Social Justice Initiative in Public Service Graduate Programs

Social Justice Initiative in Public Service Graduate Programs A Joint Proposal by the UCLA School of Public Affairs and the NYU Wagner School of Public Service

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Social Justice Initiative in Public Service Graduate Programs A Joint Proposal by the UCLA School of Public Affairs & NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

Making the Case Graduate education in public service – including the fields of public policy, public affairs, leadership, nonprofit management, social work, and planning – seeks to equip public sector policy makers with the relevant analytic tools to deal with a rapidly changing world. This proposal advances the argument that a social justice perspective – a lens on the systemic, institutional and structural conditions that constrain individual and community development - is a necessary and underdeveloped analytical tool in policy curricula. This is based on two fundamental assumptions: the first is that the field has not lived up the admonishing charge delivered by George Frederickson in 1968 to focus public service education on understanding issues of inequity and injustice, alongside effectiveness and efficiency. 1 The second assumption—based on stark empirical fact—is that the world is increasingly characterized by disparities between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” 2 This has powerful implications for how and to whom public goods and services are distributed. Graduate education for public service must reconsider social justice as a central element of both theory and practice. The primary focus of this proposal is on reshaping the field to provide appropriate and necessary training for the next generation of public service managers and leaders.

The historical roots of the related fields of public service are typically traced to Woodrow Wilson’s famous essay, “The Study of Administration,” published in 1887. 3 Wilson’s powerful distinction between “politics” and “administration” gave rise to the dominant view that disinterested and objective bureaucrats would systematically implement public law. The two driving principles of this approach were economics and efficiency. In other words, bureaucrats were tasked with producing the most efficient and cost-effective means for administering governmental action. The curricula in the university schools and programs that sprouted up to study the administration of public action typically covered such topics as public budgeting and finance, personnel procedures, and industrial organization.

To the extent that equity and justice concerns were considered, they were understood as inherent byproducts of the democratic actions of elected officials, not as intentional goals of public managers.

The post-war boom in the size and scope of American government quickly rendered Wilson’s critical distinction moot. The New Deal and World War II created more civil servants and more interest groups.

Public managers had a much greater stake in the ways in which public action were defined. These developments gave rise to a new generation of public service actors who now saw the interpretation of the public interest as within their purview. Harold Lasswell is generally credited with introducing the “policy sciences” to public service education. The main purpose of the approach was to create a

1

Frederickson, H. George. March/April 1990. “Public Administration and Social Equity.” Public Administration Review 50:2, pp. 228-237 2 Jacobsen, Linda A. and Mark Mather. 2010. “U.S. Economic and Social Trends since 2000,” Population Bulletin 65, no.1.

3 Wilson, Woodrow. 1887. “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly, 2(2):197-222.

framework for the scientific management of government. 4 This included analyzing all relevant inputs into governmental action and assessing the appropriate course of action. Further, the Lasswellian model encouraged public managers to study and evaluate the policy-making process itself. The broad goal was to address ends as well as means. More to the point, graduate programs began to emphasize the acquisition of the technical skills deemed necessary to engage in systematically clarifying policy options. Indeed, the sine qua non of this movement was “rationality.” Just as competition in the economic marketplace would produce outcomes in line with people’s preferences, so too would the marketplace of politics result in “socially optimal results.” 5 The basic idea is that a state of equilibrium would exist as the outcome of bargaining among interested actors. The problem, however, is that all parties do not come to the table as equal partners in the process. Some groups demonstrably have more political clout than others, and thus the legitimacy of public actions is called into question.

Ultimately, the development of rational actor approaches to public service education leaves questions of social justice to the whim of the marketplace. And as history all too readily shows, market failures burden some people than others.

This is not to say, however, that the education of public service managers has been completely devoid of a social justice lens. Two more recent developments are directly relatable to variations in structural influences on citizens’ needs. The first revolves around the idea of public deliberation. 6 In response to what many perceive to be a lack of accessibility to governmental decision makers, some political leaders have championed models of citizen engagement in the policy-making process. Often labeled as “deliberative democracy,” this approach stimulates citizen involvement in agency decision-making. A small number of graduate programs do train students in the techniques of public deliberation. 7 The major drawback of this approach, however, is that it is often complicated, costly and unyielding.

Further, it is not clearly evident (at least in a nontrivial number of cases) that citizen involvement results in enhanced equity or justice.

