Our Constitutional Founding: From Ideas to Institutions
Gain a deeper understanding of our Constitution by studying the political debates surrounding its founding.
In the final 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 20th-century conservative social science through four great debates in social policy: family structure, poverty, welfare, and crime. The second seminar will explore the philosophical and political issues raised by the nature of modern science and its place in our democratic society. 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.
Tony Mills on the Perils of Politicized Science
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.
Matthew Continetti
Matthew Continetti is resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining AEI, he was Editor in Chief of the Washington Free Beacon. His articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
Matthew Continetti
Matthew Continetti is resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on American political thought and history, with a particular focus on the development of the Republican Party and the American conservative movement in the 20th century. He is the founding editor The Washington Free Beacon and was Editor in Chief until 2019. Prior to joining the Beacon, he was Opinion Editor of The Weekly Standard, where he remained a Contributing Editor until 2018.
The author of The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine (Doubleday, 2006), Continetti’s articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post.
A 2003 graduate of Columbia University, where he majored in history, Continetti lives in McLean, Virginia.
M. Anthony Mills
Anthony (Tony) Mills is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies the federal government’s role in scientific research and innovation as well as how to integrate scientific expertise into our governing institutions. Dr. Mills holds a PhD and an MA in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in philosophy, French, and comparative literature from Northwestern University.
M. Anthony Mills
Anthony (Tony) Mills is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies the federal government’s role in scientific research and innovation as well as how to integrate scientific expertise into our governing institutions. He also focuses on the relationship between expert knowledge and democratic governance. Dr. Mills is concurrently a senior fellow at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy and a scholar associate at the Society of Catholic Scientists.
Before joining AEI, Dr. Mills was a resident senior fellow at the R Street Institute, where he launched and led a program on science policy and also served as associate vice president for policy. Previously, he was managing editor of RealClear Media Group and editor of RealClearPolicy. Dr. Mills has worked for numerous publications, including The New Atlantis, Big Questions Online, and several academic publications, and has held positions at Williams & Jensen, the Manhattan Institute, and the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
Dr. Mills’ writings on science, technology, public policy, philosophy, and religion have appeared in Politico, Slate, RealClearPolitics, The Hill, The Fulcrum, National Review, Washington Examiner, Law & Liberty, National Affairs, City Journal, First Things, Issues in Science and Technology, The New Atlantis, and various peer-reviewed journals. He is currently writing a book about federal science policy.
Dr. Mills holds a PhD and an MA in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in philosophy, French, and comparative literature from Northwestern University, where he also completed an MA in French.
Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
The Politics of Science
Syllabus coming soon
Check back to see the full syllabus.
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?
