Democracy Works

Democracy Works is taking a few weeks off for the summer. While we do, we are going to share some older episodes you might have missed, along with a few from other podcasts we think you’ll enjoy. First up is our democracy summer reading list, which we recorded last summer but holds up well today. Since we recored this, we’ve been lucky to have a few of the authors on the show — David Frum, Salena Zito, and E.J. Dionne. Here’s the rundown of the books we discuss: How Democracies Die (Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt) The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It (Yascha Mounk) The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Edward Luce) Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (Joshua Green) The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics (Salena Zito and Bradd Todd) Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (David Frum) One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported (E.J. Dionne Jr., Norman Ornstein, Thomas Mann)  Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)  The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (Jon Meacham) The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis (Martha C. Nussbaum) And here are a few others we’ve read since last summer that are also worthy of your time: Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (William Galston) Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life (Eric Klinenberg) Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President (Kathleen Hall Jamieson) Finally, if you enjoy Democracy Works, consider checking out The Politics Guys. This podcast is hosted by a bi-partisan groups of academics and other experts who provide a weekly rundown of the biggest news and events in American politics and interview experts from a variety of fields. Check it out at politicsguys.com. Share Tweet Google Plus Share The post A democracy summer reading list [rebroadcast] appeared first on Democracy Works podcast.

Is the United States really a democracy? What will the EU look like in 50 years? What should 2020 candidates be doing to demonstrate civility? Those are just a few of the questions we received from Democracy Works listeners around the country and around the world. We close our third season by answering some of your questions about democracy and the topics we’ve covered on the show. We’ll be on summer break for the next few weeks. New episodes resume August 12. In the meantime, we’ll be rebroadcasting some of our older episodes you might have missed and sharing episodes from other podcasts we think you’ll enjoy. Additional Information The Market as Prison article by Charles Lindblum – for more on the relationship between democracy and plutocracy Books we recommend reading this summer: Uncivil Agreement by Lilliana Mason The Last Palace by Norman Eisen In the Ruins of Neoliberalism by Wendy Brown Truth in Our Times by David McCraw Episodes mentioned: Jonathan Haidt on the psychology of democracy Using the tools of democracy to address inequality Immigration, refugees, and the politics of displacement A playbook for organizing in turbulent times Breaking the silence in Syria The ongoing struggle for civil rights School segregation then and now

We tend to think about congressional oversight in very academic terms — checks and balances, the Framers, etc. But what does it actually look like on the ground in Congress? To find out, we’re talking this week with Charlie Dent, who served Congress for more than a decade until his retirement in 2018. He argues that amid all the talk about subpoenas, impeachment, and what Congress is not able to do, we’re losing sight of the things they can do to hold the executive branch accountable. Dent is a lifelong Republican, but one that does not fit in with the direction the party’s taken under Donald Trump. We talk with him about why so few Republicans are willing to speak out against the Preisdent, and what the party’s post-Trump future might look like. He also talks about the difference between separation of parties and separation of powers — and where he thinks we are right now. Dent was the chair of the House Ethics Committee and a member of the Homeland Security Appropriations committees. These days, he is a CNN political analyst and senior policy adviser at DLA Piper. He was a recipient of the 2019 Penn State Distinguished Alumni Award, which is the university’s highest honor presented to alumni. Additional Information Charlie Dent on Twitter Discussion/Reflection Questions Is there still room for moderates in politics? If so, where can they have the most impact? What do you make of Charlie’s argument that the U.S. now operates like a Parliamentary system? What do you think the Republican Party will look like post-Donald Trump? Interview Highlights [6:00] Can you describe the district you represented and your decision to leave office? I represented a district in eastern Pennsylvania largely the Lehigh Valley for my first four terms and for my, my last three terms, the district included parts of south central Pennsylvania. It was what we’d call a swing or marginal district, had a pretty good mix of urban, suburban, rural communities. It was, in many respects, a bellwether for the country in terms of how it  performed from an election standpoint. dI anticipated early on that House Republicans would be in the minority in the new session of Congress that they’re in now. The current administration was also a factor. Just dealing with the never ending drama and chaos. [9:44] Now that you’ve had some time away, are there things you wish you would have done differently to speak out against things like increasing polarization? I think about that quite a bit. There’s only so much you can do as one person to change the direction that the herd is moving in. Increasingly, Republicans in Congress are hesitant to speak out against President Trump because they’re concerned about a primary challenger, which has created a political paralysis. In my view, we have two political parties now — a pro-Trump party and an anti-Trump party. It’s no longer about ideology or specific policies, which is always what the Republican Party has been known for. It’s now about loyalty to a man. You have to figure out how to manage that and work within it. [15:38] Have Republicans who oppose President Trump resigned themselves to holding their breath until the next election? Yeah I think that’s true. Although if you’re a member of Congress in a swing  district you simply can’t be labeled as a generic Republican or a generic Democrat. You have to develop your own brand. That was always my advice to my colleagues. You don’t survive that way in those types of