In “Living With Guns” Craig R. Whitney, a former correspondent and editor for The New York Times, writes that he is motivated by the belief that “Americans on both sides of the debate about guns can and must find common ground.” He hopes to defuse the prevailing “hysteria” by establishing that both sides are correct in at least one fundamental assertion.
In the massacre in Sandy Hook Elementary School of Newtown, Connecticut, a 20-year-old man killed 20 young children and six adults before turning one of his guns on himself. Earlier he had shot his mother at the home that they shared. This event is the latest and most horrific mass murder in the United States during 2012, which has been a very bad year in that respect. Is it possible to make sense of these events? Is it possible to do anything about them?
With Friday's defiant statement, the National Rifle Association massed its troops along familiar fronts in the culture war -- and even opened some new battle lines. But it also squandered an opportunity to participate in reasonable dialogue with an America that has begun losing its appetite for political extremism.
After the massacre of 20 Connecticut schoolchildren and six women who died trying to save them, plans are afoot for a parents' protest for stricter gun laws. More than a decade ago, we had such an event — the Million Mom March — and the lessons are instructive.
Americans are now confronted with two radically different visions of public education. Which vision ultimately prevails will go a long way toward determining the quality of the education available to future generations of children.
If Americans judged the quality of hospital care the way Newsweek judges high schools, we would soon be inundated with “charter hospitals” that only treat healthy patients.
Three Sanford undergraduate students have been selected to take part in the Duke Global Health Institute's student research training program next summer. Fourteen other students will also be developing and carrying out their own projects in the program.
The "fiscal cliff" is a rhetorical device designed to hijack the inauguration of new federal programs that would address our nation's mass unemployment crisis. It distracts us from alternatives to reducing the federal budget deficit by other means than massive federal spending cuts.
When we talk about strengthening health care systems in developing countries, we often mean building hospitals, hiring more staff or stocking up on medications. But one topic has been noticeably missing: the quality of doctors and nurses.
As another college football season winds down, there is nearly as much talk of conference realignment and television packages as there is of wins and losses. The Big Ten, already earning more than $240 million a year from its own TV network, last week added two more media markets by inviting Maryland and Rutgers to join the conference.
Two mid-career officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation began classes this fall as the first students in the new Counterterrorism and National Security Fellows Program at the Sanford School. The program is designed to give mid-career military and national security officials a deeper understanding of the policy-making process, broaden their communication and problem-solving skills and deepen their understanding of other cultures.
A new program brings together Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the Indian Institute of Management in Udaipur, India (IIMU), in a collaborative research and educational effort that aims to help transform the lives of some of the poorest people in the world.
Early life experiences shape the academic paths of many professors, but few find their research as directly connected to their roots as Jay A. Pearson, assistant professor at the Sanford School. Disparities across cultural groups and consequences of ethnic identity formation are not only the focus of Pearson’s research; he has experienced them firsthand.
New Professor Uses Cell Phones to Gather Data on Teen Stressors
With her palpable enthusiasm and warm smile, Candice Odgers, one of the Sanford School’s newest faculty members, gives you the sense right away that she is accessible. So it’s not surprising to learn that collaboration and innovation are two key aspects of her research. Odgers came from UC, Irvine, to Duke this summer as an associate professor of public policy at Sanford, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, and associate director of the Center for Child and Family Policy.
AT a time when territorial disputes over uninhabited outcrops in the East China Sea have led to smashed cars and skulls in China, a similar, if less dramatic, dispute over two remote rocks in the Gulf of Maine smolders between the United States and Canada.
The initial response to Hurricane Sandy has, necessarily, focused on immediate needs, such as restoring power, providing shelter and trucking in fuel to the area. However, after the most pressing problems are resolved and communities begin the long task of rebuilding, public health officials should make it a priority to assist some of the most vulnerable members of these communities — pregnant women and their unborn babies.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter will discuss national security issues at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy on Thursday, Nov. 29.
The 2012 presidential election was the year for Twitter and data mining, which both changed the way candidates ran campaigns and how the campaigns were covered in the media.
In his first press conference since being re-elected, President Barack Obama acknowledged he'll focus on climate change in his second term. "I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior, and carbon emissions," Obama said at a televised news conference on Wednesday. "And as a consequence, I think we've got an obligation to future generations to do something about it."
