A student-led initiative on college campuses  in North Carolina is tackling one of the most important issue of our time - political polarization. The project, called Leaders for Political Dialogue, convenes students from Duke, N.C. State, UNC and N.C. Central. Students spend a weekend learning how to communicate better with those whose political opinions may differ from their own. Kelly Brownell talks with the founder of the project, as well as three participants.

More and more rich people are choosing to give their money away before they die. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to give away 99% of his family's Facebook stock - a gift estimated at the time to be worth $45 billion dollars. Some mega-donors are even pressing to spend donated funds their own lifetimes.

Joel Fleishman, a preeminent scholar on philanthropy, compares this current trend with the more traditional approach of perpetual foundations which are designed to last for generations. Fleishman's  book is Putting Wealth to Work - Philanthropy for Today or Investing for Tomorrow.

The latest research on poverty indicates that a federal job guarantee is economically feasible. Such a guarantee could help address big American issues like crumbling infrastructure while at the same time ensuring workers aren't living in poverty. Kelly Brownell talks about the topic with William "Sandy" Darity, the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.

Barney Frank spent 32 years in Congress. He served most recently as the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee. He sponsored the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which resulted in a sweeping reform of the U.S. financial industry. He is also one of the most prominent gay politicians in the U.S. In this conversation Barney Frank questions which side Donald Trump is rooting for in 2018, talks about the use of humor in politics, and explores the need for pragmatism in the fight for a fairer society.

Barney Frank’s visit to Duke was sponsored by the Samuel & Ronnie Heyman Center for Ethics, Public Policy and the Professions, in collaboration with the Kenan Institute for Ethics; POLIS, the Center for Political Leadership, Innovation and Service, and the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke.

For decades, higher education leaders have supported expanding college education to include disadvantaged groups. Many colleges have embraced policies that fight discrimination. And yet, as the economist Charles Clotfelter shows, America’s system of undergraduate education was unequal in 1970 and is even more so today.

He contends despite a revolution in civil rights, billions spent on financial aid, and the commitment of colleges to greater equality, stratification has grown starker in part because colleges cater largely to children of elites.

Charles Clotfelter's new book is Unequal Colleges in the Age of Disparity (Harvard University Press).

Earlier this week a lone gunman perpetrated the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. Why does the U.S. lack a comprehensive gun control policy? After the violence at Columbine High School, Kristin Goss began studying the gun control movement in America. She talks about why the movement hasn't caught on (it's not the NRA) and how things may be changing.

Lisa Monaco served as President Obama’s chief counterterrorism and homeland security advisor for his entire second term. She was responsible for policy coordination and crisis management on issues ranging from cybersecurity to natural disasters to terrorist attacks at home and abroad. Previously, Lisa helped Robert Mueller transform the FBI after 9/11 into a national security organization focused on preventing terrorist attacks on the United States.

Does history make statesmen or do statesmen make history? A conversation with Bruce Jentleson about his forthcoming book The Peacemakers: Lessons Learned from 20th Century Statesmanship.

Music: Blue Dot Sessions

The United Nations estimates more than 400,000 people have lost their lives in the Syrian civil war and millions more have had to leave their homes and the country. Cynthia Viveros-Cano is stationed in Damascus, Syria, as a Humanitarian Affairs Officer for the United Nations. Her role is help ensure aid gets to the people who need it most.

Recently, many have protested the dramatically different direction the U.S. is beginning to take in regards to climate change. Tim Profeta, director of Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, helps sort through the many changes being proposed by the Trump administration.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has become the universal yardstick of progress. GDP judges the value of goods and services produced inside a country’s borders. But the number has a big problem: it only judges output. More car production for example, would seem on the surface as a success, but at what cost? Dirk Philipsen's book is The Little Big Number, How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to do About It.

Recently, a team at the Duke Reporters Lab has been developing a fact-checking app for the Amazon Echo. Owners of the Echo can “ask the fact-checkers” about claims they hear on the news and social media. The development team is led by Bill Adair, founder of the Pulitzer Prize-winning site  PolitiFact. Student researcher Julia Donheiser and project manager Rebecca Iannucci join Adair to talk through the promise and pitfalls of the project.

There's a project happening now in North Carolina in which people from across the state who have very different political views are meeting on a regular basis. The idea is this: if we can build relationships between people with differing political views, can mutual understanding – or even solutions - be far behind?

In the 1930s, half of all unmarried women who got pregnant out of wedlock got married (a so-called "shotgun marriage.") By the second half of the 2000s, only 6% of women in the same situation married before giving birth. But recently shotgun marriages have actually risen among certain groups of women.

Jared Cohen said recently, “the world is in a perpetual state of cyber-warfare.” He should know, he's the the Founder and CEO of Jigsaw, the tech incubator focused on geopolitical challenges created by Alphabet, the parent company of Google. Previously, Jared served as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and thus as a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Jared has a long-standing interest in international security issues; he has traveled to more than 100 countries, including Iran and North Korea, and has conducted interviews with members of various extremist groups including Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Al-Shabab, Somali pirates, and more recently, failed ISIS recruits. He talks with guest host Peter Feaver about the high-tech efforts Jigsaw is undertaking to harness the power of technology to make the world safer.

Across the globe more than 20 million people are victimized by human trafficking, the modern form of slavery. Judith Kelley has been digging in to the WikiLeaks documents to see whether ranking countries on how well they are tackling human trafficking issues is having an impact on their efforts. Her new book is Scorecard Diplomacy.

Think of the words "Illegal alien" or "welfare queen." What color faces do you see in your mind? Now think about about phrases like "real Americans," or  "hard-working taxpayers." What color faces do you see now? Ian Haney López argues such phrases are "dog whistles," coded language used by politicians to get certain messages across. López is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and is the author of Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class.

Research shows Hispanic children in the U.S. worry a lot more than their non-Hispanic peers. Some told researchers they feared their parents would be taken from them and sent away. Given that more than one in four U.S. children live in a family with at least one immigrant parent, our guest argues we should work toward helping parents and their children feel integrated into U.S. society rather than isolated.

The number of hate groups in the U.S. has risen for the second year in a row and is close to an all-time high according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which conducts an annual census of such groups. There's been a huge spike in anti-Muslim hate groups. We talk with Heidi Beirich who leads the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, “one of the most respected anti-terror organizations in the world” and SPLC's president Richard Cohen. David Schanzer of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security is the guest host.

How can the U.S. increase security along the southern border without building a wall? Stephen R. Kelly says more cooperation between law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border is key. Kelly focused on border issues during his time as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission to Mexico, one of the largest U.S. diplomatic establishments in the world. He served in a similar capacity in Canada. He says many of the tactics now in place in Canada could be implemented on the U.S./Mexico border.

This episode was originally published on September 9, 2016.

General Martin Dempsey is former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as such he was the nation’s highest-ranking military officer. In this episode of Policy 360, Dempsey joins host Kelly Brownell to talk about his unlikely rise in the military, changes in the military since 9-11, the one thing he wishes he could have accomplished during his time as chairman, and the words he found to comfort those left behind when a fellow serviceman or woman has been killed.

More about the Sanford School of Public Policy: www.sanford.duke.edu

Photo: Dan Nguyen/Creative Commons www.flickr.com/photos/zokuga/7976447467/

Music: Impromptu in Blue by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Artist: www.incompetech.com/

Last week, President Donald Trump signed a controversial executive action related to immigration. The action implements a number of changes to our current policies: refugees won't be admitted to the United States for 120 days, for example. It also limits immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq; Syria; Iran; Libya; Somalia; Sudan; and Yemen, and the action blocks Syrian refugees indefinitely. The executive action is called, "Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorists Entering The United States," and it has led to protests at many airports around the country.

David Schanzer is the Director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, and Associate Professor of the Practice at the Sanford School. Prior to his academic appointments, Schanzer served in a number of positions in Washington, including that of Democratic Staff Director for the House of Representatives' Committee on Homeland Security.

Professor Schanzer discusses the executive order on immigration and its impact on homeland security with Sanford's Dean, Kelly Brownell.

"passport-12" flickr photo by oso flickr.com/photos/oso/153973593 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license​. Music: Impromptu in Blue by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Artist: www.incompetech.com/

Colin Kahl, former National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden and Deputy Assistant to President Obama, spoke at the Sanford School Wednesday about his experience working in foreign policy and his expectations of the Trump administration.

During his visit, Kahl recorded an episode of Policy 360 with Sanford's Dean, Kelly Brownell. 

Special thanks to Professor Peter Feaver and his Duke Program in American Grand Strategy, the Duke Department of Political Science, and the Triangle Institute for Security Studies for sponsoring Colin Kahl’s visit to Duke.

Music: Impromptu in Blue by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Artist: incompetech.com/

Do children from low-income background benefit from living in economically mixed communities? Professor Candice Odgers, associate director of the Center for Child and Family Policy, says that growing up in the shadow of wealth may have a surprising effect on a child's development.

Odgers talks with Sanford's Dean, Kelly Brownell.

Music: Impromptu in Blue by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Artist: incompetech.com/

"Sentenced to One Year in School" flickr photo by adwriter shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license.

Can it be physically damaging to be African American? Assistant Professor Jay Pearson says there's chromosomal evidence that our bodies react to a combination of ethnicity stress and socioeconomic status. There are important resources associated with those identities that can enhance health, but there are also important risks associated with those identities that can compromise health.

Pearson talks with Sanford's Dean, Kelly Brownell.

Music: Impromptu in Blue by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Artist: incompetech.com/