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“This engenders an element of a vicious circle at work: not only will the pandemic and its fallout worsen inequality; inequality will exacerbate the spread of the virus, not to mention undermine any ensuing economic recovery efforts,” Papadimitriou told ABC News. “A reduction in income inequality is one of the most important—if not the single-most important—structural changes that needs to be implemented so that the U.S. economy can return to a sustainable growth path in the medium run.”
 

“While scientists scramble to find effective treatments for COVID, we know how to protect existing jobs and create good employment opportunities for the unemployed, whoever and wherever they may be,” writes Tcherneva. “It is time for a permanent federal job guarantee.”
Read her article in the American Prospect.

Professor Tcherneva talks about the Modern Monetary Theory and why it allows for full employment at a living wage—even now.
Listen to the interview on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show

Professor Tcherneva talks about her new book, The Case for a Job Guarantee, (Polity, 2020) in an interview with New Books Network.

“Discussions on a universal job guarantee have never been timelier. The Case for a Job Guarantee is a deeply thought-provoking book and deserves serious consideration.”
Read the London School of Economics blog book review.

She was also quoted in the New York Times last week in an article about public jobs programs for the unemployed.

Professor of Political Studies Omar G. Encarnación writes for Foreign Policy magazine in response to last week's historic Supreme Court ruling extending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to LGBTQ people. Professor Encarnación examines the foreign experience to try to find answers for why advances in LGBTQ rights are so difficult in our country.

“In India, critics have legitimately called out the hypocrisy of elites who express digital solidarity with American protesters but ignore police violence and racial prejudice at home,” writes Sanjib Baruah, Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, for the Indian Express. Baruah examines the uprising in the U.S. and the response in India in the context of a global history of racial thinking and the ideology of racial hierarchy.

Pavlina Tcherneva, associate professor of economics at Bard, spoke with David Brancaccio on the Marketplace Morning Report about her new book, The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity).
 

Roger Berkowitz, professor of political studies and human rights and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center, reflects on the progress that the Movement for Black Lives has made over the last five years. “We are witnessing the rise of a revolutionary movement of political civil disobedience with the power to reimagine the tragedy that is race in America,” writes Berkowitz. “By risking their lives — both in the face of police violence and the coronavirus — these civil disobedients are engaging in the kind of courageous political action that Hannah Arendt so valued. What is going on is neither protest nor riot: it is a mobilization of political action through civil disobedience, and it is unfolding on a scale not seen in my lifetime.”