Public policy is a professional discipline, combining the spirit of academic inquiry with the enthusiasm of political activism. As the year comes to an end and we each disappear into exams, it is easy to forget why it is fun to be a student of public policy. As we launch this semester’s PolicyMatters – today in its fifth year! – I would like to highlight the efforts of some past and current colleagues to both push, develop and challenge their ideas in the classroom and then put them into practice.
We are in an election year and several GSPP students have gotten involved in the efforts to register voters, promote candidates, increase awareness and interest in election issues and overall contribute to the vibrancy of democracy. If you would like to get involved, contact Ben Thornley.
Many GSPP students are involved in different ways in dealing with emerging challenges that combine high technology with real social and environmental problems. Several are involved with BERC, the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative and with the Berkeley Nanotechnology Club (If you would like to get involved, contact Jameel Alsalam for BERC and Javiera Barandiaran for the Nano Club, or the clubs themselves). Both clubs aim to bring together large and disparate communities of students and experts working on developing new technologies. In the case of BERC, these are new technologies to halt climate change. In the case of the Nano Club, these are new technologies that will appear in huge range of consumer products and manufacturing processes, with potentially vast health and environmental consequences. How to manage the unforeseen consequences without hurting technological and economic development is the key challenge.
Many other colleagues are involved in social projects in California and elsewhere, including Africa, Latin America and Asia. GSPP students are working in projects ranging from the founding of NGOs to help immigrants who want to repatriate home, to educational programs for underprivileged youth, to programs for global health and disease, to promoting political and social development in Nepal, to name just a few.
Finally, there are those who have gotten involved in the school’s most consistent and accessible face to the world, PolicyMatters. The journal was founded in January 2004 by David Deming and Richard Halkett, students at GSPP, to provide our community with a “forum for innovative and provocative policy analysis, in particular first-looks at new issues, or new looks at old ones”. Five years later this tradition continues thanks to generations of student editors that each year step up to the challenge. Without the dedication and energy of each new editorial team, PolicyMatters would have stopped printing long ago. I would also like to thank Sara Moore, who over the past months has worked to improve the online site of PolicyMatters. (If you would like to get involved, contact our chief editor, Doug Spencer).
I would like to thank all our editors, our future editors – especially the first years that will next week become the editors –, our writers and our readers for dedicating time and effort to this project. It is easy to become siloed into our class work; but, I would argue, to get the most out of our brief, brief time at GSPP, it is essential to get involved in the huge range of opportunities the Berkeley campus makes available to us. Explore new topics! Develop new skills! Think outside the box, be active and meet new people! Congratulations to all my colleagues who’ve chosen to live like this; it is a real privilege to work with you!
Now, go read this new issue of PolicyMatters! (And join us this Friday at 12.30 in the GSPP living room for drinks and a celebration launch party!). It begins with two provocative essays. In the first, Jenny Paul-Rappaport laments the fact that courts have failed to protect women’s equality and advances a political solution: the Women’s Equality Amendment. In the second, Naomi Goldberg questions whether current welfare-to-work policies can be modified so that women may, if they choose, adhere to the national breastfeeding recommendations.
Our featured articles section begins with five detailed recommendations for strengthening United Nations peace operations by Laurie Freeman and colleagues. Céline Ferré then explores the effects of a unique education policy change in Kenya, finding that an additional year of education decreases the probability of teenage childbear¬ing by almost 50%. Next Ryan Reyna and colleagues investigate the relationship between family structure and the cognitive development of very young children, but determine that maternal education is actually a better predictor of child cognition. Finally, Javiera Barandiaran scrutinizes the City of Berkeley’s new nanotechnology disclosure ordinance and provides suggestions for its improvement and adoption in other cities.
PolicyMatters editor Maria McKee sits down with George Washington University professor Charles Karelis to talk about his new book “The Persistence of Poverty,” which challenges one of the primary assumptions of microeconomic theory: the law of diminishing marginal utility.
The issue concludes with a thought-provoking piece by Lauren Lambie-Hanson, who provides insight on the community changes that often accompany historic preservation.
