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191 The Equal Rights Amendment

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191 The Equal Rights Amendment

FromPolicyCast

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Length:

27 minutes

Released:

Mar 21, 2018

Format:

Podcast episode

Description

Professor Jane Mansbridge explains why efforts to pass an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution have failed in the past, but could now have a real shot at ratification.

Released:

Mar 21, 2018

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

Each week, Host Matt Cadwallader speaks with leading experts in public policy, media, and international affairs about their experiences confronting the world's most pressing public problems.

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How Presidential Campaigns Influence Governance: Republican strategist Matt Lira, a spring 2015 fellow at the Institute of Politics, discusses the early days of a presidential campaign, the importance of primaries, how campaign management eventually influences governance and what technologies will likel by PolicyCast
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How Uber Wrangles Regulations: Brian Worth, the Public Policy Lead for ridesharing service Uber, discusses how the company works with governments at all levels to tackle hackney regulations it sees as outdated. Worth participated in the Harvard Institute of Politics' 2014 Internet Poli by PolicyCast
14 min listen
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Steve Jarding on the 2014 Midterms: HKS Lecturer Steve Jarding, a longtime political operative who’s currently advising the Democratic candidate for US Senate in South Dakota, gives his take on how the upcoming midterm elections are shaping up. He explains the bipartisan lack of enthusiasm by PolicyCast
19 min listen
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Is it Civil Rights or Human Rights?: HKS Associate Professor Moshik Temkin argues that the debate over civil rights in the United States, sparked by the unrest in Ferguson, MO, is actually a debate about human rights and the difference is not just semantic. by PolicyCast
19 min listen
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An Ethical Perspective on the Brian Williams Scandal: HKS Lecturer Jeffrey Seglin of the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy discusses the ethical hot water Brian Williams has recently found himself in. He breaks down the reputational harm that has been done to both Willi by PolicyCast
14 min listen
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Ensuring Electoral Integrity around the Globe: HKS Lecturer Pippa Norris discusses her work on the Electoral Integrity Project, which assesses the veracity of elections around the globe and gives policy recommendations on how to ensure free and fair voting. by PolicyCast
14 min listen
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The Criminal Injustice System: HKS Alumnus Bryan Stevenson has spent his career working to address issues of racial and wealth inequality in the United States’ justice system. He believes this inequality stems from a failure of the nation to reconcile its dark history with regard to sl by PolicyCast
15 min listen
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045 Feeding the World Through Science: HKS Professor Calestous Juma, Director of the Science, Technology, and Globalization project, believes that science and technology are critical to the future of food security. He talks about meeting the needs of a growing human population, using science t by PolicyCast
13 min listen
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Designing Smarter Policy: HKS Professor Asim Khwaja, Co-Director of the Evidence for Policy Design program, explains the benefits of bringing academics into the field to develop policy in collaboration with practitioners. by PolicyCast
22 min listen
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The Accidental Fall of the Berlin Wall: Professor Mary Elise Sarotte, a visiting professor at the Harvard Center for European Studies and author of “Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall,” explains how the opening of the border between East and West Germany came down to a decision by PolicyCast
14 min listen
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015 Why Gun Violence is a Public Health Issue: Harvard Chan School of Public Health Professor David Hemenway makes an emphatic case for why gun violence needs to be researched through the lens of public health. by PolicyCast
20 min listen
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Cracks in the Glass Ceiling: Lessons From Finland's Former President: Former Finnish President Tarja Halonen, currently in residence at the Kennedy School as an Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow, recounts the challenges she faced as a woman ascending the Finnish ranks of power. She also explains some of the facto by PolicyCast
21 min listen
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The End of the American Dream?: HKS Professor Robert Putnam explains how the United States has become a class-segregated society with a growing stratification between the educated and uneducated. He describes how upward mobility has nearly vanished over the last few decades and what by PolicyCast
25 min listen
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The Midterms, the Youth Vote and GOP Strategy: IOP Fall 2014 Fellow Kristen Soltis Anderson gives her take on the gains the GOP made in the midterm elections, how the party can better target the youth vote and what we can expect from congress over the next two years. by PolicyCast
17 min listen