districts. The fact that these elected officials can’t always be seen as rubber stamps for the President is something we should be talking more about. [17:06] What does congressional oversight look like in practice? In some respects, oversight is a serious responsibility of Congress, and it’s done on a daily basis. When I was on the Homeland Security committee, we spent a lot of our time really looking at what the department was doing. At that time, it was a relatively new department and there were growing pains so we exercised a lot of oversight. A lot of it wasn’t particularly glamorous or sexy, but it was necessary. Now I find that oversight seems be more about getting your name on television as opposed to the hard, mundane work of analyzing what these departments are doing and how they’re spending money. [21:05] How do you explain the shift toward prioritizing partisanship over the institution? I believe, in many respects, we no longer have a system of separation of powers, but a system of separation of parties. Whichever party controls the presidency, it seems like their obligation is to protect the president above defending institutional interests. It flies in the face of what Madison intended and it’s been a big problem. They’re behaving, in many respects, as if they’re operating in a parliamentary system rather than this system of separation of powers and checks and balances that we have. [24:06] Where do we go from here? I would always tell my constituents, “You elected me to be a member of Congress, not to be in the executive branch.” Until voters insist on change, things won’t change. I talk a lot about the pragmatism that’s necessary to get things done. You can be ideologically or philosophically conservative or liberal and and that’s fine, but at the same time, I worry about the capacity to be pragmatic. We need people who can set aside the things they disagree on, find common ground, and move forward.

Jay Yonamine Some political scientists and democracy scholars think that it might. The thinking goes something like this: inequality will rise as jobs continue to be automated, which will cause distrust in the government and create fertile ground for authoritarianism. Jay Yonamine is uniquely qualified to weigh in on this issue. He is a data scientist at Google and has a Ph.D. in political science. He has an interesting perspective on the relationship between automation and democracy, and the role that algorithms and platforms play in the spread of misinformation online. In some ways, this conversation makes the counterargument to our conversation with Penn State’s Matt Jordan about the relationship between social media and democracy. The conversation with Matt is worth revisiting for two perspectives on some of the most complicated questions facing democracy today. Additional Information Episode with Matt Jordan: Facebook is not a democracy Profile on Jay from Sync Magazine The Fourth Age by Byron Reese – a look at the relationship between technology, humanity, and democratic values Yuval Noah Harari on the relationship between technology and tyranny in The Atlantic Discussion/Reflection Questions What do you see as the relationship between AI and democracy? Should Google and other platforms regulate the contact that users see? Do you feel that you have control over the content you see on Google and other sites? Are you concerned about AI’s impacts on democracy? Interview Highlights [3:40] How do you define AI? AI is has to be something that’s not just a human brain relying on itself. Most of the time, when folks think about AI, what they mean is computers, which is to say a computer is doing the thinking or doing the analysis as apposed to a human brain. How I think of intelligence is the ability to make nontrivial, falsifiable, accurate predictions. I think most folks would agree that the act of a robot by itself is not necessarily artificial intelligence, but  the AI aspect of a robot would actually still be the, sort of computer engine that interprets the world and makes predictions [6:25] What is the relationship between AI and democracy? A few things have happened simultaneously that might not be as causal as maybe we might believe. There’s definitely been an increase in populist-based politicians in the United States and abroad and a move towards more heavy handed political ideologies. And then of course there’s also been a fairly rapid growth in the prevalence of AI and machine learning in our day-to-day. It’s not clear that those two are connected, but you can see the reasons why people draw their connections. And I think primarily they revolve around news, and around platforms, and around the increase ease of sharing information, and around the increase ease of sharing disinformation. [8:26] Does one influence the other? What’s interesting to me as a political scientist and someone who has studied the history of political institutions and political dynamics is for almost all of history, increased access to information and increased access to create and assimilate information has almost always driven an increase in what you might call liberal democratic values. Free speech, democracy, things that have generally been held up as good. And it’s almost always been some autocratic force that has fought against the spread of information that’s going back to the printing press. What’s interesting now is we’re seeing for the first time, the possibility of that actually shifting. We’re now starting to see that the ease of access to information and the ease of creating and assimilating information might actually now be contributing to the spread of more antidemocratic values. [10:03] Is AI’s impact on democracy being discussed at tech companies? The degree of regulation is definitely a hot issue. It’s an immensely complicated issue and one with no easy answers. There’s folks who are arguing for increased regulation ti decrease the spread of misinformation, create a better informed populous, aversion to some of the antidemocratic stuff that we’ve been seeing. But the counter to that is that you don’t want some centralized control over what can be shared and by whom. And so there’s definitely merits to that argument as well. And it’s an immensely complicated challenge. If you’ve got a team of experts in the room and, and gave them, a handful of pieces of content, I suspect they would have a hard time even reaching consensus. And then when you imagine that scale that a lot of companies operate at it’s, it’s tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of millions of pieces of content a day, a week, a month. [13:24] How are companies balancing these big issues with their day-to-day work? What a lot of companies are