The Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program: Latest Articles

With the notable exception of handing over $700 billion to Wall Street last year, the United States Congress is not known for quick, decisive action. But recently, in a resounding bipartisan vote, members of both houses voted to deny federal dollars to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Over the past fifteen years, ACORN and its affiliates have received on average about $3.5 million a year from the government, or approximately one-millionth of this year's budget.

If you believe the nightmarish forecasts, the American labor market will take a decade to return to full employment. That means that kids in high school and middle school are going to walk directly into an economic buzz-saw by the time they graduate, and that's assuming, rather wishfully, that all of them will indeed graduate. Roughly half of these children are college-bound, which means that they will have the time and resources to gain some valuable and not-so-valuable skills.

Americans have an almost mystical faith that external controls on political power can produce good government. It is a faith in things like independent counsels, term limits, separation of powers, and Lawrence Lessig's interest, transparency systems. It approaches faith because, even when these cures continue to fail, we merely ask how they can be improved, not whether the whole approach is wrong. That is why, in his essay, Lessig does not go far enough. Naked transparency isn't the problem: It… more

George W. Bush launched a "preemptive" war. Now the Nobel Committee is trying for "preemptive" peace. I had always thought the way these things worked was that you helped bring peace or democracy to some corner of the globe first, and then you won the Nobel Prize. But this year, the Nobel Committee has turned that logic around: It clearly likes what Obama is trying to do: on nuclear disarmament, climate change and Middle East peace--and so, in a "preemptive"… more

After months of contentious deliberation over U.S. policy in Sudan, President Barack Obama has announced his administration's long-awaited position on the largest country in Africa. In a statement released on Monday, Obama said...well, not very much, really. Carefully calibrated not to further enrage the Khartoum regime or the human-rights activists irate over the softening approach the Obama administration has appeared to be taking on Sudan, the president's missive offered a nod to both.