AMNIA LENDUND

The Ohio decision began with Governor Ted Strickland’s 2006 campaign promise to assure that “where you grow up in Ohio should not determine where you end up in life.” Hundreds of grass-roots campaigns throughout the state, including The Ohio Coalition For Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, took the cue from Mr. Strickland’s statement and spent the last two years working hard to hold him to it.

“Finally, this is a real step towards the equality our Constitution recommends,” says Amanda Fullerton, of Columbus. Ms. Fullerton, a mother of two, voted for Mr. Strickland because of his long history of support for educational reform, but was soon disappointed by the governor’s inaction in office. When she first heard about the proposed bill in the Ohio Senate, Ms. Fullerton decided to occupy the Governor’s office to demonstrate how important she felt the bill was. Over two hundred mothers soon joined her, camping out for six days. Many observers feel that actions like the mothers’ played a key role in convincing Governor Strickland to push hard for the bill.

Following the announcements of twenty-three states that they would be voting on similar bills, the U.S. Department of Education said it would be developing a plan for a national tax base for schools, to finally assure that as in most other developed countries, a child’s opportunities to learn will not depend on his or her birthplace.

A tragic Minneapolis bridge collapse claimed lives, but not as many as an unhealthy national lifestyle. (DANI BORA/WORLD PICTURE NEW)

The American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated that $1.6 trillion is needed to bring the nation’s infrastructure up to the level enjoyed by other industrialized nations.

“The U.S. used to have the most advanced public transportation system in the world by far,” said Transportation Department head Earl Blumenauer. “Now, of course, it’s pretty much the worst, at least in the developed world. Our love affair with the automobile has got to stop.”

Brice Terra is a spokesperson for Rebuild Sustainably, a group that formed when the funding bill was initiated, and that now counts nearly 400,000 members. The group has helped keep public pressure on senators to aim high in crafting the rebuilding bill. “We must minimize environmental impact with dense yet fully liveable cities, convert rural suburbs back to farmland, and provide access to services rather than just sheer mobility,” said Mr. Terra.

Under pressure from their constituencies, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pushing for a version of the bill that frees the U.S. from dependence on fossil fuels.

“We don’t want a patch that just preserves business as usual,” said Rahm Emanuel, Representative of Illinois, who has been leading the push for sustainable rebuilding in the Senate. “Rather, true convenience must be our top priority.”

“What we’ve realized is that we need to move away from the automobile,” said Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama. “We need to transition the United States to a more convenient, livable, economical, and enjoyable way of life.”

Mr. Blumenauer cited as instrumental to the bill’s passage the widespread public outrage which began in reaction to $10 gasoline prices and was quickly channeled by groups like Rebuild Sustainably. “When gas hit $3.50 back in March 2008, people drove 11 billion miles less per month than they had the year before,” said Blumenauer. “When it hit $10, people realized that the problem wasn’t high gas prices — the problem was gas. Fortunately, we Americans have always had the imagination and will to meet challenges.”

“Once we make our own country more livable,” says Mr. Blumenauer, “we can begin exporting the best practices of affordable transit and sustainable planning to developing nations.”

Light rail and buses
One key to the Infrastructure Modernization Bill will be light rail in cities, as well as high-occupancy overland vehicles — i.e. buses — operating at higher speeds in segregated lanes and roadways.

“We can dig out some of our old streetcar tracks, which are now buried in asphalt, but new buses are also a good solution, and much less expensive,” Mr. Blumenauer noted.
In 1922 there were fourteen thousand miles of streetcar track in American cities, according to Colleen Burgess, a representative of the Surface Transportation Board. “Berlin had the most extensive network in Europe, but that was smaller than 22 American cities. Today, we’ve got next to nothing. But we’ve got to look forward.”

National rail
One major element of the D.O.T. plan is the reconstruction of a national rail network for people and goods, and the elimination of most long distance trucking. “The rails are there,” said Ms. Burgess. “They spider across all of North America. They need maintenance, and in some cases expansion, but they’re basically there.”

“We have a passenger railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of,” noted rail advocate James Howard Kunstler. “Restoring passenger rail service would put tens of thousands of people to work at all levels, decongest airports, and revive central cities. And nothing needs to be reinvented — the infrastructure is already out there.”

