In the penultimate 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 examine a range of rival philosophical views about the family and its relation to political society, before turning to how those views inform current debates on topics including paid family leave, the child tax credit, and marriage penalties in the tax code. The second seminar will introduce students to the approaches and ideas of 20th-century conservative social science through four great debates in social policy: family structure, poverty, welfare, and crime. In both seminars, fellows will debate the merit of various policy ideas and reflect on what is required for an idea to become politically impactful.

Daniel Burns on A Political Theorist Goes to Washington

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 36 fellows will be selected.

Faculty

Patrick T. Brown

Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where his work focuses on developing a robust pro-family economic agenda and supporting families as the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society. Prior to joining EPPC, Patrick served as a Senior Policy Advisor to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee (JEC).

Patrick T. Brown

Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where his work focuses on developing a robust pro-family economic agenda and supporting families as the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society.

His writing has been published in The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Post, and USA Today, and he has spoken on college campuses and Capitol Hill on topics from welfare reform to child care and education policy.

He has published reports on paid leave and family policy with the Institute for Family Studies, and edited an essay series featuring working-class voices for American Compass. He is an advisory board member of Humanity Forward and the Center on Child and Family Policy, and a contributing editor to Public Discourse.

Prior to joining EPPC, Patrick served as a Senior Policy Advisor to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee (JEC). There, he helped lead research about how to make it more affordable to raise a family and more effectively invest in youth and young adults. He also previously worked a government relations staffer for Catholic Charities USA.

Patrick graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in political science and economics. He also holds a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He and his wife Jessica have three young children and live in Columbia, S.C.

Daniel Burns

Daniel Burns is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas. His research in political philosophy focuses on the relation between religion and citizenship. He has recently served as a staffer for the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee and as a full-time contractor for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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.

Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session

Readings:

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. Does Plato’s account of sacred familial bonds still describe how Americans experience family life today?
  2. Does Locke’s account of the contractual basis of marriage and family life offer a more reasonable basis for family-related public policy than Plato’s account?
  3. What are the most important areas of agreement between Plato and Locke on the family? What are their most important areas of disagreement? Would their disagreements have any bearing on questions of contemporary public policy?

Readings:

Discussion Questions:

  1. Rousseau claims that traditional gender roles are not only useful to society but also beneficial for individual happiness and true gender equality. Are these believable claims?
  2. Mill advocates only for legal equality of opportunity between the sexes, not for any legal interventions to correct past inequities or prevent future discrimination. Is this consistent on his part? Or do his arguments point toward a more active government role in advancing the social status of women?
  3. What would contemporary American society look like if we listened more to Rousseau? Or to Mill?

Readings:

Discussion Questions:

  1. Does the equality of the sexes require Okin’s “genderless society”? If not, then why not? Or if so, then are her policy prescriptions the best way to achieve that society?
  2. What are the social goals that proponents seek to advance through greater funding of childcare? What are some of the objections to broader funding of childcare? Are these fundamentally irreconcilable?

Readings:

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What are some of the tradeoffs that come with greater fiscal support to families? Are there any objections to pro-family policies not listed in the articles above?
  2. Why is there such a heavy emphasis placed on ‘working families’ in this debate? Who might be left out in such a framing?

Readings:

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What are different ways someone on the political left might conceive of the family as an institution in today’s policy debates, and how does that differ from someone on the political right? What are the major fault lines?
  2. What are the best examples of contemporary policy debates that illustrate how the different anthropologies of the family drive different political positions and stances?
  3. Are we entering a new era of family policy? Are the debates over the family the same as in the 1970s or have they shifted?

Readings:

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What were the social problems that prompted conservative critiques?
  2. Where did Kennedy-Johnson liberalism go awry?
  3. What lessons can we draw from this experience for analysis today?

Readings:

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. Was Moynihan’s focus on family structure merited? Was he just “blaming the victim?” Or were liberals blinding themselves to the role that choice plays in pathology?

Readings:

Discussion Questions:

  1. Is it persuasive to believe that individual behavior produces a persistent underclass?
  2. How much trust should we have in institutions to resolve the problems of the worst off?

Readings:

Discussion Questions:

  1. Was Murray right that welfare drove people to the dole? Or was he, as Jencks put it, a social Darwinist?

Readings:

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. Does the “broken windows” model work? Is it just? And should it remain the model for policing today?

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Biography Image

Adam J. White

Adam J. White is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on American constitutionalism. Concurrently, he codirects the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University.