A panel of national political journalists from broadcast, print and online media will gather on Saturday, Nov. 17, at the Sanford School of Public Policy to evaluate media coverage of the 2012 elections.
Ambassador James A. Joseph received the Distinguished Leadership Award at the 2012 International Leadership Association (ILA) conference in October. The ILA is the global network for practitioners, scholars and educators who practice, study and teach leadership.
Andrei Santalo PPS'13 spoke with Sanford Communications Office Assistant Melissa Yeo PPS '13 about his experiences at Duke and as a public policy major. Santalo is President of the Public Policy Majors Union and an ex-officio member of the Sanford Board of Visitors.
As the election nears, citizens agree that our highest priority is improving the economy. We must be pro-business and pro-economic growth. And we must look for real economic development, not a quick fix.Toward that end, candidates and voters, we ask that you heed the advice of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than 3 million businesses: invest in early childhood education for every child.
The Sanford School has appointed six faculty to new positions this academic year. Two are new to Duke University, Candice Odgers and Jay A. Pearson and four have new positions with the school, Kip Frey, Pope "Mac" McCorkle, Timothy Profeta and Elizabeth Richardson Vigdor.
In this presidential campaign season, “Our biggest national security threat is the status of our children,” Marian Wright Edelman said on Thursday. With 16.4 million poor children, the U.S. child poverty rate is the highest in the developed world.
A Bangladeshi student apparently “inspired by al-Qa’ida,” was arrested last week by the FBI for planning to set off a bomb at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “It is disturbing, but not surprising, that there continues to be a supply of these radicalized individuals around the world who have a strong desire to kill Americans,” said Duke University Associate Professor of the Practice of Public Policy David Schanzer.
The final debate of the 2012 campaign season presented a sharp contrast between one man who seemed comfortable in the role of commander-in-chief and another man who seemed unsure of his political fortunes and desperate to tear down his opponent. Such a contrast often appears when a presidential race features an incumbent and a challenger.
Monday’s foreign policy debate made clear that no single international issue is dominating the campaign. Rather, voters are formulating an overall sense of the respective abilities of President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney as effective statesmen amid the threats and opportunities of the 21st century.
Millions of U.S. citizens are too poor to buy health insurance but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. And this “not poor enough” problem varies, state by state, depending on the generosity of local governments. In some states, a person’s income can sit below the poverty level, and that person still won’t qualify for Medicaid.
In the 1960s, when my family drove by all those textile mills on Interstate 85 on our way to visit grandparents in Georgia, I couldn’t imagine that our rivers wouldn’t always run brown. I couldn’t picture paddling my canoe on the Neuse River below Raleigh’s wastewater discharge.
But a visionary law and effective partnerships between federal, state and local governments have achieved more than I would have thought possible when I was a boy.
Elections are supposed to give us choices. We can reward incumbents or we can throw the bums out. We can choose Republicans or Democrats. We can choose conservative policies or progressive ones.
Marian Wright Edelman, president and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, will discuss the effects of poverty on children and possible policy solutions at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy on Thursday, Oct. 25.
Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the PBS documentary program FRONTLINE are continuing their innovative collaboration with a new project that brings to light fresh perspectives on this year’s presidential candidates.
Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and former chair of the Democratic National Committee, will square off in a foreign policy debate with veteran Republican adviser Karl Rove at Duke University’s Page Auditorium Oct. 22.
Dean replaces Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser of Obama’s since his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, who is unable to attend.
Carolina was the only college to which I applied while a student at Goldsboro High – UNC-Chapel Hill was my dream school.
When I arrived, I was interested mostly in not living with my parents, enjoying newfound freedoms and pretty girls. Four years later, I was passionate about health policy and on my way to graduate school (also at UNC) and a career as a professor.
“The Pentagon changed fundamentally when we became a nation at war,” said former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy Thursday night during a discussion at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
The recent uproar over purported widespread cheating in a Harvard government course raises a number of perennial issues—declining moral standards, increasing competition for grades, colleges’ often ambivalent responses—and an important new one.
Michele Flournoy, the former under secretary of defense for policy, will speak at the Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy at 6:15 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27.