Senator Emanuel noted that current airline subsidies would be rechanneled into Amtrak, especially into high-speed rail connections already common in Europe, Japan, and China.

Bike Infrastructure
The Urban Bicycling Expansion Program began with the D.O.T.’s Bicycle Commuters Group in late 2007. The program’s funding is now on a par with that of a newly-shrunken Federal Aviation Administration.

“In 1990 we got the Americans with Disabilities Act, with provisions for ‘full and equal enjoyment,’” said Mr. Blumenauer. “Now there are ramps, elevators, and other accommodations. There’s no reason a few simple rules can’t permit the full and equal enjoyment of public roadways by bicyclists.”

“It’s something my predecessors at D.O.T. didn’t take very seriously,” said program head Leah Shahum, former Executive Director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “But bicyclists across the country have shown us it can work.”

The first task will be to enact “complete streets” legislation, with safe lanes for bicyclists, bicycle parking areas, and bike racks on city buses and light rail, so that cyclists can commute longer distances.

Even more ambitious will be the development of commuter bicycle lending programs in all major cities. For an annual fee of around $40, users will be able to check out three-speed bicycles from entirely automated stations. The programs will be modeled after those in Paris and Barcelona, which already have hundreds of stations and thousands of public bicycles in circulation.

Blumenauer noted that the benefits of expanded bike use are likely to impact another typically American problem: that of obesity. “Bicycles are also an investment in the infrastructure of the human body,” he said.

Zoning
One key element of the D.O.T.’s plan to get people out of their cars will occur solely on paper. “We need more mixed-use zoning; more medium-scale, high-density development; incentives for businesses to locate near residential areas and for individuals to work close to home; and better public education about the health benefits of being active,” Mr. Blumenauer said. He said that the Transportation Department will be working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to draw up guidelines that focus on access, rather than mobility.

“As we rebuild the national infrastructure,” said Housing head Rene Oswin, “building tighter communities needs to be at the forefront. When the places we live, work, and shop are closer together, quality of life improves dramatically.”

“A suburbanite who commutes for an hour and drives to the store for a cup of sugar is going to have a lower quality of life than one who walks or bikes to work and buys food at a farmer’s market,” noted Oswin. “Big box stores, malls, and peripheral office parks have been a catastrophe for our national happiness.”

The building guidelines, soon to be written into legislation, also include prescriptions for solar, wind, and geothermal energy, and grey water systems. Details are available on the H.U.D. website.

Air
In response to the government’s comprehensive Climate Control and Infrastructure Modification Act, the Federal Aviation Administration is considering two different proposals to phase out air travel.

The first calls for the nationalization of airlines, and the transition of many airports wholly or in part into transit hubs for rail and bus services. The other, more market-based plan, mandates the elimination of billions of dollars of federal subsidies for airlines.

In the first plan, the price of travel would remain the same, but there would be far fewer trips available. In the second, only the relatively wealthy could afford to fly.

“We advocate the second plan, of course,” said United C.E.O. Glenn F. Tilton.

“Even if flights become a luxury,” said Transportation head Blumenauer, “it won’t be a catastrophe for most people. An average family can afford to spend some much-needed downtime on a comfortable train between New York and Los Angeles. As for business customers who choose to fly, they will have to pay the true cost of their habits to society.”

Doctors operate on a patient who previously would have been denied care.

After the bill passed, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declared, “We can now proudly say that the United States has caught up with the rest of the developed world in granting all our citizens access to high-quality, comprehensive medical care.”

Prior to the bill’s passage, the U.S. health care system was widely regarded to be in a state of severe crisis. Over 46 million Americans have been without health insurance and another 50 million have been under-insured. Despite spending more money per capita on health care than any other nation, the U.S. has lagged behind many countries in such key health-related categories as life expectancy, infant mortality, and preventable deaths. The Institute of Medicine estimates that in recent years approximately 22,000 people have died annually in the U.S. due to a lack of health insurance. Furthermore, nearly one million Americans, many who have private health insurance plans, have filed for bankruptcy each year because they have been unable to pay medical bills. In recent polls, a clear majority of Americans have said they believe government should guarantee health care for all U.S. residents.

