When we began our study in 1999, it was a relatively obscure academic inquiry triggered by my research interest in the constitutional and policy dimensions of privatization. Then George W. Bush became President, and his Faith-Based Initiative became a centerpiece of the domestic policy agenda, and our academic study was suddenly in the cross-hairs of an acrimonious political debate.
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Game Theory
Some people go into politics because they care about policy. Others view politics as another species of sport: who wins? how? what tactical maneuvers are effective? What’s the score? For those of us who have been unable to understand how or why a man with no obvious engagement with any policy issue, domestic or foreign, became President, game theory may supply the answer.
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Pathways to College
We have literally decades of research that confirm what everyone in this auditorium already knows: families have a major influence–probably the major influence–on children’s achievement. A 2002 study reviewing recent research found that students with involved parents are more likely to earn higher grades and get better scores on standardized tests. They are more likely to take extra classes and earn more credits. They attend school with greater regularity. They have better social skills and fewer behavioral problems. And they are more likely to go on to college.
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Why Separation is Good for Church and Necessary for State
I?ll start with James Madison, my favorite Founder and the one whose views on religious liberty dominated the Constitutional Convention. Madison based his understanding of natural rights and the role of the state on Locke?s ?social compact.? But, as one scholar has noted, because the exercise of religion requires that each person follow his own conscience, it is a particular kind of natural right, an inalienable natural right. Since opinions and beliefs can be shaped only by individual consideration of evidence that that particular individual finds persuasive, no one can really impose opinions on any one else. Unlike property, or even speech, religious liberty cannot be sold, or alienated, so it does not become part of the social compact. The state must remain noncognizant of its citizens? religions?meaning that it simply has no jurisdiction over religion. A just state must be blind to religion. It can?t use religion to classify citizens, and it can neither privilege nor penalize citizens on account of religion.
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Fight Fair, Dammit
In Florence, Italy, there is a famous marble statue of two Greek wrestlers,nude, and magnificently muscular. The statues are, as we say, ‘anatomically correct,’ and one wrestler has hold of the other by an organ that my male friends tell me is quite vulnerable. I have forgotten the statue’s real name, but my husband always calls it "fight fair, dammit."
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