For years I’ve been honored to come back to Truman Scholars Leadership Week (TSLW) as a Senior Scholar, and inevitably some of the incoming Truman Scholars always ask, “Why do you keep coming back?”

Their intent is never to insinuate that I’m crazy; it’s mere, adorable curiosity, and it’s a fair question. Senior Scholars have careers and commitments, and many of us spend our spare hours at TSLW catching up on the work we left behind. The bottom line is that our commitment to public service transcends our professional careers, and it includes giving back to the larger Truman community.

Coming back is an absolute delight. Nothing keeps you motivated like a hit of Truman Scholars. The new class has an incredible energy every year, and you return home more motivated to serve and with a wonderful set of stories and new dance moves. The moves have been getting more challenging every year though. I completely failed to master the art of “smanging” during TSLW 2011, but the dance lessons at my local studio are working wonders so far.

We learn and grow more from the incoming Scholars than anything they collectively get from us. Being amongst Truman Scholars is a special setup. Not since Summer Institute could I banter with the people around me about the seemingly inane policy topics I hold dear – my favorite from TSLW 2010 was a riveting discussion on fecal contamination from ranching and the potential for zoonotic diseases as an environmental justice concern – only then to rush across the room to a game of “Mafia” about to start. Everyone brings such wonderful knowledge and experiences. Once Tara Yglesias (PA ‘93), the beloved figurehead of TSLW and Deputy Executive Secretary of the Truman Foundation, course corrects everyone with the “you’re all ‘special little snowflakes’” routine, you can learn a lot from just the casual chatter.

The only people I learn more from while at TSLW every year are the other Senior Scholars. I’ve had the pleasure to get to know a gang-busting attorney, distinguished educators, political geniuses, and a whole lot of amazing public servants. They are at the top of their fields for their age, but what’s more striking is their sense of character and good humor.

The other question I get a lot from the incoming class is, “Do the Senior Scholars talk about us?” The answer is “Yes, absolutely.” Truman Scholars are such interesting people, and you deserve to be discussed. Every class has its own collective personality and cast of characters from year to year.

Madeleine Albright, President of the Truman Foundation, once commented to me that her time as Secretary of State was somewhat akin to running a zoo, and there’s probably a comparison to be made to TSLW. In my years though as a “keeper” at TSLW, I’ve never seen the animals throwing excrement at each other or anything like that, but there are sometimes discussions amongst the “keepers” about which animals might be courting and whether or not they’ve been fed enough the night of the Hunger Banquet. In all honesty though, we spend the vast majority of our time talking about how wonderful everyone is while laughing at the constant hilarity emanating from the Truman Foundation staff, the Scholars, and each other.

For future Truman Scholars and others who are curious about what really happens at TSLW:

• If a Senior Scholar makes fun you, it means that we respect and love you… honestly
• Yes, the Senior Scholars get disappointed in Scholars when they break the rules and act like 20 year olds (even though they are)
• Senior Scholars do socialize outside of the TSLW schedule and beyond the William Jewell Campus, but we’re allowed to
• The Senior Scholars don’t actually have “favorites” – we don’t care enough to make the effort of crafting lists
• There are such things as boundaries, no matter how much you want to dance with your favorite Senior Scholar
• The only expectation of Senior Scholars for their policy groups is to not be embarrassed by them
• There are even more snacks for Senior Scholars stashed away in the basement
• We will “tweet” the hilarious things Scholars say ;)

Michael Gale (WV ’02) co-coordinates the Conserving the Future vision process for the National Wildlife Refuge System (www.AmericasWildlife.org). Follow him on Twitter @generationwild. 

Sitting in Arlington Cemetery on a beautiful Memorial Day Monday surrounded by those whose dedication to service is awe-inspiring, I am struck by the commonality of all those remembered for their service to our country and the Truman Scholars in their dedication to public service. Although none of the 2011 Truman Scholars has given the ultimate sacrifice of our life in the service to others, their passion to serve others is something that is inspiring.

When I arrived in Liberty, Missouri for the Truman Scholar Leadership Week (TSLW) 2011, I was surrounded by some of the most incredible people I had ever met. So, needless to say, I was a little nervous. And yet, my pre-mature nervousness was instantly quelled by my fellow Trumans, through their humility and warm reception. Reflecting on the week I have found it divided into three parts: conversations, activities, and community.

Conversation: The conversations during TSLW were unparalleled and varied from the healthcare system to energy policy and economics. The depth of the Truman Scholars and their interests was amazing. My first conversation was with a scholar from California who had just re-enacted the Freedom Ride, retracing the 1961 rides from Washington, DC to New Orleans, LA. With forty other selected students he toured the country meeting civil rights activists and heard memories of their fight for equal rights. Another scholar and I discussed energy policy and his role in formulating Obama’s campaign strategy for energy. These conversations not only showed me the impressiveness of the students who were scholars, but allowed us to learn from one another’s passions and share our own. Whether it was investigating various religions (including Buddhism), or discussing the importance of food trucks, TSLW was alive with conversations that occurred deep into the night and early in the morning.

Activities: Throughout the week, our class was brought together by workshops, activities, and testimonials. We collaborated on some of the most difficult issues in the “Decision-Center” of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, worked on group policies culminating in one group’s project of the Harry S. Loris Twitter and Facebook, learned about graduate programs from admissions counselors and how to finance one’s education, and heard senior scholars experiences in leadership and finding their identities. It was a week filled with a discovery of new paths and dismissal of previously held beliefs. As one speaker put it, we were put into a state of “constructive confusion.” At the end of the week many of the scholars shared their new friends with their family at the banquet and awards ceremony. At TSLW I was not only able to share the new friends I had made with my mother but I gained a new family, one brought together by shared aspirations for the future.

