Civic Lens

Corey Fields of Georgetown University and author of Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans, on what Black Republicans can teach us about the complexity of race, identity, and political behavior. Fields recommends Cathy Cohen's The Boundaries of Blackness and Jean Beaman's Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France.

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com

Vanderbilt University Law Professor Jeff Bellin, author of Mass Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became Addicted to Prisons and Jails and How It Can Recover, traces the development of American mass incarceration from the crime increases of the 1960s and 1970s through the expansion of policing, prosecution, sentencing, and imprisonment that followed.

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com

Liz Norell, Associate Director for Instructional Learning at The University of Mississippi's Center for Teaching and Learning, answers what if the biggest challenge facing higher education isn't technology—but keeping students motivated to learn?

Liz recommends A Pedagogy of Kindness and 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People .

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com

American law draws the line between childhood and adulthood in very different places—with consequences that can last a lifetime.

Professor Cohen recommends: When They Us, Adolescence, and The Rage of Innocence by Kristen Henning.

In re Gault, Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, Miller v. Alabama, and Jones v. Mississippi.

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com

Bowdoin College's Andrew Rudalevige on how the presidency become so powerful and what it means for American democracy. Rudalevige is the author of By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power and The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate.

Rudalevige recommends: Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan, The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency, The Development of the American Presidency, and the podcasts Presidential and Can He Do That? (now known as Sidebar).

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com

SMU's Matthew Wilson on how religious beliefs shape politics - even for people who rarely think about religion. Wilson is the co-author of Politics and Religion in the United States and From pews to polling places : faith and politics in the American religious mosaic.

Wilson recommends: America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln,

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com

Chris Cooper on how the South has become more urban, diverse, and connected to the rest of America, yet its identity as Southern still matters. Cooper is the author of: Anatomy of a Purple State: A North Carolina Politics Primer and co-author with Gibbs Knotts of The Resilience of Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of Its People.

Cooper recommends: Southern Politics in State and Nation (Key), Movers and Stayers: The Partisan Transformation of 21st Century Southern Politics (Irwin), Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign (Lee), Rural Republican Realignment in the Modern South: The Untold Story (Hood and McKee), and An American Problem: How the Country Built—and the Supreme Court Broke—the Voting Rights Act (Miller and Morris)

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com

Scott Huffmon (The Winthrop Poll⁠) of Winthrop University and Director of the Winthrop Poll discusses how migration has changed the South, evolving views on the Confederate Flag, polarization, and the Trump effect on South Carolina and Southern politics.

Huffmon recommends: The Long Southern Strategy, American Experience on PBS - Civil Rights, and "Jail, No Bail"

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com

Amy Hanauer of ITEP asks "When profitable corporations pay little or nothing in taxes, who makes up the difference?"

Hanauer recommnds: Why Corporations Must Pay More, ITEP State Policy, The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History, and Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com

Christopher Sebastian Parker asks what happens when people fight for democracy abroad but are denied its promises at home. Parker is the author of: Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Struggle Against White Supremacy in the Postwar South and Change They Can't Believe In: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America.

Parker recommends: Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America's World War II Military, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I, Strength for the Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military

"Close Ranks",

Get more analysis like this straight to your inbox by subscribing to Civic Lens: marvinking1.substack.com