Reihan Salam on Rebuilding Urban Conservatism

New York City in the 1970s and 1980s was, to put it lightly, not a very safe or nice place to live. Drugs, crime, and public-sector mismanagement made it dangerous and unpleasant, and even the very wealthy were not entirely immune from the disorder. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the city rebounded in an incredible way, and a great deal of that civic revitalization found its roots in the policy research of a small think tank focused on urban affairs, the Manhattan Institute. Utilizing new approaches to law enforcement and other governance matters that scholars at the Manhattan Institute incubated, Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg restored and improved New York.

Then came a wave of politicians in city hall and in Albany who forgot the hard-won lessons of the 90s revival, and the city in the last fifteen or so years has experienced a resurgence of crime, drug abuse, untreated mental illness, homelessness, and violence, along with the tell-tale signs of urban decay and disorder. In all of this, as ever, the Jewish community of New York served as the canary in the coal mine, and a spate of anti-Semitic violence preceded and then coincided with the general unraveling.

To discuss how this breakdown of order can be halted and reversed, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver is joined by the irrepressible policy entrepreneur and conservative visionary, the fifth president of the Manhattan Institute, Reihan Salam. Together they address the civic health of New York, the most Jewish city in America; what it takes to re-moralize the culture; what urban conservatism is; and why Salam believes that the work he and his colleagues are doing at the Manhattan Institute could lay the groundwork for New York’s next come back.

This conversation was recorded live in Manhattan, in front of an intimate audience of members of the Tikvah Society, so you may hear sirens and street sounds—the soundtrack of New York.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.