This event, conducted on Zoom, will feature a discussion between political commentator and contributor Tara Setmayer and Dean Robert Brinkmann on a variety of topics such as the current state of democracy, the First Amendment, women’s rights, and using your voice as an engaged citizen. A moderated question and answer session will follow.

Setmayer is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Seneca Project, a women-led, award-winning pro-democracy content and messaging organization that galvanizes voters to rise up against the erosion of democracy and women's freedoms.

She is a former CNN political commentator, contributor to ABC News , and a former GOP Communications Director on Capitol Hill. She has appeared as a guest host on ABC's The View, ABC's Good Morning America, and on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. Today, she regularly appears as an on-air commentator on MSNOW and various other news outlets in the US and abroad.

Setmayer has served as a Resident Scholar at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics since 2020. In collaboration with the Center for Politics, she narrated the Emmy-nominated three-part documentary Dismantling Democracy, which aired nationally on PBS stations in the final weeks of the 2020 election and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Prior to joining UVA, she was named a Harvard Institute of Politics Spring 2020 Resident Fellow. 

After 27 years with the Republican Party, Setmayer publicly left the GOP in November 2020, following Donald Trump's refusal to concede the election to Joe Biden despite losing the Electoral College. She now identifies as an independent. 

From 2006 to 2013, Setmayer worked in the U.S. House of Representatives as the Communications Director for the Republican Representative of California's 48th District, during which she handled immigration and federal law enforcement policy issues, and led the successful national effort to free Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean through a presidential commutation.