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The End of the American Dream?

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The End of the American Dream?

FromPolicyCast

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Length:

25 minutes

Released:

Mar 11, 2015

Format:

Podcast episode

Description

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 can be done to turn things around.

Released:

Mar 11, 2015

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service Uber, discusses how the company works with governments at all levels to tackle hackney regulations it sees as outdated.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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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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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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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The End of the American Dream?

The End of the American Dream?

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