Despite growing popular support for a single-payer system, Pelosi acknowledged that Congress would not have voted for this bill without the dedicated grassroots organizing of national groups like Healthcare-NOW and Physicians for a National Health Program, regional groups like the California Nurses Association and the New York-based Private Health Insurance Must Go Coalition, and over 450 union organizations across the country that had endorsed H.R. 676. Pelosi said that many formerly undecided congressional representatives were also swayed by seeing Michael Moore’s film, “Sicko,” and by the cogent arguments presented in a 2008 pocket-sized book, “10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care,” edited by Mary E. O’Brien and Martha Livingston, that was given to every member of Congress.

Under the private insurance system that has been in place until now, 30 percent of health insurance premiums have gone toward administrative costs, including advertising, profits, and executive salaries. This compares with a 3 percent cost for administering Medicare. Moving from the private health insurance system to single-payer is expected to save $350 billion dollars each year, enough to fund health care for those who are currently uninsured or under-insured. Under H.R. 676, the expanded Medicare for All system will be paid for through a 3.3 percent payroll tax on employers and employees, a stock transfer tax, an income tax surcharge on the top 5 percent of taxpayers, and by reversing the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans. According to the Congressional Budget Office, most U.S. residents — including those who previously received employer-based coverage–will pay less for this new public health insurance than they did for their private insurance, since there will no longer be any premium, copay, or deductible charges.

Eliminating private insurance companies, including HMOs, and moving to a publicly administered system will be no simple task. The private health-care industry is enormous, employing over 14 million people and costing 2.3 trillion dollars in 2007.

“The transition to a single-payer system will be our biggest challenge for the next 3 years, and a significant struggle even after this bill is signed,” said John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, who introduced and fought for the legislation. “But with the support of the American people, I have no doubt that we will reach our goal.” In order to make the transition easier for industry workers, H.R. 676 gives former employees of private health insurers first priority for the public-sector jobs that will need to be created to run the new program.

Many Republicans in Congress remain opposed to the new plan, arguing that quality care is best provided by private industry and free markets. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich released a statement saying: “Only market competition can bring choice and lower prices. To see the opposite trend is to be obtuse and shortsighted.” During the House floor debate, some cited claims about long waits for treatment under a similar single-payer system of medical care in Canada; these claims have been discredited by most independent researchers.

The medical services industry is promising to challenge the new bill. In an e-mail to investors, Kaiser chief George Halvorson wrote: “I remain exclusively committed as always to our investors and we plan on using every resource to protect our interests, against which this measure is obviously aimed.” Cigna C.E.O. H. Edward Hanway issued a similar statement: “HMOs have been in business for decades. Now Washington insiders want to take away our profits, our investments, and our property. That is unacceptable, and we will fight tooth and nail to insure our rights under our nation’s Constitution.”

“There has been a long-accepted myth, which is now thankfully receding, that if it’s private, it must be more efficient,” said Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Oregon Governor Dr. John Kitzhaber. “Yet our private, largely for-profit system was bloated, redundant, inefficient, and much more expensive than the better-performing national health care models of many other countries. Plus, many Americans were growing increasingly frustrated with private insurers acting as gatekeepers interfering in doctor-patient decisions, and with receiving denial letters from insurance bureaucrats sitting in cubicles far removed from their medical diagnoses. The single-payer system we will be implementing under H.R. 676 will be a vast improvement over the previous, dysfunctional health care model. And it will pay for itself by eliminating the waste and duplication of the private health insurance industry.”

When reached, a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Private Health Insurance Must Go Coalition noted that the momentum for a single-payer health care system grew after the October 2008 Wall Street bailout: “After the bailout, the American people saw more clearly than ever that our social needs were not always going to be met by private industry or the so-called ‘free market.’ There were no more valid excuses for inaction. If government was able to provide a safety net to Wall Street, it was capable of providing the American people with some real health-care security. After all, it’s not only the financial industry that has been affected by the economic downturn. It’s about time that the U.S. has joined the rest of the planet in recognizing that health care access is both a necessity and a human right. During these difficult times, a single-payer system should help to ease the financial strain that people are feeling and might even help stimulate the overall economy.”

