Polarized politics have infected local school boards, which have historically been nonpartisan. With school boards now on the front lines of the culture wars, Andrea Gabor outlines steps to strengthen school boards to function effectively given the mounting pressures facing them.

TRANSFORMING CITIES SERIES:

Resilient, sustainable cities require law enforcement officers who are not only well-trained, but also deserve the confidence of people they serve. Gerald Chaleff has devoted over two decades to this subject, overseeing reform measures and consulting on constitutional policing issues.

TRANSFORMING CITIES SERIES:

Planners and engineers in the 50's and 60's often built freeways directly through African American communities, severing neighborhoods and dismantling small businesses in the way. Sally Bagshaw, Scott Bonjukian, John Feit, and other advocates and government leaders are now speaking out against these 70-year-old road design practices, offering solutions to restore and reconnect neighborhoods.

OPINION COMMENTARY:

Starting in 1909, and every 10 years until 1971, the White House convened delegates from across the country and put them to work on the most pressing problems facing the nation’s children and youth. Anthony Mohr discusses reviving the White House Conference on Children and Youth to address urgent issues that will impact the young.

The current challenges to voting rights, indeed to our democracy, are almost unprecedented in our lifetime. It is imperative for President Biden and Congress to focus on passing election reforms now since the new state laws and new redistricting actions evidence the need for fair guidance and legal limits. The author, Robert Berg, discusses the status of U.S. voting rights, what is being done to address these challenges and provides some suggestions on what we can do.

Bludgeoned on all sides, Haiti is hurtling towards failed state status. It‘s in U.S.’ national security interest to intervene and stop Haiti’s unraveling. The Hon. Vivian Lowery Derryck urges stakeholders to come together and use previously tested strategies to finally put Haiti on a path towards democracy and political and economic stability.

A conversation with historian, teacher and activist, Professor Timothy Patrick McCarthy, on the importance of embracing an honest reckoning with history, battling the culture wars in schools, and liberation dreaming in order to realize our best aspirations and intentions for public education.

California voters hold a high degree of power in the state’s recall process. Combined with the state’s other direct democracy tools (the initiative statute, the initiative constitutional amendment, and the referendum) the state electorate has power that approaches that of a state government branch.

A conversation with Mike Feuer, Los Angeles’ City Attorney and one of California’s leading lawyers and lawmakers. As Los Angeles' chief lawyer and prosecutor since July, 2013, he has brought an innovative, problem-solving focus that combines fair and effective prosecution with initiatives to improve public safety and the quality of life throughout the city.

THE FIRST 100 DAYS OF THE BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION SERIES:

A conversation with David Gergen, Professor of Public Service and co-founding Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former White House adviser to Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.

OPINION COMMENTARY:

We see them in most major cities: tents in our neighborhoods, tarps on our sidewalks, and encampments in our parks. We see garbage piling up. Feces in doorways. Teresa Mosqueda and Sally Bagshaw emphasize, however, that inside the tents, there are people trying to survive.

ONE YEAR AFTER GEORGE FLOYD'S MURDER SERIES:

A conversation with Paul Butler, an Albert Brick Professor of Law at Georgetown University and legal analyst on MSNBC, discussing where we are as a country regarding policing and racial equality.

DISABILITY AWARENESS SERIES:

What do you picture when you think about disability? You probably envision a wheelchair user, the literal symbol of disability plastered on parking spots and bathroom doors. Kathleen Bogart discusses that disability is much broader than most people think.

DISABILITY AWARENESS SERIES:

While the ADA can be harnessed to carve out physical or digital access where it doesn’t exist, they cannot be used to change behavior from something that upends ordinary social access and norms of community. Peter Slatin discusses that without social accessibility the ADA will remain a half-measure.

DISABILITY AWARENESS SERIES:

As one of the world’s leading universities, Professor Michael Ashley Stein, co-founder and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, discusses how Harvard has the opportunity as well as the responsibility, to lead in disability-inclusion.

Carla Dirlikov Canales discusses how cultural diplomacy is one of the oldest and most important tools of statecraft. Often referred to as “soft power,” a phrase coined by University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus Joseph Nye, the power of culture offers the ability to create connections and persuade in a way that may advance national interests more effectively than traditional diplomatic and geopolitical means.

Think about the atypical person who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016. Then consider a different flavor of atypical: the person who voted for Trump in 2016 and flipped to Joe Biden in 2020. In partnership with the Schlesinger Group, the author’ firm, Engagious, has spent the last two years conducting monthly focus groups with these swing voters.

A conversation with the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, a leading New York State policy analysis and advocacy organization working to shape policies to improve health, welfare, and human services for all New Yorkers, especially those who are disenfranchised.

COVID-19 RECOVERY SERIES:

In our post-COVID, post-Election 2020 world, political organizations headquartered in blue states owe it to fellow citizens to invest in red states and purple states. We must build genuine common power.

Facing consistently overcrowded facilities, Joe Finn discusses how shelter providers recognized that they had an impossible choice: should they deny shelter to individuals in need, subjecting them to the risks associated with cold weather exposure, or continue to allow them into shelters where they would be susceptible to COVID-19, a quickly spreading and often deadly virus?