Since its inception, New America has hosted more than 500 high-profile public events. Each of these events seeks to shed new light on the major policy issues of our day, and typically features leading thinkers from across the political spectrum. More often than not, the events are newsmaking in their own right.
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A sampling of recent notable events is available below; for all events this year, please click here.
Rising health care
costs are one of the leading drivers of the nation's budgetary problems. Done
wisely, health care reform could dramatically improve the long-term fiscal situation; done
wrong, it could blow an even larger hole in the budget.
Just
last year, tuition and fees at four-year
public colleges rose 6.5 percent. Unfortunately, this continues a decades-long
trend of rising college costs, even during periods of economic unease and low
inflation. Escalating prices have also coincided
with stagnation in need-based financial aid availability, the result of which has
been mounting levels of student debt for low and middle-income families. In
this context, there has been greater reliance on savings, particularly through
529 college savings plans, in order to increase college affordability and
After introductory remarks by American Strategy Program Director Steve
Clemons, James R. Locher III -- President & CEO of the Project on National
Security Reform, and lead author of Turning
Ideas into Action -- laid out the many issues handicapping the national
security bureaucracy. Describing the Departments as strong and the integrating
mechanisms chronically weak, Locher portrayed the National Security Adviser as
the head of an enormous force with almost no independent power, lacking even
The New America Foundation's
Open Technology Initiative is hosting The Washington DC Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery Fall Lecture series.
On October 30, panelists Tia Nelson,
Nigel Purvis,
and Steve
Schwartzman discussed the new market mechanism, REDD --
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation -- that aims to
allow residents of tropical forest properties to earn more money from standing
forests than from their removal. Tropical deforestation accounts for 20 percent
of all carbon emissions into the atmosphere, more than the combined emissions
of every car, truck, ship, plane and train on the planet. The panelists