Unlike the response from company executives, reaction to the passage of H.R. 676 among insurance industry employees has been largely positive. Sarah Schwartz, a Cigna medical records specialist in Ohio, said: “I’ll get retraining. They need people who do what I do. I’ll get different forms and procedures, that’s all. Plus this new system will be much better for the patients, so that feels good.” When asked about other changes the new law will bring, Schwartz told the Times about her aging mother who, at 71, continues to work at a full-time office job. “She almost got laid off last year, which meant my dad wouldn’t have been able to see a doctor for his heart problems anymore, since he was covered under her plan. For our family, this bill passed just in time.”

“Health care should be like water — a right for everyone. Anything less is barbaric,” said a spokesperson for Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization that has advocated for health care reform since 1987.

In recent years, a majority of physicians had grown tired of the growing, confusing, and sometimes disruptive role of the private insurance companies, with a 2008 poll showing 59 percent of doctors supporting a single-payer system. At an American Medical Association banquet last night, a spontaneous standing ovation occurred when doctors learned of the bill’s success. A.M.A. President Nancy Nielsen, M.D. said in her speech: “We’re trained to save lives. We’re trained to practice medicine. Finally, we can do what we entered this field to do — practice with the interest of patients at heart.”

Protests organized by Witness Against Torture helped pave the way for the close of the Guantánamo facility. (KC IVY/The New York Times)

“In education and health care, most notably, but also in housing, banking, and the environment, we have documented unprecedented responsiveness on the part of political leaders,” said Dr. Joyce Wellmon, director of the Plains Institute for Policy Analysis, a New York-based think tank. “Our data show a direct correlation between the level of activity of particular coalitions, on the one hand, and specific legislative action, on the other. It’s popular pressure that is responsible for the swiftness and scope of legislation emerging from the White House and Congress.”

The institute’s report shows a three-fold increase in the incidence of letters, phone calls, faxes, and email received by congressional offices, 88 percent of which were from people who identified themselves as new members of particular activist organizations. The report includes extensive interviews with House and Senate staff, who speak of “unimaginable change,” a “dramatic policy shift,” and “a new era of accountability” since the elections.

“Not since the Great Depression has the interaction between popular movements and public leaders been so robust,” said Jorge Lazaro, head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Lazaro cited, in particular, the Wagner Act, also known as the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which recognized the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively with their employers.

“Roosevelt showed no interest in the Wagner Act until it became clear the unions were going to force it through regardless,” Mr. Lazaro noted. “At that point he jumped on it and helped push it into law.”

Mr. Lazaro also pointed to the Depression-era organizing of the Farmers’ Holiday Association, when farmers refused to sell or bid on crops, blockaded roads, and even once used a torpedo to halt a train carrying livestock into Iowa. Such direct actions helped push courts and legislatures to adopt measures that granted relief from debt caused by low crop prices.

“The similarities between the two periods are remarkable, and the lesson that emerges is simple: if you want change, keep our feet to the fire.”

Dr. Wellmon agrees. “The only reason the current President and Congress have been able to implement all these changes, was because of pressure from popular movements that made them have to.”

The Plains report, due out next month, cites the work of groups associated with United for Peace and Justice, an umbrella for anti-war groups, for galvanizing public support for ending the war, and for pushing the Administration to resist the oil lobby and other interest groups. It also cites the work of groups such as Healthcare-NOW, United Students Against Sweatshops, Housing Works, the A.C.L.U., and others for helping advance progressive causes such as universal health care, worker rights, civil liberties, and economic justice.

“There’s no question that in all areas, mass movements made the difference. Without them we wouldn’t be close to a national health program, a wind and solar bill, a plan to guarantee fair and equal funding for public education, or the banking oversight bill, expected to pass next month in both houses.”

“I never anticipated the rapid advances made in the past six months,” Dr. Wellmon said, “but the public has shown a fierce desire for change. It’s a virtuous cycle: with the breaking of market manacles, human and financial resources are becoming available to support even more real changes in all areas of American life.”

Mr. Arar was a software engineer changing planes at J.F.K. Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation when he was detained, kept from counsel, and sent to Syria for a year of torture and interrogation.

The letters in support of Mr. Arar were part of a campaign organized by a coalition of human rights groups including Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and MoveOn.org. His case has come to represent some of the worst excesses of the previous administration’s national security policies.

The context for the apology is the White House’s new Truth and Prosecution Program, which has exposed and reversed policy on secret C.I.A. interrogation and torture centers worldwide, warrantless wiretapping, illegal infiltration of activist meetings (and Quaker quilting bees), and extraordinary rendition, the extrajudicial transfer of suspected terrorists to countries known to torture prisoners.

The program works to assist the Attorney General’s criminal prosecutions of former Bush administration officials for their role in torture policy and taking the country to war under false pretenses.

In a prepared statement, White House Press Secretary Samantha Bee said, “We will not condone torture, nor outsource torture. Maher Arar can never regain that year of his life, when our country sent him to be tortured in Syria, but the Medal of Freedom at least recognizes his heroic fight to assure that what happened to him will never again happen to anyone else.” Bee also noted that the U.S. is matching Canada’s $10 million compensation to Mr. Arar for his ordeal, “but in real money.”

In a tearful interview on ABC’s daytime talk show “The View” earlier this week, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, currently awaiting trial, told Elisabeth Hasselbeck that he hoped the world would not remember him as the man who brought torture out of the dungeon and into the Executive branch. “Maybe the whole torture thing wasn’t such a good idea after all,” he said. “I just hope people also remember my way with words, and peer through that to the essence, where I am also a, at least some kind of, father.”

She is far from alone. The growth of the postwar economy in Iraq has proven so tempting that dozens of members of the U.S. military chose to remain in Iraq. Thus a region long associated with its citizens fleeing abroad has seen unprecedented volumes of immigration.

Seven years ago, Ms. Blaine had no experience with safety engineering or building codes but was sent to Basra to assist in the rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure. Today, her private contracting company is benefiting from a local building boom.

“For the first year of our business, most of the work was government contracts,” said Blaine, “but after the major infrastructure work was done and the Iraqi economy began to rebound, there was a surge in demand for new housing.”

Ms. Blaine met her husband, Ibrahim Khan, when he was hired to work as her translator during the war. It is a role he continues to serve as Ms. Blaine’s Arabic improves.

Ms. Blaine claims that it hasn’t been hard to adjust to life in Iraq. “I expected to have to deal with a lot of sexism. But until the invasion, this was a modern, secular society.”

Sergeant Rahim Rafiqi has also benefited from the new construction, opening an insurance agency that caters to the construction industry. Prior to joining the military, Mr. Rafiqi had worked at his father’s small insurance company. “I was able to get backing for what some would have seen as a risky investment, but we were in the black pretty quickly,” says Mr. Rafiqi.

According to the recent émigrés, the cultural adjustments that are necessary to move from the United States to Iraq are more than worth enduring to be a part of the new Iraq. “Getting sent to Iraq was the best thing to happen to me,” said Ms. Blaine. “I’m finally living the American Dream.”

I know, you’re thinking I’m going too far. I haven’t always been wrong about everything. I recently made some sense on global warming and what we needed to do about it, for instance.

But to have been so completely and fundamentally wrong about so huge a disaster as what we have done to Iraq — and ourselves — is outrageous enough to prove that people like me have no business posing as wise men, and, more importantly, that The New York Times has no business continuing to provide me with a national platform.

In any case, I have made a decision: as of today, I will no longer write in this or any other newspaper. I will immediately desist from writing any more books about how it’s time for everyone to climb on board the globalization high-speed monorail to the future. I will keep my opinions to myself. (My wife suggested that I try not to even form opinions, but I think she might have another agenda.)

Baffled? I don’t blame you. So I’ll cite some facts to support my decision — a practice, I must admit, I have too seldom followed.

Let’s start with the invasion itself. I was pretty much all for it. Mind you, I was not one of the pundits, reporters, or public figures who said that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. I knew better — but I said it didn’t matter!

Back in February of 2003, I wrote in this space: “Saddam does not threaten us today. He can be deterred. Taking him out is a war of choice — but it’s a legitimate choice.” In other words, we should invade a sovereign state and replace its government in order to remake the world more to our liking.

Now the simple fact is, an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state is a war crime, even when linked to grand ideas of the future of mankind. In fact, that’s exactly what Hitler did, for exactly the same reasons. The Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal called it the “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

What was I thinking? And more importantly, why didn’t anyone stop me?

But wait, it gets worse. Having expressed how acceptable it was to commit Hitler’s signature crime, I then applauded the invasion of Iraq as an “audacious roll of the dice.” It should have occurred to me that this gamble would be unspeakably painful for an untold number of Iraqis who had done nothing to us — in other words, any of them.

Soon, when it became obvious that my pipe dreams for a peaceful and democratic subject nation were just that, I decided to say it was too soon to tell how things would turn out in Iraq, but that we would definitely know in six months to a year. I said this pretty much every six months for five years. And The Times just kept giving me more and more column-inches.

I’m not trying to beat myself up here. I’ve done that plenty already, believe me — and my wife has done the rest! But I have one question: why are newspapers like The New York Times letting people like me make fools of themselves, mislead the American people, and, worst of all, give their wives a lifetime of ammunition?

To err is human, but to print, reprint, and re-reprint error-mad humans like me is a criminally moronic editorial policy.

Nor, of course, is it only me. Just consider who populates the opinion pages of America’s top newspapers. Bill Kristol, who was actually hired by The Times long after being proven wrong on Iraq. Charles Krauthammer. Robert Novak. Mona Charen. Fred Barnes. The list goes on and on of officially-approved wise men (and a woman or two) who never once doubted that Iraq had vast stockpiles of W.M.D.s. And that’s just in newspapers.

We were all wrong again and again — and the consequences were devastating. Can anyone tell me why any of us should ever be asked, let alone paid, for our opinions ever again? Or, for that matter, why Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz should be allowed behind any sort of desk whatsoever as long as they live?

Peace in Iraq will undoubtedly have many far-reaching consequences. As promised, I’m not going to speculate publicly about what they might be.

Except one. As of today, I’m putting down my pen, to take up a screwdriver. I am going to retrain as an engineer and spend the rest of my life working to build non-carbon-based energy technologies. And I’m going to spend a lot of time washing my hands.

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Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008

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Further video updates will be posted shortly.

A 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter in Detroit is just one of many expected to close.

“We in the big box community are committed to ensuring our investors’ rights, in accordance with the U.S. Constitution,” said Wal-Mart C.E.O. Lee Scott. “We will definitely fight this with all the resources at our disposal, which are, by the way, considerable.”

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Rene Oswin vowed to defend the legislation. “You know something’s wrong when the earnings of poor folks end up in the pockets of Wal-Mart shareholders in Manhattan,” said Oswin. “This act has finally put a stop the flow of money out of these communities. To backtrack now would be disastrous.” Oswin predicted the big-box reatailers’ challenge would fail.

The act prescribes a two-stage withdrawal process for the stores from lower-income neighborhoods, which are defined as neighborhoods with a median household income under $30,000. In the first two-year phase, the stores will become wholesalers, able to sell only to smaller local businesses at heavily discounted prices. The local businesses can buy from whichever supplier they want. By the end of a second eight-year phase, the stores will be completely dissolved.

“We have nothing to lose but our chains,” said Marlo Lewis of Big Boxes Out, a citizens’ group that was instrumental in pushing for the Economic Independence Act, and which is now promoting a second act, the Full Economic Independence Act, to eliminate all chains with more than ten outlets from lower-income neighborhoods, along a similar ten-year timeline.

“We believe that the recent increase in visibility of progressive movements and ideals, coupled with the demotion of free-market capitalism as a viable belief system, has led students away from training in accumulation for its own sake and into fields where they can advance peace and justice,” said Harvard spokesperson Susan Morrison.

It became apparent in early 2009 that enrollment in fields like marketing, advertising, corporate communications, and management dropped 44 percent, while enrollments in fields like social work, journalism, and community organizing were up 53 percent in the same period.
“We’re not sure if it’s an anomaly or an indicator of a long term trend, but there’s definitely a change,” said Morrison.

Morrison said the new Integrity School is contacting campuses around the world to encourage graduating seniors to apply. “We see as our job to help students tap into their desire for integrity and compassion, rather than their greed. That’s what they need, and that’s what our society needs.”