The Brookings Institution is identified in The Bob Zadek Show excerpts only through the guests who hold positions there. No excerpt describes the institution’s founding, its funding, its governance, its research programs, or its location beyond the city named in one introduction. What the sources supply is a set of affiliations: three guests introduced by Bob Zadek as holding positions at Brookings, each appearing to discuss a different subject.
Jonathan Rauch on hate speech
Bob Zadek introduced Jonathan Rauch as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, adding that Rauch had written for the National Journal and The Atlantic, had received a 2005 National Magazine Award, and was the author of Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul and The Kindly Inquirers Jonathan Rauch on the New Attacks on Free Thought (2015). The episode’s subject was whether hate speech is good for America.
Rauch, who described himself as a gay American, argued that allowing hate speech is good for America and that he was a personal beneficiary of that allowance, having been born in a country he characterized as saturated in hatred and hate speech against gay people. He said the way to change a society’s mind is by identifying that hate, confronting the fears underlying it, and contrasting the truth against it, and that gay people in America had made their progress by putting themselves up against the hate speech and looking better by comparison with it Jonathan Rauch on the New Attacks on Free Thought (2015).
Rauch told listeners, particularly friends in minority communities who support hate speech laws, that minorities are in the long term always safer in a society that protects hate speech than in one that protects them from hate speech, because such protections will be administered by political majorities to their own ends. He said that in the 1950s the people targeted by speech codes against offensive and hateful speech were gay people, and that in 1953 the US Postmaster General censored the first openly gay intellectual magazine—an issue that, he noted, was criticizing the Postmaster General’s censorship rules. He described the 1958 Supreme Court decision overturning that government censorship, in two sentences, as the greatest single breakthrough in gay rights history until gay marriage came along Jonathan Rauch on the New Attacks on Free Thought (2015).
Bob Zadek’s own framing, in his introduction, was that the United States is maybe the only country in the world, and certainly the only first-world country, that does not prohibit hate speech as such, while most of Europe, Canada, and most of the free world do prohibit it. He put the choice to listeners as between a society where hate speech was limited or prohibited and one such as ours where hate speech is permitted and cannot be prevented, at least not by government Jonathan Rauch on the New Attacks on Free Thought (2015). Rauch agreed with Bob’s formulation that living in a free society means being exposed to events and circumstances that might make one uncomfortable, saying it was hard to improve on what Bob had said Jonathan Rauch on the New Attacks on Free Thought (2015).
Jonathan Rothwell on market egalitarianism
Jonathan Rothwell was introduced by Bob Zadek as Gallup’s principal economist, an economist by training who had lived his entire life in the world of politics and public policy, and as the author of A Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society Jonathan Rothwell on Market Egalitarianism (2019). In his own account of his background, Rothwell said he had become most interested in the topic around the 2000 election while an undergraduate studying mostly science, that the election and the topics it brought up—including Ralph Nader’s campaign talk about income inequality—motivated him to study economics, and that he had then worked at the Brookings Institution in DC for seven years before joining Gallup Jonathan Rothwell on Market Egalitarianism (2019).
On the substance, Rothwell said it was perfectly natural that there would be some income inequality, but that one concern was that the United States stands out among other democracies as having what could be characterized as an extreme amount of income inequality. He said that countries that are poor and often have authoritarian or corrupt governments have fairly extreme income inequality, with the richest 1% controlling 20% to 30% of income in a given year; that in European democracies and countries like Japan and Korea the figure is more like between 6% and 12% or 13% at most, usually under 10%; and that in the United States it is 20%, leaving the country closer to authoritarian governments and non-democracies than to other developed countries Jonathan Rothwell on Market Egalitarianism (2019).
Bob Zadek’s introduction framed the episode through the myth of Procrustes, the blacksmith who stretched or amputated his captives to make everyone the same height, which Bob offered as no more absurd than income equality or its converse. Bob said the subject of income inequality is born of envy and a desire to take from people who have more, and asked whether politicians must all take an oath to become Procrustean in their policy Jonathan Rothwell on Market Egalitarianism (2019).
Clifford Winston on the legal profession
Clifford Winston was introduced by Bob Zadek as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Economic Studies program and an applied microeconomist, and as the author of Trouble at the Bar, which Bob described as a deep dive into how the maladministration of the regulation of the practice of law negatively affects everyday life for Americans Trouble at the Bar (2021). Bob, who said he had been a practicing lawyer for 54 years, framed the episode around the claim that the regulation and organization of the practice of law—not the day-to-day work lawyers do—has a profound effect on every American all of the time, and indirectly affects the proper functioning of government Trouble at the Bar (2021). Winston thanked Bob for having him and for covering the topic Trouble at the Bar (2021).
The excerpt for this episode consists of the introduction and Winston’s brief reply; it does not record the arguments Winston went on to make about occupational licensing, the American Bar Association, legal education, deregulation, access to justice, or judicial decision-making.
Across episodes
Three episodes touch on the Brookings Institution, in 2015, 2019, and 2021, and each does so only by naming a guest’s affiliation: Rauch as a senior fellow there, Rothwell as a former employee of seven years, and Winston as a senior fellow in its Economic Studies program. The excerpts show no development in how the institution is treated—no episode discusses Brookings as an organization, and the three references are unconnected to one another.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when the Brookings Institution was founded, by whom, or on what principles; they do not describe its funding, its governance, its publications, or its research output; and they do not say what positions, if any, it takes on hate speech, income inequality, or occupational licensing. The only location given is Washington, in Bob Zadek’s introduction of Rauch, and the only internal unit named is the Economic Studies program, in his introduction of Winston. Nothing in the sources indicates whether the three guests’ Brookings affiliations overlapped in time or whether they knew one another.