New Books In Public Policy

It’s common for colleges in the U.S. to have service learning programs of one kind or another. These are sometimes criticized as being liberal or even radical endeavors — especially if “social justice” language is employed. But what if these are, in fact, conservative programs at their heart, ones that, in the context of the corporatized university, are furthering the neoliberal project and inhibiting the development of better social welfare policies? Listen to our interview with Randy Stoecker as he discusses his book, Liberating Service Learning and the Rest of Higher Education Civic Engagement (Temple University Press, 2016), for a first-hand critique as well as some thoughts on how we might all better serve our students — and the communities they would engage with. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of

How might we account for the rapid rise of for-profit educational institutions over the past few decades, who are the students who attend them, how can we evaluate what those schools do and why, and are there actually lessons that traditional higher ed institutions can learn from them? Join us as we speak with Tressie McMillan Cottom about her new book Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy (The New Press, 2017). Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There has been much talk in the news recently about funding for public education, the emergence of charter schools, and the potential of school vouchers. How much does competition for financing in urban public schools depend on marketing and perpetuating poverty in order to thrive? Are the actors in this drama deliberately playing up stereotypes of race and class? A Good Investment? Philanthropy and the Marketing of Race in an Urban Public School (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) offers a firsthand look behind the scenes of the philanthropic approach to funding public education a process in which social change in education policy and practice is aligned with social entrepreneurship. The appearance of success, equity, or justice in education, the author argues, might actually serve to maintain stark inequalities and inhibit democracy. A Good Investment? Philanthropy and the Marketing of Race in an Urban Public School shows that models of corporate or philanthropic charity in education may in fact reinforc

Does sex play a determinative role in political contests? Recognising the dual political realities of voters holding gender stereotypes and female candidates achieving electoral success, Kathleen Dolan’s innovative book When Does Gender Matter? Women Candidates and Gender Stereotypes in American Elections (Oxford University Press, 2014) is crucial for understanding the gendered dynamics of America’s political climate. As part of the Presidential Gender Watch 2016 Syllabus, Professor Dolan’s two-wave survey methodology delves into the gendered psyche of elections by analysing the public attitudes and voter choice of over 3000 individuals. Finding that gender stereotypes in voter consciousness are present but not determinative, Dolan rewrites the conventional wisdom that stereotyped attitudes are detrimental to a woman’s electability. However, in forcing the reader to acknowledge the nexus between voter and candidate, Dolan’s data analysis extends to campaign strategy. Based on the 2010 races for Congress and

Harris Beider is the author of White Working-Class Voices: Multiculturalism, Community-Building, and Change (Policy Press, 2015). Beider is chair in Community Cohesion at the Center for Trust, Peace, and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK, and visiting professor at Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs. Many of the same socio-economic changes that scholars have associated with the rise of President Donald Trump in the US have been associated with recent political events in Great Britain. The white-working class has been at the center of many of these debates, but often based on limited empirical evidence of their beliefs and attitudes. Based on over 200 interviews in multiple sites in the UK, Beider challenges conventional notions of the white working-class. Especially on issues of race and multiculturalism, the book adds nuance and detail to the ways white working-class people have reacted to de-industrialization, the changing racial and ethnic makeup of the country, and the

In What’s Wrong with the Poor: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty (University of North Carolina Press, 2016), Mical Raz offers a deep dive into the theoretical roots of the Head Start program, and offers a fascinating story of unexpected policy origins and of the interplay between psychiatric theory, race, and U.S. social welfare policy. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ellen Hazelkorn, Policy Advisor to the Higher Education Authority (HEA), and Director, Higher Education Policy Research Unit (HEPRU), Dublin Institute of Technology, joins the New Books Network to discuss her recently published book, entitled The Civic University: The Policy and Leadership Challenges (Edward Elgar Pub 2016). She is the co-editor of the book, along with John Goddard, Louise Kempton, and Paul Vallance. The book explores the new challenges that universities face in this era defined by globalization and internationalization, but also by the consequences of funding shortages and slashed budgets. The authors of the book look at ways institutions can better embed themselves into their surrounding cities or environments to have greater meaning and connection, instead of becoming separate Ivory Tower islands. While the focus is on the management of solutions to these issues and challenges, the target audience for this book is anyone interested in education, civics, or policy. Ellen Hazelkorn previou

