Policy 360

Ray Starling grew up on a hog and tobacco farm in rural North Carolina. He recalls working on the property by age five. Abdullah Antepli grew up in poverty in a slum in Turkey - his father left school in the fifth grade, and his mother is illiterate. Today, both men live in North Carolina, and their politics could not be more different. Starling leans right - he is a former principal agriculture advisor to former President Trump. Antepli, a Duke professor and a Muslim leader, leans left. But the two became friendly through an innovative program designed to get civic, business and political leaders with differing political views  to discuss important issues in the state of North Carolina. In this episode, they talk about how the strategies they learned in the program could help others in these divided times. Get show notes, transcripts and credits

Russia has invaded Ukraine. In response, President Biden has promised that the U.S. will impose “severe sanctions” against Russia for its actions. But what are sanctions exactly? How do they work? Do they have a history of working? Do they work well? Bruce Jentleson is a former State Department official. He has held numerous senior foreign policy positions in past U.S. administrations. He’s a professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, and his new book is called Sanctions: What Everyone Needs to Know. Get show notes, transcript and credits  

COVID-19 has upended lives around the world. Prior to the pandemic, Jennifer Lansford and her colleagues were conducting in-depth. multi-year research on children and families in nine countries. They are now expanding their research to consider COVID-19 and children and parents’ mental health. Jennifer Lansford is a research professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University where she’s an affiliate of Duke’s Center for Child & Family Policy. Get show notes, transcript & credits

Duke Sanford School of Public Policy Professor Stephen Buckley argues In some ways, the events of January 6 and related actions by Trump and his allies feel "like a coup that will never end. An almost invisible, drip, drip, drip coup. Or, as one friend recently called it, 'a termite coup.'" Read the article in The Atlantic Get show notes, transcript & credits

Stephen Glass’s story is legendary in certain circles –  he is one of the most famous liars in journalism. In 1998, as a young writer for the New Republic and other magazines, Glass fabricated more than 40 articles. And not just small details, he made up whole characters and scenes. His story even became a film called Shattered Glass. After Glass was caught, he had to somehow put his life back together again. He did find employment (not as a journalist) and he had a longtime partner. He decided he’d live by a simple rule: always tell the truth. But when Duke Sanford professor Bill Adair invited Glass to speak to his ethics class, he discovered a little-known part of Glass’s story. He had vowed not to lie again, but he found he had to break that promise. Read the article Loving Lies on Air Mail Get show notes, transcript & credits

Twelve Duke students had an exciting opportunity recently – they attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. They join us to discuss what stood out to them, what worries them, and what gives them hope. Get show notes, transcript & credits.

Dr. Jim Young Kim is a physician and anthropologist who previously served as the President of the World Bank. As a student at Harvard he co-founded the influential non-profit Partners in Health with Dr. Paul Farmer. Kim has received the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World." Dr. Kim sat for a wide-ranging conversation with the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy Dean Judith Kelley.  The two discuss China, the challenge and the need to vaccinate the world against COVID-19, and how anyone can use their own skills to make real change.

Scholars, practitioners, advocates and students gathered recently at Duke University to examine the topic of redistricting, the process of drawing congressional boundaries. The conference included judges and mathematicians, investigative reporters, and more. Each contributed insights to try and untangle the complex web that redistricting had become. This episode includes comments from: James Andrew Wynn, judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Jonathan Mattingly, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, Duke University Tyler Dukes, Investigative Reporter, Raleigh News & Observer and Adjunct Instructor in the Sanford School of Public Policy Art Pope, Chairman, John William Pope Foundation Tom Ross, President, The Volcker Alliance and Co-Chair, North Carolinians for Redistricting Reform Guest: Professor Deondra Rose, Director of Polis, the Center for Politics at Duke University.

There’s been tremendous political wrangling in the US recently about raising the debt ceiling (how much money we allow ourselves to borrow). The U.S. is not the first country in history borrow money and we won’t be the last.  In the late imperial period until the early 1920s, Russia needed cash, and they got it from Britain and France. Owing so much money gave Russia a kind of power; if Russia defaulted, it would have been catastrophic for the countries that lent them money. Guest: Duke professor Jennifer Siegel. Her book is For Peace and Money: French and British Finance in the Service of Tsars and Commissars.

