News from 2012
Shootings mark an end of innocence
Until Friday morning, Newtown, Conn., pop. 27,560, was known, if at all, as the place where Scrabble was invented. Its residents - well-off - liked it that way. Then came the massacre: 26 dead, including 20 elementary schoolchildren. The event changes everything, not just for Newtown but for America. In recent years, we've grown wearily familiar with killings in high schools. These horrific events happen with seeming randomness, not in hot-spots like Harlem or Watts but in burgs scattered across the nation,…
Red Versus Blue in a New Light
The basic question driving the 2012 campaign was always clear: could Mitt Romney gain enough of the vote among older, upper-income white Americans to overcome President Obama’s overwhelming advantage among young, low-income and minority voters? As in previous elections, richer voters leaned Republican while lower-income voters came out strong as Democrats. But there’s much more to this story. The maps we have made show that the election was not just about red and blue states. What&rsquo…
Finances bleeding Cal State system dry
To educators from around the globe, the California State University system is lauded as a triumph of mass higher education. Its 23 campuses enroll more undergraduates - 426,000 - than any other four-year higher education system in the United States. For CSU students, many of them the first in their family to attend college and many of them minorities, higher education is the ticket out of poverty and into the New Economy. What's good for these students is…
PPIA 2012
The Goldman school once again welcomes 30 outstanding college juniors from across the nation to the Public Policy International Affairs Junior Summer Institute, a seven-week, intensive immersion into the world of public policy. The program, with its focus on empowering and better serving historically under-served communities, offers rigorous coursework designed to sharpen the analytic and quantitative skills vital to success at top-level graduate programs in public policy, international affairs and law. The curriculum includes classes in policy analysis, economics, quantitative analysis,…
The Impact of the Supreme Court Health Law Ruling
Professor John Ellwood convenes a panel of experts to address the major consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, including what the decision means for future health reform, constitutional law, medical care, the insurance market, insurance premiums, public policy and politics. The program is free and open to the public. 10 a.m. to noon, Monday, July 2 Room 132, UC Berkeley Law School (at the corner of Piedmont Avenue and Bancroft Way). Directions here. Panel: John…
Making Schools Work
Amid the ceaseless and cacophonous debates about how to close the achievement gap, we’ve turned away from one tool that has been shown to work: school desegregation. That strategy, ushered in by the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, has been unceremoniously ushered out, an artifact in the museum of failed social experiments. The Supreme Court’s ruling that racially segregated schools were “inherently unequal” shook up the nation like no…
Reforming the Peace Corps
In November 2011, President Barack Obama signed the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act into law, enacting the most substantial reform of the iconic agency since its inception in 1961.The legislation was the result of years of advocacy from David Puzey (MPP/ERG Candidate '14), whose sister, Peace Corps volunteer Kate Puzey, was murdered after reporting that a Peace Corps contractor had raped several students. The legislation provides powerful whistle-blower safeguards and establishes an Office of Victim Advocacy and Sexual…
Stop the Clock Week (April 2-6, 2012)
“Stop the Clock” week provides students and faculty with a chance to interact with and to hear from leading decision-makers who have worked in government. This year, the Goldman School welcomes Regents’ Lecturer Ann Veneman (MPP ‘71), former US Secretary of Agriculture ( 2001-05) and Executive Director of UNICEF at the United Nations (2005-10). Please note schedule below: Monday, April 2 12:15 – 1:15 pm: Discussion with Henry Brady, Robert Reich, John Ellwood American Politics: The Republican Nomination and the Obama…