In the sixth week of Political Studies, fellows will turn to contemporary issues of domestic policy, with a focus on understanding how ideas influence policy.

One seminar, led by Charles Fain Lehman of the Manhattan Institute, introduces fellows to the key approaches and debates of twentieth-century conservative social science through four major policy arenas: family structure, poverty, welfare, and crime.

The second seminar, led by Patrick Brown of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, explores the reciprocal relationship between family and politics—how public policies influence family life and, in turn, how families sustain or challenge the political order.

Image: “Security of the Family,” WPA mural for the Health and Human Services Building, Washington DC, by Seymour Fogel

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.

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.

Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session

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, “Equal Schools or Equal Students?,” The Public Interest, Summer 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:

  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:

  • 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:

  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:

  • James Q. Wilson, “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” The Weekly Standard, October 18, 1999
  • Daniel DiSalvo, “Edward Banfield Revisited,” National Affairs, Summer 2017
  • “Summary of Report,” Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The “Kerner Commission”), 1968
  • 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

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:

  • Robert VerBruggen, “The Influencer,” City Journal, Summer 2022
  • Tom Wolfe, “Mau–Mauing the Flak Catchers,” in Radical Chic & Mau–Mauing the Flak Catchers (FSG, 1971) pp. 117–84
  • Charles Murray, Chs. 4, 12, 13, & 17, 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)
  • Robert Rector & Jennifer A. Marshall, “The Unfinished Work of Welfare Reform,” National Affairs, Winter 2013

Discussion Questions:

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

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, 1, Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing (Harvard 2005)
  • George L. Kelling, “How New York Became Safe: The Full Story,” City Journal, Special Issue 2009
  • Peter Moskos, “‘There Is a Tendency to Romanticize the Gutter’: The Rebirth of Times Square, Port Authority and Bryant Park,” Vital City, June 7, 2022

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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Judge Roy Altman

Judge Roy K. Altman, at 36, became the youngest federal district court judge in the country—and the youngest federal judge ever appointed in the Southern District of Florida. He received his BA from Columbia University and his JD from Yale Law School, where he was projects editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, Altman clerked on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for the Honorable Stanley Marcus.

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Adam J. White

Adam J. White is the Laurence H. Silberman Chair in Constitutional Governance and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the Supreme Court and the administrative state. Concurrently, he codirects the Antonin Scalia Law School’s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State.