Community: The Truman Community is something that was previously unimaginable. It is a catalyst of some of the brightest minds in the country, who are not only some of the most achieving college students, but who are incredibly humble. During the week, our class grew as a community as we participated in service activities that included volunteering at a food bank, a free health clinic, a domestic violence center, and a homeless shelter. We played mafia at night, rolled down hills, raced on piggy back, ran in the early morning, and even had a dance. Now you may be wondering the dance expertise of the Truman scholars, but you would be very impressed with the ability of scholars to “Swang it” and do the “Dougie.” Also, doing the “slow loris” is something that will always be infamous to our class. I was also extremely impressed with our scholars when there were two tragedies: a scholar’s father passing away and a deadly tornado in the nearby town of Joplin. The scholars were always there for her to talk to as well as offer a comforting hug. One of the students proposed a group effort by the Truman Scholars to raise funds for the Joplin residents. Immediately the Trumans galvanized their ideas on how to best help the suffering community. The reaction to these two great heartbreaks evidenced the strength and solidarity of the 2011 class.

With guidance from our senior scholars, Tara Yglesias and Andy Kirk of the Truman Foundation, and Westbrook Murphy of the Foundation Board, I will forever cherish the week I had with my fellow Trumans. While we came from diverse backgrounds and large age ranges, our class instantly became a close family. Brought together by a common drive for service we, as one scholar commented were able to “find our people.”

Elizabeth Davis (MT ’11) is completing her final year at the University of Notre Dame.

By Westbrook Murphy, General Counsel, Truman Scholarship Foundation

Sixty years ago today—April 11, 1951—President Harry Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his commands in Japan and Korea.  Doing so firmly re-established the Constitutional principle of civilian control; of the military.  The back story also shows how Truman took responsibility for his decisions as announced by the famous sign on his desk: “The Buck Stops Here.”

MacArthur

Douglas MacArthur emerged from Word War II as a wildly popular general.  Like Patton in Europe, MacArthur’s campaign up the island chain from Australia was aggressive and captured large amounts of territory and enemy prisoners with a comparatively low ratio of U.S. casualties. 

And—like Patton—MacArthur seldom missed a chance to glorify his own reputation.  His ego knew few bounds.  As Truman wrote privately: “Unlike MacArthur, the Cabots at least talked to the Lodges before telling God what to do.”

In a precursor of his contretemps with Truman, in the early 1930s MacArthur had gotten away with openly defying President Hoover.  MacArthur then was the Army’s Chief of Staff. 

In the depths of the Depression, World War I veterans marched on Washington to demand that a deferred bonus due to them in two more years be paid early.  This so-called bonus army set up a makeshift camp on the eastern side of the Anacostia River—across the river from the present sites of RFK and the Washington Nationals Stadia. 

One day the bonus army crossed the Anacostia and marched in a demonstration up Pennsylvania Ave.  Shots were fired—no one knew by whom—and one or two people were killed.

President Hoover called out the Army to restore order.  Col. Dwight Eisenhower, then MacArthur’s principal aide, advised MacArthur to assign some other officer to lead the Army’s peacekeeping operations.  But MacArthur ignored this advice.  Putting on his full uniform, he took personal command of the operation.

President Hoover’s original orders were explicit: a U.S. Army detachment was to force the bonus marchers back across the Anacostia, but to stop there without itself crossing the river.  When Hoover sent a messenger repeating his order, MacArthur dismissed it, declaring that he was not bound by any so-called orders from the President.

MacArthur did not stop at the river, but crossed the Anacostia and razed the bonus army’s makeshift camp.  He then went to the White House and defied Herbert Hoover to challenge what MacArthur had done.  Hoover refused to do so.

You may read more about this and other events in MacArthur’s life in William Manchester’s American Caesar. 

The Korean Situation

The first few months of the North Korean’s surprise late June 1950 attack across the 38th parallel were highly successful.  They drove the United nations forces (mostly U.S.) into a defensive line around the southeast Korean port of Pusan. 

MacArthur conceived a daring plan of an amphibious landing at Inchon, a port mid-way up the peninsula’s western side—not far from the capital of Seoul and the 38th parallel.  If successful, UN forces then could cut off the North Korean Army. 

But the 20-foot+ tides at Inchon made the entire operation a huge gamble.  Landing craft could reach the shore only for an hour or so during the high tides that occurred about 12 hours apart.  The Pentagon brass was highly skeptical, but President Truman backed the Inchon landing.

The Inchon landing in September, 1950, turned the war around.  Many North Koreans were killed or captured between UN forces who had landed at Inchon and those who broke out of the Pusan perimeter.  The UN forces drove what remained of the North Korean army back across the 38th Parallel, and continued the campaign northward—but without any clear strategic goal having been established. 

The Wake Island Meeting

In October, 1959, President Truman met personally with MacArthur, traveling much further to the meeting place—Wake Island—than did MacArthur.  Two asides, before resuming the principal story:

• Mrs. Truman was deeply concerned about the President flying so far in what was then a propeller-driven presidential plane across so much of the Pacific—particularly the last leg from Hawaii to Wake Island.  White House Physician Wallace Graham told her not to worry:  the Navy would have a line of ships stationed along the route which quickly could go to the rescue if the plane should need to ditch.  When Mrs. Truman realized that the Navy lacked enough ships to cover that vast stretch of the Pacific, Dr. Graham reassured her that the entire route would be covered because, as the planed passed over the ship at the end of the line, that ship would steam around to the front.
• President Truman wanted to take with him a gift for Mrs. MacArthur: See’s chocolate candies of which she was known to be fond.  While the plane stopped over in San Francisco, he sent my father Charles Murphy out to search for candy.  My father could find only 1-pound boxes, and returned with five of them.  During the next stop at Honolulu, he tried again and found a 5-pound box for the President to give to Mrs. MacArthur.  I never learned what happened to five 1-pound boxes.

