The Latest from the New America Foundation

The Key to College Success: Summer

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:33:47 +0000

May 24, 2013

Annie Murphy Paul

May 24, 2013

URL:

http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/24/the-summer-before-college-is-critical-to-success/

Bulgakov's Ghost

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:32:13 +0000

May 24, 2013

Emily Parker

May 24, 2013

URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/books/review/bulgakovs-ghost.html?pagewanted=all

Five Reasons Drones Are Here to Stay

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:29:52 +0000

May 23, 2013

Romesh Ratnesar

May 23, 2013

URL:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-23/five-reasons-why-drones-are-here-to-stay

The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:42:48 +0000

May 22, 2013

Liza Mundy

May 22, 2013

URL:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/06/the-gay-guide-to-wedded-bliss/309317/

Sanctions Alone Won’t Stop Iran’s Nuclear Push

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:40:54 +0000

May 23, 2013

Tara Maller

May 23, 2013

URL:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-22/sanctions-alone-won-t-stop-iran-s-nuclear-push.html

An Assets Agenda for the States

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:27:22 +0000

Policy Ideas and Recent Developments

May 23, 2013

Karen Harris, Illinois Asset Building Group

Click here to download "An Assets Agenda for the States"

Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and a “hard work” ethic are the hallmarks of America’s definition of success. To achieve success and the economic mobility of the American Dream, however, requires not only the ability to generate income, but also the ability to translate such income into assets. While income may measure whether or not a person has enough to get by, assets measure whether or not a person has enough to get ahead.

The U.S. government has long recognized the distinction between these two concepts. In fact, throughout its history the federal government has designed and implemented policies and programs to help families build assets. In fiscal year 2013, the federal government will spend, through both direct outlays and tax deductions and credits, nearly $548 billion on asset building policies. Unfortunately these policies are terribly skewed, often subsidizing the wealthiest at the expense of the nation’s poor.

A prime example is the tax code, which rewards wealth and exacerbates wealth inequality. A typical middle-class household making $50,000 a year receives less than $500 in benefits from the most expansive of these federal policies annually and families making $100,000 get about $2,000. By contrast, taxpayers bringing in more than $1 million enjoy $95,820 in annual support through mortgage and property tax deductions and investment tax breaks.

At the same time, the racial wealth gap has also grown significantly. The median wealth of a white family in 2009 was 20 times greater than that of the average black family, and 18 times greater than the average Hispanic family. The average white family had $113,149 in net worth, compared to $6,325 for Hispanics and $5,677 for blacks. This is the largest gap since the government began collecting this data a quarter of a century ago, and twice what it was before the start of the Great Recession. While financial assets, such as stocks, held largely by wealthier Americans, have made a roaring comeback, the value of homes, the main source of wealth for average Americans and most Hispanics and blacks, has remained significantly depressed.

Given current wealth disparities, we must focus on creating tools that working families can use to build financial stability. Despite state budget crises, opportunities exist on the state level to create asset building policies and programs. This paper endeavors to examine current state asset building efforts with an eye toward examining those policies and priorities that are emerging as trends in this challenging economic environment.

Click here to read "An Assets Agenda for the States."

Click here to view the Appendix.

Attachments:

An Assets Agenda for the States (25 pp.)

An Assets Agenda for the States--Appendix (56 pp.)

9 Myths about Drones and Guantanamo

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:50:23 +0000

May 22, 2013

Peter Bergen

Jennifer Rowland

May 22, 2013

URL:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/opinion/bergen-nine-myths-drones-gitmo/index.html?iref=allsearch

Editing (Out) the Occupation

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:55:55 +0000

In Collaboration with B'Tselem

Event Time and Date:

Thursday, May 30, 2013 - 9:00am - 10:00am

Event Venue:

New America DC

Location:

New America Foundation

1899 L Street NW Suite 400

Washington, DC 20036

See map: Google Maps

After nearly forty-six years of military occupation, two intifadas, a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and a stalled political process, the Israeli public seems to have lost whatever interest it had in the Palestinian issue. Public attention has turned inwards -- looking at economic and social concerns. However a critical examination of these concerns, by necessity, requires an equally critical examination of the ongoing occupation.