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Somalia’s First Female President?: HKS Mid-Career MPA Mason Fellow Fadumo Dayib recounts her story growing up as a Somali refugee and explains how her life’s experience has pushed her to mount a 2016 run for president in her homeland. by PolicyCast
26 min listen
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Measuring Human Ability: Ron Suskind’s world was shaken when his son Owen was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. Now, more than 20 years later, his experience has helped kick off new research into how we as a society can better integrate those with developmental disabilit by PolicyCast
22 min listen
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A Wholesale and Retail Approach to Digital Government: Nick Sinai, formerly a U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer at the White House and currently a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy fellow at the Shorenstein Center, describes in detail the effort the Obama administration has put into modernizing the fe by PolicyCast
22 min listen
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Ending Veteran Homelessness: Andrew McCawley, president and CEO of the New England Center for Homeless Veterans, describes the steps the organization is taking to combat homelessness among US veterans and how likely it is that the nation will see the complete eradication of vetera by PolicyCast
16 min listen
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Behind the Steady Recovery in Cyprus: Cyprus’ Minister of Energy, Commerce, Industry and Tourism Yiorgos Lakkotrypis describes his country’s slow emergence from a deep economic recession following a 2013 EU bail-in that came with significant austerity measures attached. He points out brigh by PolicyCast
14 min listen
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A Political Crossroads in Indonesia: HKS Adjunct Lecturer Jay Rosengard, faculty chair of the Ash Center’s HKS Indonesia Program, breaks down the political climate in Indonesia, just months after the election of a new, potentially transformational president. He explains how Indonesia’s still by PolicyCast
15 min listen
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Startup Government: Aneesh Chopra, a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Shorenstein Center who served as the United States' first Chief Technology Officer, describes how the federal government, historically a leader in new technologies, fell behind in em by PolicyCast
23 min listen
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From Selma to Harvard: Supporting the notion of public service: Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust discusses what drew her to the study of history; her role as a student activist in the civil rights movement in Selma; how her experience as an activist shapes her leadership now; her advice to young people who are tryi by PolicyCast
21 min listen
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Is Transparency Bad for Politics?: Professor Michael Ignatieff of the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy makes the case that increased transparency in government makes it harder for politicians to find compromise by relating his experience as the Leader of the Opposit by PolicyCast
17 min listen
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Madeleine Albright on Immigration, the Refugee Crisis, and Youth Activism: Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright encourages young activists to join established systems in order to learn how to drive change from within; discusses the emerging relevance of non-state actors in the international system; offers her take on by PolicyCast
16 min listen
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Better Policy Through A.R.T.: Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus, Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) and professor of the practice of theatre at Harvard, explains why the arts are critical to the shaping of public policy. Paulus offers examples of how a by PolicyCast
25 min listen
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The Development of Agency: HKS Adjunct Lecturer Ronald Ferguson emphasizes the importance of looking beyond standardized test results and measuring students’ sense of agency - the belief that they have the capacity to succeed - in order to address lingering achievement gaps. by PolicyCast
28 min listen
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How to Fix a Sovereign Debt Crisis: HKS Professor Carmen Reinhart details the lessons we can learn from two centuries of data on how countries have historically dealt with debt problems. She discusses the long menu of debt relief options that are often overlooked, criticizes the disparity b by PolicyCast
25 min listen
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The Other Effects of Torture: HKS Lecturer Doug Johnson, Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, goes beyond the debate over the efficacy of torture to look at the consequences of its use in legal, military and international relations contexts. by PolicyCast
19 min listen
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Big Data; Better Cities: HKS Professor Stephen Goldsmith, Director of the Data-Smart City Solutions Project at the Kennedy School’s Ash Center, describes how city and state governments can improve service to citizens by harnessing new technologies. by PolicyCast
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How Partisan is the US Judiciary?: HKS Assistant Professor Maya Sen describes new research breaking down political leanings within the United States judiciary. The analyses exposes a partisan divide between lawyers and judges and finds a link between certain political leanings and specific by PolicyCast
13 min listen

