Policy 360

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.

On January 27, 2021, the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security issued a first-ever National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin due to a heightened threat environment across the U.S., which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the Jan. 6 Presidential Inauguration.

In a recent guest column in the Tampa Bay Times, Duke Professor David Schanzer wrote "Jan. 6 demonstrated to all Americans what many observers have been warning about for years – we have a serious domestic terrorism threat on our hands."

Schanzer joins Judith Kelly to explore options to reduce the threat. Schanzer directs the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Music: Blue Dot Sessions freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/

Music licensed under Creative Commons Attribution creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

Learn more about the Sanford School of Public Policy: sanford.duke.edu

Duke Professor Anne-Maria Makhulu joins Dean Judith Kelley to compare the current racial and socioeconomic disparities of South Africa with the disparities that have been made increasingly apparent over the past decade in the United States. The scholars discuss the countries' similarities and differences with regards to the coronavirus response, responses to police violence, movements for racial equity, and more. Makhulu says that one lesson to be learned from this comparison is that "the intractable problems that South Africa confronts are in fact the same intractable problems that the United States confronts. And there has to be a conversation about the infrastructure of racism, which is economic [...]"

Music: Blue Dot Sessions freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/

Music licensed under Creative Commons Attribution creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

Learn more about the Sanford School of Public Policy: sanford.duke.edu

The end of the Cold War is often considered a bit of a geopolitical anomaly. In 1980 the increasing antagonistic relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union caused many to fear that the conflict was once again on the path to nuclear fallout. President Regan famously characterized the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" and while Soviet media described U.S. foreign policy as "nuclear insanity."

Then suddenly, things quickly shifted. The two superpowers started cooperating and even more surprisingly the Soviet Union collapsed by the end of the decade and just like that the Cold War ended. As historian John Lewis Gaddis has observed "Wars, hot or cold, do not normally end with the abrupt but peaceful collapse of a major antagonist." So what changed in those 5 years that brought about the end of the Cold War?

Simon Miles is an Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, and his recently released book Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War seeks to answer this question among several others. The book focuses on the often overlooked period of the early 1980s. Was this shift in relations as abrupt as it appeared? To what extent did popular perception of the conflict reflect the reality of the situation?

Grab a copy of Simon's book: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501751691/engaging-the-evil-empire/

Subscribe to the Policy 360 podcast: social.sanford.duke.edu/Policy360_ApplePodcasts

Music: Blue Dot Sessions freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/

Music licensed under Creative Commons Attribution creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

In a special episode, Policy 360 joins a panel of Duke University experts for a debrief the day after election day 2020. Sanford professors Mac McCorkle, Director of POLIS: Center for Politics, and Deondra Rose, director of Research at POLIS: Center for Politics, moderate a discussion with four other professors here at Duke.

John Aldrich is a professor of Political Science and an expert on politics in the United States.

Duke Law School professor Guy-Uriel Charles is an expert on constitutional law, election law, campaign finance, and more political issues in the United States. He is also the Co-Director of the Duke Law Center on Law, Race, and Politics.

Public policy and journalism professor Bill Adair is the director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. Bill also created the Pulitzer Prize-winning website Politifact.

Judith Kelley is the Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy. She is an expert in international relations and has written extensively about election observation in an attempt to monitor democracy across the world.

Watch the entire video from the Zoom event: The Day After Election Day: An Expert Recap: https://bit.ly/3oXy801

Subscribe to the Policy 360 podcast: social.sanford.duke.edu/Policy360_ApplePodcasts

Read the episode transcript: https://sanford.duke.edu/articles/day-after-election-day-expert-recap-policy-360-podcast

Music: Blue Dot Sessions freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/

Music licensed under Creative Commons Attribution creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/