New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force will host visiting Israeli journalists Uri Misgav and Linoy Bar-Geffen on May 30 for a conversation examining why the occupation is edited out of mainstream Israeli media and exploring how mainstream and alternative media can bring the occupation more forcefully into the Israeli national conversation.

Participants List:

Linoy Bar-Geffen
Israeli Journalist
Co-host, “Visitor's Club," Israel’s Channel 2
Editor, "Hayarkon 70," an online alternative news program

Uri Misgav
Israeli Writer and Commentator
Blogger, “Misgav for the People,” Ha’aretz

Moderator
Sarah Wildman
American Journalist
Visiting Scholar, International Reporting Project at John Hopkins SAIS
Foreign Policy Correspondent, PoliticsDaily.com

Calendar

RELEASE: Upgraded Database of CIA Drone Strikes in Pakistan

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:28:51 +0000

Site Shows Year-by-Year Breakdown of Strike Locations, Casualty Counts, and Targets

May 21, 2013

Washington, DC — The New America Foundation’s National Security Studies Program announced today its newly upgraded database of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. The site includes an interactive map that plots the approximate locations of all 355 strikes carried out since 2004 in Pakistan’s tribal regions.

The database now includes a breakdown of the organizations targeted under President George W. Bush compared with those targeted under President Barack Obama. Where the affiliation of those targeted can be ascertained, al-Qaeda militants were the target for 37.5 percent of drone strikes during the Bush administration, while under President Obama al-Qaeda militants have been targeted in just over 9 percent of strikes.

Other key points within the database, which is based on reliable news reports, include:

• Only 2 percent of those killed in all of the drone strikes were reported to be known militant leaders.
• Under President Bush, 40 percent of those killed were reported to have been civilians or could not be identified. Under President Obama, that number has fallen to 16 percent.
• 2013 has seen no confirmed civilian casualties.
• The strikes are entirely confined to Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas — 71 percent took place in North Waziristan Agency.

New America’s National Security Studies Program intends for this database to be a critical source of information as U.S. officials and the international legal community continue to debate the legality, efficacy, and ethics of the CIA drone program.

To view the database, please click here.

For more information or to schedule an interview, contact Clara Hogan.

Peter Bergen

Jennifer Rowland

NEW REPORT: ‘Next Generation Universities’ Innovating in Face of Higher Education Crisis

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:44:55 +0000

New Report Highlights Six Institutions Adapting to Support Students

May 21, 2013

Washington, DC — As the nation struggles to find new ways to increase college access and completion rates while lowering costs, a handful of “Next Generation Universities” are embracing key strategies that make them models for national reform, according to a report released today by the New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program.

The report, “The Next Generation University,” comes at a time when too many public universities are failing to respond to the nation’s higher education crisis. Rather than expanding enrollment and focusing limited dollars on the neediest of students, many institutions are instead restricting enrollments and encouraging the use of student-aid dollars on merit awards. But, according to the report, some schools are breaking the mold by boldly restructuring operating costs and creating clear, accelerated pathways for students.

The report focuses on six public research universities: Arizona State University, University at Buffalo, University of California at Riverside, University of Central Florida, Georgia State University, and the University of Texas at Arlington. These universities are continuing their commitment to world class research while increasing enrollment and graduation rates, even as the investments from their states have declined.

“With the economy stuck in neutral, tuition prices and student loan debt skyrocketing, and parents and students increasingly questioning the value of a college degree, our public institutions urgently need a different approach to the challenge of educating an increasingly diverse mix of students at a reasonable cost,” said Jeff Selingo, one of the report’s authors.

The report includes case studies on each of the six universities, which were selected after an analysis of federal higher education data, site visits, and interviews. Based on similarities in their approaches to reform, the report’s recommendations include:

• Institutions must adjust to serve a growing and changing student population by increasing class size and providing personalized learning communities and technologies. Two- and four-year colleges must work together to ease access for transfer students.