The CNN program "Global Public Square" asked a group of historians and commentators for their take on the most successful and least successful U.S. presidents, from a foreign policy point of view. In this article, Sanford Professor Bruce Jentleson discussed his choices for the worst: George W. Bush and James Polk.
The CNN program "Global Public Square" asked a group of historians and commentators for their take on the most successful and least successful U.S. presidents, from a foreign policy point of view. Sanford Professor Bruce Jentleson discussed his choices, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and second choice Thomas Jefferson.
The killings of four U.S. diplomats in Libya Tuesday exposed a stark truth that many Americans either don't realize or won't believe — diplomacy has gotten dangerous.
The U.S.-China relationship is between the two biggest actors on the world stage today, “a marriage where divorce is not an option,” Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Monday night during a talk in Page Auditorium at Duke University.
North Carolina matters in this presidential election. The two major-party candidates frequently jet in and out of our state to give speeches, and it is no coincidence that the Democrats selected Charlotte to host their convention this week.
Doctors who participated in Duke University’s innovative “Documenting Medicine” program will present and discuss their work on Tuesday, Sept. 11, at the Sanford School of Public Policy. The 5:30 p.m. presentation in Room 153 of Rubenstein Hall is free and open to the public.
Two professor who teach at the Sanford School present very different views about the foreign policy aspects of the 2012 presidential election and of the candidates in essays published by Foreign Policy magazine.
Former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., diplomat, businessman and twice-elected Republican governor of Utah, will deliver a two-part talk at Duke University this fall.
This Sunday, Aug. 26, Women’s Equality Day, marks the date in 1920 when women in the United States won the right to vote after nearly a century of political organizing.
Not altogether surprising words to spill out of a college student’s mouth. But this particular student was not talking about sex. She was discussing the U.S. health-care system – more specifically what she thought it would take for our two political parties to come together to find a reasonable way to control our nation’s health-care costs.
America has a math problem. We've had a math problem for at least fifty years - since the Soviets launched Sputnik, if not before. Our high school students have trouble competing with those raised in considerably poorer nations, and we aren't producing enough talented scientists and engineers to ensure our nation a leadership position in the twenty-first century knowledge economy.
While the policy specifics -- and lack thereof -- in Mitt Romney's VFW speech have gotten most of the attention, it's the underlying thematics aimed at the broader electorate that were the main political play.
Noah Pickus has been reappointed to a second five-year term as the Nannerl O. Keohane Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics (KIE) at Duke, Provost Peter Lange announced Tuesday.
Last summer, I was honored to be invited to an Iftar dinner -- the meal to break the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan -- hosted by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. The guests consisted of many high ranking government officials, including a large number of Muslim government employees.
If you thought donuts were bad for your health, consider donut holes. Specifically, the donut hole sitting smack in the middle of Medicare Part D, the program helping senior citizens pay for their medications.
Last week, a panel of university presidents dealt with one of college sports’ festering problems by approving a four-team playoff for football. For years, critics have been calling for this kind of playoff, which is so popular in pro sports and the NCAA’s own March Madness.
Paul M. Gross The Energy Initiative is building on Duke’s existing strengths in teaching, research and outreach. Undergraduates can earn a Certificate in Energy and the Environment. The environment and business schools offer master’s degree programs with a focus in energy, and a Sanford program is under consideration. Duke also offers the first PhD program in the world jointly coordinated by a school of the environment and a school of public policy.
In the spring of 2003,Hal Brands watched the first accounts of the Iraq War trickle in from the battlefield as reporters embedded with U.S. military divisions recorded the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.Now Brands, along with a team of other researchers, has helped to make thousands of internal Iraqi documents and transcripts captured by coalition forces during the ground invasion available to scholars.
Why do some countries invite election monitoring organizations, when candidates clearly intend to cheat? Are foreign election monitors accurate and objective? Most important, do they improve the quality of elections?
June 18 marks the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the War of 1812, a conflict that may well be the last time most Americans thought seriously about Canada.
Sarah Cohen, founding director of The Reporters’ Lab at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, will leave Duke in July to join the computer assisted reporting team at The New York Times.
The health of a caregiver is the most important predictor of orphan health, according to a new Duke University study that spans five less-wealthy nations in Africa and Asia.
