Peter Beinart, Zócalo in Phoenix: Can Israel Save Its Democracy?
A Zócalo/ASU Event in partnership with Valley Beit Midrash
By many measures, Israel has never been stronger or healthier. Its GDP continues to rise, its population continues to increase, and its defense capabilities continue to improve. And yet Zionism today is in crisis. If Israel incorporates the West Bank into borders, it will either cease to be a Jewish-majority state or cease to be a democracy.
...
James Q. Wilson, Broken Windows and Los Angeles
A Zócalo/UCLA Event
Moderated by Mark Kleiman, UCLA Public Policy Analyst
Social scientist James Q. Wilson was a self-described conservative, but his ideas were embraced by thinkers and leaders across the political spectrum. Nowhere was that more true than in Los Angeles, where he lived and taught for more than two decades. His “broken windows theory” of combating crime—by maintaining order and focusing on minor infractions—helped re-shape LAPD policy. His work on bureaucracy influenced late 20th-century efforts to re-organize California governments. His writing on marriage and morality has been cited in contemporary debates on same-sex unions, marijuana dispensaries, and racial categorization. Can Wilson be thanked—or blamed—for changes in the place he considered home? Or did his theories obscure more deeply rooted problems? LAPD chief Charlie Beck, Pepperdine University economist Angela Hawken, UCLA political scientist Mark Peterson, and executive director at UCLA’s Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law Brad Sears visit Zócalo to ask how Wilson changed Los Angeles and the world—and how L.A. changed him.
...
The Center for Social Cohesion, a project of Arizona State University in partnership with the New America Foundation, is dedicated to studying the forces that shape our sense of social unity.
Wholly non-partisan, pluralistic and multidisciplinary in outlook, the Center for Social Cohesion seeks to promote understanding of how diverse societies cohere. Globalization, immigration and the fragmentation of media have increased the urgency of questions surrounding national identity, citizenship, political discourse and the fraying social contract. It’s time to devise new strategies and public policies to foster healthy civic engagement locally, encourage robust integration nationally and explore the meaning of citizenship and community globally.
To that end, the Center for Social Cohesion fosters discourse and supports research on the ever-shifting balance between the pluribus and the unum in American society.