trying to do is, hire or create teams and departments and groups whose full time job is just to think about these types of ethical issues. And then create scenarios where those voices have sufficient authority or discretion to actually impact product roadmaps. Companies are big, complex organisms and it’s hard to introduce that type of, of thinking in a really productive way. It’s not like there’s a blueprint where you can say, “Oh, well this is how company A did this in ’98” and now there’s someone who wrote a book on the best practices for introducing ethics and normative guidelines into an AI-based product. [18:31] How should candidates be talking about these issues in 2020? It’s very easy to be optimistic about the societal benefit of technological adaption here’s the self driving story where it’s feasible to imagine a world where 50 years from now there’s one one hundredth of the car fatalities that there are today. So that I think is a pretty easy, legitimate story to tell about the benefits of innovation. The counterargument is that when someone comes up with some new device, it displaces a meaningful number of jobs and what do you do with those people? To go back to self-driving cars, we could see a very quick reduction in the number of truck drivers that are needed in the coming years, which is a major industry in a lot of places. The optimist would say that new jobs will be created to do things like work on the self-driving cars and trucks and do additional road maintenance because the quality of the roads will become increasingly important, but it remains to be seen whether that will actually happen and those jobs will actually be created. Share Tweet Google Plus Share The post Will AI destroy democracy? appeared first on Democracy Works podcast.

Lindsay Lloyd. Photo by Grant Miller If Alexis de Tocqueville visited America today, what would he have to say about the condition of our democracy? We hear a lot in the news and on Twitter about how support for democracy is waning. We’re perhaps even a little guilty of it on this show. But, what do everyday Americans think? Some of the biggest names in politics from across the ideological spectrum teamed up to find out. The Democracy Project, an initiative of the George W. Bush Center, Penn Biden Center, and Freedom House, found that people support the ideal of democracy, but worry that the United States is not living up to that ideal in practice due to factors like economic inequality and the decline of civics education. Lindsay Lloyd, director Bush Center’s Human Freedom Initiative and part of The Democracy Project, joins us this week to discuss the report and what its findings mean for citizens across the United States. We’ve collaborated with the Bush Center on several projects in the past few months and highly recommend checking out their podcast, The Strategerist. Additional Information The Democracy Project report Our episodes on economic inequality and civics education The Strategerist podcast from the Bush Center Discussion/Reflection Questions How does your perception of democracy align with The Democracy Project’s findings? What do you make of the report’s recommendations for action? Do you agree with Lindsay that there is strong support for democracy-based initiatives in Congress? What role should the U.S. play in promoting democracy in other countries? Have your feelings about democracy changed since 2016? Or 2018? Interview Highlights [5:19] What is the Democracy Project and how does it relate to the Bush Center’s mission? The Bush Center opened in 2009 and one of the areas we work in is democracy and human rights. Historically, it’s been focused outside the United States. A few years ago, we noticed that something was happening in American democracy regarding partisanship and wanted to see what we could do about it. We partnered with the Penn Biden Center and Freedom House and launched a public opinion project related to American democracy. We did focus groups with constituent groups around the country, as well as a national public opinion poll. [7:10] How are people feeling about the state of democracy in the U.S.? There was a flurry of articles in early 2017 suggesting that people living in democratic societies were looking for alternatives, particularly among young people. We did not find that in our survey. The people we talked to overwhelmingly felt it was important to them to live in a democracy. On the flip side, our respondents felt that America’s democracy was weak and getting weaker and isn’t delivering in the way it traditionally had. [9:04] What role do you see the Bush Center playing in addressing the issues identified in the research? The second half of the survey covered perceptions of democracy outside the U.S. We’re starting a bipartisan working group to look at support for democracy and human rights overseas. It’s taken a hit under the Trump administration and we believe it’s important that the U.S. speak out when human rights abuses are happening and continue to support democracy around the world. Our adversaries are advocating for authoritarianism and democracies need to advocate for their point of view. We found that respondents agreed and found that having a more democratic world makes America safer and makes the world safer. [11:35] Who do you see as your allies in this work? There’s still strong support across party lines in Congress for democracy-related initiatives. The Trump administration proposed cutting the budget for groups like the National Endowment for Democracy and Congress has put it back in and, in some cases, increased funding. Newer democracies are also very interested in this work, countries that were formerly under authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. [16:25] President Trump is not mentioned anywhere in the report. Did he come up at all in the focus groups? We intentionally did not ask about approval of the President because it’s not a political poll. He did come up in the focus groups, including one group of people who supported the President in 2016 and another group who supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. His name came up early and often, but nothing particularly surprising. The President has some strong supporters and some strong detractors. But, it’s also important to remember that democracy is about more than what happens in the White House. Democracy needs to deliver at the local level, or else confidence in the system suffers. [19:58] Did you see any evidence of polarization in your work? Is it still possible to find middle ground? One of the complications is that people think that getting rid of partisanship means everyone needs to agree with them. It’s of grave concern, but we did still hear from people who were in the middle. It’s much less of a concern at the local level, where local officials are often nonpartisan. There’s frustration across the board that Washington can’t solve problems. Ideas are examined based on who’s proposing them, rather than on their merits. In the end, most people don’t care who’s behind a proposal, they just want to see it get done. Both of the parties have seen a hollowing out — the days of Rockefeller Republicans and blue democrats are largely gone. One way people change that is by voting in primaries for candidates who support compromise and trying to find middle ground on issues. Share Tweet Google Plus Share The post The 2019 version of Democracy in America appeared first on Democracy Works podcast.

