The 11th annual Domenici Public Policy Conference at New Mexico State University will focus on national defense, immigration and the 2018 elections, Sept. 12-13, at the Las Cruces Convention Center, 680 E. University Ave.
The Domenici Institute for Public Policy at NMSU is named after Pete V. Domenici, New Mexico’s longest-serving United States Senator. The institute at NMSU was created to continue Domenici’s legacy of service to both the state and the country. This year’s conference will be a salute to Domenici, who died in September 2017.
Registration for the two-day conference has opened, and the conference agenda is posted online. Currently scheduled to speak on Wednesday will be former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, who will address the Domenici legacy. Nunn was Georgia’s U.S. Senator for 24 years, from 1972 to 1996. Presently, he is co-chair of Nuclear Threat Initiate, which he co-founded with Ted Turner in 2001.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Stephen W. Wilson will follow and discuss national defense. Wilson is the Air Force vice chief of staff. In his role, he manages the air staff and is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Requirements Oversight Council and Deputy Advisory Working Group.
Immigration will be the focus of Wednesday afternoon with Alan Kraut, Theresa Cardinal Brown, Edward Schumacher-Matos and Jon Barela slated to speak.
Kraut is a professor in the Department of History at American University in Washington, D.C. He is a non-resident Fellow of the Migration Policy Institute. Cardinal Brown is director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Schumacher-Matos is the director of the Edward R. Murrow Center for a Digital World at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. An award-winning journalist, Schumacher-Matos worked at newspapers such as the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Barela, who is chief executive officer of the Borderplex Alliance, will conclude the first day and speak on immigration in the border region.
On Thursday, Robert S. Ford, a former U.S. Ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014 and Algeria from 2006 to 2008, will begin day two with a discussion on foreign policy. He is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
The conference focus then will shift to the 2018 elections. Both New Mexico gubernatorial candidates have been invited to speak: Democratic nominee U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Republican nominee U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce. The conference will conclude with James Carville, a political strategist, and Kristen Soltis Anderson, a pollster, discussing the current political landscape. The pair will return to Las Cruces after speaking at the conference two years ago. Carville first spoke at the conference in 2012.
Online registration for the conference is available at http://domenici.nmsu.edu. Registration fees are $50 before Sept. 1 and then increase to $75. The conference is free to NMSU students. For more information or to receive an invitation by mail, call the Domenici Institute at 575-646-2066.
Information from NMSU