Attacking “Sinful Inequalities”

Post–World War II political science in America has been described (by me, that is) as an excuse, concocted by college professors, for avoiding actual political engagement while not actually achieving science. Too much work by too many colleagues over too many decades deserves that dismissive characterization, but not so for the report penned by the professors who led the American Political Science Association Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. Theirs—ours!—is arguably the most important and timely report ever produced by APSA. As I told the task force when I served as one of its discussants, the report is terrific and makes me proud to be a card-carrying member of APSA.At Penn, John J. DiIulio Jr. serves as faculty director of the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society. In 2001 he served as the first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. He is coeditor with E. J. Dionne of What's God Got to Do With the American Experiment?