Matters of Policy & Politics

“Don’t Know Much About” . . . America? | Renewing Civics Education – Preparing for American Citizenship

The Hoover Institution is launching a new limited podcast series featuring experts grappling with how to reinvigorate civics education across America.

Renewing Civics Education: Preparing for American Citizenship is a five-part podcast series that will feature a range of experts on aspects of civics, such as civics instruction, the role of the media in fostering an understanding of civics, and how civics programs in higher education can resist any forms of indoctrination.

The series premieres on Tuesday, February 11, with an episode featuring Distinguished Visiting Fellow Bill Whalen interviewing Senior Fellow Chester E. (Checker) Finn Jr., a national renowned scholar on education policy who leads Hoover’s Working Group on Good American Citizenship. Whalen and Finn will discuss the efforts by Finn and his working group colleagues to reinvigorate civics education across the K–12 and college landscapes.

Subsequent episodes will be hosted by Finn and released weekly in the lead-up to Civic Learning Week, which begins March 10 and culminates at the Hoover Institution on March 13, when the Center on Revitalizing American Institutions will cohost a one-day conference on civics education.

The episodes, which will run as part of the Matters of Policy & Politics podcast, are developed in response to the urgent need to rekindle civics literacy via our schools and colleges. This five-part series takes on the challenges of citizenship education: why it matters, what it needs to do differently, and what shortcomings it must overcome.

Programming will include the following:

• A conversation between Bill Whalen and Checker Finn examines how US educators can improve civics instruction at the K–12 and collegiate levels.
• Focusing on civics at the K–12 level, Finn speaks with Senior Fellow Paul E. Peterson about his experiences teaching an introductory government course and his thoughts on related topics including education reform, school choice, and standardized testing.
• Examining the difference between instilling American patriotism and indoctrination, Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz joins Finn to talk about the reforms he believes are necessary elements of civics education, not just in college but also in high school.
• What do best practices of civics instruction at the undergraduate level look like? Senior Fellow Josiah Ober, who leads the Stanford Civics Initiative and co-leads the new Alliance for Civics in the Academy, joins Finn to talk about his roadmap for improving civics instruction.
• Contending with the decline of trust in news media and its impact on civic knowledge and participation, Nick Mastronardi, a Hoover Institution veteran fellow and software innovator in the field of public-sector communications, discusses advances in data collection and artificial intelligence and how they can positively affect government behavior and civic interaction.

The programming will also draw on the Good American Citizenship Working Group’s existing projects, which assess the state of civics instruction across US schools and how it has evolved over time.

Episodes will be available on YouTube and many other podcast distributors.

For coverage opportunities, contact Jeffrey Marschner, 202-760-3187, jmarsch@stanford.edu.

California Update: Rising from the Ashes – What’s Next for Los Angeles?

Los Angeles’s devastating wildfires have prompted a series of troubling questions, ranging from the city and county’s reported lack of preparedness and apparently outdated water infrastructure to the crisis-management skills of state and local leaders. And are those same leaders capable of rebuilding both swiftly and in a commonsense manner, as opposed to years of regulatory gridlock?

Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s California on Your Mind web channel, join Hoover senior product manager Jonathan Movroydis to reflect on lessons learned from the wildfires, the impact on various political fortunes, plus can a Los Angeles already under pressure to present a more idealized version of itself in advance of the 2028 Summer Olympics – i.e., fewer homeless encampments, flowing traffic – remind the world that California is still capable of accomplishing great engineering tasks (unlike, say, the state’s failed experiment with high-speed rail)?

Recorded on January 30, 2025.

Now What Do We Do? | Saints, Sinners, & Salvageables

And so the great American election crisis that was destined to be, didn’t happen – the end-result stirring relatively little in the way of legal challenges or disruption of the constitutional process, with the public feeling better about the democratic process (or so the post-election polls suggest). 

In this, the last of four installments on election integrity in the 2024 campaign cycle, Ben Ginsberg, the Hoover Institution’s Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow and a preeminent authority on election law, joins Hoover distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen to discuss whether America’s crazy quilt of election systems and safeguards was formidable or merely fortunate in 2024, what laws a Republican Congress might pursue (voter ID?), plus future Hoover endeavors to help craft better ways of holding elections in America.

Recorded on December 11th, 2024. 

America’s Shifting Latino Vote: Tectonics Trumps All?

