2008
December 17, 2008
The next administration will face the reality that our 20th century government is no match for our 21st century problems. Brookings Senior Fellow William Galston moderated a discussion with Donald Kettl, author of The Next Government of the United States: Why Our Institutions Fail Us and How to Fix Them, to examine the governance challenges facing the next administration and offer solutions to the policy problems plaguing our government.
November 12, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama now faces the daunting challenge of shaping a new administration. On November 12, William Galston moderated a discussion with David Lewis and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas to examine the basis on which presidents pick their political appointees and the impact of their choices on government performance.
September 18, 2008
In Picture Perfect: Life in the Age of the Photo Op (Princeton University Press, 2008), Kiku Adatto explored the expressions and problems of America’s photo op culture. William Galston moderated a discussion with Diana Walker, photojournalist and photographer for Time magazine; Gloria Borger, CNN senior political analyst and political columnist with U.S. News & World Report; and Bill Kovach, former Washington bureau chief of The New York Times and senior counselor for the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
April 28, 2008
In Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton University Press and Russell Sage, 2008), political scientist Larry Bartels argues that economic inequality in America is partly a product of our democracy, dominated by partisan ideologies and the interests of the wealthy. William Galston moderated a discussion with Bartels, Thomas Mann and Elisabeth Jacobs.
April 23, 2008
During the nation’s infancy, Alexis de Tocqueville meticulously studied America’s democratic experiment and defined the contours of American exceptionalism. Nearly 200 years later, scholars James Q. Wilson and Peter Schuck reconsider what defines the United States and its role in our rapidly changing world in Understanding America: The Anatomy of an Exceptional Nation (Public Affairs, 2008). William Galston moderated a discussion with Wilson, Schuck and Brookings scholars Don Kettl and Ron Haskins.
April 7, 2008
In The Word of the Lord is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2008), sociology professor Jonathan Reider illustrates King’s awesome character while reminding us of his humanity. William Galston discussed with Reider the legacy of Martin Luther King at this Governing Ideas event.
March 24, 2008
In the span of a generation, conservative intellectuals and activists have succeeded in mounting a potent challenge to liberal legal theories, writes Steven M. Teles in The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement. William Galston of the Brookings Institution moderated a discussion with Teles, Jack Balkin of Yale Law School, and Michael S. Greve of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI).
February 11, 2008
E.J. Dionne in Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith & Politics after the Religious Right (Princeton University Press, 2008) claims millions of religious Americans are reclaiming faith, exhausted with a religious style in politics that was excessively dogmatic, partisan and ideological. Joining the discussion were Richard Cizik, a top official of the National Association of Evangelicals, and Peter Steinfels, co-director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University and religion columnist for The New York Times.
2007
October 16, 2007
Richard Kahlenberg tells the story of the founder of the American Federation of Teachers in his new book. On October 16th, Kahlenberg was joined by Brookings’s E. J. Dionne, Jr. and others for a discussion of Shanker’s legacy
September 11, 2007
On the anniversary of 9/11, featured speaker Alan Krueger presented his recent analysis which suggests that political oppression, rather than poverty, is the main cause of terrorism. The discussion was moderated by Senior Fellow William Galston, as part of the "Governing Ideas" series.
May 17, 2007
Political theorist Benjamin R. Barber argues in his new book, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (W.W. Norton, 2007), that capitalism has generated a culture that idealizes youth and is obsessed with consumption. This over-commercialization of our culture, Barber contends, poses a serious threat to democracy and civilized society. On May 17, Barber discussed Consumed with Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute and Brookings senior fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr. Wilkinson is the managing editor of Cato Unbound, which engages experts and the public in contemplating big-picture societal concerns; Dionne has written extensively on civic engagement and civil society.
April 30, 2007
In a new book, What Democracy is For: On Freedom and Moral Government (Princeton University Press, 2007), Stein Ringen points out the failure of the world's democracies, most specifically the United States and Britain, to live up to their own founding ideological values and expectations. Ringen, professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Oxford, argues that citizens are increasingly distrustful of their government and apathetic to participating in public affairs. On Monday, April 30, Stein Ringen joined Brookings Senior Fellows William Galston and Kent Weaver to discuss the policy solutions he proposes in his book that aim to restore faith in global democracy. Panelists also discussed Ringen's view that a global economy must be grounded in shared values of freedom and democracy.
April 13, 2007
Four years ago, the Bush administration concluded that containment as a foreign policy strategy had become obsolete and that pre-emptive, unilateral military action was warranted, even necessary. Yale professor of political science Ian Shapiro disagrees. In his new book, Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror (Princeton University Press, 2007), Shapiro argues for containment as a pragmatic idea for dealing with the nation's post September 11 threats and critiques the current policy of military pre-emption. On April 13, Shapiro joins Daniel Benjamin, Brookings senior fellow and former National Security Council director for counterterrorism, in a discussion of containment policy. Brookings President Strobe Talbott will provide the introduction.
March 1, 2007
In observing politics at the end of the 20th century, former President Reagan described government as "the problem, not the solution." In her book The End of Government...As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007) Elaine Kamarck of Harvard University explains that such dissatisfaction with government is in fact a widespread rejection of bureaucracy, occurring in democratic, developing, and communist countries alike. On Thursday, March 1, Brookings hosted a discussion featuring Kamarck, a public policy lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Nonresident Senior Fellow Donald Kettl.
2006
November 16, 2006
With national leaders increasingly seeking moral or religious legitimacy for their public actions, and cross-cultural misunderstandings fueling international conflict, it is time to ask whether there are universal moral truths upon which to base ethical and political judgments. On November 16th, Brookings hosted a panel discussion of the new book Universalism Vs. Relativism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) to debate the notion of compelling moral concepts and their relevance to modern governance. Participants included the volume's editor, Don Browning, and authors of two of the book's chapters: Amitai Etzioni and James Turner Johnson.