ACADEMICS

Faculty

Richard Benedetto
Professor, Journalism Internship Seminar
Richard Benedetto retired from USA Today in 2006, where since 1982 he had served as their White House/national political correspondent as well as a political columnist for Gannett News Service. He has covered the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and now George W. Bush. He also has covered the presidential campaigns of 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004. Presently, he is an adjunct professor at American University.

Benedetto received his B.A. from Utica College of Syracuse University and holds an M.A. in Journalism from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communication. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1992.

Benedetto has lectured at colleges and universities across the country and received numerous journalism awards. In 2005, he was a visiting professor at the University of Colorado and St. Bonaventure University. He also taught news writing and reporting as an adjunct professor at Utica College.He was honored in 1998 with the National Italian-American Foundation Media Award for his projection of a positive image for Italian-Americans.

Professor Karen Czarnecki

Karen Czarnecki
Professor, Public Affairs Internship Seminar
Karen M. Czarnecki has worked in politics and public policy for over 20 years, serving in the White House under two Republican Presidents and in one Cabinet Department as a senior advisor to the Secretary of Labor. She has also worked at the leading conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, and at the bi-partisan legislative member organization, The American Legislative Exchange Council, where she was Director of the Health and Human Services and Civil Justice Task Forces. She has volunteered on many presidential, gubernatorial, and state legislative campaigns. She has extensive media experience, and has been a conservative commentator and panelist on PBS' To The Contrary public affairs show for well over a decade. 

Ms. Czarnecki has worked in many roles that have given her a unique perspective on American politics and the inner workings of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of Federal and State governments. She has extensive experience coordinating strategic and diverse outreach activities and coalition building with major demographic groups including small-business owners, women's groups, women entrepreneurs, Asian Pacific Americans, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans. For several years, she has served as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University teaching a public policy seminar for the Fund for American Studies.

She received her undergraduate and law degrees from The Catholic University of America, and is the proud mother of three active girls.

Professor Brian Blase

Brian Blase
Professor, Economics and Public Policy Issues
Brian is a fourth-year PhD student studying Economics at George Mason University. His main fields of research interests are health economics and public economics. He is currently working on two papers as part of his dissertation. Medicaid Growth: The Impact of the Federal Subsidization shows how increases in subsidies states receives results in significant expansions of state Medicaid programs. He is also working on a paper that attempts to understand a part of why Cesarean-section rates are increasing so dramatically. In addition to teaching for Capital Semester, Brian is teaching Managerial Economics at George Mason University.

John Samples

Professor John Samples

Professor, Theories of Constitutional Interpretation
John Samples directs the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute. He has written extensively on campaign finance regulation. His book The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform was published by the University of Chicago Press in the fall of 2006. He has edited three books for the Cato Institute including Welfare for Politicians: Taxpayer Financing of Campaigns (2005). Samples co-directed the Brookings-Cato project on the decline of electoral competition which led to a volume he co-edited entitled The Marketplace of Democracy (2006).  He has taught courses on public opinion and on money in politics at the Johns Hopkins University. Samples previously served as Director of the Georgetown University Press and Vice President of The Twentieth Century Fund. He received a PhD in political science from Rutgers University.