Neoliberalism is one of those fuzzy words that can mean something different to everyone. Wendy Brown is one of the world’s leading scholars on neoliberalism and argue that a generation of neoliberal worldview among political, business, and intellectual leaders led to the populism we’re seeing throughout the world today. But is it mutually exclusive to democracy? Not necessarily.Brown joins us this week to help make sense of what neoliberalism is, and where things stand today. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy of her book, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, which will be released in July. It’s a follow up to her 2015 book, Undoing the Demos, and you’ll hear her talk about how her thinking has changed since then.Brown is the Class of 1936 First Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches political theory. You might also recognize her from Astra Taylor’s documentary, What Is Democracy? If you enjoy this episode, we recommend checking out the Political Theory Review podcast, produced by Jeffrey Church at the University of Houston.Additional InformationWendy’s books: In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, Undoing the DemosWendy’s website Our episode with David FrumThe Political Theory Review podcastDiscussion/Reflection QuestionsWhat do you see as the relationship between neoliberalism and democracy?Do you think it’s possible for two to coexist?What do you see as the future of neoliberalism? Will Millennials and Generation Z move in a different direction?Interview Highlights[5:45] How do you define neoliberalism and how is it related to democracy?North Americans are a little bewildered by the term, and we don’t have it as part of our everyday lexicon although I think it’s finally beginning to seep in. But having said that, I also want to suggest that we understand it at a social and political level and not just an economic level. We recognize it as the undoing of the Keynesian welfare state and the substitution of free market policies, low taxes, everyone’s responsible for themselves and getting rid of all the social supports except for a bare minimum safety net, but I want to add that it’s also a whole from of governing reason.[7:45] How does neoliberalism relate to authoritarianism?One of the things I felt compelled to understand with our hard right turn in the West over the last several years with Trump and Bolsonaro and Brexit and so forth was the connection of that to neoliberalism. One thing you can say is rising inequality and open borders produces rage about being at the bottom end of that inequality and also about immigrants, but there was something else on the horizon that I had never noticed, which is that the neoliberal scheme was not just to substitute markets for social policy.It was also to substitute traditional moral values for understandings of social justice and institutions of social justice. And so part of what we’re experiencing now is what I call the kind of scorpion tail of neoliberalism — the lashing out against the inequality and the continued insistence that traditional morality, moral values, and traditions more generally from white supremacy to patriarchal families, religion in the public sphere, that those are more appropriate governors of human conduct than any state-mandated practices of equality or inclusion.[11:04] How did neoliberal ideas make their way from academics to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher?First, there was a very serious economic crisis often called a crisis of profitability in the 70s that was also often seen as a crisis of the welfare state. Too much taxation, unions that were too strong, corporations that were too large and lazy, and a real problem of stagflation. It was a moment where you could strike with a new set of ideas. At the same time, neoliberalism had already been experimented with extensively in Latin America. The IMF was already solidly neoliberal, so bringing it up to the north wasn’t so difficult once Reagan and Thatcher were in power.[14:37] What will Millennials and Gen Z make of neoliberalism?Millennials and Generation Z are living in a kind of schizophrenic subjectivity that comes from the rejection of capitalism and the sluggish, dinosaur-like pace of parliamentary or constitutional democracy that is now so deeply corrupted by neoliberal money and corporate power. One of the things I see coming from these generations is the rejection of those two things as the necessary coordinates of the political and economic future, and I think all the hope rests there.[17:46] Is there a way for neoliberalism and democracy to coexist?Why I’m impatient with a neoliberal conception of democracy as a way to redress either the gross inequality or the serious existential dangers that we face now is that it’s basically saying, “Go join something, go feel like you’re part of something,” but let the major powers that shape our lives run through markets that presumably run through no hands at all. We rather desperately need to get our hands on those powers.[20:37] Is it possible to move past the neoliberal worldview given that it’s been dominant over the past generation?Yes. The Keynesian system lasted for fifty years. No one thought it could be taken apart and everyone thought it was here to stay. The question for the neoliberals was always to try to figure out how to keep it from getting worse and how to prevent this straight on drive toward complete socialism, and keep some markets in the picture. So, one generation is not a lot of time. The second thing I want to say is that we are obviously in a very serious political crisis where there’s an impatience with the current system and a belief that it’s not serving people or the planet. not just the left and right edges, but left and right mainstreams now um, the impatience with the- with the current system, and the belief that it’s not serving people, or the planet, is very strong.

