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When Too Much Remains the Same: Women’s progress in America has farther to go

12.23.13

BY ELIZABETH A. KISLIK In a lecture at Harvard University in mid-October, New York Times columnist Gail Collins discussed how fundamentally women’s roles in American society have changed over the past half-century. Her talk reflected the theme of her 2009 book, When Everything Changed. Collins recalled the days of “executive flights,” on which young, unmarried […]

Long-Winded Texans: Wendy Davis vs. Ted Cruz

11.21.13

BY ADRIENNE MURPHY Anyone who follows recent political news knows that Texans like to talk. First, there was the stylish, hot-pink Mizuno sporting Wendy Davis and her fervent defense of abortion rights. Then came the fiery, Dr. Seuss-quoting Ted Cruz and his passionate opposition to Obamacare. Thirty-two hours and hundreds of thousands of words later, […]

The 25th Amendment & Dick Cheney’s Heart

10.25.13

BY TOMMY TOBIN Whatever you think about former Vice President Dick Cheney, his upcoming book Heart provides new fodder for debates around the 25th Amendment and America’s system of presidential succession.  Cheney’s imperilled health during his term in office demonstrated that the 25th Amendment and the nation’s procedures for handling inability, disability, and vacancy in […]

Parsing the Foreign Policy Experts: Five Tips for Separating the Wonks from the Wannabes

10.16.13

BY JONATHAN HILLMAN Would you ask an ophthalmologist to remove your gall bladder? Would you pay a traffic cop for legal advice? Probably not — unless you happen to be that dashing, danger-seeking Dos Equis guy. Yet when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, Americans seem content accepting counsel from dubious sources. Who can blame […]

Is It Becoming Harder to Vote? A Closer Look at Voting Rights In the South Over 50 Years

10.10.13

BY SARAH ALLIN The nation’s political system was designed as a counterweight to economic inequality, but what happens when inequality enters the democratic sphere that we perceived to be immune? Alex Keyssar, professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, posed this question last week during the taping of WBUR’s On Point. […]

Who is Medicaid Missing? What I learned in “Introduction to U.S. Health Care Policy” shocked me

10.9.13

BY KARLY SCHLEDWITZ With a historic overhaul of our health care system underway, I felt like a good public policy student should understand the basics of American health policy. Dutifully, I enrolled in “Introduction to U.S. Health Policy,” a semester-long course co-taught by Sheila Burke and Richard Frank. I knew there would be new vocabulary […]

Will the Supreme Court Abolish Common Sense Limits on Campaign Spending?

10.8.13

BY PATRICK KIBBE Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for a case that could be worse for the American public than Citizens United v. FEC, and unleash countless millions of special interest dollars into political campaigns. In this case ­– McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee v. FEC – Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama […]

Mind the Gap: Connecting the Movement to the Moderates in India and the United States

04.1.12

BY ABIGAIL BELLOWS As pro-democracy revolutions swept the Arab world last year, citizens in the world’s two largest democracies also rose up. In India, a massive anticorruption movement spearheaded by activist Anna Hazare started in April 2011 and boomed in August. In the United States, Occupy Wall Street and its sister movements sprung up in […]

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