Alcohol abuse is a multifaceted problem that requires a diverse portfolio of programs and policies. Adolescent drinking, alcoholism, drunken driving, alcohol-enabled domestic violence and child neglect, crime and public drunkenness all elicit distinct, tailored policy responses.
Just four years ago, only two people in the world had their genome sequenced: James D. Watson (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) and J. Craig Venter (former President of the firm that mounted a private-sector rival to the Human Genome Project). There are now many thousands of such people.
Sweeping changes in the Middle East, such as the reduction of terrorism, the end of the Iraq war and the Arab Spring, call for a new U.S. strategy for the region, argues Sanford Professor Bruce Jentlesonin a newly released report. The report, Strategic Adaptation: Toward a New U.S. Strategy in the Middle East by Jentleson, Andrew M. Exum, Melissa G. Dalton and J. Dana Stuster, outlines a framework for new policy approaches.
The World Health Organization's Director-General recently warned of the growing challenge of antibiotic resistance in the starkest terms: "A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill."
New York City's plan to prohibit the sale of large, sugary soft drinks is a brave and provocative policy, one that promotes public health at minimal cost to New York City residents.
Before long the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the health care reform law, a decision that will have tremendous policy ramifications and could reshape the presidential election.
The fact that North Carolina’s unemployment rate seems to be moving in the right direction is good news, with the current three-month average rate lower than it has been in some time.
Is there solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer? In 2006, 77 percent of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center answered “yes” to that question. By 2009 the percentage had dropped to 57, a huge shift in public opinion. The shift occurred among all political affiliations, but was especially dramatic among Republicans, from 62 to 35 percent.
In graduation ceremonies on Saturday the Sanford School of Public Policy congratulated 277 new alumni, including the school’s first PhD graduate. Among the class of 2012 were 165 undergraduates, 63 Master of Public Policy (MPP) graduates and 48 Master of International Development Policy (MIDP) graduates from 23 countries.
If you saw the Duke Chapel lit up in blue on World Diabetes Day or thousands of Cameron Crazies wearing red ribbons at the Duke-Michigan State game on World Aids Day last winter, you saw the work of Braveen Ragunanthan PPS ’12. These are only two of the projects that earned Ragunanthan the 2012 Terry Sanford Leadership Award.
When we started the Bi-Sectoralists series, our thesis was that the public and private sectors as well as the major political parties had to work better together for America to succeed. To that end, we laid out five guiding principles to help the United States revitalize domestically and compete globally.
“How can the government make us buy health insurance? What gives them that right?” Sitting on my left while our airplane raced above the clouds, Elizabeth was clearly upset about Obamacare.
The United States is not being overrun by illegal aliens, is not running out of oil or natural gas, and is not being sucked into the vortex of Mexican cartel violence along the border.
Lauren Hendricks PPS ’12 arrived at Duke from South Carolina eager to take advantage of opportunities to broaden her worldview. Outgoing president of the PPS Majors Union and ex-officio member of the Sanford Board of Visitors, Hendricks will head to Mongolia in August as a Fulbright scholar. She talked about her experiences with Communications Assistant Hyejin Sul.
A collaboration between Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the PBS documentary program FRONTLINE will bring to the public full-length interviews with federal officials and industry leaders involved in the U.S. financial crisis.
Senior economics and public policy student David Deng spent this past fall semester visiting Durham homes and conducting an in-depth research project to gauge access to private social safety net services.
Nondemocratic governments pose a greater threat to sustainable peace than nuclear weapons, according to Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, who spoke Monday at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.
"Three great shocks" are shaking up the assumptions of the international system, affecting the ability of the United States to impress its vision upon the system, said former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Tuesday night in Page Auditorium.
Editor’s note: Attend an information session on Sept. 11, 2012, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., in Rhodes Conference Room, Sanford Building. Lunch will be served. Applications for the Duke in DC-Public Policy program are due Oct. 1, 2012.Apply online.
Next spring, about a dozen Duke undergraduates will head to the nation’s capital for a new Sanford School program that will combine classroom learning with real-world education and interactions with practicing policymakers.
A veteran environmental reporter, Mark Hertsgaard has covered climate change for outlets ranging from The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Time for over 20 years, will speak at Duke University’s Sanford Commons at 12 noon on Friday, April 13.
Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Iranian human rights activist, with give the Crown Lecture in Ethics at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. The event will be in the Fleishman Commons at 5:30 pm on April 16, 2012.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will speak in Duke University's Page Auditorium on Tuesday, April 10. Rice will deliver the Ambassador Dave and Kay Phillips Family International Lecture at 4:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required.
In the spring of 2007, lawyer and businessman Michael Sorrell MPP'90/JD’94 was named interim president of Paul Quinn College, a historically black college (HBCU) in Dallas on the verge of collapse. It had mounting debts, crumbling buildings, falling enrollment and was threatened with losing accreditation.
According to the current storyline regarding this fall’s presidential election, Barack Obama has jumped out of the frying pan of a weak economy into the fire of skyrocketing gas prices, a spike driven largely by tensions in the Persian Gulf.
The cornerstone of the Obama administration's strategy for addressing homegrown terrorism is the development of trusted relationships between law enforcement and communities targeted by al Qaeda and other radical groups. Since the policy was rolled out last summer, a series of episodes has undercut this effort.
Tea Party members are mostly over 50, fearful of the demographic changes occurring in America and resentful of government benefits received by people they see as undeserving, according to authors of a new book on the influential political movement.
Television producer Rome Hartman calls on viewers to reach beyond their comfort zone: "Does retweeting it or clicking on the 'Like' button constitute meaningful action?"
Refugees and asylum seekers are the focus of a photo exhibition and panel discussion at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.On Wednesday, March 21, a panel discussion on refugee issues will take place from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in Room 153 of Sanford’s Rubenstein Hall.
A recently released report has spawned new outrage over an old problem: Black and Hispanic students are more likely to be suspended from school than white students.
Two experts in health care economics will debate ways to control health care costs at a March 14 event at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.
Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, authors of “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” will discuss the impact and future of the movement at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy on March 15, at 4:30 p.m.
Voting behavior cannot be predicted by one or two genes as previous researchers have claimed, according to Evan Charney,a Duke University professor of public policy and political science.
As Alberta’s Premier makes her rounds in the United States this week to sell the oil sands, she might want to capitalize on the current American preoccupation with gasoline prices, which have soared more than 20 percent in parts of the country since mid-December.
Grace Zhou is a junior public policy major and Global Health Certificate student from Cleveland, Ohio. In fall of 2010, Grace and a fellow Duke student, Alexandra MacLeish, founded an organization that works in Durham to inspire positive social behaviors through play.
Tony Brown, a professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, has been honored for his course “Social Entrepreneurship in Action,” which has been the launching pad for a number of ongoing on-campus and off-campus organizations over the last 12 years.
Andrew S. Rosen, chairman and CEO of Kaplan Inc., and Jennifer Haygood, CFO for the N.C. Community College System, will discuss the future of higher education in a panel discussion at noon on Friday, Feb. 24, at Duke University.
Today, Feb. 2, also known as Groundhog Day, marks a more momentous event in North American history that most Americans can’t remember, and most Mexicans can’t forget.
Change — especially the slow, steady kind — can be a hard thing to notice. When we see the same people and places every single day, we often don’t register how they grow and evolve.
But when we stop to reflect — digging out an old photo album to size up the effect of time on a hairline or a house — the differences can be profound.
New York, NY— A report released today by The Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership focuses on the pervasive decline in segregation that occurred during the first decade of the twenty-first century. “The End of the Segregated Century: Racial Separation in America’s Neighborhood, 1890-2010” was co-authored by MI senior fellow and Harvard Professor of Economics Edward Glaeser and MI adjunct fellow and Duke University Professor of Public Policy Jacob Vigdor.
We acknowledged when we began our Bi-Sectoralists column that it would be naïve to suggest that politicians and investors should never think short-term. But it's even more unrealistic to accept pervasive short-termism as a given when it is so antithetical to being strategic.
Facts, figures and wise cracks were tossed around the stage in equal measure Wednesday night, but Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson made it clear the federal budget and congressional gridlock are no laughing matters.
Ambassador James A. Joseph received the Distinguished Leadership Award at the 2012 International Leadership Association (ILA) conference in October. The ILA is the global network for practitioners, scholars and educators who practice, study and teach leadership. 