One of the main topics discussed on Wake Island was whether the Chinese Communists might intervene militarily as the UN forces pushed northward toward the Chinese border.  MacArthur told the President that the Chinese would not intervene, but—if they did—he pitied them.  They would be slaughtered like sheep.  In describing that conversation years later, may father said that MacArthur was the most persuasive man he ever heard.

When they parted, President Truman thought that MacArthur agreed with the President’s military aims as described below.

Differing War Aims

MacArthur—and Truman too—badly misjudged Chinese intentions.  In late November, 1950, tens of thousands of Chinese “volunteers” stormed across the frozen Yalu River and inflicted great casualties on the UN forces while driving them back to about the 38th Parallel.

President Truman’s goal in Korea was limited:  he wished to beat back the North Korean aggression and restore order on the Korean peninsula.  He feared that widening the war would give the Soviet Union an opportunity to initiate military action in Europe while the U.S. was bogged down in Korea, and might even lead to World War III.

Declaring that, “There is no substitute for victory,” MacArthur wanted to attack Communist China, and perhaps even restore to power the Nationalist Chinese under Chiang Kai-shek.  MacArthur made public his disagreement with the President through, inter alia, a message he sent to an American Legion Convention and a letter he wrote to Joseph Martin, the House Republican Leader. 

For more detail, read David Halberstam’s last book, The Coldest Winter.  You’ll find there that MacArthur was well past his prime even as a military commander. 

The Last Straw

In the spring of 1951 the Truman Administration had feelers out to the Chinese that might have brought an end to the Korean fighting.  MacArthur sabotaged these efforts by publically announcing that any truce would have to be negotiated with him.  Truman then decided that McArthur must be relieved of his commands.  But he kept this decision to himself.

He had a file assembled of the correspondence between MacArthur and his nominal superiors in Washington.  He gave copies of this file to each of one of the most sterling set of advisors ever assembled for a U.S President:

• Secretary of State Dean Acheson,
• Secretary of Defense George Marshall,
• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Omar Bradley, and
• Special wartime advisor Averill Harriman.

He instructed each to read the file and then reassemble the next day.  They did so, agreeing that MacArthur should be relieved. Gen. Marshall, however, advised caution because of the expected public reaction.  Truman then told them of his decision to relieve MacArthur.

What a President!

Under my father’s direction the White House staff and the Pentagon begin to prepare the necessary papers to carry out the President’s decision to relieve Gen. MacArthur and appoint Gen. Mathew Ridgeway in his place.  Out of respect for MacArthur, they trued to arrange for Army Secretary Frank Pace, who then was in Korea, to fly to Tokyo and personally inform MacArthur that he was being relieved.  The effort to reach Pace was unsuccessful. 

Reacting to a possibility (false, as it turned out) that MacArthur had learned of the President’s decision and would try to gain a public relations advantage by resigning, the White House rushed to announce the President’s decision late at night.  About 10 p.m. President Truman, as was his habit before making an important decision, assembled his staff to ask their individual opinions.

A young aide to Averill Harriman named Ted Tannenwald spoke up to push an idea that my father had rejected earlier in the day.  Tannenwald urged that the White House press release should recite that Truman was acting on the advice of his principal civilian and military advisers—the group listed above.

Truman looked at him and said: “No, Son, not tonight.  All that will come out eventually.  But tonight this is the President acting as President on his own authority.”

In The Coldest Winter, supra, Halberstam calls this President Truman’s finest hour.

The day before MacArthur was relieved Herblock’s Washing Post editorial cartoon showed artillery captain Harry Truman cowering under his desk before the towering figure of the great General MacArthur.  Herblock’s cartoon the next day was simply a drawing of the White House flying a large American flag from the roof, with the caption: 48 Star General.”

Aftermath

Relieving General MacArthur created the greatest public furor of any of Truman’s decisions.  MacArthur returned to a hero’s welcome in the United States, including a tickertape parade down Broadway.  He delivered to a joint session of Congress his famous speech that “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”

Truman, on the other hand, was accused of being mentally unbalanced.  There were calls in Congress and elsewhere for his impeachment.  Congressional hearings were convened.  But the MacArthur bubble burst when Army Chief of Staff Omar Bradley’s crisply summarized for the Congressional committee that: “Gen. MacArthur wanted to get the United States into the wrong war in the wrong place with the wrong enemy at the wrong time.” 

Westbrook Murphy serves as General Counsel of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.

By Westbrook Murphy, General Counsel, Truman Scholarship Foundation

In the words of the old Kingston Trio song: “They’re rioting in Africa!”  And in the Middle East.  Tunisia. Egypt. Libya. Yemen. Bahrain. Maybe even Saudi Arabia and Iraq.  What should we (the Untied States) do?

September, 1953, Dean Acheson—Truman’s former Secretary of State (both then having been out of office about eight months)—offered advice that still may be pertinent. 

Acheson was concerned about what he called the “liberation ideas” of his successor, John Foster Dulles.  Acheson feared that Dulles’ talk of “rolling back communism” in Central and Eastern Europe would give the peoples of those countries false hope of U.S. support should they revolt against their Moscow-controlled dictators.  Such a hope, in fact, may have influenced the 1956 abortive Hungarian revolution, which was brutally crushed by the Soviet Military.

On September 24, 1953, Acheson sent Truman comments on draft of a speech Truman was to give four days later when accepting the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Award.  Acheson worried that—as written—the speech seemed to commit former President Truman—

. . .to an impossibility broad program and one which I am afraid will get you tangled up with the Dulles liberation ideas.  I do not think that you want to say that it is our task to establish the Four Freedoms everywhere in the world—Russia, China, South Africa, etc.—and that there is no end save victory in the struggle. . . .  Therefore, I suggest that this whole section be written as follows:

“It is not enough to defend our freedoms at home only. We must be concerned with a world environment in which free men can live free lives.  Franklin Roosevelt knew that we could not exist in an oasis of freedom in a world of totalitarianism.  ‘The world order which we seek,’ he said, ‘is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.’  The Four Freedoms for us, as for all free nations, depend upon a world in which peace and justice are maintained by the concerted effort of free nations.”