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The policy changes needed now to avoid a climate-driven global food crisis: The warning lights are blinking for the world’s food supply. At least that’s what 150 Nobel Prize and World Food Prize laureates said in a recently-published open letter calling for a “moonshot” urgency effort to start the immediate ramping up of food production to meet the global demands of 9.7 billion people by 2050. Harvard Kennedy School economist Wolfram Schlenker, the new Ray A. Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System says doing that will require urgent policy changes and, in some cases, policy reversals to meet those goals against the headwinds of climate change. Even as crop yields are under stress due to rising temperatures and extreme weather events, Schlenker says spending on research and development of new, climate-resistant crops and other food technologies has declined. Countries are also starting to put up more protectionist barriers around their domestic agricultural sectors, undermining th by PolicyCast
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From insight to impact: Dean Jeremy Weinstein wants the Kennedy School to embrace and solve complex public problems: Jeremy Weinstein became the newest dean in the 88-year history of the Harvard Kennedy School this past June, arriving from Stanford University, where he was an award-winning scholar and the founding faculty director of the Stanford Impact Labs. The pursuit of deep scholarly curiosity and roll-up-your-sleeves impact has been a theme in his life and career, as well as an approach he intends to accelerate schoolwide at HKS under his leadership. Growing up, Weinstein experienced a family run-in with government policy gone horribly wrong—one that could have inspired a deep cynicism about the role of government in people’s lives. He found inspiration instead and embarked on a career that has encompassed field research on the ground in post-conflict countries including Uganda, Mozambique, and Peru; wide-ranging scholarship in areas including political violence, the political ec by PolicyCast
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Legalized gambling is exploding globally. What policies can limit its harms?: Turbocharged by the internet and mobile technology, legalized gambling has exploded across the globe, leaving behind ruined lives, broken families and financial hardships, and should now be classified as a major public health concern. A four-year study by a public health commission on gambling convened by The Lancet, the respected British journal of medicine, found that net global losses by gamblers could exceed $700 billion by the year 2028, and that 80% of countries now allow some form of legal gambling. But HKS Professor Malcolm Sparrow, a leading scholar on regulating societal harms, says that in reality the percentage of countries where gambling is practiced is closer to 100% because internet- and mobile-based gambling—often using cryptocurrencies—can easily circumvent borders. Among the commission's more concerning findings is that a significant portion of virtual gamblers are teenagers, and that more t by PolicyCast
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How emotion science may help solve the world’s leading cause of preventable death: The World Health Organization says smoking is the leading cause of global preventable death, killing up to 8 million people prematurely every year—far more than die in wars and conflicts. Yet the emotions evoked by national and international anti-smoking campaigns and the impact of those emotions has never been fully studied until now. HKS Professor Jennifer Lerner, a decision scientist who studies emotion, and Vaughan Rees, the director for the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, say their research involving actual smokers in the lab shows that sadness—the emotion most often evoked in anti-smoking ads—can actually induce people to smoke more. Lerner and Rees’ research also found that evoking gratitude, an emotion that appears to function in nearly the exact opposite manner to sadness, made people want to smoke less and made them more likely to join a smoking-ce by PolicyCast
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A new program and policies to fight global anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination: Anti-LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex) discrimination is on the rise, both in the United States, where hate crime statistics are climbing, and globally, with the increase in right-wing populist governments weaponizing public sentiment against marginalized people. But there are also rights advocates around the world pushing back, despite threats of physical harm, prosecution, and even death. The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy’s Timothy McCarthy and Diego Garcia Blum, who are leading a new program to support those advocates, joined host Ralph Ranalli to on the most recent episode of PolicyCast to talk about the project and about policy responses to a growing threat. The Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program recently held a summit featuring 20 leading rights advocates from countries including Kenya, Russia, Brazil, Bangladesh, Morocco, and Pakistan to explore research-based methods to by PolicyCast
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The essential reforms needed to fix the housing crisis: America is in the grip of a severe housing crisis. Tenants have seen rents rise 26 percent while home prices have soared by 47 percent since early 2020. Before the pandemic, there were 20 US states considered affordable for housing. Now there are none. And 21 million households—including half of all renters—pay more than one-third of their income on housing. Harvard Kennedy School Associate Professor Justin de Benedictis-Kessner and former Burlington, Vermont Mayor Miro Weinberger say that’s because homebuilding hasn’t kept up with demand. They say housing production is mired in a thicket of restrictive zoning regulations and local politics, a “veto-cracy” that allows established homeowners—sometimes even a single disgruntled neighbor—to block and stall new housing projects for years. Weinberger, a research fellow at the Taubman Institute for State and Local Politics, and de Benedictis-Kessner, whose research focuses on urban poli by PolicyCast
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Changing the narrative on women's leadership: As Vice President Kamala Harris making a strong bid for the U.S. presidency, HKS Women and Public Policy Program Co-Director Hannah Riley Bowles says Harris is just one of many “path breakers” who have dramatically increased leadership opportunities for women. But she also says the reaction to Harris’ campaign in the media and the public conversation shows how the popular narrative about the efficacy of female leaders still lags behind the reality of what successful women are achieving. And she says that narrative also isn’t supported by research, including multiple studies showing that on average women are actually rated higher than men for a number of important leadership qualities associated with performance. Bowles is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the HKS, she chairs the HKS Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences (MLD) Area, and she recently completed her tenure as co-director of the Center by PolicyCast
