RALEIGH – We’re entering last week of the 2006 electoral season, which is why I want to call your attention away from elections and political issues, at least for today.
Carolina Journal and its parent organization, the John Locke Foundation, certainly do house staffers and programs that pay close attention to politics and elections. The print, broadcast, and online editions of CJ provide analysis of key federal, state, and local races and issues. Our candidate briefing book, Agenda 2006, provides two-page summarizes of the major topics of political conversation in North Carolina. During campaigns, we respond to dozens of information requests from candidates – Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and independents – who are running for offices ranging from county commissioner and school board to statewide executives and Congress. They often want to check statistics, explore bill histories, discover what other states have done in particular areas, or see whether our policy analysts would agree or disagree with their proposals.
While elections keep some of our folks busier than usual, it has been interesting, during the past couple of years of growth in our organization, to see more and more JLF staff and programs affected little if any by electoral chatter. These are staffers and programs under JLF’s Events & Outreach Division. Many are focused on specific topics, audiences, or communities in North Carolina and often have long-term educational or operational goals.
One of the newest of these Outreach projects is the Faculty Affiliate Network. Headed by Dr. Karen Palasek, a George Mason University-trained economist and director of academic and educational programs, FAN is designed to engage professors and students on campuses across North Carolina in programs about the classical liberal tradition. These programs include seminars, internships, a web site featuring the work of our dozens of faculty affiliates, and panel discussions such as the one cosponsored last week with the Duke University Department of Political Science.
With assistance from Jenna Ashley Robinson, Karen also directs the E.A. Morris Fellowship for Emerging Leaders. It brings together 12 Fellows from diverse backgrounds to study and apply principles of effective leadership in business, government, and charitable institutions. Our 2006 class attended three retreats chock-full of seminars on personal strengths, public speaking, economics, ethics, diversity, constitutional government, and the policy process. They also developed a community project to apply the knowledge, skills, and understanding they picked up during the course of the year. (Karen is currently taking applications for the 2007 Fellowship class.)
Another program under Karen’s purview happens every Monday at noon at JLF’s offices in downtown Raleigh: our discussion club, the Shaftesbury Society (named for John Locke’s patron and friend, who was also notable in history as the lead proprietor of the Carolina Colony and for getting the Habeas Corpus Act enacted by Parliament in 1679). Shaftesbury speakers have run the gamut from journalists and politicians to scholars, authors, civic leaders, and business owners. Topics have ranged from political philosophy in Ancient China and the history of immigrant entrepreneurs in rural North Carolina to Shakespeare’s views on lawyers and current issues in bioethics. Today’s offering, from one of the nation’s most respected resource economists, is an excellent example of what the Shaftesbury Society has to offer.
History is a sometime theme of the Shaftesbury Society but forms the core of another JLF Outreach project: the North Carolina History Project. Headed by Dr. Troy Kickler, who specialized in 19th century religious and African American history during his graduate studies at N.C. A&T State University and the University of Tennessee, the North Carolina History Project consists of a growing online encyclopedia, lesson plans for educators, lectures and conferences across the state, and articles on North Carolina history for the academic and popular press. Ably assisted by Richard Carney, Troy is also at work on a major book project involving one of America’s important early leaders, Nathaniel Macon, a North Carolinian who served as Speaker of the U.S. House, a U.S. senator, and chairman of a state constitutional convention.
Together with our longtime projects providing research and consultation services to city and county officials (the Center for Local Innovation) and education reformers (the North Carolina Education Alliance), these Outreach Division efforts consume nearly a third of our annual operating budget and represent a major investment of staff time and effort. They aren’t really intended to affect today’s public policy debate about legislative bills or political controversies. They are intended to help build the intellectual and cultural legacy we will leave to the next generation of North Carolinians.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.