Good approach to today’s problems?

Westbrook Murphy serves as General Counsel of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.

By Jason Saul (IL ’89)

The primary sources of revenue for nonprofits are all in irreversible decline: The federal government is broke, states are running budget deficits that total $140-billion, the charitable tax deduction is in jeopardy, and giving has seen the deepest declines ever recorded.  The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported in its Philanthropy 400 in October, donations to the nation’s biggest charities dropped 11 percent last year. What’s more, contributions to foundations fell 8 percent in 2009, following an almost 20 percent drop the year before.

Truman Scholars working in the nonprofit sector, I challenge you to think about how we might address this issue. Here’s what I think:

We are facing the end of fundraising. Lobbying harder and asking for larger donations will not cut it any more. I offer that perhaps the reason that all seems like too much of a struggle for too little money is that we’re focusing on seeking money from the wrong places and in the wrong way.

For too long in the world of philanthropy, there has been a substantial disconnect between supply and demand. Nonprofits “supply” social impact (research, services, advocacy, etc.), but the “consumers” of that impact (the beneficiaries) are often the least able to pay. As a result, foundations, donors, and governments are the ones that set the demand for these services, using their best judgment to choose which organizations should get financed and which should not.

Consumers spend $227-billion annually for goods and services related to health, the environment, social justice, and sustainable living. Corporations spend billions on environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and volunteerism and other efforts to keep employees loyal and motivated. Governments spend more than ever on education and health care results not just because they are social entitlements but also because they affect our nation’s economic competitiveness. Investors have allocated $2.71-trillion to socially screened mutual funds, pensions, and other impact investments. Those dollars mean there’s no reason to focus just on the $300-billion in charitable contributions but to look at the quest for money in a whole new way.

The fact is that today social change is no longer something that operates outside of the economy. As a result, neither do nonprofits.

In my latest book, The End of Fundraising, I help nonprofits figure out how to capture, market, and sell “high value” outcomes—the outcomes most relevant to actually solving social problems.

I submit that to solve social problems, nonprofits must take more entrepreneurial, innovative, and systemic approaches to their work. This means that groups can’t just keep doing what they are doing and hope that someone will finance it.

If people are really “buying impact,” not just giving money to programs, then nonprofits need to devise better strategies to produce those results. That requires a whole new toolkit: public-private partnerships, new technologies, new incentives, and cutting-edge approaches to creating change.

It’s time for all of us to think about new ways to forge social outcomes into economic currency. It is time for the nonprofit world to tap into the engine of the economy, not just the fumes.

Jason Saul (IL ’89) is the author of The End of Fundraising, published this month by Jossey-Bass. He is chief executive of Mission Measurement, a Chicago consulting company that helps nonprofits, corporations, and government agencies figure out whether they are making a difference to society. He is also the founder of the nonprofit Center for What Works.

Nearly 63 years ago, on July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, calling for “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.”  He made this important decision in the aftermath of a period of intense racial violence against black veterans returning home to the Jim Crow South after serving in World War II.  His order to desegregate the nation’s armed services is viewed as a critical step in the long march toward racial justice.

The Truman administration’s support for civil rights extended to the Justice Department’s decision to try to end segregation in housing and education.  The Department submitted amicus briefs in several Supreme Court cases, including the challenge to racially restrictive covenants (Shelley v. Kraemer, 1948) and the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. (The brief in Brown had been submitted by the Truman administration at an earlier stage of the case.)  Brown overruled Plessy v. Ferguson’s pernicious “separate but equal” doctrine in the field of public education and held the promise of equal educational opportunity.

Twenty years later, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Milliken v. Bradley (1974) undercut efforts to desegregate metropolitan school systems outside of the southern United States and effectively undermined the promise of equal educational opportunities embodied in Brown.  Gary Orfield, Director of the Harvard Project on School Desegregation and a leading expert on this issue, argued that Milliken “rendered Brown almost meaningless for most of the metropolitan North by blocking desegregation plans that would integrate cities with their suburbs” and “lock[ed] millions of minority schoolchildren into inferior, isolated schools.” While Milliken by itself did not create the dire conditions that exist in public education across the nation today, it made it almost impossible to address the problems. My new book, The Detroit School Busing Case: Milliken v. Bradley and the Controversy Over Desegregation, explains in detail how and why Milliken came about, as well as its impact on the Court’s school desegregation jurisprudence and on public education in major metropolitan areas.

The controversy surrounding the Milliken case can also be viewed as a failure of public leadership – presidential and otherwise.  In a period marked by anger, fear, and racial hysteria, President Nixon and other elected officials added fuel to the fire, rather than using their positions to urge calm and restraint.  The Nixon administration, along with senators and representatives from Michigan and other states (from both parties), proposed constitutional amendments to prohibit the use of busing for desegregation purposes and used public concerns about busing as a wedge issue in their reelection campaigns.  Philip Hart, Michigan’s Democratic senior senator, was an important exception.  He took a courageous stand as the only white member of the state’s congressional delegation to support busing, noting that “Whenever there was a finding of deliberate school segregation in the South, I supported busing if that was the only way to correct it.  If I were to change my position now that the issue has come home, Michigan would have a fraud for a senior senator.”

The failure of the Nixon administration in providing principled leadership as the nation wrestled with the controversy over metropolitan school desegregation in the 1970s stands in sharp contrast to the role of the Truman administration in its battles over civil rights in the 1940s and 1950s.  While President Truman undoubtedly faced his share of criticism for not moving fast and far enough and for supporting civil rights merely for political purposes, his public statements and policy proposals did help to move the nation forward in the quest for equality and justice.