Patricia Roberts-Miller When you think of the word “demagogue,” what comes to mind? Probably someone like Hitler or another bombastic leader, right? Patricia Roberts-Miller is a rhetoric scholar and has spent years tracing the term and its uses. She joins us this week to explain a new way of thinking about demagoguery and how that view relates to democracy. She also explains what she’s learned from what she describes as years of “crawling around the Internet with extremists.” Patricia is a Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and Director of the University Writing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of two new books on demagoguery. Demagoguery and Democracy is a short book in the style of On Tyranny that covers the basics of her argument in about 100 small ages. Rhetoric and Demagoguery is a longer, more academic book for those looking for more on the rhetorical roots of demagoguery and its relationship to democratic deliberation. Additional Information Patricia’s books: Demagoguery and Democracy, Rhetoric and Demagoguery Patricia’s website Episode on civility with Timothy Shaffer of Kansas State University Discussion/Reflection Questions After listening to Patricia, do you feel better equipped to notice demagoguery in media you consume, or even in your own language and writing? What do you see as the relationship between demagoguery and democracy? Do you see parallels between the increase of demagoguery and the decline of civility we discussed with Timothy Shaffer? Can you think of a time when you’ve tried to appreciate the other side’s point of view in a conversation or something you read? Did doing so change your perspective? Interview Highlights [5:18] How do you define demagoguery and why is it bad for democracy? It’s useful to think about it as reducing all political issues or even all issues to questions of identity. And specifically in-group versus out-group. And it’s oriented toward providing a lot of certainty and reducing nuance. When you have a culture that is reasoning about everything in that way, you can’t actually explore multiple solutions. What I have to say about demagoguery in politics is pretty similar to what people will say about how a business should come up with a good business plan or how people should make decisions about health. It’s just better decision making. [7:04] How does the media landscape influence the culture of demagoguery you describe? We’re in an economy of attention and what matters most is w- whether you are doing things that get viewers and get likes, and get clicks and shares, and all that. It’s extremely difficult to do a good argument on Twitter, one that takes into consideration the nuance of a situation, what other people have said, represents the opposition fairly. [10:44] Why is demagoguery so often associated with political leaders? Because demagoguery is about reducing politics to identity. And so if you’re thinking about politics in terms of identity you’re going to be looking for a person on whom you can blame bad politics. And it better not be you. Right? So I think that’s one reason that we really like that notion the demagogue who is the source of all of our problems. And often when you have a culture of demagoguery, at some point somebody will come up. [13:14] What are some strategies people can use to identify demagoguery? We assume that demagoguery is going to be vehement, and we assume it’s going to be aggressive. And so we have a tendency to make that judgment on the basis of affect. The affect of the person speaking, but also our own. Do we feel threatened? And if we don’t feel threatened then we’re not likely to think of it as demagoguery. So I think, but what that means is that you don’t recognize the demagoguery on behalf of your in-group. People have to perspective shift and imagine how would we feel about this if we were in the other group? Would we feel threatened by it under those circumstances? How would we feel if exactly that same argument was made about our group? Um, how would we make, how would we feel about that kind of argument? Would we assess it as a rational argument if it was made on the part of the opposition? [16:16] Is there ever a time when it’s not worth trying to understand the other person or side’s point of view? One of the things you always have to figure out about anyone you’re interacting with is whether they are open to change and persuasion. One of the problems with conspiracy theories is by definition they’re not. They have a way of discounting any kind evidence that doesn’t conform to their beliefs. Often, the people don’t believe in climate change have an almost 19th century notion about a scientist is, and what science is. So if a mechanical engineer tells them that climate change is a hoax they’re like, “There’s a scientist who doesn’t believe in it.” Without understanding that a mechanical engineer is not actually an expert on either of those areas.Sometimes I get really interesting insights into people’s beliefs from doing that. And sometimes it’s sort of like kicking over a rock and just going, “Ew.” [21:50 ] Do you think we’ll be able to move beyond the “us vs. them” rhetoric to a more deliberative model? I’m really worried, but I’m hopeful that at least Facebook is starting to take this really seriously, and try to think through some better strategies that they have. What we actually need to emphasize is understanding other points of view. Instead of just relying on the facts I’ve been given by my in-group, to see what the facts are on other sides. And to see, especially why they reject the facts.

