Greg Berman – författare

A call to tone down our political rhetoric and embrace a common-sense approach to change.Many experts believe that we are at a fulcrum moment in history, a time that demands radical shifts in thinking and policymaking. Calls for bold change are everywhere these days, particularly on social media, but is this actually the best way to make the world a better place?In Gradual, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox argue that, contrary to the aspirations of activists on both the right and the left, incremental reform is the best path forward. They begin by emphasizing that the very structure of American government explicitly and implicitly favors incrementalism. Particularly in a time of intense polarization, any effort to advance radical change will inevitably engender significant backlash. As Berman and Fox make clear, polling shows little public support for bold change. The public is, however, willing to endorse a broad range of incremental reforms that, if implemented, would reduce suffering and improve fairness. To illustrate how incremental changes can add up to significant change over time, Berman and Fox provide portraits of "heroic incrementalists" who have produced meaningful reforms in a variety of areas, from the expansion of Social Security to more recent efforts to reduce crime and incarceration.Gradual is a bracing call for a "radical realism" that prioritizes honesty, humility, nuance, and respect in an effort to transcend political polarization and reduce the conflict produced by social media.

A call to tone down our political rhetoric and embrace a common-sense approach to change.Many experts believe that we are at a fulcrum moment in history, a time that demands radical shifts in thinking and policymaking. Calls for bold change are everywhere these days, particularly on social media, but is this actually the best way to make the world a better place?In Gradual, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox argue that, contrary to the aspirations of activists on both the right and the left, incremental reform is the best path forward. They begin by emphasizing that the very structure of American government explicitly and implicitly favors incrementalism. Particularly in a time of intense polarization, any effort to advance radical change will inevitably engender significant backlash. As Berman and Fox make clear, polling shows little public support for bold change. The public is, however, willing to endorse a broad range of incremental reforms that, if implemented, would reduce suffering and improve fairness. To illustrate how incremental changes can add up to significant change over time, Berman and Fox provide portraits of "heroic incrementalists" who have produced meaningful reforms in a variety of areas, from the expansion of Social Security to more recent efforts to reduce crime and incarceration.Gradual is a bracing call for a "radical realism" that prioritizes honesty, humility, nuance, and respect in an effort to transcend political polarization and reduce the conflict produced by social media.

A bracing look at what's gone wrong in American nonprofits--and how it might be fixed.We rely on nonprofits every day to feed the hungry, care for the sick, and perform a host of other essential work, but American nonprofits have been under siege in recent years. Attacked by the left (for being part of the "nonprofit industrial complex") and the right (for advancing a "woke" agenda), nonprofits have also faced a serious threat from within: a rising generation of staffers who expect their employers to share their social justice convictions.In The Nonprofit Crisis, Greg Berman takes an in-depth look at the challenges faced by American nonprofits in the years since Donald Trump's first election. It highlights the very real problems that have plagued the nonprofit sector and shows how some organizations have lost their way during the culture wars. Berman, an award-winning nonprofit executive, argues that if nonprofit leaders cannot figure out a way to handle the challenges of racial justice, the generational divide, and political polarization effectively, we are doomed to a future of declining public trust in some of our most important American institutions. The Nonprofit Crisis offers nonprofits, and those that care about them, a way forward in trying times.

A bracing look at what's gone wrong in American nonprofits--and how it might be fixed.We rely on nonprofits every day to feed the hungry, care for the sick, and perform a host of other essential work, but American nonprofits have been under siege in recent years. Attacked by the left (for being part of the "nonprofit industrial complex") and the right (for advancing a "woke" agenda), nonprofits have also faced a serious threat from within: a rising generation of staffers who expect their employers to share their social justice convictions.In The Nonprofit Crisis, Greg Berman takes an in-depth look at the challenges faced by American nonprofits in the years since Donald Trump's first election. It highlights the very real problems that have plagued the nonprofit sector and shows how some organizations have lost their way during the culture wars. Berman, an award-winning nonprofit executive, argues that if nonprofit leaders cannot figure out a way to handle the challenges of racial justice, the generational divide, and political polarization effectively, we are doomed to a future of declining public trust in some of our most important American institutions. The Nonprofit Crisis offers nonprofits, and those that care about them, a way forward in trying times.

In this revised edition of their concise, readable, yet wide-ranging book, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox tackle a question students and scholars of law, criminology, and political science constantly face: what mistakes have led to the problems that pervade the criminal justice system in the United States? The reluctance of criminal justice policymakers to talk openly about failure, the authors argue, has stunted the public conversation about crime in this country and stifled new ideas. It has also contributed to our inability to address such problems as chronic offending in low-income neighborhoods, an overreliance on incarceration, the misuse of pretrial detention, and the high rates of recidivism among parolees. Berman and Fox offer students and policymakers an escape from this fate by writing about failure in the criminal justice system. Their goal is to encourage a more forthright dialogue about criminal justice, one that acknowledges that many new initiatives fail and that no one knows for certain how to reduce crime. For the authors, this is not a source of pessimism, but a call to action. This revised edition is updated with a new foreword by Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., and afterword by Greg Berman.

In this revised edition of their concise, readable, yet wide-ranging book, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox tackle a question students and scholars of law, criminology, and political science constantly face: what mistakes have led to the problems that pervade the criminal justice system in the United States? The reluctance of criminal justice policymakers to talk openly about failure, the authors argue, has stunted the public conversation about crime in this country and stifled new ideas. It has also contributed to our inability to address such problems as chronic offending in low-income neighborhoods, an overreliance on incarceration, the misuse of pretrial detention, and the high rates of recidivism among parolees. Berman and Fox offer students and policymakers an escape from this fate by writing about failure in the criminal justice system. Their goal is to encourage a more forthright dialogue about criminal justice, one that acknowledges that many new initiatives fail and that no one knows for certain how to reduce crime. For the authors, this is not a source of pessimism, but a call to action. This revised edition is updated with a new foreword by Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., and afterword by Greg Berman.

Public confidence in American criminal courts is at an all-time low. Victims, communities, and even offenders view courts as unable to respond adequately to complex social and legal problems including drugs, prostitution, domestic violence, and quality-of-life crime. Even many judges and attorneys think that the courts produce assembly-line justice.Increasingly embraced by even the most hard-on-crime jurists, problem-solving courts offer an effective alternative. As documented by Greg Berman and John Feinblatt—both of whom were instrumental in setting up New York's Midtown Community Court and Red Hook Community Justice Center, two of the nation's premier models for problem-solving justice—these alternative courts reengineer the way everyday crime is addressed by focusing on the underlying problems that bring people into the criminal justice system to begin with.The first book to describe this cutting-edge movement in detail, Good Courts features, in addition to the Midtown and Red Hook models, an in-depth look at Oregon's Portland Community Court and reviews the growing body of evidence that the problem-solving approach to justice is indeed producing positive results around the country.