Barney Frank Discusses the Federal Budget and Military Spending

Fifth in the Public Voices Series
Tuesday, June 4, 2013, 6:00-7:30 PM
The New School, John L. Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street

Barney Frank recently retired from over 30 years in Congress (1981-2013) where he served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee from 2007 to 2011. As chairman, Frank was instrumental in crafting a compromise bill to stem the tide of home mortgage foreclosures, as well as the subsequent $550 billion rescue plan. He was a co-author of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and led the passage of the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act.

In 1987, Frank became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as openly gay, and in 2012 he married his longtime partner, Jim Ready, becoming the nation’s first congressman to enter into a same-sex marriage while in office.

Frank discusses a topic that has been a focus of his lectures since leaving office: why military spending can and must be reduced if we are to bring down the federal deficit in a socially responsible way.

Barney Frank will be joined for discussion by Robert Pollin, professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (PhD, New School for Social Research, 1982).

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is recommended. RSVP to cps@newschool.edu.

Corruption, Accountability, and Transparency

30th Social Research Conference
Thursday and Friday, November 21 and 22, 2013
The New School

The decision to organize a public conference and issue of Social Research on the theme of “Corruption, Accountability, and Transparency” seemed long overdue, since there is hardly anywhere one can look in public or political life, either in the United States or elsewhere, where one does not find evidence of it. The challenge, therefore, was how to delimit this project, and we have chosen to focus on what corruption means in its political and historical contexts. The conference will examine U.S.-specific and global dimensions of the problem of corruption, including social and historical dimensions of corruption, systems at risk of corruption (governments, business, labor, and markets), and possibilities for reform. Additional issues will be addressed in the Social Research issue (Volume 80, Number 4, Winter 2014) with case studies of corruption in Kenya, India, Russia, Latin America, and the U.S.

Visit the conference page to view the complete program and to register: www.newschool.edu/cps/corruption.