Among the surprise results in this year’s American election: a victorious Donald Trump improving his numbers among Latino voters to a level not seen in 20 years and George W. Bush’s re-election (the only other time this century that the Republican choice won the popular vote). 
David Leal, a Hoover Institution adjunct senior fellow and University of Texas-Austin professor of government specializing in American demographic changes, discusses why Latino voters turned Trump’s way, how 2024’s inroad impacts the idea of demography as destiny ( i.e., a growing minority population working to the Democrats’ advantage), plus Texas returning to its redder self despite talk of newcomers from other states making the Lone Star State more competitive.

Recorded on November 20, 2024.

California Update: The Golden State’s Black-and-Blue Election

The verdict on California’s November election? America’s largest “blue” state emerged black-and-blue as voters sent bruising, non-progressive messages regarding public safety, wage increases, and future approval of local bonds. Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s California on Your Mind web channel, join Hoover senior product manager Jonathan Movroydis to discuss the latest in the Golden State, including the political futures of vice president Kamala Harris and governor Gavin Newson (does she want his job?). They also discuss a special legislative session to “Trump-proof” the Golden State, plus the remote likelihood of Sacramento and Washington cooperating on changes to federal immigration policy.

Recorded on November 20, 2024.

Restoring Confidence in Congress: Will the House Come to Order?

By most metrics – a 16% job-approval rating, failing to deliver budgets much less conducting itself in a stately manner – the U.S. House of Representatives isn’t living up to the Founding Fathers’ ideals. How to restore the public’s confidence in the ways of Capitol Hill? Brandice Canes-Wrone, the Hoover Institution’s Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow and the founding director of Hoover’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, joins former Illinois congressman and Hoover distinguished fellow Daniel Lipinski to discuss Revitalizing the House: Bipartisan Recommendations on Rules and Process – suggested ways to re-empower House members and committees and restore some semblance of the democratic process.

Recorded on November 12, 2024.

America Votes – The System Holds | Saints, Sinners, & Salvageables

And so the great election meltdown that was supposed to happen didn’t – across America this week, tens of millions of voters going about their business in a seemingly orderly fashion, with a decisive outcome favoring one presidential candidate and his party.

In this, the third of a four-part series on election integrity, Ben Ginsberg, the Hoover Institution’s Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow and a preeminent authority on election law, joins Hoover distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen to discuss how voting played out on Election Day in America – results that surprised Ben, how different systems and vote-counting processes held up in battleground states, plus what election reforms a new Congress might want to pursue in 2025 (translation: requiring identification, greater uniformity and addressing non-citizen voting).

Recorded on November 7, 2024

California Update: Election Eve In The Golden State – The Times (And The L.A. Times) They Are A-Changin’

What to expect in a California election that shows some prominent big-city incumbents in trouble and an anti-crime ballot measure steamrolling to victory?

As Election Day approaches, Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s California on Your Mind web channel, join Hoover senior product manager Jonathan Movroydis to discuss the latest in the Golden State including the spectacle of government-envisioned “tiny houses” with not-so-tiny costs. They also discuss what a non-endorsement in the presidential race says about the troubled state of the state’s once-mightiest newspaper, and how Governor Gavin Newsom can move forward in 2025, depending on who becomes America’s 47th president.

Recorded on October 31, 2024.

Close Encounters Of The Coos County Kind | Saints, Sinners, & Salvageables

Justin Grimmer, a Hoover Institution senior fellow and Stanford University political scientist, joins Ben Ginsberg, the Hoover Institution’s Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow and a preeminent authority on election law, to discuss what the former’s visit to Coos County, Oregon, revealed about trust in the election process and the challenges involved in debunking election-integrity myths. Their suggestions for curbing skepticism: losing candidates admitting defeat, encouraging the public to look “under the hood” at how elections are administered, and encouraging early voting to minimize dramatic vote swings after Election Day. Also discussed: the impact (or lack thereof) of voter-identification laws and reduced early-voting windows on turnout this fall.

Recorded on October 28, 2024

 

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” of Election Integrity | Saints, Sinners, & Salvageables

Wednesday, October 16, 2024 - 56 min listen
Hoover Institution | Stanford University

Like a storm headed to America’s shores, the November forecast calls for the sound and fury of a contentious election that challenges the public’s trust in democracy. Ben Ginsberg, the Hoover Institution’s Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow is a preeminent authority on election law. Ginsberg revives his Saints, Sinners And Salvageables podcast series from two years ago with this kickoff installment examining whether battleground states are better prepared this election cycle than in recent election cycles, plus Ginsberg explores possible legal challenges that might happen before, during, and after the vote-count. 

Recorded on October 14, 2024.