If you’ve ever opened the New York Times, it’s likely that you’ve read something by Frank Bruni. He worked at the paper for 25 years as metro reporter, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, and even the chief restaurant critic for a time. He was also the first openly gay op-ed columnist at the Times. Bruni is now a faculty member at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and he joins Dean Judith Kelley to talk about polarization, ambivalence and ambiguity in the media. Here's the article they discuss.

Duke University’s Cyber Policy program has a new report that shows data brokers are openly and explicitly advertising sensitive information about US individuals for sale including demographic information, political preferences, even real-time GPS locations on current and former U.S. military personnel. The authors say such data brokerage is a virtually unregulated practice in the United States. Guest:  Justin Sherman directs data brokerage research for Duke’s Privacy & Democracy Project during his fellowship through Duke’s Technology Policy Lab.

Most Americans have no idea that there are elaborate pretend Iraqi and Afghan villages scattered around the United States – on US military bases. The villages are designed to look real. There are people in them - many of the people were born in the Middle East and immigrated to the U.S. They now play pretend versions of themselves, in pretend Middle Eastern villages, in the very real forests and deserts of the U.S. Christopher Sims has been photographing the villages, and he joins Duke Sanford Dean Judith Kelley to discuss his work. Sims is a new faculty member at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He also serves as the Undergraduate Education Director at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. Credits/Transcript: https://policy360.org/2021/09/08/inside-military-training-villages/

COVID-19 has ripped through nursing homes and long-term care facilities in the US, painfully unveiling and amplifying the problems that have been inherent in long-term care delivery for decades. Guest: Nathan Boucher is an assistant research professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

What does it take to build a business from the ground up? Are there special challenges that women face? Are there lessons that can be learned from those who have, as they say, been there and done that when it comes to building organizations that matter? Our guest today is Maya Ajmera, who started her first organization, the Global Fund for Children, shortly after she graduated from Duke University with a Master of Public Policy degree. She’s now the President and CEO of the Society for Science and Publisher of its award-winning magazine, Science News. 

What role do corporations play in a functioning democracy? Is there a way to encourage companies to be more socially responsible? Guest: Stan Litow is the author of The Challenge for Business and Society: From Risk to Reward. At IBM he led the global corporate social responsibility program. Litow now teaches graduate courses at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He has held high level positions for the Mayor and Governor of New York, and served as New York City’s Deputy Schools Chancellor.

Our guest this episode is part of a team of researchers that used data from real people's social media accounts to build bots that expose people to news they don't agree with – then they measured how users reacted. What they found is that when people are exposed to views that oppose their own, they actually become MORE not LESS polarized. Guest: Chris Bail,  Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Data Science and director of The Polarization Lab at Duke University; Author of Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make our Platforms Less Polarizing.

Sometimes we know exactly what the consequences of a policy will be, and sometimes we don’t. In this episode, we’ll explore a surprising consequence related to stepped-up enforcement of immigration policy in one county in North Carolina: Mecklenburg County. Guest: Professor Christina Gibson-Davis is Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke and co-author of the study Heightened Immigration Enforcement has Troubling Impact on Babies.  

In this episode, we look at ways to demystify artificial intelligence (AI) for military commanders and arm military personnel with the right questions to ask to distinguish AI with real, enduring capabilities from so called “drive-by AI.” Guest: Marc Losito is a Master of Public Policy student at the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy, where he is a Carlucci Fellow in Security Studies. He is also a Warrant Officer in the US Army. He authored an article for the Small Wars Journal, "The Commander's AI Smart Card".

As Elizabeth Warren memorably wrote, “It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house. But it is possible to refinance an existing home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting the family out on the street.” That quotation is an apt introduction to Mallory SoRelle's book, Democracy Declined – the Failed Politics of Consumer Financial Protection.  Consumer financial protections are becoming more and more complex and yet the system still requires individuals to sift through fine print to make sure they aren't going to get taken advantage of by predatory lenders. In this episode we'll look at the history of federal policies related to consumer financial protection, and options for how policies might be changed to benefit Americans and our economy. Get show notes, transcript, credits.

In this episode, we explore new research into providing healthcare recommendations by algorithm. Professor Kate Bundorf recently published a study examining the impact of algorithmic information and recommendations on consumer choice in health insurance plans.