Vice Chair of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Political Committee and a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University.

 

Fmr. U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes '84 (MD-03)

Former Representative John Sarbanes '84John Sarbanes is an American lawyer and politician who served as the U.S. representative for Maryland's 3rd congressional district from 2007 to 2025. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes Annapolis, the entirety of Howard County, and parts of Anne Arundel and Carroll counties.

John Sarbanes, (son of Paul Spyros Sarbanes), a Representative from Maryland; born in Baltimore, Md., May 22, 1962; graduated from Gilman School, Baltimore, Md., 1980; A.B., Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., 1984; J.D., Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1988; lawyer, private practice; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Tenth and to the eight succeeding Congresses (January 3, 2007-January 3, 2025); was not a candidate for reelection to the One Hundred Nineteenth Congress in 2024.

 

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell '86 (AL-07)

Congresswoman Terri A. SewellCongresswoman Terri A. Sewell is in her seventh term representing Alabama’s 7th Congressional District.  She is one of the first women elected to Congress from Alabama in her own right and is the first Black woman to ever serve in the Alabama Congressional delegation.

Congresswoman Sewell sits on the exclusive House Ways and Means Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and the Committee on House Administration where she serves as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Elections. In her short time in Congress, Sewell has held several leadership positions, including Freshman Class President in the 112th Congress. In the 118th Congress, she was selected by Democratic leadership to serve as a Chief Deputy Whip, and sits on the prestigious Steering and Policy Committee which sets the policy direction of the Democratic Caucus. Congresswoman Sewell is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus where she is Chair of the Voting Rights Task Force. She is a member of the New Democrat Coalition; Co-Chair of the Congressional Voting Rights Caucus; Vice-Chair of the Congressional HBCU Caucus; and Co-Chair of the Rural Caucus.

A proud product of Alabama’s rural Black Belt, Congresswoman Sewell was the first black valedictorian of Selma High School. She is an honors graduate of Princeton University and Oxford University in England and received her law degree from Harvard Law School.

 

Frances E. Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs

Frances E. Lee Frances E. Lee is jointly appointed in the Department of Politics and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs where she is Professor of Politics and Public Affairs. She is co-director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP).

Lee has broad interests in American politics, with a special focus on congressional politics, national policymaking, party politics, and representation. She is author of Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign (2016) and Beyond Ideology: Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U.S. Senate (2009). She is also coauthor of The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era (2020), Sizing Up The Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation (1999) and a textbook, Congress and Its Members (Sage / CQ Press). Her research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and other outlets.

Lee is editor of the Cambridge Elements Series in American Politics and a series editor for the Chicago Studies in American Politics. She was co-editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly from 2014 to 2019. She is also co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of the American Congress (2011). Along with Nolan McCarty, she co-chaired the Institutions Working Group for the Social Science Research Council’s Anxieties of Democracy Program and co-edited an associated volume, Can America Govern Itself? (2019).

Lee is the recipient of the American Political Science Association’s Gladys M. Kammerer Award for the best publication in the field of American national policy and its Richard F. Fenno prize for the best book in legislative studies. She is a two-time recipient of the D.B. Hardeman Prize presented by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation for the best book on the U.S. Congress from the fields of biography, history, journalism, and political science. In 2002-2003, she worked on Capitol Hill as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 


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