Joyce A. Baugh (SC '79) is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Central Michigan University. Her forthcoming book, The Detroit School Busing Case:  Milliken v. Bradley and the Controversy Over Desegregation, is being published this month by the University Press of Kansas as part of its Landmark Law Cases and American Society series.

Tico Almeida (WI '98) wrote a guest blog piece, "President Obama Strengthens ENDA by Rejecting DOMA" for The Bilerico Project.

Excerpt:

"Some advocates within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community have presented a false choice between advocating for marriage equality and the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would outlaw workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The truth is that the steps we take toward one goal also bring us closer to the other goal. Equality begets equality."

Read the full article here.

By Jared Duval (VT ’04)

Just over five years ago Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, creating a challenge of epic proportions for the public leaders responsible for the rescues, recovery, and rebuilding of New Orleans. I open my forthcoming book, Next Generation Democracy (Nov. 9, Bloomsbury), with the stories of the rescue and recovery efforts, exploring those that largely failed (namely FEMA), those that worked (the Coast Guard most of all), and what separated the two.

Perhaps the most interesting interview I conducted for my opening chapter, however, was not about the immediate rescue efforts but longer-term rebuilding. A year after the storm hit, New Orleans was still without a citywide rebuilding plan, a requirement for federal aid to start flowing in earnest. The Mayor’s effort to create such a plan had failed because of the public outcry that erupted after he cut citizens out of the process and hired outside “experts” who proposed turning low-lying neighborhoods – which also happened to be the poorest and most African American neighborhoods – into green space.

Into the void stepped AmericaSpeaks, an organization whose mission is to engage citizens in governance. Through a series of three 21^st Century Town Meetings, over ten thousand New Orleanians demographically representative of the city by race and income deliberated with their neighbors to work through the challenges facing their city. Using keypad polling, these “Community Congresses” created the “Unified New Orleans Plan.” The plan included some ideas suggested directly by citizens and came to win overwhelming public support, finally providing a path forward for the city.  

One of the leaders who facilitated community engagement for the Unified New Orleans Plan was Vera Triplett.  I asked Vera how the process of creating the plan changed her outlook about government.  What she told me opened my eyes to a whole new vision of democracy and public leadership:

“At the end of the day,” she said, “it’s about letting people who are impacted by something be a part of the decision-making process ... For a long time, our city elected people who thought of us as too stupid to make our own decisions. But now I’ve begun deciding who to vote for based on whether they are willing to have us actually be a part of the problem-solving process. Before, we would give them votes or money. Now we want to give them evidence and case studies, and we want them to make decisions on the ground with us, not from some isolated and untouchable ivory tower.”

Vera’s view of a more collaborative and directly democratic form of government seems to me long overdue. Many of the assumptions that necessitated a more republican form of government, based on a clear division between citizens and elected officials, no longer hold true. Compared to the late 1700’s we have incredibly high literacy rates and access to education. And with the great invention of the 20^th century - the Internet – we also now have near instant and increasingly widespread access to information and communications costs are nearing zero. Altogether, the prohibitive factors that once prevented citizens from effectively playing a more direct role in government problem solving efforts are disappearing.

Another story I tell in the book is that of the Internet startup company SeeClickFix, a web-based tool for “turning residents into citizens.” Built on a Google maps platform, the site allows anyone to report non-emergency issues in their community (ranging from potholes to drug dealing to an area of town lacking a supermarket) with a message, picture, or video. Through the site’s discussion forums citizens can explore the complexities of the issue with other citizens and with government officials. The amazing thing about SeeClickFix is that it is not only a more transparent and effective reporting service aimed at government, but also a tool for collaboration, with or without our government.

It’s not a coincidence that Ben Berkowitz, the co-founder and CEO of SeeClickFix, is only 32 years old. The Millennial generation (those of us born roughly between the late ‘70s and late ‘90s) has markedly different views than our elders about both the role of government and how we want to interact with it. Consider that one of the largest generation gaps in American politics today is on the question of “the proper role of government.” According to Pew, 69 percent of Millennials “favor an expanded role for government, agreeing that it should do more to solve problems.” Yet among older generations, not one age group registers majority support for that statement.

I believe that what Millennials really care about though isn’t so much the size of government but rather our process of governance. Consider that, according to polling from Harvard’s Institute of Politics, fully a third of Millennials express an interest in “internet collaboration with government.” So while we may be fairly agnostic about the size of that more active government we desire, it’s clear that we want to be able to do far more than just vote and donate money.

In this context, I think we need a new concept of what leadership means for public servants. It can’t be about “vote for me and I’ll solve your problems for you.” After all, the “I’m the decider” model is patronizing and uninspiring to a public with web 2.0 inspired inclinations to directly engage in problem-solving efforts. Effective public service leadership for our time should be more about facilitation and engagement. As Vera Triplett said, it’s time for our next generation of democracy to be about “letting people who are impacted by something be a part of the decision-making process.”

Jared Duval (VT ’04) is a Fellow at Demos and the author of Next Generation Democracy: What the Open-Source Revolution Means for Power, Politics, and Change (Nov. 9^th, 2010, Bloomsbury). For those in DC, the launch event for his book will be Nov. 8^th at 6:30 at the Busboys & Poets at 5^th & K. 

by Melissa Boteach Kaplan (MD '04)

In his 1949 state of the union address, Harry Truman laid out the cornerstone of his domestic policy agenda, underscoring that “Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal." By a Fair Deal, Truman implied that that all Americans should have access to health insurance, fair wages, affordable housing, and a rising standard of living.