• States should adopt performance-based funding. Performance-based funding can encourage universities to grow enrollment and serve more under-represented students when designed to consider degrees awarded, rather than enrollment or graduation rates.

• Nationally, we must embrace change and encourage innovation. The report recommends the creation of a demonstration program that challenges four-year public institutions to find innovative ways to increase access and completion while lowering costs.

These recommendations and lessons will be featured at a release event today at the New America Foundation from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m, which you can watch live here. The event includes presidents from some of the featured universities as well as higher education thought leaders.

In addition to the report, New America also released two issue briefs today: one on technology-enhanced education and another on state policy environments and a database featuring output, productivity, and efficiency data from public research universities.

To read the full report, please click here. To schedule an interview, please contact Clara Hogan.

The Next Generation University project was funded through a generous grant from Lumina Foundation.

Kevin Carey

Rachel Fishman

The Next Generation University

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:38:55 +0000

May 21, 2013

Kevin Carey

Rachel Fishman

Jeff Selingo, editor at large for The Chronicle of Higher Education; Hilary Pennington, director of the Generations Initiative; and Iris Palmer, senior associate of HCM Strategists

To read the full report, click here.

As the nation struggles to find new ways to increase college access and completion rates while lowering costs, a handful of "Next Generation Universities" are embracing key strategies that make them models for national reform. The report The Next Generation University comes at a time when too many public universities are failing to respond to the nation's higher education crisis. Rather than expanding enrollment and focusing limited dollars on the neediest of students, many institutions are instead restricting enrollments and encouraging the use of student-aid dollars on merit awards. But, according to the report, some schools are breaking the mold by boldly restructuring operating costs and creating clear, accelerated pathways for students.

The report focuses on six public research universities: Arizona State University, University at Buffalo, University of California at Riverside, University of Central Florida, Georgia State University, and the University of Texas at Arlington. These universities are continuing their commitment to world class research while increasing enrollment and graduation rates, even as the investments from their states have declined.

According to report's authors, "With the economy stuck in neutral, tuition prices and student loan debt skyrocketing, and parents and students increasingly questioning the value of a college degree, our public institutions urgently need a different approach to the challenge or educating an increasingly diverse mix of students at a reasonable cost."

The report includes case studies on each of the six universities, which were selected after an analysis of federal education data, site visits, and interviews. Based on similarities in their approaches to reform, the report's recommendations include:

At the Institutional Level

Increase size to ensure broad access, test new ideas from pedagogy to student services, and serve growing populations. Despite cuts in state funds, public universities still have vast resources at their disposal, including well-established brand names. Universities often say they cannot get bigger without some infusion of cash or by lessening quality and excellence. But many of our institutions have increased class size without an adverse impact on retention and completion rates. A university can be high quality and big at the same time. Next Generation Universities demonstrate that size and research ambitions, enrolling high-achieving students, or attracting star faculty are not mutually exclusive strategies pursued in isolation from each other. The large universities featured in this report have discovered ways of making their campuses feel small, with living-learning communities, personalized adaptive learning technology, or separate campuses for clusters of disciplines.

Create direct connections between two- and four-year colleges to ease access for transfer students. The nation needs more than just growth in the number of students enrolled in postsecondary education; it needs more students graduating from college with degrees. Next Generation Universities successfully move students to graduation by forging strong partnerships with local community colleges. The most productive of the agreements go well beyond the usual transfer articulation pacts common in many states and closely link the two institutions, such as the University of Central Florida and Valencia College, which share facilities allowing students to finish a bachelor's degree on the campus of a two-year college.

At the State Level

Guarantee a low net-price for low-income students. Low-income students are more likely to enroll full-time and complete college when net prices are a reasonable share of family income. Research shows that targeting financial aid to the neediest students has the largest impact on college attendance and completion. Thus, states and systems should focus on tuition moderation and encourage institutions to focus aid on the neediest and away from merit-based aid.

