The Century Foundation Welcomes Public Policy Expert Suzanne Mettler as a New Fellow

Jan 20, 2012

Authors: Christy Hicks

Publisher(s): The Century Foundation

January 20, 2012--The Century Foundation welcomes as a new fellow Suzanne Mettler, an award-winning Cornell University political scientist who has written extensively about social policy, tax expenditures, health care reform, and higher education policy. Her most recent book is The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Mettler discusses her current research agenda in a new Policycast on The Century Foundation website, www.tcf.org.  You can listen to the podcast here .

“Suzanne writes with deep insight about the interrelationships between politics and policy, focusing particularly on the reasons why voters feel disconnected from government,” said Janice Nittoli, president of The Century Foundation. “We are so excited to provide a new platform that will provide broader visibility for her important work.”

Mettler’s earlier books include Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Cornell University Press, 1998), which was awarded the Kammerer Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book on U.S. national policy, and Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (Oxford University Press, 2005), which also won the Kammerer Award as well as the Greenstone Prize of the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association.

Mettler is coeditor, with Joe Soss and Jacob Hacker, of Remaking America: Democracy and Public Policy in an Age of Inequality (Russell Sage Foundation, 2007), and coeditor with Lawrence R. Jacobs of a special issue of the Journal of Health Policy, Politics, and Law focused on “Public Opinion, Health Policy and American Politics.” She has published articles in several journals, including American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, and Studies in American Political Development, and numerous book chapters in edited volumes.

Mettler is one of five newly appointed Century Foundation fellows, all of whom are widely recognized as insightful generators of distinctive and provocative public policy ideas. Together they will advance TCF’s mission of providing bold, thought-provoking responses to unequal opportunity in America and the challenges to the United States of the diffusion of global power. The other  new fellows are: Daniel Alpert, the founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, LLC, who writes perceptively about the causes of the economic woes facing America and the rest of the world while recommending ambitious policy responses; Michael Cohen, a foreign policy analyst and author who writes about U.S. foreign policy, national security, and foreign assistance, and whose critiques of U.S. military policy, and particularly America’s approach to the Afghanistan war, have proven to be prescient; Amy B. Dean, whose Century Foundation book, A New, New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement, and other work highlights innovative alternatives to traditional unions that have arisen throughout the country and how these local institutions realize economic change;  and Mark Thoma, a University of Oregon economist whose widely read blog, Economist’s View, synthesizes current economic research for non-experts and highlights ideas for strengthening American social insurance and employment opportunities.

“Our new fellows share the rare ability to connect dots about the ways in which U.S. policy has gone astray and how it can be repaired in politically plausible ways over the course of the next decade,” said Greg Anrig, vice president of policy and programs. “In each case, their insights are distinctive and not widely known by the general public, but their arguments are persuasive and have the potential to transform policy debates in the United States.”

The Century Foundation is a progressive nonpartisan think tank. Originally known as the Twentieth Century Fund, it was founded in 1919 and initially endowed by Edward Filene, a leading Republican businessman and champion of fair workplaces and employee ownership strategies, all with an eye to ensuring that economic opportunity is available to all. Today, TCF issues analyses and convenes and promotes the best thinkers and thinking across a range of public policy questions.  Its work today focuses on issues of equity and opportunity in the United States, and how American values can be best sustained and advanced in a world of more diffuse power.

For more information on The Century Foundation and its work, please visit www.tcf.org. You can keep up with the latest news from Century by signing up for our mailing list, following us on Twitter @tcfdotorg and joining our Facebook page.  For media inquiries, contact Christy Hicks at hicks@tcf.org or (212) 452-7723.