Laura Rosenberger By now, you’ve no doubt head all about the report issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the drama in Washington that’s ensued in the time since its release. But, if you only focus on the information about collusion and obstruction in the Trump administration, you are missing a whole other part of the story about Russian interference in democracy leading up to the 2016 election. Laura Rosenberger and her colleagues at the bipartisan Alliance for Securing Democracy have been working to raise awareness about this threat since the 2016 election. Laura joins us this week to discuss what she learned from the report, and where the efforts to combat Russian interference stand. She is our first repeat guest on the podcast. We last spoke with her in the fall of 2018, just before the midterm elections, during a live event at the National Press Club. Additional Information Alliance for Securing Democracy Our conversation with Laura in fall 2018 Discussion/Reflection Questions Whose should be taking the lead on combating Russian interference in our democracy? What role does the government have to play? Social media platforms? Everyday citizens? Do you think that Russian interference will influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election? Interview Highlights [5:15] What did you learn from the Mueller report? I think it is one of the most important things to remember is that Special Counsel Mueller was appointed to investigate a number of different things. One of them was Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. We learned through the course of his investigation, including through some indictments that he brought against Russian officials and entities, some of what he was finding, but the report definitely added to that. In many ways, I would say his report and the investigation that he led really built on what we found and saw from the findings of the intelligence community and its own assessment of the Russian interference operations, as well as investigations by a number of bipartisan committees in Congress. [9:58] Are you seeing any evidence that calls to respond to Russian interference are being heeded? I think we have seen some incremental steps. I think that maybe we are in a slightly better position than we were in 2016, but I think that we have a whole lot of progress that we still need to make if we’re actually going to better protect our democracy against the threats that we face. I think the social media companies need to do a whole lot more to take this issue on in a very systemic way, really going after the root of the problem. I worry right now that some of the approach is too focused on eliminating what they’ve dubbed harmful content. [11:35] Who do you see as your allies in these efforts? I think there’s a lot of really great folks out there trying to work on different components of this problem. One of them, there’s a really robust community of researchers that have been taking on this problem and trying to better understand it and provide information. I think transparency and exposing these kinds of operations is one of the really important things that we can do to help combat them. [14:20] Did we see any changes in election security between 2016 and the 2018 midterms? We definitely have seen some steps being taken around the midterm elections, including better information sharing between the federal government and state and local officials, getting more information to those officials to be able to ensure that they understand the threat picture, getting a little bit more funding to them, although the funding that was given to them was really for addressing existing vulnerabilities even before the Russian attempts were made. One of the things, though, that’s really concerning to me is in the wake of the Mueller Report, one of the things that he had in there that was new was talking about a county in Florida that had it’s networks penetrated by Russian cyber hackers. In the wake of that, there’s been a big dispute between the federal government and the state of Florida about whether that was true, whether there was evidence of that, claims that the FBI hadn’t shared what they needed. [19:29] What changes do you think we’re most likely to see between now and the 2020 election? Since 2014 we’ve basically seen an ongoing effort by the Russians that has had different chapters at different times. Sometimes targeting different elections and different election cycles, sometimes targeting different issues that are highly divisive in the media. It’s important to understand that these operations are ongoing and they evolve at different points in time. Some of the things that I’m worried about that we might see in terms of evolution targeting the 2020 elections, first is we’ve seen the Internet Research Agency getting even better at insinuating itself to different activist groups. We are a very fertile target surface for our adversaries to take aim at. I think that we’ve got to really turn that table around to ensure that we’re better protected. [24:01] What would you recommend our listeners do if they are concerned about Russian interference in our democracy? Voting is something everything can do and it’s also really important for people, as on any other issue, for peoples elected officials to hear from them if this is an issue that they’re concerned about. Dozens of bipartisan pieces of legislation were introduced in the last Congress to address these tactics by the Russians, and we have seen none of them become law. It’s also really important for people to engage in critical thinking on any piece of information. That includes online, and that includes elsewhere. It’s really easy in the political campaign context, when people are very emotional and you’re really trying to make a point, it’s very easy to hook onto something that we agree with, that we think is a really solid thing, even if we don’t know who’s saying it or what their interest or motivations may be, or where the information came from.