Adopt performance-based funding. To encourage research universities to grow enrollment and serve more underrepresented students, lawmakers should base appropriations on degrees awarded rather than enrollment or graduation rates. Enrollment and graduation rates can sometimes encourage institutions to enroll students without a chance of success or focus only on admitting top-ranked students they know will complete a degree. Funding that focuses on outcomes and reaching under-served populations can provide incentives to recruit transfer students, reduce time-to-degree, and graduate more low-income students.

Create transfer policies that encourage completion. Strong state policies encourage universities to admit large numbers of transfer students from community colleges and ensure that students are appropriately prepared for upper division work in their majors. Clearly articulated statewide general education requirements, common state-wide course numbers, and major prerequisites can smooth the path for transfer students.

Ensure students in the K-12 pipeline are prepared. States should commit their K-12 systems to better preparing students for success at research universities, making sure curriculum aligns with college-readiness. Meanwhile public research universities must also commit to admitting students deemed college-ready and not just the best and brightest in an effort to increase their prestige.

At the National Level

Develop Next Generation Leaders for Next Generation Universities. Higher education faces a potential leadership crisis in the decade ahead. The median age of the college president is 61, and with many expected to retire in the coming years, the pipeline to the presidency is running dry, especially at regional public colleges. As we can see from this report, innovative ideas for reforming higher education are being tested, and in many places delivered with measurable results. But much of that work remains unfamiliar to would-be leaders interested in the vibrancy of higher education, and as a result, detached from their conversations and strategy about the future. We need to create the professional development opportunities for the next generation of leaders to build the next generation of universities.

Acknowledge that external recognition remains important in higher education, and provide recognition for increasing access and student success. Universities often pursue policies that are not in the public interest because of the hope of receiving improved rankings, awards, or publicity, which in turn help attract more students, better faculty, and bigger donations. The Next Generation Universities should be rewarded, too. We are not encouraging a new set of rankings, but outside organizations and the media should publicly recognize these universities for the bold steps they have taken and what they have achieved.

Create a demonstration program that challenges four-year public higher education institutions to innovate to:

Increase access and degree production;
Improve the quality of learning through greater personalization of instruction and student support;
Decrease cost;
Dramatically increase enrollment and graduation of students who reflect the socioeconomic and racial/ethnic profiles of their region.

This could include a competitive grant program for up to 15 public four-year universities to innovate to create Next Generation Universities. These universities would commit to expanding enrollment and graduation rates while holding tuition stable or lower. Eligible universities would have already demonstrated their capacity to serve students well, and their willingness to step up to enroll and graduate more students. They would demonstrate:

Commitment from high-level organizational leadership to expanding access, particularly for underserved populations, even in times of state budget cuts;
Development of tuition and institutional aid policies that support the institutions' financial stability while increasing demand for accelerated, lower-cost models;
A record of improving student support, persistence, retention and completion, for students overall and for sub-populations;
Demonstrable restructuring and reallocation of expenditures to support enrollment and success of many more students.

The competitive grant program would make resources available to each of these institutions to support innovations such as:

Use of technology to increase personalization, advise and support students, reduce time-to-degree and instructional costs, and improve learning;
Articulated pathways with community colleges to increase educational attainment and regional economic vitality;
Continuous assessment of student learning and public reporting of outcomes, including collaboration in the development of a new set of metrics which more closely measure university cost/benefit effectiveness and student/faculty success;
Commitment to academic excellence, particularly applied academic research that seeks solutions to regional or global challenges; expansion of interdisciplinary approaches and structures; support for entrepreneurship; and
Proactive responsibility for building the economic, social and cultural vitality, health and well-being of their communities.

Desired outcomes would include:

Improve freshman persistence to 90 percent;
Enhance university graduation rate to 75-80 percent;
Increase the number of transfer students from community colleges to the university, and their persistence to bachelor's degree completion by 50 percent;
Eliminate attainment gaps by income and race.

These recommendation and lessons were featured an event held at the New America Foundation on May 21st, 2013. You can watch a recording of the event here.

Download the full report here.