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After an attempted assassination, how to turn back a rising tide of political threats and violence: The attempted assassination of former President and candidate Donald Trump has catalyzed an important discussion about both actual violence and threats of violence against political candidates, office-holders, policymakers, election officials, and others whose efforts help make our democracy work. Harvard Kennedy School professors Erica Chenoweth and Archon Fung join host Ralph Ranalli to talk about political violence, what it is, what it isn’t, why it has grown, and—most importantly—strategies for mitigating it to ensure the health of democratic governance in the United States and beyond. The motivations and political leanings of the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who shot and wounded Trump with an AR-15-style assault rifle, Thomas Crooks, remain murky, making it difficult to make sense of why it happened. In one sense it was a continuation of an unfortunate 189-year-old tradition of assa by PolicyCast
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The populism of self-destruction: How better policies can blunt the anti-clean energy backlash threatening humanity’s future: Populism—the political term that describes a group of self-described common people who oppose elite—has turned up in what for many is an unexpected place: the push for a worldwide transition to clean energy. Even though they’re vital to preventing the most catastrophic consequences of the manmade global climate crisis, clean energy measures are encountering pushback from multiple sources ranging from local citizens groups, to cost-conscious consumers, to self-styled conservationists, to right-wing politicians, and to corporate boardrooms. Harvard Kennedy School Professor Robert Z. Lawrence and Professor Dustin Tingley from Harvard’s Department of Government say a number of forces are shaping the new clean energy pushback, including genuine popular resentment in some communities left over from economic transitions like the loss of manufacturing jobs due to global by PolicyCast
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Public policy, values, and politics: Why so much depends on getting them all right: Public policy has great power, both to improve people’s lives if it is planned and executed well and to cause significant suffering if it is not, says Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf, who will step back from his post this summer to rejoin the faculty. He joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli in this episode to discuss the crucial role policy plays in everyday life, the often-imperfect ways it gets made, and the factors that shape it, including politics, values, education, and communication. He also addresses the issue of public distrust in policy advice and the vital role that values play in policy making and educating public leaders, even when those values—including economic justice and diversity and inclusion—are under attack by some in the political sphere. “Our job is to enunciate our values, and to explain how those values can help us serve the world,” he says. Elmendorf became dean of by PolicyCast
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The Ghost Budget: How U.S. war spending went rogue, wasted billions, and how to fix it: HKS Senior Lecturer Linda Bilmes, an expert on public finance who has studied post-9/11 war costs for the past 20 years, says their staggering $5 trillion cost was enabled by what she calls “The Ghost Budget.” Using an unprecedented combination of borrowing, accounting tricks, and outsourcing, presidential administrations, Congress, and the Pentagon were able to circumvent traditional military budget processes in a way that kept war costs out of the public debate and resulted in trillions being spent with minimal oversight. The result: corporations and wealthy investors raking in huge profits, massive waste and fraud, and—combined with the Bush and Trump tax cuts—a shifting of the burden of the costs of war away from the wealthy and onto middle- and lower-income people and future generations. Of course by any metric, the United States-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were costly. Human life? At leas by PolicyCast
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The document that redefined humanity: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 75: Harvard Kennedy School Professor Kathryn Sikkink and former longtime Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth have spent years studying the transformational effects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and have worked on the ground to make its vision of a more just, equal world a reality. On December 10th, the world celebrated not only the annual Human Rights Day, but also the 75th anniversary of the UDHR, which some historians and social scientists consider to be the greatest achievement in the history of humankind. It was the first time representatives of the world community declared that every human person on earth was entitled to the same rights as every other, without discrimination, and no matter the circumstances. It was an achievement that was both historically radical—legal slavery in the United States had ended just 80 years earlier—and yet one which made perfect, urgent by PolicyCast
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Legacy of privilege: David Deming and Raj Chetty on how elite college admissions policies affect who gains power and prestige: Legacy admissions, particularly at elite colleges and universities, were thrust into the spotlight this summer when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action in admissions. The ruling raised many questions, and fortunately, Harvard Kennedy School Professor David Deming and Harvard University Professor Raj Chetty were there with some important answers—having just wrapped up a 6-year study of the impact of legacy admissions at so-called “Ivy-plus” schools. Students spend years preparing to face judgment by colleges and universities as a worthy potential applicant. They strive for report cards filled with A’s in advanced placement courses. They volunteer for service projects and participate in extracurricular activities. They cram furiously high-stakes standardized tests. They do all that only to find a big question many top colleges have is effe by PolicyCast
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191 The Equal Rights Amendment

191 The Equal Rights Amendment

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