It’s been 65 years since the Brown v. Board of Education changed public schooling throughout a large portion of the United States. In his opinion, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that public education was important to democratic society and the “very foundation of good citizenship.” Integrated schools, the Court argued, would expose children to new cultures and prepare them for an increasingly diverse world.How do you balance the public good against the inherent desire every parent has to do what’s best for their children? It’s a question that schools across the country are still wrestling with today.To help us understand the history of integration and the Brown decision’s impacts on public policy, we’re talking this week with two experts at Penn State. Crystal Sanders is an associate professor of history and African American studies and director of the Africana Research Center. She’s an expert on 20th century African American history. Erica Frankenberg is a professor of education and demography and director of the Center for Education and Civil Rights. She is an an expert on the connection between school segregation and public policy.Crystal and Erica co-chaired a conference at Penn State on the 65th anniversary of the Brown decision.Additional InformationBrown@65 ConferenceBrown v. Board of Education opinionOur episode on school boards with Robert Asen of the University of Wisconsin-MadisonInterview Highlights[5:52] What was the political climate when the decision of Brown v. Board of Education was madeThere were many people on the ground; black teachers, black principals, black parents who had been organizing for generations for quality educational opportunities for their students. Decades prior March 1954, black parents were mobilizing to ensure that their students had the resources to ensure that their students to get to school.[7:43] How was the Brown decision received?There was a massive resistance at the beginning. The reason because Dwight Eisenhower in 1957 for sending troops to Little Rock was essentially because the rest of the world was watching and laughing at us. We see white parents taking their kids out of public schools, we see entire school system shutting down, as was the case in Prince, Edward County, Virginia. It takes a very long time before we even began to see real implementation. We are seeing now a widespread re-segregation across the country.[9:37] What are some of the factors that are causing re-segregation?One of the things that most people might not be aware of is that more than 25 states allow communities to secede from a school system and create their own new school system. Across the country, but especially in wealthy suburbs and Southern states, we see wealthy white communities pull out from school systems and create their own new school system that allows them to maintain racial segregation.[12:24] A lot of the conversation around school segregation focuses on the South. What was going on in other parts of the country?It’s important to think about how School desegregation look different in the South versus the North. In northern states there were a lot of ways in which structures were used to create segregated schools. There was the first two decades after the Brown decision in which there were a lot of questions legally as to how Brown would apply outside of the South. When we think of re-segregation today, whether we’re talking about the north or the south, we have to look at housing patterns. We have to look at the lack of affordable housing and the ways in which we still have very weak fair housing laws, and that has been detrimental to ensuring that our public schools are as diverse and inclusive as they can and should be.[15:56] What’s the relationship between school integration and the public good?I believe that most Americans still believe that public education is a public good. I don’t believe that most Americans believe integration is a public good. Those are two separate things. There’s still some investment in public education, but there is no investment in integration as a public good.[17:59] What do we know about the outcomes of integrated schools?There are social and psychological benefits of integrated schools for all students. Students from integrated schools are less likely to have racial stereotypes and prejudice formation. There are important benefits in terms of being more likely to live and work in diverse spaces as an adult. Some research even finds you’re more likely live in more integrated neighborhoods.[23:11] Are there particular cities or communities that that have been particularly successful at integration?No district is perfect, but some communities are intriguing. Jefferson County, Kentucky had court-ordered desegregation in the 1970’s, and in 2000 the court said they had met the requirements. The Wake County school system in North Carolina has done a phenomenal job by ensuring that they have diverse schools across the district. They created a plan that used race to ensure that all of the high schools in the district had proportional levels of different populations.