In addition to the report, the authors of the report released two in-depth issue briefs:

In "Technology and the Next Generation University," New America's Rachel Fishman explores the barriers to technology-enhanced education and presents promising practices Next Generation Universities employ to overcome them.

In "Formation of the Next Generation University: Role of State and System Policy," HCM Strategists' Iris Palmer, Kristin Conklin, and Nate Johnson explore how transfer policy, financial aid, net price, performance funding and the K-12 pipeline affect Next Generation Universities within their state context. It makes recommendations for state and higher-education system policymakers on how to ensure public institutions are meeting the needs of the state.

HCM Strategists, in conjunction with the release of The Next Generation University developed a new interactive tool:

Next Generation Universities: Select Dimensions of Research University Output, Productivity and Efficiency 2006-2011

This dashboard, created by HCM Strategists and Postsecondary Analytics, includes a selection of measures of public research university performance through the great recession, showing how they have fared over time and in comparison to the sector as a whole. It helps illustrate the very different ways research universities have experienced and responded to the challenges of the last several years, and which institutions have been able to sustain or grow the number of students served in spite of the financial challenges they faced.

Please note that the dashboard is a large file (2.5 mb) and may take up to a minute to load. It requires Adobe Flash, which is already installed in most browsers.

Also released at the event were two conference papers from the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University: 1) More Students, More Degrees, More Dollars: How Universities Can Close Budget Gaps while Benefiting Students; and 2) The High Price of Excess Credits: How New Approaches Could Help Students and Schools.

The Next Generation University project was funded by a generous grant from Lumina Foundation.

Building a Bridge to a Tri-Polar World Economy: An American Growth Strategy

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:34:57 +0000

May 21, 2013

Jay Pelosky, J2Z Advisory

Click here to download the full paper as a PDF.

[Download the full paper here].

Five years into the global financial crisis, the prospects for economic growth are again deteriorating. The IMF has revised downward its 2013 forecast for world economic growth to 3.3 percent, confirming that a worldwide economic growth compression is still at work. U.S. GDP growth in the first quarter of 2013 came in at 2.5 percent, well below estimates, and is expected to weaken further as cuts in government spending and payroll tax hikes together with headwinds from Europe and China continue to act as a drag on the U.S. economy. The Euro-zone remains in recession, as economic weakness has spread from the southern Euro-zone economies to Germany and other core economies. Meanwhile, Euro-zone unemployment has risen to a record 12.1 percent, with jobless rates in Spain and Greece at depression levels of more than 25 percent. China’s growth rate has compressed from its double-digit average of the past several decades to less than 8 percent. And Asia and emerging markets more broadly face slower growth in the coming years as they attempt to move from investment-led to domestic consumption-led growth.

More worrying, there are signs that the foundations of the world economy – at least as we have known it over the past 20 years – are eroding. Economic growth models lie broken across developed and emerging markets alike. Globalization is in retreat as financial institutions retrench and re-nationalize. Debt levels in most of the advanced economies are approaching politically, if not economically, unsustainable levels, forcing policy makers to rely almost exclusively on Central Bank monetary measures that carry excess liquidity risks and have diminishing returns. As growth compresses and unemployment rises, the political temptation to enact policies that protect rather than expand has increased. Early signs of a creeping beggar-thy-neighbor tendency are evident in world currency markets, as one economy after another has sought to weaken its currency to gain competitive advantage and increase net exports. If allowed to continue, the resort to beggar-thy-neighbor measures could bring an end to the world’s second great try at globalization.

Of all the major developed economies, the U.S. economy is in the best position to break out of this five-year growth compression and to fix its broken economic growth model. Over the past few years, it has developed several new potential drivers of economic growth powered by Middle America – a shale oil and gas revolution that could make the United States a surplus energy producer, a manufacturing renaissance made possible by lower energy and labor costs and the adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques, and new technological advancements in cloud computing and biotechnology. Together, these developments could make the U.S. economy less dependent on debt-financed consumption and increase its growth potential.

