New Blog Posts

  • Security Policy and Urban Policy: Uncomfortable Bedfellows

    David Meni, MPP, Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives Here’s a thought experiment: if the US capital were planned and built from scratch today, what would it look like? Would we still have the Paris-inspired streets of the L’Enfant Plan, or the dense neoclassical government buildings of Federal Triangle? Since the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing of…

  • Zero-Tolerance for Black Girls

    Ashlynn Profit, MPA, Staff Writer Brief Policy Perspectives The video of a school police officer brutally assaulting a black girl drew the world’s attention to the harsh reality of zero-tolerance school discipline. Presumably most students are not subjected to this type of abuse, but the incident should call our attention to how our students, particularly black…

  • Fighting ISIS: Lessons from Counterinsurgency Strategies

    Chelsea Lenhart, MPA, Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives After the terror attacks in Paris on Friday, November 13, politicians and pundits began to question if the United States’s counterterrorism strategies towards ISIS are effective. The day before the attack that claimed the lives of 129 innocents, President Obama told ABC News that the U.S. has…

  • Better Than the Minimum Wage – Refundable Tax Credits and the Earned Income Tax Credit

    Conor McGrath, MPA, Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives A debate over raising the minimum wage has recently found its way into the 2016 Presidential Debate. Among the three candidates running for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have promised to raise the national minimum wage to $15 per hour, up from the current…

  • World Bank Program Overview: Republic of Tajikistan for a Second Public Finance Management Modernization Project

    Zhao Zhai, MPP, Staff Writer, Brief Policy Perspectives Introduction The Republic of Tajikistan is one of the poorest countries in Central Asia. Following six years of civil war, in 1997, Tajikistan’s government established political stability and sought international assistance to grow the country’s economy. The Second Public Finance Management Modernization Project is an effort by the World Bank…