What is the role of evidence in the policy process? In The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence (Routledge, 2016), Justin Parkhurst, Associate Professor of Global Health Policy at the London School of Economics, maps the history of evidence based policy making and offers a new model for the good governance of appropriate evidence in policy. The book is both agenda setting and a detailed and insightful overview of evidence in policy. Moreover, the range of examples shows the importance of understanding the norms and values shaping politics and thus setting the circumstances for evidence use. In the complex and contested current context for evidence in policy, the book makes an important intervention charting the possibility of a more transparent form of decision making and a more evidence informed approach to policy. The book is available as an open access version here.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 9/11 attacks revealed a breakdown in American intelligence and there was a demand for individuals and institutions to find out what went wrong, correct it, and prevent another catastrophe like 9/11 from ever happening again. In Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State (Crown Publishers, 2016) Karen J. Greenberg discusses how the architects of the War on Terror transformed American justice into an arm of the Security State. She tells the story of law and policy after 9/11, introducing the reader to key players and events, showing that time and again, when liberty and security have clashed, justice has been the victim. Expanded intelligence capabilities established after 9/11 (such as torture, indefinite detention even for Americans, offshore prisons created to bypass the protections of the rule of law, mass warrantless surveillance against Americans not suspected of criminal behavior, and overseas assassinations of terrorism suspects, including at least one American) have repeatedly chosen to privil

Sabeel Rahman is the author of Democracy Against Domination (Oxford University Press, 2016). Rahman is assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School. Combining perspectives from legal studies, political theory, and political science, Democracy Against Domination reinterprets Progressive Era economic thought for the challenges of today. The book offers a new approach to regulation and governance rooted in democratic theory and the writing of Louis Brandeis and John Dewey. In order to oversee complex economic activities and financial markets, Rahman argues for more democracy, not less, more participation by citizens and more participatory institutions established to facilitate this aim. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The wish to understand mental suffering is universal and requires an appreciation for its history. Since Biblical times, humans have understood madness, or other deviations from normal mental functioning, in diverse and unique ways. These have included belief in divine origins, biological causation, and environmental influences. And treatments for mental illness have undergone a similar evolution. In his book Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity (Princeton University Press, 2015), Andrew Scull offers an important and timely examination of this complicated history. And in our interview, he talks about what motivated him to take on such an ambitious and important project and his hopes for the future of psychiatry and psychology. Andrew Scull is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His prior books include Masters of Bedlam: The Transformation of the Mad-Doctoring Trade (2016); Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and Madmen: The Social Histor

The Pope said that Donald Trump wasn’t much of a Christian if all he can think about is building walls. Trump replied that it was “disgraceful” for a any leader, even the Pope, “to question another man’s religion or faith.” I imagine that many Americans agreed with Trump on this score. But is Trump’s “radical tolerance” position really sensible? Can’t someone reasonably and respectfully say to another “Gee, I think you’ve got that particular point of scripture wrong” or even “I think your faith is, well, misguided for reasons X, Y an Z”? In his thought-provoking book The Limits of Religious Tolerance (Amherst College Press, 2016), Alan J. Levinovitz argues that we can and indeed must question religion, both our own and everyone else’s. How else, he asks, are we to understand why we and our fellow citizens believe what we say we believe? To be sure, Levinovitz advises that we only engage in critical discussions of religion in certain, well-defined contexts: churches, synagogues, mosques and such are good plac

The year 2016 was the hottest year on record, and in recent months, drought and searing heat have fanned wildfires in Fort McMurray Alberta and in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Meanwhile, the Arctic has had record high temperatures, leading one climate researcher to warn the region is unraveling. Yet for the most part, these climate-related events and dire warnings from climatologists have fallen on deaf ears, especially in the United States, where climate-change denial is firmly entrenched, especially among Republican lawmakers. But why? In his recent book, Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming (University of Washington Press, 2016), historian Joshua Howe seeks to answer this question. Howe traces the history of climate change from a scientific oddity in the late 1950s to a topic of fierce debate among politicians and environmental activists who fear that failure to tackle global warming will lead to stronger storms, fiercer wildfires, and rising seas. Scientists knew the most about the nuan

Rebecca S. Natow, Senior Research Associate with the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, joins New Books Network to discuss her recently published book, entitled Higher Education Rulemaking: The Politics of Creating Regulatory Policy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016). In the book, she explores what happens after higher education legislation becomes law, specifically focusing on implementation of programs and rules in the sector. For the study, in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals from the US Department of Education, congressional staffers, representatives from higher educational institutions, both student and consumer representatives, mediation experts, state government officials, and representatives from the lending industry. Professor Natow previously joined New Books Network to discuss The Politics of Performance Funding for Higher Education Origins, Discontinuations, and Transformations. For any questions, comments, or recommendations for th