But this transition to a more investment- and production-led economic model with strong economic growth is being held back by the unfavorable world economic conditions in Europe and Asia and by a premature move toward fiscal consolidation at home. The latter has been prompted in part by a worry that global capital markets will at some point turn against U.S treasuries.

For U.S. policymakers concerned with international economic policy, these developments pose a dual challenge: how to mix international concerns with domestic policy to put the U.S. economy on a new robust economic growth path of 3 to 4 percent a year; and how to stabilize globalization and point it in a more sustainable direction. Five to eight years out, there is the promise that a rising global middle class in emerging economies will help drive demand for U.S. goods and services and will usher in an era of more balanced world economic growth. The challenge is how to get from here to there, given the concurrent crises in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

In the late 1990s, following the Asian financial crisis, the United States was able to stabilize the world economic system by absorbing the surpluses of troubled Asian (and Brazilian) exporters. But today the world economy is much larger, the crisis much more widespread, and the U.S. economy much less able to act as the world’s consumer of last resort. Given the global nature of the growth compression, the ideal solution would be a coordinated world economic recovery with each major region committing itself to fiscal as well as monetary expansion and with the international lending agencies channeling resources into the most depressed debtor economies.

But Germany and other major economies have ruled out such an ambitious approach, opting instead for a program of fiscal retrenchment and structural reform in spite of growing evidence that this approach is not working and that an alternative is needed. The United States has more recently followed course with its own form of fiscal austerity created by a series of small fiscal deals that have raised taxes and cut government spending.

Faced with fiscal contraction at home, the Obama administration seems to be moving to a strategy of trying to offset the fiscal drag with external demand by talking up future free trade agreements with Europe and Asia. But such a strategy runs up against the realities of weak global demand and Asia and Europe’s own goal of exporting their way out of the current economic slowdown.

This paper explores the options for supporting a transition to investment- and production-led growth at home while averting beggar-thy-neighbor policies globally – creating a bridge to a more balanced global economy. It explains why the current mix of international policy is not working and why it is complicating the transition to a more balanced U.S. economic growth model. It then shows why the administration’s proposed strategy of pursuing new free trade initiatives with Europe in the Atlantic and with Japan and the Southeast Asian economies in the Pacific will fall short of the dual goal of facilitating the transition to a new U.S. growth path and preventing the further collapse of globalization. Finally, it lays out a road map for an alternative growth strategy that would combine a bold public and human capital investment program at home with an international strategy that would deepen integration with our trading partners in the Americas and in so doing provide a model for other major economies to proceed with their own regional economic deepening. This would set the stage for globalization’s next iteration: a more balanced tri-polar world economy.

Click here to read "Building a Bridge to a Tri-Polar World Economy: An American Growth Strategy" by Jay Pelosky.

Attachments:

Building a Bridge to a Tri-Polar World Economy: An American Growth Strategy (22 pp.)

New America NYC: Dirty Wars: A Social Cinema Screening

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:18:49 +0000

Event Time and Date:

Thursday, June 6, 2013 - 6:30pm - 8:30pm

Event Venue:

New America NYC

Location:

The CORE: Club

66 East 55th Street

New York, NY 10022

See map: Google Maps

This event has reached capacity and we are no longer accepting RSVPs.

Please note that this event will be held at the CORE: club, not our SoHo space.

Across the globe, the powerful and clandestine Joint Special Operations Command takes orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to capture or kill enemies of the state. The elite and nameless members of this group will never appear before Congress, and their actions have remained largely unknown to the public.

In the groundbreaking documentary Dirty Wars, investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill takes viewers into the heart of our nation’s secret wars, revealing the truth about the boundless global violence our government struggles to keep concealed. Directed by Richard Rowley and renowned for its stunning cinematography, the film exposes one of the most significant yet underreported stories of our time.

Please join New America NYC at the Core Club for a screening of the award-winning film Dirty Wars. Plan to stay afterward for a conversation with Jeremy Scahill and Nicholas Schmidle about some of the most important questions in foreign policy and human rights today.

