Practitioner Senior Fellow
Fast Facts
- Director of the Katzmann Initiative and visiting fellow with Governance Studies, the Brookings Institution
- Advisory board member, White House Transition Project
- Fellow, Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service
Areas Of Expertise
- The First Year
- Governance
- Elections
- Leadership
- Politics
- The Presidency
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas is director of the Katzmann Initiative and a visiting fellow with Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, advisory board member of the White House Transition Project, and a fellow with the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service.
Tenpas is a scholar of the American presidency focusing on White House staffing, presidential transitions, and the intersection of politics and policy within the presidency (e.g., presidential reelection campaigns, trends in presidential travel, and polling). She has authored the book Presidents as Candidates: Inside the White House for the Presidential Campaign and published more than 60 articles, book chapters, and papers on these topics.
Tenpas earned her BA degree from Georgetown University and her MA and PhD degrees from the University of Virginia.
Featured Publications
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas News Feed
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution tracking turnover in the Trump administration, said it was rare for White House staff to see through all four years of any presidency, with the turbulence under Trump making Liddell “even more of an exception”. According to her analysis, the longest-serving Trump staffers were insiders such as Ivanka; “those who tell the president what he wants to hear”, such as Peter Navarro and Mark Meadows; and “those who oversee non-controversial issues”. “If you can stay out of the limelight, keep your head low and avoid making enemies, you have a good chance of hanging around.”
The Guardian
The University’s Miller Center of Public Affairs hosted a webinar Monday night about the future of relations between the U.S. and China, arguing that the Trump administration was responsible for worsening tensions between the two countries. The webinar consisted of a panel of eight scholars and politicians. Five panelists from the Miller Center and Center for Politics at the University were joined by three panelists from the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, a partner institution of the University.
The Cavalier Daily
The portfolio Harris takes on during her tenure as vice president will illuminate which areas she is trying to strengthen in preparation for a future run, said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. And Biden, a former vice president himself, will likely be willing to support those future ambitions. “I suspect because of Biden’s age, the fact that he’s been in government for so many years and because Biden cares a lot about the Democratic Party, that I think he will do what he can to empower her,” Dunn Tenpas said. “ . . . I don’t think they need to tell her not to overshadow Biden. A vice president has a pretty tough time overshadowing a president.”
The Washington Post
Each president decides which officials are part of the cabinet. For consistency across administrations, Brookings senior fellow Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and research assistant Grant Koehl looked at only the cabinet-level positions in the line of presidential succession and didn’t include certain positions that presidents sometimes give more importance, such as United Nations ambassador, which Mr. Biden has made a cabinet position. The number of cabinet members in the line of succession increased with the addition of the Veterans Affairs Department under former President George H.W. Bush and the Department of Homeland Security under former President George W. Bush, bringing the total to 15.
The Wall Streeet Journal
Despite the truncated transition brought on by President Trump’s refusal to concede the election and Emily Murphy, administrator of the General Services Administration, also refusing to certify the transition for nearly three weeks—the delay has not affected the pace of President-elect Biden’s appointments. In fact, the Biden transition is well ahead of his seven predecessors. As of Jan. 7, the transition had publicly identified the top 15 Cabinet members. The completion of these highly visible appointments provides the opportunity to compare the relative diversity (in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, and age) of the Biden Cabinet to his six predecessors at the start of their administrations.
Brookings
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Senior Fellow at the Miller Center, University of Virginia, discusses moves to remove Donald Trump, why impeachment is important even if it may not be achieved by 20th January, how recent events will change the Republican Party, and the risk of escalating violence.
BFM Malaysian Radio