Unfortunately, the numbers released by the Census Bureau earlier this month imply that a “Fair Deal” is still a far ways a way for too many Americans. The most recent data reveal that last year 3.7 million additional people fell into poverty, for a total of 43.6 million, the largest number since the Census began keeping track in 1959. Median incomes declined, as did the number of Americans with health insurance coverage.

While these trends would have been significantly worse without the emergency assistance measures enacted in the Recovery Act, we can’t exactly pat ourselves on the back when more than one in five (20.7 percent) of America’s children lived in poverty last year, and racial and ethnic disparities widened at an alarming rate.

Often when we read these types of depressing numbers, our eyes glaze over. The problem of poverty is too big. Poverty will always be with us. These numbers are sad, but it doesn’t impact me.

Yet, if we look back at our history, we can see that poverty is not an intractable problem. There have been periods when economic gains were more equitably shared and we were able to significantly reduce poverty—periods when a strong near-full-employment economy was combined with governmental and private initiatives to lift all Americans up. Between 1964 and 1973, for example, poverty fell by more than 40 percent. Between 1993 and 2000 it fell by 25 percent.

Half in Ten, the campaign I manage at the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAP Action), believes that we can achieve this kind of progress again, cutting the U.S. poverty rate by half in ten years. A study by our partner, Center for American Progress, underscored that this isn’t some pie in the sky target, but a goal within reach if we muster the political will to make sensible policy reforms. In fact, the study revealed that just 3 policies: raising the minimum wage, making the tax code work better for low-wage workers, and ensuring that childcare assistance is more broadly available could cut poverty by 26 percent over the next decade. 

Moreover, we believe that reducing poverty in America is not only the right thing to do, but also in our national self-interest. A recent study we commissioned from noted economist Harry Holzer revealed that child poverty alone cost the U.S. economy more than half a trillion dollars every year. Cost-effective interventions now could increase our economic growth and result in lower fiscal deficits in the future. 

How does the Half in Ten campaign work to achieve its goal to halve poverty over the next decade? Together with our three convening partners: CAP Action, The Coalition on Human Needs, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, we:

• work with  local groups to organize and train low-income families to advocate on behalf of themselves, and to build state-wide antipoverty campaigns;
• provide timely information and policy recommendations to lawmakers on legislation impacting low-income families
• recruit, educate and mobilize grassroots activists to advocate on behalf of policies that create decent-wage jobs, strengthen families, and promote economic security for families who fall on hard times.

 Why advocate for a national poverty-reduction goal? Having a target is important because it can encourage collaboration across various agencies working to reduce poverty and engage the private sector. Moreover, a target provides focus and accountability in our efforts to rebuild the middle class, encouraging lawmakers to judge proposals before them in relation to progress toward a larger goal.

Much of last year’s increase in poverty was caused by the lingering effects of the Great Recession. It is not surprising that more people fell into poverty as unemployment remained near record highs. It is important to remember, however, that poverty was a problem even before the Great Recession. Between 2003 and 2007 we experienced the first-ever economic “recovery” on record where productivity and profits grew but poverty went up and median incomes fell. The middle class and low-income families did not benefit from the gains accrued over the last decade.

We can and must do better this time around. A shared goal of cutting poverty in half provides that focus. As we rebuild our economy we must tackle poverty’s root causes. This means creating more decent-wage jobs, strengthening work supports, and investing in children early on so that everyone can participate in the economy. I invite all Truman Scholars to join us in achieving this Fair Deal for all Americans and endorsing a national goal to cut poverty in half in ten years,

Resources:

• Click here to access our interactive map, where you can find poverty data for your state and congressional district
• Click here to endorse a goal to cut the U.S. poverty rate in half in ten years and get involved in the campaign.

Melissa Boteach Kaplan (MD '04) is the Half in Ten Manager at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

When Harry Truman was president, security was a broad concept.  It implied not just a strong military, but also a strong economy, strong morale at home, and strong alliances based on shared threat.  After World War II, President Truman and his able foreign policy corps created a security structure that would buttress world stability for the good of America.  They had the vision to see that America was safer in a world that was more peaceful, more just, and more prosperous.  And they articulated that vision of enlightened self-interest to the American people, explaining why it was in America’s security interest to support the unprecedented foreign aid of the Marshall Plan, reduced protectionism that spurred trade and revived the world economy, and binding alliances such as NATO.

In recent decades, this broad understanding of global security has been dismantled.  Conservative think-tanks teach that national security equals military strength alone.  Liberal pundits want an America so humble that we retreat from global responsibilities, leaving countries like flood-soaked (and nuclear-armed) Pakistan to their own devices.  From both sides of the political spectrum, we pursue narrow self-interest over enlightened self-interest, and are surprised that we reap resentment, anger, and distrust.

When I was finishing a D. Phil in England, supported by my Truman Scholarship, I saw firsthand how these twin strands of policy could tighten into a noose that would harm America – and the world.  Doing dissertation research in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, I saw how anti-Americanism plummeted after our tsunami assistance – and how America’s right wing was forcing politicians into cutting such aid and supporting simplistic militarized security measures.  While working in Albania, I saw the gratitude that had come from years of American support for their human rights – most recently through the war in Kosovo.  And yet from the left came cries of hubris if America intervened to assist the lives of the marginalized, poor, and oppressed.

We founded the Truman National Security Project to create a strong voice for Americans who supported a third way in foreign policy.  We wanted to articulate a strong, smart, and principled set of policies that harkened back to the wise worldview of President Truman while meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

Five years later, the Truman Project and its sister organization, the Truman Educational Institute, have become the nation’s largest organizations training progressive leaders in national security.  Each year, we offer courses for more than 200 Congressional staff, scores of political candidates, and hundreds of progressive political consultants and activists who may never have considered security issues before.  Our flagship Truman Fellowship trains a handpicked cohort of future leaders.  Over 100 Truman Fellows now serve in the Obama Administration and in Congress, ranging from special assistants to National Security Advisor General Jim Jones, General David Petraeus, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and speechwriters for President Obama, to on-the-ground military officers and USAID leaders in Afghanistan.