Participants List:

Jeremy Scahill
Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow, The Nation Institute
Author, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield

Nicholas Schmidle
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Author, To Live or To Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years Inside Pakistan

Calendar

Education Watch Podcast: The Hell of (and Hope for) American Daycare

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:34:04 +0000

Last week, at an event based on the New Republic article, The Hell of American Daycare, Reid Cramer, director of New America’s Asset Building Program, further explored the dismal state of American child care and started a conversation about potential strategies to improve our early education system more broadly. In this podcast hosted by Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at New America Foundation, Guernsey continues the conversation with fellow panelists Jonathan Cohen and Brigid Schulte. Cohen and Schulte discuss their motivations for delving into this subject, as well as their thoughts on the prospect of change.

A special thanks to the Asset Building Program for their work organizing and coordinating the event.

Appeasing the Taleban Would Be a Fatal Error

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:08:44 +0000

May 13, 2013

Anatol Lieven

May 13, 2013

URL:

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article3763033.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2013_05_12

Bring Up the Bodies

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:20:33 +0000

May 6, 2013

Nicholas Schmidle

May 6, 2013

URL:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/06/130506fa_fact_schmidle

Three Trials for Murder

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:16:35 +0000

November 11, 2011

Nicholas Schmidle

November 11, 2011

URL:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_schmidle

On the Trail of an Intercontinental Killer

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:14:56 +0000

January 5, 2013

Nicholas Schmidle

January 5, 2013

URL:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/hunt-for-a-serial-killer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

HHS Announces First Nationwide Safety Standards for Child Care

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:29:05 +0000

May 16, 2013

Brigid Schulte

May 16, 2013

URL:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/hhs-announces-first-ever-federal-health-and-safety-standards-for-child-care/2013/05/16/47ac12de-be37-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html

The De-Gendering of Divorce: Wives Pay Ex-Husbands Alimony Too

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:31:32 +0000

May 16, 2013

Liza Mundy

May 16, 2013

URL:

http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/16/the-de-gendering-of-divorce-wives-pay-ex-husbands-alimony-too/

Why American Colleges Are Becoming a Force for Inequality

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:27:20 +0000

May 16, 2013

Joshua Freedman

May 16, 2013

URL:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/why-american-colleges-are-becoming-a-force-for-inequality/275923/

What’s Next for Pakistan’s New Government?

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:23:40 +0000

Event Time and Date:

Thursday, May 23, 2013 - 12:15pm - 1:45pm

Event Venue:

New America DC

Location:

New America Foundation

1899 L Street NW Suite 400

Washington, DC 20036

See map: Google Maps

On May 11, Pakistanis turned out to the polls in record numbers to vote in a momentous election: the country’s first transition from one democratically elected government to another. The party of former two-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif quickly surged ahead on Election Day, easily winning a simple majority in parliament. But Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz face a range of thorny problems, from a vicious insurgency to a crippling energy shortage.

It remains to be seen what the next government's agenda will be, and how easy or difficult those goals will be to achieve given the strength of the government and the makeup of the opposition. Pakistanis and the international community alike will watch closely to see how Sharif's victory impacts security issues, including relations with the historically powerful military, and how a Sharif-led government will approach regional challenges, especially with regard to India and Afghanistan in light of the ongoing NATO drawdown.

The New America Foundation’s National Security Studies Program is pleased to invite a panel of experts to discuss these issues and others facing the incoming Pakistani government.

Follow @afpakchannel to join the conversation online.

Participants List:

Shamila Chaudhary
Senior South Asia Fellow, National Security Studies Program, New America Foundation

Andrew Wilder

Director, Afghanistan and Pakistan Programs, United States Institute of Peace

Malik Siraj Akbar

Editor-in-Chief, The Baloch Hal

Contributing Writer, Huffington Post

Dr. Simbal Khan

Pakistan Scholar, Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Moderator

Peter Bergen

Director, National Security Studies Program, New America Foundation

Calendar

HHS Announces First Ever Federal Health and Safety Standards for Child Care

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:38:53 +0000

May 16, 2013

Brigid Schulte

May 16, 2013

URL:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/hhs-announces-first-ever-federal-health-and-safety-standards-for-child-care/2013/05/16/47ac12de-be37-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html

Genocide in Our Hemisphere

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:57:24 +0000

Justice and Reconciliation in Guatemala Beyond the Conviction of General Ríos Montt

Event Time and Date:

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 - 2:00pm - 5:00pm

Event Venue:

New America DC

Location:

New America Foundation

1899 L Street NW Suite 400

Washington, DC 20036

See map: Google Maps

On May 10, 2013, Guatemala made history when General Efraín Ríos Montt became the first former head of state to be tried and convicted for genocide in the courts of his own country.

