New Books in Public Policy

The Future of University Credentials: New Developments at the Intersection of Higher Education and Hiring (Harvard Education Press, 2016) offers a thorough and urgently needed overview of the burgeoning world of university degrees and credentials. At a time of heightened attention to how universities and colleges are preparing young people for the working world, questions about the meaning and value of university credentials have become especially prominent. Sean R. Gallagher, EdD, guides us through this fast-changing terrain, providing much-needed context, details, and insights. The book casts a wide net, focusing on traditional higher education degrees and on the myriad certificates and other postsecondary awards that universities and other institutions now issue. He describes the entire ecosystem of credentials, including universities and colleges, employers, government agencies, policy makers and influencers—and, not least, the students whose futures are profoundly affected by these certifications. And he looks intently at where university credentials might be headed, as educational institutions seek to best serve students and employers in a rapidly changing world. Hoover Harris, editor of Degree or Not Degree?, holds a PhD in English Literature and writes and speaks about trends in higher education. He can be reached by email at hooverharris@icloud.co or on Twitter @degreenot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Stephen Riley, a lecturer in the Law School of the University of Leicester in Britain, has written a philosophical work examining the concept of dignity and its role in legal theory and, to a degree, the application of law.  In Human Dignity and Law: Legal and Philosophical Investigations (Routledge, 2018), Riley argues that the role of human dignity should be recognized by courts and all of society, but he is wary of such a concept becoming a trump card in a court’s decision-making process.  He notes that the concerns of justice and equality need to be recognized by courts but court must be aware of the infrequent instances when the demands of dignity are in conflict with the demands of justice.  In this podcast we discuss the definition of human dignity, the author’s philosophical orientation, and the applications of the concept of dignity has been applied by courts in different settings. Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth–from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll of between 50 and 100 million people, it exists in our memory as an afterthought to World War I. In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind’s vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted–and often permanently altered–global politics, race relations and family structures, while spurring innovation in medicine, religion and the arts. It was partly responsible, Spinney argues, for pushing India to independence, South Africa to apartheid and Switzerland to the brink of civil war. It also created the true “lost generation.” Drawing on the latest research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology and economics, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (PublicAffairs, 2017) masterfully recounts the little-known catastrophe that forever changed humanity. Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthcare podcast along with industry thought leader Dr. Robert Pearl. A University of Iowa history alumnus, Jeremy is curious and passionate about all things healthcare, which means he’s always up for a good discussion! Reach him at jeremyccorr@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Autism as a condition has received much focused attention recently, but less attention has been paid to its politics. It is a condition that necessitates significant accommodations and interventions, which can be difficult for people with autism and their loved ones to obtain, depending on the state of autism public policy. Sociologist John J. Pitney argues that political science needs to more rigorously study autism policy and politics, as he outlines in his book The Politics of Autism: Navigating the Contested Spectrum (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). In our interview, we explore the evolution of our understanding of autism, how public policy impacts the lives of autistic individuals, and suggestions for future research. For anyone with autism or their loves ones, this interview offers suggestions for meeting important needs and hope for a better future. John J. Pitney Jr., Ph.D. is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of The Art of Political Warfare and the coauthor of several books, including Epic Journey: The 2008 Elections and American Politics as well as After Hope and Change: The 2012 Election and American Politics. In addition to his scholarly work, he has held staff positions in the U.S. Congress and the New York State Legislature. He maintains several blogs, including Autism Policy and Politics. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City and Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image, and relationship issues. He is a graduate of the psychoanalytic training program at William Alanson White Institute, where he also chairs their monthly LGBTQ Study Group. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (Routledge, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

What kind of barriers and risks do single parents face? In their new book, The Triple Bind of Single-Parent Families: Resources, Employment and Policies to Improve Well-Being (Policy Press, 2018), editors Rense Nieuwenhuis and Laurie C. Maldonado argue that understanding inadequate resources, employment, and policies matter for understanding single-parent families. They refer to these as the “Triple Bind.” Part One explores resources, including exploring education, wealth gaps, and school settings. Other chapters in this section also explore how single-parenthood is often a transitory phase and the importance of co-parenting. Part Two explored inadequate employment and starts with an important chapter about taking a life course perspective when researching single-parents. The chapters in this section also tackle income transfers, paid parental leave, and other workplace characteristics. Part Three focuses on redistributive policies, including cash benefits, universal vs. targeted polices, daycare, and minimum income. Part Four concludes the book with important discussions around framing single-parents in a “deficit model” way, the importance of gender in the discussion of single-parents, and ideas for future research. This book is free to download in its entirety online and therefore is made accessible to anyone who may be interested in one or all of the topics contained within!  Overall, this book tackles important topics around single-parents around the world and would be useful for an upper level undergraduate course in the Sociology of Family or Family Studies. It would also be the perfect addition to a graduate level course that focus on families. Sarah E. Patterson is a postdoc at the University of Western Ontario. You can tweet her at @spattersearch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In Schoolhouse Wreck: The Betsy DeVos Story (Strong Arm Press, 2018), Jason Linkins delivers a searing critique of controversial Trump administration Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The book tracks the DeVos family’s accumulation of wealth through the multi-level marketing company Amway, which was founded by her Betsy DeVos’ father-in-law, and the family’s subsequent forays into philanthropy and Michigan Republican politics. Linkins offers a harsh assessment of her push for charter schools in Michigan, and argues she is determined to lower the firewall between church and state in America’s schools. He also explores her record in the federal government, contended she has sided with unscrupulous for-profit colleges and private student lenders at the expense of students. But while the public perception of DeVos is one of an incompetent, Linkins concludes DeVos is a savvy political operator with deep convictions who should not be underestimated. Bill Scher is a Contributing Editor for POLITICO Magazine. He has provided political commentary on CNN, NPR and MSNBC. He has been published in The New York Times, The New Republic, and The New York Daily News among other publications. He is author of Wait! Don’t Move to Canada, published by Rodale in 2006. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

In Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), geographer Caitlin DeSilvey offers a set of alternatives to those who would assign a misplaced solidity to historic buildings and landscapes in order then to “preserve” or “conserve” them. DeSilvey reimagines processes of material decay, which always intermingle natural and cultural landscapes, as more animate, eventful, productive, and worthy of affirmation than prevailing practice would have it. Her narrative wends through Montana, Vermont, Germany’s Ruhr Valley, and numerous English sites, each of them rendered at close range, in lithe, sometimes experimental prose. Through these encounters, and with a remarkably light touch, she thinks in a key recognizable alongside, but never subservient to, many strands of recent geographic thought on the force or vitality of nonhuman matter. Curated Decay is an ethical intervention, too, posing difficult questions about vulnerability, rights, care, repair, maintenance, and how we might better respond to environments as they weather and fragment. Just this week, happily, the book was just awarded the Historic Preservation Book Prize by the Center for Historic Preservation at the University of Mary Washington. It will satisfy a wide and curious readership across diverse domains of theory and practice, and because the lines of questioning it opens are not easily closed down, it will stoke debate for some time to come. Peter Ekman teaches in the departments of geography at Sonoma State University and the University of California, Berkeley. He received the Ph.D. from Berkeley in 2016, and is at work on two book projects on the cultural and historical geography of urban America across the long twentieth century. He can be reached at psrekman@berkeley.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The use of our data and the privacy, or lack thereof, that we have when we go online has become a topic of increasing importance as technology becomes ubiquitous and more sophisticated. Governments, advocacy groups and individual citizens are demanding that action be taken to protect their valuable data. But what does this sporadic noise amount to? B.J. Mendelson in his book Privacy: And How to Get It Back (Curious Reads, 2017) argues that a complacent citizenry and the overly-intimate relationship that corporations have with government has led to massive breaches of people’s privacy. Mendelson humorously explains the way people’s data is used and abused as he tracks the long history of government surveillance leading to an explanation of, what he believes, could be the solution to the abuse of people’s privacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Christy Ford Chapin, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has written a history of the funding of America’s health care system: Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System (Cambridge University Press, 2015).  She begins with an account of the development of physicians’ practices in the mid-nineteenth century and traces the evolution of the American Medical Association’s role in shaping how physicians practiced medicine and how it was financed.  The advent of the insurance model for funding health care was a creation of the Progressive period and became dominant in the late 1930s, during the New Deal.  Chapin provides an account of the pitfalls of the insurance funding mechanism and recounts the battles between vested, competing interests, such as the AMA, independent physicians, corporate employers, labor unions, insurance companies (nonprofit and commercial), and the state and federal governments.  Each of these entities shaped the health care system we have today.  Chapin’s book helps explain how we got here and her critique of the insurance model suggests possible alternatives to our contemporary system of paying for health care. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

The Americans with Disability Act passed in 1990, but it was just one moment in ongoing efforts to craft the meaning and practice of “good design” that put people with disabilities at the center. In their new book, Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), Aimi Hamraie takes a “sledgehammer to history” in the spirit of one guerrilla activist group that they track in the archives—among many other people, objects, and historical contexts. Hamraie focuses on work around “access-knowledge”—that is, the forms of expertise that were considered legitimate ways of knowing and responding to disability through design. What has counted as legitimate access-knowledge, Hamraie argues, indicates designers’ goals: Was the aim of design to make productive workers, liberal consumers, or structures that materialized a commitment to spacial belonging? Who were the imagined users and how could new political priorities materialize in worlds already built? Answers to these questions made—and continue to remake—our material world and its frictions.  Hamraie brings their training in feminist epistemology to never-before-accessed archival materials, along with an array of historical images and documents. The result is a persuasive, beautiful, and intrepidly researched book. Building Access torques received wisdom in disability studies, history of science, and architectural design, and models how to attend to research, writing, and publishing as a material practice. Hamraie is Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health & Society, and Director of Vanderbilt’s Critical Design Lab. This interview was a collective effort among Vanderbilt faculty and graduate students in the course New Approaches to STS. For more information about using NBN interviews as part of pedagogical practice, please email Laura Stark or see the essay “Can New Media Save the Book?” in Contexts (2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy