The Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program: Recent and Upcoming Events

In How We Missed The Story: Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and the Hijacking of Afghanistan, award-winning journalist Roy Gutman weaves a narrative that exposes how and why the U.S. government, the United Nations, and the Western media "missed the story" in the leadup to 9/11. Focusing primarily on events in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s, Gutman contends that foreign policy in the region was non-existent. He argues that instead of a comprehensive foreign policy, the U.S. government… more

On Feb. 1, Whitehead Senior Fellow Michael Lind hosted award-winning Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang, who delivered a talk based on his new book, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. A brief summary follows, while an MP3 audio recording of the 71-minute event can be downloaded below and the video can be viewed at right.

Chang’s central theme was that developing countries should look to the history of successful nations, rather than economic theory, to… more

Between 1994 and 1999, Kenneth W. Kizer, MD, MPH, led a dramatic turnaround of the Veterans health care system. Today, in study after study, the VA emerges as an exemplar of best practices in patient safety, disease management, evidence-based medicine, electronic medical records and customer service. Both Senators Clinton and Obama, as well as a number of jounalists and academics, have recently pointed to the VA health care system as a model for national healthcare reform, and a… more

In most markets, paying more buys better quality. When you pay $400 for a night in the Four Seasons, you expect to get a better room and better service than you would at Motel 6. But in health care, the normal rules of economics don't apply. The American health care system ranks in the bottom third of developed nations. American medicine kills 100,000 patients a year through medical error and our health statistics are on a par with the Czech… more

Shannon Brownlee, award-winning journalist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, has written and spoken widely about health care, genetic testing and the insurance industry, problems in the assisted reproductive industry, and the need for national policies to regulate new human genetic technologies.

In Overtreated, Shannon argues that the U.S. health care system delivers huge amounts of unnecessary care that is not only expensive and wasteful but can actually imperil our health. She shows how the interests… more

Noted middle east and terrorism expert Daniel Byman offers a new approach to fighting the war on terrorism in his new book, The Five Front War. He argues that two of the main solutions to terrorism offered by politicians -- military intervention and the democratization of the Arab world -- shouldn't even be our top priorities. Instead, he presents a fresh way to face intelligence and law enforcement challenges ahead: conduct counterinsurgency operations, undermine al-Qaeda's ideology, selectively push for reforms,… more

Despite the sustained economic growth of recent years, Americans are increasingly concerned with economic security. Even before economists began reporting signs of recession, skyrocketing health care costs, faltering pensions, and burgeoning inequality frayed the fabric of the American social contract. America's social contract is an evolving, complex web of legal and informal relationships between households, employers, government, and civil society that extends beyond particular federal programs. Now is the time to strike a new bargain between these sectors, rethinking the… more

In the recently published Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, Gregory Rodriguez takes an in-depth look at the largest immigrant group in American history. Rodriguez examines the complexities of the heritage and the racial and cultural synthesis -- mestizaje -- that has defined the Mexican people since the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. Vis-a-vis the present era of Mexican American confidence, Rodriguez argues that the rapidly expanding Mexican American integration in to the mainstream is changing not only how… more

Gregory Rodriguez's recently published book, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, is a seminal work on the history of the Mexican American experience and their long term cultural and political influence in the United States. Rodriguez examines the complexities of the Mexican American heritage and how its racial and cultural synthesis, its mestizaje, is continually changing the manner in which Americans think about race and their identity as a nation.

Gregory Rodriguez is an Irvine Senior Fellow and Director of the California… more

**THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.  WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE THIS MAY CAUSE YOU.** 

In April 2004, the Abu Ghraib photographs set off an international scandal. Author Tara McKelvy—the first journalist to speak with female prisoners of Abu Ghraib—traveled to the Middle East and across the United States to unearth the full story. Join us for a lively discussion of her book, Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War, and to examine… more

In Merchant of Death, Douglas Farah and Stephan Braun tell the true story of Viktor Bout, a young Russian intelligence officer who, since the end of the Cold War, has redefined how wars are fought in much of the developing world. By gaining access to unguarded weapons arsenals and a fleet of several dozen aircraft, Bout became a one-stop shopping service for all sides in many wars, from Afghanistan, where he armed the Norther Alliance and the Taliban, to… more

On Sept. 27, scholar Philip H. Gordon of The Brookings Institution discussed his new book, Winning the Right War: the Path to Security for America and the World (Times Books, 2007), and entertained questions from an audience at the New America Foundation. After a brief introduction by Peter Bergen, terrorism analyst and senior fellow at New America, Dr. Gordon asserted that six years into the war on terror, “we are not doing as well as we could be.” He proposed… more

In the recently published Spying Blind, Amy Zegart argues that after the Cold War ended, the CIA and FBI failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism. She makes the case by conducting painstaking analysis of more than three hundred intelligence reform recommendations and tracing the history of CIA and FBI counterterrorism efforts from 1991 to 2001. Zegart finds that political leaders were well aware of the emerging terrorist danger and the urgent need for intelligence reform, but failed… more

As California searches for market-based incentives for energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reductions, white certificates -- tradable certificates representing one megawatt of verified electrical savings --are emerging as a promising policy option.

In this one-day seminar, nationally known experts will discuss the benefits and complications of white certificates as well as the ways in which white certificate programs affect incentives for energy efficiency. Following the presentations, Bill Prindle of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy… more

All too often the foreign policy debate is divided between “realists” who favor power politics and “idealists” who want the United States to act as a missionary nation exporting democracy or human rights. In his ground-breaking and controversial new book Bounding Power, Daniel Deudney, one of America’s leading students of international relations, transcends this stale debate and shatters the categories in which we think about U.S. foreign policy. Deudney revives and modernizes republican security theory, a way of thinking about… more

New America senior fellows Peter Bergen and Anatol Lieven recently returned from Pakistan, having met with leading figures from the government, the military, the opposition, the radical Islamist groups, and the administration of the North West Frontier Province and Tribal Areas. They have each authored several pieces on their findings and will publicly discuss them -- along with the present political and security situation in Pakistan and the relationship between Pakistani developments and the war in Afghanistan. … more

In his new book Security First, Amitai Etzioni calls for a complete reorientation of American foreign policy. In order to minimize the threat to both American citizens and the global community at large, basic security for all—not democracy— must be America's primary foreign policy goal. Basic security, Etzioni explains, is freedom from deadly violence, maiming, and torture.

Etizioni posits that Democracy may follow basic security, but without security first, democracy inevitably fails. Many citizens and leaders who oppose… more

The death of Taliban commander Mullah Dudallah has scored a major victory for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, while the House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved H.R. 2446, the Afghanistan Freedom and Security Support Act (AFSSA), authorizing $1.6 billion per year over the next three years for development, economic and security assistance programs in Afghanistan. However, these successes are set against the backdrop of a deteriorating political and security environment -- with the steady rise of suicide attacks… more

Is America ready for the next September 11 or Hurricane Katrina? Is our nation really safer now than it was when Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center towers? Have the billions of dollars we spent on Homeland Security prepared our industrial and financial systems for real shocks? Have we even managed to identify what the real threats to our society actually are?

Charles Perrow is one of America’s preeminent experts on disasters and disaster preparedness, and… more

When it comes to the economy, it's often said that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Yet most economists have been confounded by the failure of recent productivity gains to significantly raise the incomes for the majority of American workers.

At this special event, a presentation of the Next Social Contract Initiative at the New America Foundation, MIT economists Frank Levy and Peter Temin presented their new paper “Inequality and Institutions in 20th Century America,” which… more