The trial revisited one of the most brutal cases of government repression in the Western Hemisphere—a 34-year civil conflict forged by the Cold War in which military-dominated regimes engaged in the systematic killing, rape, torture, and abuse of its own people. By the war’s end in 1996, an estimated 200,000 people had been killed, and 1.5 million had been displaced.

On May 20, 2013, Guatemala's Constitutional Court ruled in favor of challenges to the proceedings filed by Ríos Montt's attorneys. It is unclear whether the case will be re-tried or whether only certain aspects of the case will be heard again. What this will mean for the defendants, for Guatemala and for the word remains uncertain.

The conviction of Ríos Montt decades after he lead Guatemala during one of the bloodiest periods of its long civil war provides a critical opportunity to reckon with questions about the country’s often-overlooked genocide. What does the trial and conviction of Ríos Montt mean for the people of Guatemala? What lessons can be learned from this case about prosecuting other leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity? And what responsibility does the United States bear for policies that supported and enabled brutal regimes in Guatemala, in other Latin American nations and around the world?

This event is co-sponsored by the New America Foundation, Arizona State University’s School of Politics & Global Studies and Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, as well as CUNY/Lehman College’s Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies and the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews.

Agenda:

1:45 p.m. Registration and Coffee

2:00 p.m. Why Have We Heard About Pol Pot and Pinochet, but Not Ríos Montt?

Daniel Rothenberg
Professor of Practice, Lincoln Fellow for Ethics and International Human
Rights Law, Arizona State University

2:10 p.m. A Crime Against Us All: The Importance of Acknowledging Genocide

Aryeh Neier
President Emeritus, Open Society Foundations

2:35 p.m. The Ríos Montt Trial: What Led to the Historic Conviction?

Susie Kemp
International Human Rights Lawyer

Otto Argueta
Historian, Institute of Latin American Studies, German Institute of
Global and Area Studies

Edgar Alvarez

Lawyer for genocide survivors, Association for Justice and Reconciliation

Moderator
Julia Lieblich
Assistant Professor of Journalism, Loyola University Chicago

3:15 p.m. Using Data to Prosecute Genocide

Patrick Ball
Director, Human Rights Data Analysis Group

Marta Elena Casaus
Professor of History, Autonomous University, Madrid, Spain
Expert Witness at the Trial

3:40 p.m. Building Peace After Genocide

Benjamin Manuel Geronimo
Massacre Survivor
Representative, Association for Justice and Reconciliation

Roddy Brett
Lecturer, Centre of Peace and Conflict Studies, School of International
Relations, University of St. Andrews

Moderator
Xeni Jardin
Journalist, Boing Boing

4:20 p.m. Reckoning with the U.S. Role in the Guatemalan Tragedy

Victoria Sanford
Professor, CUNY/Lehman College, Director, Center for Human Rights and
Peace Studies

Kate Doyle
Senior Analyst of U.S. Policy in Latin America, National Security Archive

Aryeh Neier
President Emeritus, Open Society Foundations

Jose Carlos Marroquin
Journalist and Publisher, La Hora newspaper

Calendar

In D.C., Parents Miss Work, Lose Jobs Trying to Get Child-Care Subsidy

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:53:57 +0000

May 16, 2013

Brigid Schulte

May 16, 2013

URL:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/parents-miss-work-lose-jobs-trying-to-get-child-care-subsidy/2013/05/15/3031ac2c-ba59-11e2-b94c-b684dda07add_story.html