Our trainings emphasize hard moral and policy questions: for instance, a recent scenario on what to do about Iran’s nuclear weapons program was co-created with Harvard University’s Graham Allison, and moderated by leading Iran experts.  Those we train are inspired by personal meetings and mentorship from security leaders such as Homland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (NM ’77), General Petraeus, and Anthony Lake.  We provide deep training in effective communication, drawn from cutting-edge psychological research.  And we position those we train to impact the public conversation, by placing them in the media, in advocacy campaigns, and in the political sphere.

A crucial part of our effort is to reconnect foreign policy leaders with the military.  In a democracy, civilians must lead the military.  But as the left became estranged from our fighting forces following Vietnam, it left a legacy of separateness that harmed our ability to understand what our military could, and could not, do.  That hurts policy.  Thucydides said that “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”   By bringing together rising policy-makers under 40 with their military peers, we hope to overturn such a damning indictment.

We also work to bridge the gap between foreign policy makers and politicians.  For decades, foreign policy thinkers have disdained American politics.  The political process removes so much nuance from tough foreign policy questions that to engage in politics was seen by many as a betrayal of their policy wisdom.  But in a democracy, policy is made through politics.  We help rising foreign policy leaders under 40 become comfortable with the political sphere, and able to communicate their policy case in language that resonates politically – not just to the illuminati of Beltway Washington!

One of our most recent projects in this sphere has been in the area of climate change and energy.  Our addiction to oil has poured billions of dollars into the coffers of countries arrayed against us – such as Iran and Russia.  It also filters into terrorist networks. In the words of former Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey, our oil addiction has created the first time since the Civil War that we are funding both sides of a conflict. Meanwhile, climate change is a threat multiplier, sparking famines and floods and exacerbating migration in the poorest parts of the world, creating uprooted populations ripe for riot and radicalism.

But the issues of energy and climate had become partisan.  Half our polarized country saw them as left-wing issues, rather than looking at the policy facts.  The Truman Project has mobilized more than 700 veterans in our OperationFree program (watch video here) to speak out on the national security need to reduce climate change while freeing America from oil dependence.  They have spoken in more than 200 cities across America, and have been hosted twice at the White House.  Their efforts to lobby Congress for action – from supporting a cap on carbon, to working for higher fuel efficiency standards – are changing the terms of this debate, and helping everyday Americans to understand the security need to move to a new energy future.

As President Truman said, “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”  We hope through the work of the Truman Project to create a new generation of leaders who can help America stay great, and the world to be ever more peaceful and just.

Rachel Kleinfeld (AK '97) is the CEO and Co-Founder of the Truman National Security Project and Truman Educational Institute.

Janine Davidson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and Aron Ketchel, Truman Fellow

Gayle Smith, Senior Director at the National Security Council, with Phil Carter, Truman Fellow

Truman Fellows at the annual conference

Contributed by A. Scott Henderson (FL ’82)

Regardless of what the philosopher George Santayana said, the past is often doomed to be repeated whether we remember it or not.  This is especially true for policy debates.  Recent discussions concerning the military’s ban against openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members underscore this point.

Enacted in December of 1993, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy was a compromise between the Clinton administration and Congress over the president’s desire to allow gays and lesbians to serve in the armed forces.  DADT prohibits military officials from ferreting out or identifying closeted gay, lesbian, or bisexual personnel (“don’t ask”), while enjoining the latter—under threat of discharge—from being open about their sexual orientation (“don’t tell”).  Data from a variety of sources, including the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, indicate that over 13,000 troops have been discharged under DADT (see http://www.sldn.org/pages/about-dadt).

Efforts to repeal DADT gained momentum with the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, who publicly opposed the policy.  In early 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the Pentagon would conduct a study to assess the impact of ending DADT, and in May of that same year the U.S. House of Representatives added a provision to the Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2011 that would repeal DADT.

The most vocal critics of DADT’s repeal have been the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion.  The VFW believes that permitting gays and lesbians to openly serve would undermine the “morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability” (see http://www.vfw.org/index.cfm?fa=caphill.levele&eid=4192).  Similarly, the American Legion has warned that a repeal of DADT would endanger “national security” and “unit cohesion” (see http://clarencehill.legion.org/2010/05/the-american-legion-to-congress-dont-repeal-dont-ask-dont-tell/).  In short, both organizations stress the corrosive effect that gay and lesbian soldiers would have on heterosexual ones.

Supporters of DADT’s repeal are quick to note that these are some of the same arguments that were used against integrating the armed services along racial and gender lines.  But the déjà vu aspect of current policy debates does not end there.  To see why, we need to travel back to early-1950s America (President Harry Truman’s second term).  In addition to the anti-communist hysteria that swept the country during those years, there was a witch-hunt aimed at federal employees who were homosexuals.  This “lavender scare”—to borrow the apt title from historian David K. Johnson’s excellent book on the subject—foreshadowed subsequent rationales used by policymakers and elected officials to deny gays and lesbians equal rights.

“Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government” was perhaps the lavender scare’s most telling and disturbing document.  This report was issued in 1950 by an ad-hoc subcommittee of the United States Senate that was chaired by North Carolina Democrat Clyde Hoey.  For Hoey and his fellow committee members, employing homosexuals in the federal government was primarily a security problem (homosexuals were especially vulnerable to blackmail, or so the argument ran).

