new america

In this episode, I talk with Rachel Fishman, acting Director of Higher Education at New America. I ask Rachel about the bipartisan House proposal to create a short-term Pell program and discuss her concerns about the proposal. We also discuss the latest New American survey, Varying Degrees, about the changing perceptions of Americans regarding the value of a higher education. 

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NEWS

1. Watch ‘Batman vs. Robin’ trailer for Mark Waid and Mahmud Asrar’s upcoming series
   1. DC Comics reveals [REDACTED] returns from [REDACTED] in ‘Batman vs. Robin’ preview
2. Marc Silvestri gets DC Black Label series ‘Batman/The Joker: The Deadly Duo’ #1
3. New Geoff Johns projects announced: JSA, Stargirl, and ‘The Golden Age’ one-shot
4. DC Comics celebrates the 90s!
   1. Wildstorm 30th Anniversary Special
   2. WILDCATs
   3. Waller vs. Wildstorm
   4. Batman Spawn Complete Collection
5. Marvel releases November 2022 solicitations
   1. Marvel teases big plans for Captain America titles in November
   2. ​​Ryan North and Iban Coello to take over ‘Fantastic Four’ in November 2022
      1. Frank Miller crafts ‘Fantastic Four’ #1 variant cover for November launch
   3. Marvel goes ‘X-Treme’ this November with series of variant covers
   4. Gerry Duggan and Juan Frigeri launch ‘Invincible Iron Man’ #1 this December
6. BOOM! and Jason Aaron team up for ‘Once Upon a Time at the End of the World’ #1
7. Vault Comics sets September for 'Wasted Space: The Cosmic Collection' Kickstarter launch
8. Vault Comics announces 'Door to Door, Night by Night' horror series
9. ‘Creepshow’ #3 creative teams announced by Skybound Entertainment
10. IDW announces video game tie-in comic ‘Star Trek: Resurgence’ #1 for November 2022
11. Are the X-Men in trouble? Marvel teases an S.O.S. is coming January 2023
12. F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' gets comics adaptation 'Gatsby'

Our Top Books of the Week

Dave:

1. The Silver Coin #13 (Johnnie Christmas, Michael Walsh)
2. Batman: One Bad Day - The Riddler #1 (Tom King, Mitch Gerads)

Nathan:

1. Batman: One Bad Day - The Riddler #1 (Tom King, Mitch Gerads)
2. Do A Powerbomb #3 (Daniel Warren Johnson)

Standout KAPOW moment of the week:

Nathan - Strange #5 (Jed Mackay, Marcelo Ferreira)

Dave - Barbaric: Axe to Grind (Michael Moreci, Nathan Gooden) 

TOP BOOKS FOR NEXT WEEK

• Dave: Minor Threats #1 (Patton Oswalt, Jordan Blum, Scott Hepburn)
• Nathan: Tales of the Human Target #1 (Tom King, Mikel Janin, Kevin Maguire, Rafael Albuquerque, Greg Smallwood)

JUDGING BY THE COVER JR.

• Dave: Carnage #5 (Maria Wolf)
• Nathan: The Swamp Thing #16 (John McCrea variant)

Interview: Curt Pires - New America #1--debuts August 23

1. To start, New America is a political thriller, would you say it’s a response to any specific moment in American history?
2. You’ve crafted New America with artist Luca Casalanguida. How long has the project been in the works?
3. Given the political underbelly of New America, do you hope the series could enact change in the real world?
4. There’s a lot of passion on the page, particularly a scene with a burning of something, when writing the first draft for this did you have to scale back your own passion, or lean into it?
5. It’s hard to shock me, but I honestly was taken aback by some of the violence. You see holes in people. What went into the choice to make the violence graphic?
6. Set in the future, how futuristic does New America get?
7. New America ends up on news channels come its release August 23, what’s your response? Do you go on the 24 hour news talk shows?
8. Curt you’re a busy guy, do you have other projects you’d like to talk about today?

What’s ailing American politics, and can the underlying ideals of US democracy be renewed? How should the US change its role in the world, and are there alternatives to solving global challenges that exploit resources beyond our current UN system of nation-states? 

To answer such big-picture and wide-ranging questions, we spoke with a prodigious thinker. Anne-Marie Slaughter has worn many hats: lawyer, Ivy League academic, foreign policy leader, and now CEO of the think tank New America. Throughout her career, she’s asked big questions about our global political order, and America’s place in it. More recently, she’s turned to domestic issues, which are the topic of her new book Renewal.

“So there's a profound paradox, at least to most people the first time they encounter it, that if we want people to take more risks, we have to provide them with more security,” says Slaughter. “And if we're going to be the entrepreneurial society, we pride ourselves on, we need to provide more security.”

In this episode, Anne-Marie argues that making key political reforms and devoting attention to people’s welfare can renew the tattered promises of American democracy. And to tackle our biggest global challenges like the pandemic, she suggests we create new impact hubs that draw together resources from governments, the private sector, and non-profit activists.

Tectonic is a production of Swissnex in Boston and New York, whose aim is to bring the leading ideas from our hub of academic inquiry to Switzerland and the world, in order to inspire new thinking across disciplinary and national boundaries.

This episode was written and hosted by Brendan Karch, with production, sound design, and editing by Anour Esa.

Credits for audio clips used in this episode:  CBS News, “America's growing student loan debt crisis”, Montague Community Television, “Black Lives Matter Protest, Greenfield MA 6/6/20”

Chances are, if you’re an LGBTQ student, you’ve never been able to see yourself reflected in the materials teachers use at school. That’s because curriculum that is inclusive of the LGBTQ population is rare to nonexistent in most schools. That’s just beginning to change. A few states are revising curriculum standards to include the LGBTQ representation. But the biggest hope for spreading inclusive curriculum is through openly licensed resources, also known as OER, which can be freely shared. OER allow teachers to find inclusive curriculum and customize it to their needs. In this episode of Your Edtech Questions, Sabia Prescott from the New America think tank talks about the nascent efforts to create OER curriculum that’s LGBTQ-inclusive. 

Open educational resources are the education world’s version of the sharing economy. OER is curriculum and other learning materials that are shared without cost and without copyrights. That allows users to adapt the materials any way they want and freely share their new creations with anyone. That’s different than copyrighted materials, which are protected intellectual property that restrict sharing. With OER, there’s no revenue stream to protect. Sounds like a good deal, right? It is, but, like a free puppy, there is care and feeding involved. For starters, finding them, vetting them and understanding how best to use them takes a lot of time and resources. Kristina Ishmael, an OER specialist for the Washington, D.C.-nonprofit New America, offers an OER primer and describes what’s involved when a school wants to start using OER materials. She explains how materials from the Office of Education Technology (tech.ed.gov/open/districts/launch) and the New America website (www.newamerica.org) can help educators get started so that they experience more joy and less annoyance from their new puppy.