Quotes in Press

How Mayor Vincent Gray Is Failing DC Students

DIANE RAVITCH 02/18/13 By Diane Ravitch During Michelle Rhee’s book tour, the nation will hear a lot of claims about the dramatic changes she imposed on the D.C. schools, which qualifies her to export her ideas to the rest of the nation. What should other states and cities seek to […]

‘Amish Mafia,’ a Real Exercise in Pop Culture Exploitation

WASHINGTON POST 01/04/13 By Lisa Miller The week before Christmas, 3 million people watched the Discovery Channel’s new reality show, “Amish Mafia,” making it the second-most-viewed cable show that night, after the trashy hit “Moonshiners.” This is surprising for two reasons: First, it reveals Americans’ enduring fetish with all things […]

Education Disparities Persist in D.C.

BET 11/16/12 By Cord Jefferson The nation’s capital now has the worst racial achievement gaps in the country when it comes to educating children. A new op-ed in the Huffington Post dredges up a well known but important topic of conversation: the growing and increasingly entrenched disparities between whites and […]

Hill Climbers: Aide Sees a Future in Congress

ROLL CALL 10/01/12 By Emily Cahn Michael Shank is driven by his commitment to progressive values. The returning communications director and senior policy adviser in Rep. Mike Honda’s (D-Calif.) office was raised in an Amish-Mennonite community in Kidron, Ohio, where the ideas of helping the downtrodden, sustainable development and nonviolence […]

Inside the Beltway: Pillars of Liberty

WASHINGTON TIMES 07/25/12 By Jennifer Harper THE COST OF AURORA “Why must the tragic Colorado theater shootings stimulate a debate on more than mere gun control? Not simply because, or however remarkable the fact that, violent mass killings — whether in Columbine, Virginia Tech or now Aurora — tend to […]

In the Wake of the Shooting, Gun Control Debate Re-Emerges

NEWSY 07/20/12 By Matthew Picht and Anchor Jim Flink Debate about gun control has flared up once again after the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Here’s Sky News. “This argument happens every time there is a shooting incident in America. The last significant argument about gun control was after the […]

Embassy Hosts High Level Debate on United Nations

LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE 06/20/12 On June 20, 2012, the Embassy of France hosted a conference organized by the French-American Global Forum (FAGF), the Maison Française and the Monde Diplomatique newspaper about the current state of the United Nations. The event was part of a series called “Le Monde Diplomatique Debates” […]

UN Press Conference on Global Peace Index

UNITED NATIONS 06/14/12 The cost of the economic impact of violence on the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the last years was $9 trillion dollars, Michael Shank, Vice-President of the Institute for Economics and Peace, told correspondents today at Headquarters.     Mr. Shank, who was addressing a press conference […]

Report Shows Correlation Between Peace and Resilience

ALL AFRICA 06/12/12 By Stephen Kaufman Washington – Would political and economic leaders work harder for peace if they saw that it not only has economic benefits, but it also helps societies recover faster from a crisis?The international nonprofit organization Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), which rates global levels […]