Can an AWOL Congressman de-stigmatize mental illness? Why did civil rights activists give Romney the hook? Did Obama stiff the NAACP? IF... DC-area facilitators discuss policy, politics and their plans for future discussions. Link to separate podbean player for...
IF’s East Asia Chronicles. A bestselling book recently argued that Chinese mothers are superior, inflaming insecurities about the U.S. education system. IF fellow Sue Goodney Lea and Boston University doctoral student and IF resident Taiyi Sun compared education...
The magic in some discussions come from the unexpected--the stuff you just can't script. That was the lesson in a recent education discussion in Washington, D.C. For several months, the Interactivity Foundation has been sponsoring small-group public policy...
The Womb vs. the State. D.C.-based novelist Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Howard University law professor Lisa Crooms, and health activist Autumn Saxton Ross discuss the recent "war on women" and more generally women's rights, race, class, health care, and the role of the...
Are U.S. Schools Really Factories? February 2012. Dr. Julie Sweetland, Director of the Urban Teacher Academy of the National Center for Urban Education, alternative high school guidance counselor Derek Andrews, and 3rd grade literacy teacher Darla Bunting find a...
In this month's podcast, Interactivity Foundation Fellows Natalie Hopkinson and Dennis Boyer discuss his new report, "Helping Out: Humanitarian Policy for Global Security." We discuss this citizen discussion guide and look at a few recent headlines, staving off...
Sometimes chance encounters plant the seeds for something great. Historic proof of this point became apparent to me when I recently attended one of the DC Music Salons, at my local library (Watha T. Daniel in Washington, D.C.) The week's topic was the historic...
But the speaker who really brought things home for me was Dr. Azan Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. “Who is going to bail out creativity and thought?” she said early in her conversation with the book critic Michael Dirda. “We are dealing with a crisis of vision.”
Nafisi agreed with Rep. Jim Moran that: “we need a cultural diplomacy for inside America. Then we won’t ask stupid questions like ‘who needs the art museum.’ We need to understand our culture in order to communicate with the world.”
This July, I was part of a group academics, political advisors, playwrights and writers, international aid organizers, activists, professors and journalists who were invited to attend an “ideas festival” in the Aspen mountains, free of charge, as “scholars.” On the...