Jen Manion is an associate professor of history at Amherst College. Her book Liberty’s Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) offers a detailed examination of how the reform regimen of incarceration developed as the new American nation was experiencing deep social and political transformation. The place of women, African-Americans, immigrants and the poor was recast by new attitudes toward maintaining the social order through the patriarchal family, heterosexual regulation and the property system. Penitentiaries were designed to replace harsh British methods of corporal punishment with republican reform for those accused of property crimes, vagrancy, and public disorder. Reform was imposed through a system of work and submission to disciplinary authority. Within the walls of the prison, women approximated the model of domesticity and submission, while men faced the challenge of demonstrating manly responsibility within a system of denigration. Both men and women

In Misunderstanding Terrorism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) Marc Sageman provides an important reassessment of the global neojihadi threat to the West. He argues that inaccurate evaluations of the threat and overreactions to a limited threat have transformed U.S. society. By constructing a model to explain the turn to political violence, Sageman shows how a misunderstanding of terrorism in the West has dramatically inflated fear of the actual danger posed by neojihadis. This has led to overreaction of the counterterrorist community, which has resulted in threats to fundamental civil liberties. Sageman makes the distinction that the vast majority of political protestors are not violent and he expands on the conditions that may turn some members of an imagined community from talking about violence to engaging in violence. The book brings realistic numbers into the assessment of the threat facing the West and concludes with straightforward policies to end the threat instead of perpetuating it. Learn m

What is the future for Arts and Humanities in Europe? The podcast discusses these questions with Paul Benneworth, one of the authors, along with Magnus Gulbrandsen and Ellen Hazelkorn, of The Impact and Future of Arts and Humanities Research (Palgrave, 2016). Dr. Benneworth, from the University of Twente’s Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, was part of a pan-European project to consider the impact of Impact and the way Arts and Humanities narrate their public value, research which was the basis for the book. The book draws on a wealth of empirical and theoretical material, including comparative case studies from Ireland, Norway, and The Netherlands. The comparative approach allows the book to contextualise engagements with science policy, the role and purpose of the university, public value, and innovation, to offer a new vision of Arts and Humanities research that avoids instrumentalisation. The book is important and essential reading for all interested in the future of higher education and research

In 2012, Canada stopped mining and exporting asbestos. Once considered a miracle mineral for its fireproof qualities, asbestos came to be better known as a carcinogenic, hazardous material banned in numerous countries around the world.Canada was once a leading producer of asbestos and home to the worlds largest chrysotile asbestos mine, located in the Town of Asbestos in the province of Quebec. This is the subject of a new book by Professor Jessica van Horssen, A Town Called Asbestos: Environmental Contamination, Health, and Resilience in a Resource Community (UBC Press, 2016), is a thoroughly researched and thoroughly shocking account of the history of asbestos mining, environmental health, and resistance in this small, Quebec resource town. How did the people of the Town of Asbestos respond to the growth of asbestos mining, the knowledge of the harmful health effects of asbestos, and the consequence for their own bodies? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Jessica van Horssen about her new book.

In Healthcare Policy In Africa: Institutions and Politics from Colonialism to the Present (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Jean-Germain Gros argues that healthcare policy should be the black box rather than the black hole of African Studies. By this he means that policy should be decoded so its secrets can be laid bare, rather than treated as an impenetrable mystery. To this end, in the book, as well as in the interview, Gros uses a variety of methodological approaches to explain/explicate the relative roles of agency and institutions in the history of healthcare policy in Africa. The book’s central thesis is that healthcare policy does not take place in a vacuum and it fills an important gap in the scholarship by examining the impact of factors including debt relief, conflict, humanitarianism, brain drain and globalization on policy affecting and affected by the health and wealth of Africans. Mireille Djenno is the African Studies Librarian at Indiana University. She can be reached at mdjenno@indiana.edu.

What new can there be to say about the New Deal? Perhaps more than you think. Join us as Karen Tani talks about her new book, States of Dependency: Welfare, Rights and American Governance, 1935-1972 (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which examines the ways in which the rights talk we typically associate with the 1960s might be traced back to New Deal Administrators who, through programs like the ADC, simultaneously reshaped federal state relations and created new incentives for the professionalization of state bureaucracies. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices