The Radical Bureaucrat

For the last episode of the season, Sam and Abram invited some friends to watch and discuss Brazil, a surreal film that takes on themes of bureaucracy and alienation. Sam and Abram are joined by Patrick G. Williamson, who works for the NYC Department of Education and produces the podcast 3 Educated Brothas, and Toni Smith-Thompson, who is an organizer for the New York Civil Liberties Union. In Bra...

In this episode, Sam and Abram chat with Paul Forbes while he drives one of his Expanded Success Initiative students to college. The Expanded Success Initiative, which Paul runs, is a New York City Department of Education program that works with Black and Latino boys in high schools to make sure they graduate ready for college and career. Paul’s approach has a strong emphasis on community- and rel...

A special tribute to the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior.

"The Radical Bureaucrat: Love" When a co-worker cried after a tense phone conversation, Sam started thinking about accountability and human relationships within bureaucracy. Inspired by this incident and by the closeness they’ve built while working on The Radical Bureaucrat, Abram and Sam spend this episode exploring the intersection of love with the bureaucratic workplace. Join a conversation fra...

The Radical Bureaucrat: Noliwe Rooks At the beginning of her most recent book, Dr. Noliwe Rooks shares a conversation she had over and over with her white, affluent students at Princeton. They called education “the civil rights issue of our time,” and seemed eager and committed to eradicating educational inequity. Rooks quickly noticed that for all their enthusiasm, few of her students had actuall...

“Is there any way to rock the boat without falling out of it?,” is the central question of Debra Meyerson’s article “Radical Change, the Quiet Way,” which Sam and Abram spend this episode discussing. Meyerson’s article resonates because it addresses those “tempered radicals” who work to steer institutions toward justice from the middle – meaning without positional power. It’s a topic that forces u...

In today’s episode, Sam and Abram chat with Vinny Schiraldi, who oversaw radical changes running Juvenile Corrective Services in Washington, DC. Listen to Vinny explain how, guided by his approach of “acting incrementally while dreaming boldly,” he vastly cut down on institutionalization, abuse, and corruption. The story includes a steady stream of trauma and a lot of patient collaboration. Topics...

What can a viral video of a teacher ripping up an elementary schooler’s book tell us about government regulation and management? In this inaugural recording, Sam and Abram try to unpack some of the arguments and assumptions in Elizabeth Green’s January 2018 article in The Atlantic: “The Charter School Crusader” about Eva Moskowitz and the school system she founded and now leads: Success Academy Ch...

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, described a scenario in which a person rescues a baby drowning in a river--then another one, then another. How many babies would you have to rescue before walking upstream to address the root cause? How do you continue rescuing babies downstream while you walk upstream? Fleshing out this and other metaphors, Sam and Abram lay out key concepts and the...

The Radical Bureaucrat trailer, where we briefly preview the coming season.