A second strain of social justice pedagogy in current use is a focus on human rights. It is not uncommon to find curricula centered on the idea of human rights in graduate programs that have a strong global or international focus. The global perspective is particularly useful for examining the role of NGOs, citizen’s rights groups, and other stakeholders as they bring pressure on states that violate the basic human rights of their citizens. This approach, however, has found little traction in examining public actions in the American context. Moreover, it is not typically a core approach to graduate education across the vast majority of programs that focus on public actions.

Similarly, while graduate programs in the field have responded to social and legal calls for greater diversity through the use of a broader literature and cases, increased offerings in ethics, and aggressive faculty recuitment, the core policy curriculum still revolves almost entirely around economics, particularly microeconomics, public management and efficiency.

4

Lasswell, Harold D. 1951. “The Policy Orientation,” in The Policy Sciences. Harold D. Lasswell and David Lerner (eds.) Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

5 Handbook of Public Policy 6 Fishkin 7 ibid

In all, too many graduate programs that train public service managers have not kept in mind what Frederickson said over 40 years ago – questions of equity and justice must be treated as a core element of the public service pedagogy. Not only does democratic theory require it, but the changing demographic patterns across the globe make it imperative that new cadres of public managers are properly trained and equipped to deal with the realities of program design and management, service delivery, and policy implementation in a diverse, globalized workforce.

In what follows, we describe a course of action that begins to develop a social justice approach for educating public service leaders and managers.

Progress to Date Both NYU Wagner and UCLA have taken significant strides to move our respective schools toward an increased understanding of the important impact of race, class, gender and other markers of identity on policy making and analysis, systems management and governance, and resource allocation and distribution.

Ultimately, schools will need robust offerings in three domains—faculty development, curricular initiatives, and extracurricular offerings.

UCLA School of Public Affairs In the two years since Frank Gilliam has become Dean at the School of Public Affairs, the outlines of a social justice program have been put in place. The School recently received support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to support the School’s new social justice initiative. In addition to the NYU partnership, the School has built working relationships with UCLA Law School, which has an established Critical Race Studies program, and other units on campus including Public Health and Education. Starting in 2010-11, the School will offer two new school-wide courses focused on social justice. In previous years, these courses were student-initiated and -organized. In addition to these curricular offerings, the School will include a training session for new students at orientation; offer social justice graduate fellowships; and sponsor dialogues on race and inequity issues with community partners (The Los Angeles Urban League, Crenshaw High School, and Los Angeles Human Relations Commission).

The School still needs to make strides when it comes to its core curriculum. This Spring, students conducted a self-evaluation of the School’s course offerings and how they addressed social justice. In the departments of Urban Planning and Social Welfare, there is a strong emphasis on social justice and community building; however, the Public Policy department has a ways to go. Although social justice is addressed in many courses, it needs to be developed as an analytic tool/lens. With support from the Ford Foundation, the School plans to offer faculty curriculum development grants to encourage the

inclusion of a social justice lens in core courses; develop two additional school-wide elective courses (for a total of 4 courses focused on social justice); and offer a day-long dialogue/training for West Coast public service programs.

The School has also formed a social justice committee made up of faculty, administrators, students and alumni to guide efforts to make UCLA School of Public Affairs one of the leading graduate programs with a focus on social justice.

The NYU Wagner School of Public Service Since Ellen Schall became dean in 2002, NYU Wagner has made significant strides to ensure that the school is a community in which issues of race, class, gender, and other markers of identity and difference are discussable, within the classroom and beyond. Last year, the Women of Color Policy Network (WOCPN), an affiliate of the Research Center for Leadership and Action (RCLA) at Wagner, interviewed key stakeholders within the NYU Wagner community and scanned offerings at some of our peer schools. The findings confirm that NYU Wagner leads many of its peers in addressing issues related to difference, diversity, and inclusion – particularly through its partnership with UCLA. The proposed social justice initiative presents an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen faculty development, course offerings, and extracurricular programming, as well as contribute to the field of graduate education for public service by sharing our learnings with our peers.

NYU Wagner has room for significant improvement in infusing social justice into the faculty development process. The school offered a faculty workshop in 2006 on managing “hot topics” in the classroom. Ongoing faculty searches seek to identify strong candidates who bring diversity through their backgrounds and research interests. With support from the Ford Foundation, the School plans to offer faculty curricular development grants to further encourage faculty to incorporate issues of social justice into existing and new courses.

At the curricular level, each of NYU Wagner’s core courses includes at least some mention of diversity.

