City Journal Audio

Heather Mac Donald joins Brian Anderson to discuss the state of policing today, the "Ferguson Effect," former FBI director James Comey's defense of proactive policing, and the recent protests against conservative speakers on college campuses. Since the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014, public discussion about police and the criminal justice system has reached a fever pitch: activists claim that policing is inherently racist and discriminatory, while supporters say that public pressure has caused officers to disengage from proactive policing. President Trump's promise to restore "law and order" in American cities upset many progressives, but with violent crime on the rise in cities across the country since 2014, Trump was right to raise the issue. Read Heather's piece in the Spring 2017 issue of City Journal, "How Trump Can Help the Cops." Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Mac Donald's work at City Journal has covered a range of topics including higher education, immigration, policing, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion. Mac Donald's newest book, The War on Cops (2016), warns that raced-based attacks on the criminal-justice system are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk.

KC Johnson joins Seth Barron to discuss sexual assault and college disciplinary procedures on campuses across America. In 2011, the Obama administration ordered all campus disciplinary offices to use a lower "preponderance of evidence" standard when charging a student of a sexually related crime. Today, colleges are under intense pressure from both activists and bureaucrats to punish students accused of rape. And with the political climate growing toxic on college campuses, school administrators know that there's little to gain from defending the accused. KC Johnson is the co-author, with Stuart Taylor, of The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America's Universities. Johnson played a prominent role during the Duke University lacrosse rape case in 2006-2007, disseminating facts about the case and calling out the media for presuming guilt of the students involved. He is a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Seth Barron is associate editor of City Journal and project director of the NYC Initiative at the Manhattan Institute. He writes primarily about New York City politics and culture.

DJ Jaffe and Stephen Eide join Howard Husock to discuss severe mental illness and the deficiencies in mental health services in New York City and across the country. DJ Jaffe is the author of an important new book, Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill. He is executive director of Mental Illness Policy Org., a nonpartisan think tank, which creates detailed policy analysis for legislators, the media, and advocates. Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of a recent report, Assisted Outpatient Treatment in New York State: The Case for Making Kendra's Law Permanent. His piece featured in the Spring 2017 Issue of City Journal, Failure to Thrive, dissects New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's signature mental health initiative, Thrive NYC.

Adam J. White joins Brian Anderson to discuss the "administrative state," often described as the fourth branch of the federal government. Under the Obama administration, bureaucratic agencies were aggressivelyutilized to bypass congressional hostility to the progressive agenda. In 2014, President Obama declared his "pen and phone" strategy: if the Republican-controlled Congress was unwilling to act on his priorities, he would sign executive orders directing federal agencies to enforce new rules or ignore existing ones. Environmental regulations, immigration reform, and Internet neutrality were just a few areas where the Obama administration directed agencies to make substantial policy changes. Adam White is an attorney, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a contributing editor of City Journal. His story "Break the Bureaucracy" appeared in the Winter 2017 Issue.

Peter Cove joins Brian Anderson to discuss his new book Poor No More: Rethinking Dependency and the War on Poverty. Declaring the War on Poverty in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson stated that the goal was to "cure poverty, and above all, prevent it." 50 years later, most people would agree that the signature campaign of the "Great Society" has shown mixed results, at best: Despite spending over $20 trillion on anti-poverty programs, the official poverty rate has barely moved. Peter Cove is the founder of America Works, the nation's first for-profit, welfare-to-work company that has placed nearly 1 million people into employment. Peter first became involved in the fight against poverty when he moved to New York in 1965 to join the Anti-Poverty Operations Board, where he helped write federal grant proposals and managed local programs. Find out more about Peter Cove's book on Amazon.​

Katherine Kersten joins Brian Anderson to discuss how public school leaders in St. Paul, Minnesota abandoned student discipline—and unleashed mayhem—in the name of "racial equity." In January 2014, the Obama administration's Departments of Education and Justice issued a "Dear Colleague" letter to every school district in the country, laying out guidelines to local officials for how to avoid racial bias when suspending or expelling students. Equity proponents view "disparate impact"—when the same policies yield different outcomes among demographic groups—as conclusive proof of discrimination. But nearly half a decade before that order was announced, the superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools had already embarked on a crusade to dismantle the purported "school-to-prison pipeline"—with disastrous effects for teachers and students. Read Katherine's piece in the Winter 2017 Issue of City Journal, "No Thug Left Behind."

Michael Totten joins Brian Anderson to discuss the issue of homelessness in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. Portland is often called the "City of Bridges" for the many structures that cross the city's two rivers. Underneath many of those bridges are homeless encampments complete with tents, plastic tarps, shopping carts—and people. Oregon's Supreme Court has blocked efforts to regulate homelessness in Portland, leading the city's political leaders and nonprofits to explore new options as the situation has worsened.

Robert Poole (of the Reason Foundation) joins Aaron Renn to discuss the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The Port Authority was originally founded to manage the region's transportation infrastructure, but the agency has long been plagued by politicized decision making, money-losing facilities, and declining financial viability. Poole is the author of a new report commissioned by the Manhattan Institute, Reinventing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Check out City Journal's coverage of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey below. The Port Authority Leviathan (Seth Barron, Winter 2016) Bloated, Broke, and Bullied (Steve Malanga, Spring 2016) Let's Break Up the Port Authority (Stephen Eide, Summer 2016) The New York Police Force That Doesn't Work (Judith Miller and Alex Armlovich, Autumn 2016) Making New York's Airports Great Again (John Tierney, Winter 2017)

Victor Davis Hanson joins the City Journal podcast to talk with Aaron Renn about the 2016 election, the divide between rural and urban America, and how a life-long New Yorker came to lead a movement of "deplorables" all the way to the White House. Read Victor's piece in the Winter 2017 Issue of City Journal, "Trump and the American Divide."

City Journal editor Brian Anderson and contributing editor Kay Hymowitz discuss her new book, "The New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back," which chronicles the history of New York City's largest borough and its remarkable transformation from a symbol of urban decay by the mid-20th century to one of the most valuable and innovative environments in the world.