New Books in Public Policy

Gene Slater's book Free to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspired to Segregate Housing and Divide America (Heyday Books, 2021) uncovers realtors' definitive role in segregating America and shaping modern conservative thought. Gene Slater follows this story from inside the realtor profession, drawing on many industry documents that have remained unexamined until now. His book traces the increasingly aggressive ways realtors justified their practices, how they successfully weaponized the word "freedom" for their cause, and how conservative politicians have drawn directly from realtors' rhetoric for the past several decades. Much of this story takes place in California, and Slater demonstrates why one of the very first all-white neighborhoods was in Berkeley, and why the state was the perfect place for Ronald Reagan's political ascension.The hinge point in this history is Proposition 14, a largely forgotten but monumentally important 1964 ballot initiative. Created and promoted by California realtors, the proposition sought to uphold housing discrimination permanently in the state's constitution, and a vast majority of Californians voted for it. This vote had explosive consequences--ones that still inform our deepest political divisions today--and a true reckoning with the history of American racism requires a closer look at the events leading up to it. Freedom to Discriminate shatters preconceptions about American segregation, and it connects many seemingly disparate aspects of the nation's history in a novel and galvanizing way.Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Drawing from forty years of experience, Julia Brannen offers an invaluable account of how research in family studies is conducted and 'matters' at particular times. Social Research Matters: A Life in Family Sociology (Bristol UP, 2019) covers key developments in the field and vital issues which remain of pressing concern to Britain and the world. Brannen shows how social research is an art as well as a science - a process that involves craft and creativity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Today’s Postscript (a special series that allows scholars to comment on pressing contemporary issues) engages the latest chapter in American abortion politics as the United States Supreme Court has just allowed a Texas statute banning abortions after 6 weeks to go into effect. Lilly Goren and Susan Liebell have assembled a panel of experts in political science and law to interrogate the construction of the Texas law, the Supreme Court ruling, and how these cases map onto the wider political landscape.Dr. Renée Ann Cramer is a Professor of Law, Politics, and Society at Drake University -- and the author of Birthing a Movement: Midwives, Law, and the Politics of Reproductive Care from Stanford University Press, 2021.Dr. Rebecca Kreitzer is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- and the author of some of the most downloaded articles in political science on the policy environment in which abortion laws are passed. Her most recent work, “Anti-Abortion Policymaking and Women’s Representation” (co-authored with Reingold, Beth, Tracy L. Osborn, and Michele Swers) appears in Political Research Quarterly.Dr. Andrew R. Lewis is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati and the author of The Rights Turn in Conservative Christian Politics: How Abortion Transformed the Culture Wars (Cambridge, 2017). He writes at the intersection of politics, religion, and law in America with expertise in Evangelicals and politics, conservative legal activism, and rights politics.Dr. Joshua C. Wilson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Denver -- and the . author of The Street Politics of Abortion: Speech, Violence, & America’s Culture Wars and The New States of Abortion Politics both from Stanford University Press 2013 and 2016. His article “Striving to Rollback or Protect Roe: State Legislation and the Trump-Era Politics of Abortion appeared in Publius last summer.Dr. Mary Ziegler is a Stearns Weaver Miller Professor at Florida State University College of Law. She is the author of Abortion and the Law in America: A Legal History, Roe v. Wade to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and has a forthcoming book Dollars for Life: The Antiabortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment expected from Yale University Press, 2022).Daniella Campos assisted with this podcast.Susan Liebell is Dirk Warren '50 Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them?In the face of widespread challenges--everything from record levels of personal and national debt and the sky high cost of education, to gun violence, racial discrimination, an immigration crisis, overpriced pharmaceuticals, and much more--the government seems paralyzed and unable to act, the most recent example being Covid-19. It's the deadliest pandemic in over a century. In addition to an unimaginable sick and death toll, it has left more than thirty million Americans unemployed. Despite this, Washington let the first round of supplemental unemployment benefits run out and for more than a month were unable to agree on a bill to help those suffering.Jeanne Sheehan's book American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021) explains why we are in this situation, why the government is unable to respond to key challenges, and what we can do to right the ship. It requires that readers "upstream," stop blaming the individuals in office and instead look at the root cause of the problem. The real culprit is the system; it was designed to protect liberty and structured accordingly. As a result, however, it has left us with a government that is not responsive, largely unaccountable, and often ineffective. This is not an accident; it is by design. Changing the way our government operates requires rethinking its primary goal(s) and then restructuring to meet them.To this end, this book offers specific reform proposals to restructure the government and in the process make it more accountable, effective, and responsive.Jeanne Sheehan is a Carol S. Russett Award winning Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iona College School of Arts & Science. She is also Bloomberg News Political Contributor and the author of several books and articlesKirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Political Scientist Ursula Hackett’s new book, America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge UP, 2020), is the winner of the APSA 2021 Education Policy and Politics Section Best Book Award. America’s Voucher Politics  examines the way that the approach to vouchers, as a policy design and as a point of advocacy, has evolved over the past decades, and, in the process, this policy area has shifted strategic losses into strategic and growing wins. School vouchers, essentially the central case study in Hackett’s book, are a perfect example of what Hackett describes as “attenuated governance.” Attenuated governance is the form that a particular policy design and often the associated rhetoric with that policy take in an effort to disconnect the policy itself from the state, so as to avoid or elide constitutional conflicts that may strike down the policy that was passed by state or national legislative bodies. Attenuated governance is the umbrella concept that includes both the attenuated delivery of the goods or services and the rhetoric to accompany the policy design and delivery. As Hackett notes, school vouchers are the perfect lens for this exploration of American political development and examining the shifting approaches that courts and judges have taken to how the policies work within public and private institutions.As the subtitle of the book indicates, the story of school vouchers is the tale of hiding the role of the state in shifting funds from public schools to private and parochial schools and doing so in such a way so that the courts would decide in favor of the constitutionality of these new policy designs. Many of the initial attempts at this form of attenuated governance were unsuccessfully made in the 1950s and 1960s in response to the Brown v. Board of Education decision and other moves to desegregate schools, and other public entities and spaces. But these early failures in court provided the blueprint for subsequent successes, not just in designing policy that would be more attenuated or disconnected from the state itself, but also in the way that these policies were publicly discussed and argued. America’s Voucher Politics is a fascinating study not only of this particular policy area as it developed over the past 70 years, but also of this concept of attenuated governance, which builds on America’s foundational identity struggles around religion, race and racism, and civic institutions.