The Wagner School also offers 26 graduate courses on a range of social justice topics. Additionally, all new elective course applications must specifically state how the course will address issues of social justice.

NYU Wagner has a robust set of extracurricular offerings led by both the administration and by students to create spaces and opportunities for dialogue around social justice issues. The administration signals to admitted students our commitment to social justice through the “Diversity and Intersections in Public Service” conference, which brings together admitted students, current students, faculty, and staff who wish to explore the multiple ways in which multiple markers of identity influence public policy and management in local, national, and global contexts. There is an explicit focus on race during our mandatory overnight orientation retreat for incoming students. Throughout the year, we offer multiple

events and other learning opportunities for faculty, staff, students, and broader communities at NYU, within NYC, nationally, and even globally.

NYU Wagner students are important partners in these efforts. More than one-third of all student groups, including those dedicated to criminal justice, education, critical race students, and other issues, identify attention to diversity, difference, and social justice as part of their core values. Support from the Ford Foundation would enable us to enhance the School’s individual and collective offerings. These advances will strengthen our individual graduate schools and the global field of public service.

Looking Ahead Each school has work to do to advance in each of the three domains - faculty development, curricular initiatives, and extracurricular offerings—within our own schools, collaboratively, and with our peer schools in order to achieve our goal of being models for the field

Faculty development – In addition to the important and critical commitment of both deans, both schools already have small groups of faculty who are engaging in these issues. We must continue to work on increasing the faculty’s capacity to incorporate social equity issues into their research and teaching.

Curricular initiatives – At the core level, NYU Wagner and UCLA will offer curricular development challenge grants during the first two years to support courses that focus on social equity. NYU Wagner has developed a range of elective course offerings in recent years. UCLA has plans to increase its electives. Together, we will share information across schools and with the larger public (through our respective web sites, the Electronic Hallway, and other online resources).

UCLA and Wagner will also engage a six-person faculty advisory committee, with faculty from NYU Wagner and UCLA, to meet once each semester via videoconference to review initiatives, share information, and evaluate progress.

Extracurricular offerings – At the extracurricular level, we have a strong beginning across the schools.

We seek to lead the field by helping our peer institutions better understand the social equity framework and how they might advance toward incorporating this lens into their curricular and extracurricular offerings. We would accomplish these goals by building on the success of the “Navigating Complex Conversations” events we convened in Spring 2009, by hosting two additional programs, one in Los Angeles and one in New York, to bring together students, faculty, administrators, alumni, to engage in day-long dialogues aimed at creating a space and a framework for conversations about social justice

issues in the context of graduate education in public affairs/administration/policy/management.

Additionally, we would engage our peer school deans, directors, and faculty through conversations at the annual conference of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA), the membership association and accrediting body of graduate programs of public affairs/administration/policy/management.

Regional Dialogues This iteration of the event will seek to extend the dialogue beyond NYU and UCLA by including participant teams from additional schools in each region to grapple with today’s pressing social problems and issues of equality and justice. For example, the Los Angeles program would include teams of 3-4 participants from: o o o

NYU (administrators, faculty, student); Other schools at UCLA; Local schools including USC, RAND, UC Riverside, Cal State, Pepperdine, and Loyola Marymount.

The New York City program would include teams of 3-4 participants from: o o o

UCLA (administrators, faculty, student); Other schools at NYU; Local schools including Columbia, Baruch College of the City University of New York, and the New School.

NASPAA Conference Each year, NASPAA convenes representatives from its 260 plus member schools for an annual conference focused on public service education. This year’s conference is from September 30 – October 2 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The theme is “Transitions in the Public Service.” NYU Wagner and UCLA will present a panel exploring the elements of a model curriculum for graduate schools of public service education with a specific focus on social justice. Below is the accepted panel proposal: Social Equity and Public Service in the New Millennium In 1968, H. George Frederickson called for the addition of a “third pillar” to public administration, with a focus on social equity as a value equal in status to economy and efficiency. Over time, however, schools of public affairs/administration/policy/management have come to rely almost exclusively on economic tools and quantitative analytics in evaluating decision-making. In today’s global context, with ever-widening disparities and inequality, it is imperative that our curricula also incorporate a social equity lens if we are to carry out our collective mission to prepare the next generation of public service leaders. This panel will explore the challenges and opportunities for fully integrating a social equity framework into a rigorous public service education, and discuss the analytic tools necessary to achieve this goal.