Taking Stock: Biden’s Equity Agenda

TUE, APR 5, 2022 (1:15:51)

Upon assuming office, President Biden proposed an ambitious equity agenda, designed to address systemic racial, gender, ethnic and economic disparities.

One year into his Presidency, we will examine his record. He has made some historic picks to lead his Administration and nominated the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. However, even a much scaled down social spending bill—which would have delivered some of the most consequential investments in the social safety net since the New Deal—seems dead in the water.

The Biden Administration’s efforts to address voting rights, immigration policy and economic inequalities have been stalled by a deeply divided Congress. GBH News Senior Reporter Phillip Martin leads a panel discussion to examine the present impact and future fate of Biden’s equity agenda, the fierce backlash, and how this is likely to influence voter enthusiasm in the midterms.

This series builds upon Suffolk University’s historic mission of access, opportunity, and engagement with our alumni and the communities to which we belong. It’s sponsored by the Department of Political Science and Legal Studies in collaboration with the Ford Hall Forum, The Washington Center and GBH’s Forum Network.

+ BIO: Phillip Martin

Phillip Martin, senior investigative reporter for The WGBH News Center for Investigative Reporting, is a multi-award winning journalist. Honors include the 2019 National Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting, the National Society of Professional Journalists 2017 Sigma Delta Chi award for Best Investigative Reporting and the 2014 national Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Investigative Reporting. He is also the recipient of the 2013 New York Festivals Gold Award and the 2013 United Nations UNDPI Gold Award. He was part of a team of reporters that was honored in 2002 with a George Foster Peabody Award to NPR for coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. He has received numerous other journalism and civic engagement honors over the course of his career including AP, NABJ, regional Edward R. Murrow, AAJA, Rueban Salazar, Gabriel, Prized Pieces, PRNDI, Harry Chapin and Clarion awards. WGBH also awarded Phillip one of its highest honors, the Margret and Hans Rey Producer of the Year Award (2011-2012).

Phillip was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and most recently a Pulitzer-Center grantee (2018). He has also received fellowships from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), the U.S. Japan Media Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism and the Poynter Institute. He is the recipient of two major Ford Foundation grants and reporting grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Paul Robeson Fund. Phillip earned a master’s degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and studied international protection of human rights law at Harvard Law School as well as journalism at the University of California at Berkeley in the Program for Minority Journalists.

Phillip hosted the highly praised podcast, Heat and Light, produced by The Conversation about key events that shaped the year 1998. He worked as a supervising senior editor for NPR from 2003 to 2006 and was NPR’s first national race-relations correspondent from 1998 to 2001. He was executive producer for Lifted Veils Productions, a nonprofit public radio journalism project that he developed “dedicated to exploring issues that divide and unite society”. His Color Initiative, an occasional series of reports about the global impact of skin color, aired on The World from 2007 to 2010.

He is a contributing reporter to PRI’s The World, a co-production of WGBH, the BBC, PRX and PRI; a program, which he helped develop as a senior producer in 1995 and Phillip is an advisory board member for the Groundtruth Project and the Economic Hardship Project.

+ BIO: Tanisha Sullivan, Esq.

Tanisha Sullivan, a Brockton-raised lawyer and former Boston Public Schools chief equity officer, is the current President of the NAACP Boston Branch. Sullivan’s work as an attorney has included involvement in the Economic Justice Project and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, where she helped entrepreneurs with issues related to forming and growing businesses.

+ BIO: Cheryl Clyburn Crawford

Cheryl Clyburn Crawford is the Executive Director of MassVOTE. In addition to her role at MassVOTE, Cheryl is the 2nd Vice President of the NAACP-Boston Branch. She is a former Executive Board Chair of EmergeMA. She sits on the Women’s Pipeline for Change’s Oversight and Planning Board. She is an active member of the Order of the Eastern Star, a Prince Hall affiliated organization. She is a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Council on Racial Justice and Equity and a board member of American Promise.

Before MassVOTE, Cheryl served as Campaign Manager and then Chief of Staff to State Representative Willie Mae Allen. Born in New York, Cheryl grew up in Boston and is a graduate of Lesley College, Cambridge, MA.

[source:Mass.gov]

+ BIO: Gregory Fried

Professor Fried has taught at the University of Chicago, Boston University, California State University Los Angeles, and Suffolk University. He teaches and publishes in political philosophy, with a particular interest in responses to challenges to liberal democracy and the rise of ethno-nationalism. He also works in philosophy of law, especially law and hermeneutics; philosophy and race; practical ethics, including just war theory; public philosophy; the history of ethics; Ancient philosophy; and 20th century Continental philosophy, especially Heidegger. [Source: Boston College]

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