Sarah Koenig spent a year inside Cleveland’s criminal justice system for season three of the Serial podcast. Along the way, she met some interesting people and had a birds-eye view of what justice (and injustice) look like for lawyers, judges, defendants, police officers, and the countless others who pass through the building’s courtrooms each day.It’s once thing to study criminal justice empirically, as many academics do, but something else entirely to be embedded within the system as Koenig and her team were in Cleveland.We invited Koenig to Penn State for an on-stage conversation with Democracy Works host and McCourtney Institute for Democracy Director Michael Berkman. They discuss community policing, the lack of data about what works and what doesn’t, and where college students should focus their energy if they’re looking to reform the criminal justice system.Additional InformationSerial podcastCornell’s Peter Enns about the U.S. as the world’s most punitive democracyUNC’s Frank Baumgartner on race and policingA note to our listeners in the New York City area: Jenna Spinelle will be participating in a panel called “Podcasts to the Rescue! An Emerging Medium for Learning About Civics, Government, and the Social Contract” on Thursday, May 30 at the Metropolitan New York Library Council. The event is free and open to the public. We would love to meet you!Discussion/Reflection QuestionsIf you’ve listened to Serial season 3, what did you find most surprising?Which part of the criminal justice system do you think is most in need of reform?How should that part of the system change?How much discretion should judges have when it comes to sentencing?What kind of data is needed to understand how to reform the criminal justice system?What is the relationship between law and justice?Interview Highlights[2:45] What about this season of Serial do you think captured people’s attention?We tried to do what we know how to do, right? Which is to know how to make it narrative, as narrative as we could, and to introduce difficult concepts kind of slowly and not overload you with information. It’s become a topic that people are talking about and caring about in the last however many years and that’s personally a thrill to me, but I think that helps. The timing of it helped.[3:54] Does season 3 relate to season 1?A lot of people after season 1 were like “Well, what does this mean about the whole system? Can you extrapolate?” And it felt like, well that, no you can’t extrapolate off of one case that is pretty extraordinary. So it really did feel like, well let’s just go look and see the ordinary stuff. What is the baseline functionality of our system in a very, kind of day to day, mundane way, honestly. Let’s treat the courthouse as an office.[6:10] What did you learn about the police in Cleveland?So it was just a very typical, I mean if you read about for example, what’s happening in Baltimore, what’s happened in some other places. And it seems like the places where there has been any successful, true successful outcome from those consent decrees, I think Seattle has actually had a pretty good result if I’m not mistaken. It’s where they get buy-in from the police union, and it’s hard. In a place like Cleveland it’s very hard. It’s very old school. It’s very like, “Don’t tell me how to do my job, I put my life on the line every day.”[9:40] What do people in Cleveland think about the idea of community policing?They see the value of it and they think it’s valuable and they don’t want to be the people who, in a place like Cleveland, all you do is just get in your car and just race from call to call to call to call. And half the time, you’re at a call trying to deal with something and you get a call for a more major thing and so you’re ripped away, so then that person that you’re trying to help is like, there goes my guy. So, it’s bad for everyone, that kind of policing. They, they want it and they want, I think, to be able to have real interaction with people in communities.[14:03] Judge Gaul comes up in several episodes throughout the series. Tell us about him.His dad had been in county politics. He was getting near retirement age, so he was like mid-60’s. He’d been on the bench a long time, and in Cleveland, in Ohio, you know, county judges have an extraordinary amount of of discretion and latitude.I mean, it’s sort of like a cliché of the courthouse, but like they really do treat it as their own little kingdom. And so he had his style and his way of berating almost every defendant who came before him. He saw it as tough love. That’s how you get elected in Cuyahoga county. No one pays attention to judicial races, so you see the Democratic name, it’s an Irish name, you’re like, it’s vaguely familiar because there’s like ten thousand people named Gaul in the county and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that guy. I’m sure he’s fine.” And so that’s how these people stay on the bench forever.[20:40] What did you learn about the way probation works in Cleveland?Half the docket when I was watching would be a probation violation. Most of them were for things like staying out after curfew or going out of state for a funeral somebody’s funeral smoking weed. They’re having to come back through the thing and if you piss off the judge, especially, someone like Judge Gaul who has a temper, you can end up incarcerated. Part of the hugely frustrating thing we saw in Ohio, but I think this is again true in lots of parts of the country, there’s no data. We don’t keep data on this stuff. Nobody is tracking outcome say for when is probation is effective and when people start to slide off and violate more.[27:50] What do you make of the momentum around electing progressive prosecutors to reform the system?The focus that we have lately on progressive prosecutors and the big money that’s going into these prosecutors races across the country is fantastic, but it is one piece of the puzzle. This system is enormous and it has many different machines working at once. They do not often interact with each other well or at all. I get a little nervous when we start saying, “Oh, we’ve, we’ve figured out how to fix it, just elect a bunch of progressive prosecutors.” My fear is, yes, you can elect progressive prosecution, but you can also unelect those same prosecutors. So I would rather see a more systemic change.[30:15] Where can young people have the biggest impact in criminal justice reform?I would say like those kinds of agencies that are so unsex and it just feels like why would I want to go be a government bureaucrat and like a thankless job? If you’re asking where you can make a difference, boy, wouldn’t it be fantastic to have, um, the smartest, most compassionate, most energetic brains be working on juvenile crime.