Constitutional Studies Program
Study key constitutional questions and controversies with leading legal experts & practitioners.
In the fifth week of Political Studies, fellows will turn to contemporary issues of domestic policy, with a focus on understanding how ideas influence policy.
One seminar will introduce students to the approaches and ideas of twentieth-century conservative social science through four great debates in social policy: family structure, poverty, welfare, and crime. The second seminar will explore policy at the intersection of politics and economics, and offer a critical examination of current fault lines: welfare state design, income inequality, and the delicate balance between governmental intervention and economic autonomy.
Charles Fain Lehman on Social Policy at PSP
This course is part of our residential Political Studies Program. Fellows participate in morning seminars and meet prominent men and women in public life over afternoon and evening sessions. Up to 32 fellows will be selected.
Faculty
Charles Fain Lehman
Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, working primarily on the Policing and Public Safety Initiative, and a contributing editor of City Journal. His work on criminal justice, immigration, and social issues has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Tablet, among other publications.
Charles Fain Lehman
Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, working primarily on the Policing and Public Safety Initiative, and a contributing editor of City Journal. He also hosts the podcast Institutionalized with cohost Aaron Sibarium.
Lehman was previously a staff writer with the Washington Free Beacon, where he covered domestic policy from a data-driven perspective. His work on criminal justice, immigration, and social issues has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, and Tablet, among other publications, and he is a contributing writer with the Institute for Family Studies. Originally from Pittsburgh, he now lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Daniel DiSalvo
Daniel DiSalvo is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York-CUNY. His scholarship focuses on American political parties, elections, labor unions, state government, and public policy.
Daniel DiSalvo
Daniel DiSalvo is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York-CUNY.
His scholarship focuses on American political parties, elections, labor unions, state government, and public policy. He is the author of Government Against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Engines of Change: Party Factions in American Politics, 1868-2010 (Oxford University Press, 2012).
DiSalvo writes frequently for scholarly and popular publications, including National Affairs, City Journal, American Interest, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, and New York Post. He is coeditor of The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics.
DiSalvo holds a Ph.D. in politics from the University of Virginia.
Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
Social Policy
Session I: The Crisis in Social Policy
Readings:
- Adam Keiper, “The Public Interest at 50,” National Affairs, Fall 2015
- Robert Martinson, “What Works? Questions and Answers About Prison Reform,” The Public Interest, Spring 1974
- James Coleman, “Equality of Educational Opportunity,” National Center for Education Statistics, 1966
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Defining Deviancy Down,” The American Scholar, Winter 1993
- James Q. Wilson, “Crime Amidst Plenty: The Paradox of the Sixties,” in Thinking About Crime (Basic Books, 1975)
Discussion Questions:
- What were the social problems that prompted conservative critiques?
- Where did Kennedy-Johnson liberalism go awry?
- What lessons can we draw from this experience for analysis today?
Session II: “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”
Readings:
- Greg Weiner, “Moynihan and the Neocons,” National Affairs, Winter 2016
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Chs. 2 & 4, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of Labor, March 1965
- William Julius Wilson, Ch. 3, The Truly Disadvantaged (University of Chicago, 1987)
- Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “How the Great Society ‘Destroyed the American Family,’” The Public Interest, Summer 1992
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Revisiting the Moynihan Report,” The Atlantic, June 17, 2013
Discussion Questions:
- Was Moynihan’s focus on family structure merited? Or was he “blaming the victim?”
Session III: The Unheavenly City
Readings:
- Robert J. Samuelson, “The Gift of a Good Teacher,” Washington Post, October 14, 1999
- James Q. Wilson, “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” The Weekly Standard, October 18, 1999
- Daniel DiSalvo, “Edward Banfield Revisited,” National Affairs, Summer 2017
- Edward Banfield, Chs. 3, 9, & 10, The Unheavenly City Revisited (Little, Brown and Co., 1974)
- Peter H. Rossi, “The City as Purgatory,” Social Science Quarterly, 51, No. 4, March 1971
- R. Marmor, “Banfield’s Heresy,” Commentary, July 1972
- Thomas Sowell, “The Unheavenly City at Fifty,” Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2020
Discussion Questions:
- Is it persuasive to believe that individual behavior produces a persistent underclass?
- How much trust should we have in institutions to resolve the problems of the worst off?
Session IV: Losing Ground
Readings:
- Robert VerBruggen, “The Influencer,” City Journal, Summer 2022
- Charles Murray, Chs. 10, 12, 13, & 16, Losing Ground (Basic Books, 1984)
- Christopher Jencks, “How Poor Are the Poor?,” New York Review of Books, May 9, 1985
- Charles Murray and Christopher Jencks, “‘Losing Ground: An Exchange,’” New York Review of Books, October 24, 1985
- Mickey Kaus, Ch. 7, The End of Equality (Basic Books, 1992)
- Amy A. Fowler & Douglas J. Besharov, “The End of Welfare as We Know It?,” The Public Interest, Spring 1993
Discussion Questions:
- Was Murray right that welfare drove people to the dole? Or was he, as Jencks put it, a social Darwinist?
Session V: “Broken Windows”
Readings:
- Peter H. Schuck, “James Q. Wilson and American Exceptionalism,” National Affairs, Winter 2016
- Charles Fain Lehman, “Contra ‘Root Causes,’” City Journal, Summer 2021
- George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, “Broken Windows,” The Atlantic, March 1982
- Bernard Harcourt, Ch. 1, Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing (Harvard 2005)
- Bernard E. Harcourt and David E. Thacher, “Is Broken Windows Policing Broken?” Legal Affairs, October 17, 2005
- George L. Kelling, “How New York Became Safe: The Full Story,” City Journal, Special Issue 2009
Discussion Questions:
- Does the “broken windows” model work? Is it just? And should it remain the model for policing today?