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Our current food system has decimated rural communities and confined the choices of urban consumers. Even while America continues to ramp up farm production to astounding levels, net farm income is now lower than at the onset of the Great Depression, and one out of every eight Americans faces hunger. But a healthier and more equitable food system is possible. In Building Community Food Webs (Island Press, 2021), Ken Meter shows how grassroots food and farming leaders across the U.S. are tackling these challenges by constructing civic networks. Overturning extractive economic structures, these inspired leaders are engaging low-income residents, farmers, and local organizations in their quest to build stronger communities..Ken Meter is one of the most experienced food system analysts in the U.S., holding over 50 years of experience in community capacity building. Meter is co–author of a toolkit for measuring economic impacts of local food development and co-editor of Sustainable Food System Assessment: Lessons from Global Practice. He has taught at the University of Minnesota and the Harvard Kennedy School.Dr. Susan Grelock Yusem is an independent researcher trained in depth psychology, with an emphasis on community, liberation, and eco-psychologies. Her work centers around interconnection and encompasses regenerative food systems, the arts and conservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Howard speaks to Juha Kaakinen, CEO of Y-Foundation, a global leader in implementing the "Housing First principle" and a clear example of how genuine progress can be made in concretely addressing homelessness.Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Today's guests are Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman and Dr. Daniel Peach. Dr. Kuhlman is a former White house physician. From 2007 to 2011, he served as Chief of the White House Medical Unit, designating him as the personal physician to President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. He currently serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Quality and Safety Officer for AdventHealth.Dr. Kuhlman is joined today by his colleague and co-author, Dr. Daniel Peach. Dr. Peach, a registered sports medicine physician in the UK, currently serves as Executive Director of Clinical Innovation for AdventHealth. Their new book, “Transformative Healthcare,” and their unique career paths are the subjects for today’s episode. Their book was published by AdventHealth Press in August of 2021.Colin Miller and Dr. Keith Mankin host the popular medical podcast, PeerSpectrum. Colin works in the medical device space and Keith is a retired pediatric orthopedic surgeon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing how we think about care. Care work has long been devalued – the daily labors of sustaining the well-being of individuals and community members were seen as natural duties belonging to women, and did not receive recognition as labor. However, with the COVID-19 crisis, the popular media is increasingly valorizing care workers as essential workers because of the growing need for care from our vulnerable populations. The question remains whether we as society are ensuring care for both workers and recipients of state-funded domestic personal support, who are also marginalized from society because of their age, disability, class, and race. Home Care Fault Lines: Understanding Tensions and Creating Alliances (ILR Press, 2020) makes a timely intervention – the scholarship on care work focuses either on workers, recipients, policies, or private sectors. In her important sociological investigation, Cynthia Cranford examines both the workers’ and recipients’ perspectives through in-depth interviews with over 300 people in Canada and the US to understand how we can improve the workers’ security with recipients’ flexibility (often seen in opposition from one another) at levels of labor process, labor market, and state.Through case studies of Toronto’s Direct Funding Program, Los Angeles’s In-Home Supportive Services program, Toronto’s Home Care program, and Toronto’s Attendant Services program, Cranford evaluates the potential of co-ethnic alliances, union organizing, and state-funded model in mediating the tension between security and flexibility. Drawing from a wide range of scholarship on domestic labor, migration, and unions, Cranford proposes a three-pronged model of intimate community unionism to ensure flexible and secure working environments for both workers and recipients where they can democratically contribute their knowledges and form alliances. Cranford’s in-depth, thought-provoking, and insightful work is an important read not only for scholars of care work and labor, but also for activists, social workers, and organizers outside of academia who are interested in building alliances of care.Cynthia Cranford is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, where she studies inequalities of gender, work and migration, and collective efforts to resist them.Da In Ann Choi is a PhD student at UCLA in the Gender Studies department. Her research interests include care labor and migration, reproductive justice, social movement, citizenship theory, and critical empire studies. She can be reached at dainachoi@g.ucla.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Child sponsorship, originally a project of nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries, has become one of today’s most profitable private fund-raising tools for global organizations, including World Vision, Compassion International, and ChildFund. Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States (Princeton UP, 2020) is an investigation of two centuries of sponsorship and its related practices in American living rooms, churches, and shopping malls, that reveals the myriad ways that Christians who don’t travel outside of the United States cultivate global sensibilities.Hilary Kaell traces the movement of money, letters, and images, along with a wide array of sponsorship’s lesser-known embodied and aesthetic techniques, such as playacting, hymn singing, eating, and fasting. She shows how, through this process, U.S. Christians attempt to hone globalism of a particular sort by oscillating between the sensory experiences of a God’s eye view and the intimacy of human relatedness. These global aspirations are buoyed by grand hopes and subject to intractable limitations, since they so often rely on the very inequities they claim to redress.Based on extensive interviews, archival research, and fieldwork, Christian Globalism at Home explores how U.S. Christians imagine and experience the world without ever leaving home.Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at r.garfinkel@yahoo.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy