President’s Update 2020 President’s Year-End Update CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD PAUL E. SINGER VICE CHAIRMAN MICHAEL J. FEDAK CHAIRMEN EMERITI ROGER HERTOG RICHARD GILDER* PRESIDENT REIHAN SALAM ANDREW CADER ANN J. CHARTERS ANTHONY P. COLES RAVENEL B. CURRY III TIMOTHY G. DALTON, JR. KENNETH B. GILMAN HARVEY GOLUB MAURICE R. GREENBERG FLEUR HARLAN MICHAEL A. KAUFMAN ROGER KIMBALL WILLIAM KRISTOL THOMAS E. MCINERNEY REBEKAH MERCER JAY H. NEWMAN NICK OHNELL RUSSELL PENNOYER ROBERT ROSENKRANZ NATHAN E. SAINT-AMAND, MD THOMAS W. SMITH DONALD G. TOBER BRUCE G. WILCOX KATHRYN S. WYLDE *In memoriam 2 CITY JOURNAL AT 30 ................................. 17 ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT ...................... 24 HEALTH CARE ........................................ 26 K–12 EDUCATION ..................................... 28 CIVIL SOCIETY ........................................ 30 NEXT-GENERATION ENGAGEMENT ................32 11 8 Race and Identity 14 in America Policing and The Post-Covid America’s multiethnic Public Safety composition has Urban Future As protests swept the always been both Covid-19 has placed 20 country this summer, a source of great cities under intense An Opportunity the debate over national strength and stress. In many places, Agenda for policing in America profound challenges. it has also revealed took a radical turn. In debates on race and long-standing issues America While some voices identity, Americans in city government. America cannot afford called for a defunding are arguing about Fiscal duress is made an economic recovery of the police, violent the very definition worse by bloated as halting and tepid as crime ticked up in of what it means to budgets. Remote the one that followed cities across America. be an American. Our education is failing the Great Recession. The Manhattan scholars have argued to reach those most MI’s scholars have laid Institute developed for a color-blind ideal in danger of falling out plans to harness and disseminated many of citizenship that behind. To preserve America’s energy of the foundational recognizes everyone’s their dynamism and abundance, open the ideas of proactive inherent equality and vibrancy, city leaders higher-education sector policing that tamed rejects all claims to across the country to new providers, and crime in the 1990s unique privileges. need to recommit provide free-market and 2000s. Now we themselves to building health-care reforms. are committed to lean but effective making the case for public sectors. effective policing and protecting those hard- earned gains. Visit manhattan-institute.org to see video and bonus content 3 2020 President’s Year-End Update LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT Dear friends and supporters, America has elected a new believe that the threats to American short supply. At MI, we will con- president. President-elect Biden dynamism and liberty are real, but tinue to champion the color-blind faces several interlocking crises: we reject pessimism and fatalism in ideal that rejects racial prejudices the Covid-19 pandemic and all its forms. as well as racial preferences. attendant economic recession, rising disorder in our cities, and This is a country that desperately racial and social polarization needs to reinvigorate economic that is straining our country’s growth. Throughout history, the civic bonds. America’s ability to surest route to sustainable growth respond to these challenges with has been the preservation of open We at MI believe that renewed dynamism will determine and competitive markets, and we at the threats to American whether we remain the world’s MI intend to defend economic free- premier power in the 21st century. dom as the cornerstone of American prosperity. This is a country whose dynamism and liberty At this hinge point in our country’s cities are home to some of the history, the Manhattan Institute’s world’s most innovative industries are real, but we reject (MI) work is indispensable. Since and most ineffective governments. our founding, we have been If urbanites are running out of pessimism and fatalism dedicated to fostering economic patience with administrations that in all its forms. choice and individual responsibility. promise too much and deliver too Yet these values are increasingly little, they may begin demanding under threat. Some observers fresh ideas from their elected offi- Our work will play out across years even believe that they will become cials—ideas that we are singularly and decades, not just one election fringe ideas in a country that is equipped to provide. This is also a cycle. But 2020 was a milestone in becoming more urban and diverse, country founded on the rejection MI’s defense of the institutions and and in which millennials constitute of tribal divisions; yet unity and principles that undergird Ameri- the largest voting bloc. We at MI patriotic feeling seem to be in can exceptionalism. In the wake of 4 the summer’s protests and riots, innovative energy market with one readership and podcast audience, shortsighted officials in city after dominated by command-and-con- increasing 84% and 47%, year- city embraced starkly antipolice po- trol regulation, senior fellow Mark over-year, respectively. Our scholars sitions, only to see a rise in violent P. Mills explains how America’s published op-eds in every major crime. In response, MI launched the energy abundance could reinvigo- national newspaper and spoke Policing and Public Safety Initia- rate American manufacturing. From (virtually) to thousands of young tive, which draws together leading K–12 education to taking control people through MI on Campus, academics, practitioners, and MI of our public debt and more, MI’s Young Leaders Circle, and the Adam experts, including Heather Mac scholars are developing workable Smith Society. While continuing Donald and Rafael A. Mangual, to ideas to foster upward mobility and to maintain a high standard of make the case for data-driven polic- economic opportunity for all. excellence in our core research ing to ensure that America’s cities and journalism, we are continually remain safe places to live, work, breaking new ground and and raise a family. expanding our reach in new media, from YouTube to Instagram. On the national level, many polit- ical leaders and opinion makers We are gratified All this work is made possible by have argued that the government your generous support. We want should take the lead on econom- that MI’s ideas are to thank you for being part of ic recovery. This would be a path our community and for standing toward statism and sclerosis, and reaching newer and with the Institute and our shared we believe that there is a better values in what has been a trying way. Instead of taking another step larger audiences than year. The work ahead of us will be toward the government takeover of ever before. challenging and prolonged, but health care, for example, MI senior we are confident that with your fellow Chris Pope has a plan to support, America and its great remove the government-imposed We are gratified that MI’s ideas centers of commerce and creativity barriers that prevent many peo- are reaching newer and larger will emerge stronger than ever. ple from purchasing affordable audiences than ever before. Our health care on their own. Instead of flagship publication, City Journal, replacing America’s dynamic and enjoyed a banner year for its online 7 2020 President’s Year-End Update POLICING AND PUBLIC SAFETY America’s long-simmering debate protecting life and property. In Min- frenetic pace of writing and televi- over policing and race boiled over neapolis, where the city council has sion appearances. Her three op-eds this summer with a wave of pro- passed a resolution to abolish the in the Wall Street Journal in summer tests, an alarming number of which city’s police department, shootings 2020 sparked an ongoing conver- devolved into riots and looting. Met have more than doubled this year; sation with the paper’s readership, with a crisis requiring courageous across all of America’s large cities, who responded to Mac Donald with public leadership, too many city violent crime is up 20% from the several letters to the editor, many leaders instead outsourced their 2015–19 average. echoing her concerns and some thinking to activists who quickly objecting vociferously. From Fox’s transformed “defund the police” When disorder broke out in Ameri- prime-time programs to public from a protest chant into a policy ca’s cities, no institution responded radio, the viewers and listeners goal. Against a backdrop of shat- with more urgency or resolve than who engage with Mac Donald are tered storefronts and burning cars, MI—an effort led by two of our treated to rigorous analyses indiffer- television anchors and pundits outstanding fellows, Heather Mac ent to the taboos and free from the solemnly informed Americans that Donald and Rafael Mangual. In the illusions that inhibit so many other their country suffered from an tumultuous three months follow- scholars of policing and crime. epidemic of racist over-policing. We ing George Floyd’s death in police are already seeing the consequenc- custody, Mac Donald—MI’s Thomas Mangual, for his part, has been es of the ensuing turn away from W. Smith fellow and a City Journal tireless in sharing his perspective, government’s foundational task of contributing editor—maintained a including with liberal and urban 8 audiences most in need of it. Across their only exposure to policing vilification of police officers was his 11 op-eds, including placements comes in the form of viral videos recognized early on by Mac Donald, in the Washington Post and Wall seized on by activists and the media. who documented this trend in her Street Journal, seven MI events, and So while policing reform groups and 2015 New York Times best-selling a bevy of appearances on television de-incarceration activists invoke book, The War on Cops.