But committee members also listed other reasons for barring homosexuals from government employment.  Engaging in homosexual acts reflected “emotional instability” and led to weakened “moral fiber,” qualities that would poison the workplace.  Moreover, because homosexuals tended to “gather other perverts” around them, their numbers would multiply as soon as a few got their feet in the door.  Once employed, they would “attempt to entice normal individuals,” especially “young and impressionable people,” to participate in “perverted practices.”  As the report chillingly concluded, “One homosexual can pollute a government office.”  In 1953, Eisenhower heeded those admonitions by signing an executive order disqualifying from federal service any individual who practiced “sexual perversion.”

The Chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, John W. Macy Jr., would echo the contamination metaphor several years later.  In a 1966 State Department newsletter, Macy argued that the employment ban should be maintained because of the “apprehension” and “revulsion” that homosexuals would cause “other [heterosexual] employees to feel,” as well as the umbrage they would generate if the public had to interact with a “known or admitted sexual deviate.”  Ultimately, these disruptions would cause a diminishment of “service efficiency.”

As Gregory B. Lewis has shown in his insightful examination of the topic in the Public Administration Review, supporters of the ban emphasized how the mere presence of homosexuals would trigger the prejudices of others.  However, instead of addressing the causes of intolerance, they believed it was better, or at least easier, to simply eliminate its presumed catalyst (which would be like making a playground off-limits to children who wore glasses because their appearance sparked the anger of bullies).  The ban enacted by Eisenhower’s executive order would not be phased out until 1975.

This brings us back full circle to current debates over repealing DADT.  If we replace “military service” with “civilian service,” it is as if we have returned to the 1950s and 1960s.  Like that era, it is not the competence of gays and lesbians that is currently being questioned, but an essential characteristic—their sexual orientation.  Because others (mainly heterosexual men) are deemed incapable of dealing with this characteristic, military officials demand that it be expunged whenever it appears—for instance, several dozen Arabic translators have been discharged since 1998 for being gay.  To put it another way, just as the Department of Homeland Security has a “red level” to indicate a severe risk of terrorist attack, the military’s DADT policy functions as an alarm against those who are a putative threat to our personal and collective well-being.

Regrettably, pleas for military or civilian “cohesion” are often based on simplistic and misleading us-vs.-them dichotomies.  Whether we shout “Wir sind ein Volk!”  (“We are one people!”) or decorously affirm our support of “traditional family values,” we often do so at the expense of denying others their humanity.  We should keep this in mind as we continue to debate the future of DADT and similar policies.

A. Scott Henderson (FL ’82) is an Associate Professor of Education at Furman University.

The Truman Scholar commitment to public service originally focused on government service, and more recently, has focused on the nonprofit sector.  The Truman Scholarship exists, in part, to encourage promising young Americans to follow public-sector careers in lieu of more lucrative private sector options.  But my last year working for Gray Ghost Ventures, an "impact investing" firm that has roughly $200 million deployed in for-profit companies worldwide that seek to have a direct impact on poverty alleviation, has led me to ask, "Can you build financially sustainable companies with meaningful social returns, and if so, is that public service?"

Compared to government programs, the world's problems are simply too large for the nonprofit sector to solve. The federal government spends more on education each year than the entire endowment of the Gates Foundation (and federal spending is only a small portion of all government spending on education in the sector).  And given the financial situation in the United States, budgets for major programs are becoming increasingly tight, and government will likely have fewer and fewer resources as the years progress.  In many emerging markets, corruption and instability have shifted responsibility for development projects away from governments.  If we want to change the world, we have to think of complements to these two incomplete solutions.

In recent years, the field of "social enterprise" has been on the rise.  Today, there are more than 50 firms worldwide that invest in early-stage companies that directly address poverty.  The most famous sector within social enterprise is microfinance - banking practices that lend small amounts (roughly $100) in emerging markets, with mostly women clients, and have repayment rates at upwards of 98 percent.  Microfinance was made globally famous by founder Muhammad Yunus winning the Nobel Prize in 2004, and today, more than $3 billion is invested in small-scale microfinance banks alone.  Major multinationals from Deutsche Bank to JP Morgan are now participating, and any individual can make a small-scale loan to an individual in the developing world through the website Kiva.org. 

In the past five years, organizations like Omidyar Network, Acumen Fund, and Gray Ghost Ventures, my employer, have been investing in companies beyond microfinance that address poverty.  These enterprises are varied and high-impact.  D.Light Design, for whom fellow Truman Scholar Greg Nolan (FL '06) interned, is a solar-powered light that is sold in India, Kenya, and Tanzania for $10 - or two months' worth of kerosene for a family living below the poverty line - and has sold over 100,000 units.  Promethean Power Systems, for whom fellow Truman Ming-Jay Shiao (OH '06) consulted, makes solar-powered bulk refrigeration units that increase farmers' income by upwards of 50 percent, cuts down on carbon emissions from heavily-polluting diesel machines significantly, and are an attractive alternative based on energy cost-savings to multinational dairies and food companies.  I worked for the Indian School Finance Company in Hyderabad, which makes market-rate loans to low-cost independent schools in slum areas of India, an increasingly large part of the Indian education system.  

Do these enterprises count as public service?  The sector is too young to tell.  But if these enterprises can be financially successful, they are more self-sustaining than nonprofits and do not face the same budgetary pressure as governments.  In addition, being able to leverage the sheer volume of capital in the private sector - several orders of magnitude greater than the grant dollars available in the philanthropic sector - has world-changing potential.  The for-profit social-enterprise sector has its risks: companies need to maintain a strong focus on their social mission to keep the "public good" objective (for example, microfinance banks, if the interest rates are too high, could border on exploitation), and to date, financial successes for investors have been limited.  But as our world struggles to figure out how to bring about major social change with increasingly limited resources, I encourage Trumans to think about how we can include business solutions as a piece of how our public service mandate can change the world.

Ross Baird (GA '06) is an investment analyst at Gray Ghost Ventures, an impact investment firm dedicated to providing market-based capital solutions to entrepreneurs who are addressing the needs of low-income communities in emerging markets.