Solving Complex Policy Problems

In her interview with PAW (On the Campus, February issue), SPIA Dean Amaney Jamal notes that when it comes to mainstream policy decisions or the results of high-profile trials, her students should always ask “whether systemic racism was at play.” In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, issues surrounding race in America should be reexamined with a sense of urgency that is long overdue. But to suggest students and faculty should examine every area of domestic policy through such a lens is difficult to square with her commitment to “academic excellence [and] rigor in research and teaching.” If you are constantly on the lookout for something, you are predisposing yourself to find it.

It wasn’t that long ago that public-policy programs in Princeton and elsewhere examined issues domestic and foreign through the lens of a global struggle against communism. As George Kennan 1925 said at that time, the results of policies undertaken under the rubric of “containment” were not always pretty. A little bit of Olympian detachment on the part of even public-policy academics can go a long way toward fostering more creative solutions to what are always complex problems.