By Ben Hitchcock
My classmates at Wagner are attacking every conceivable policy problem from every conceivable position. When my cohort graduates in May, a horde of community organizers, urban planners, nonprofit executives, data analysts, and future elected officials will stride out into the world, ready to fight the climate crisis, the housing crisis, the reproductive health crisis, and on and on.
Because of Wagner students’ range, the Wagner Review publishes writing on a huge array of topics. Is there a central theme here? What unites us across these disparate passions?
Broadly speaking, I think all of us Wagner students are navigating the same tension: the tension between idealism and realism, between vision and savvy.
To be successful in public policy, we have to be able to close our eyes and see a better world. We have to believe in justice and beauty; we have to be hopeful and maybe even a little naive. At the same time, we have to understand how the levers of power are arranged, and understand when to pull and when to push. Policy work requires technical knowledge, attention to detail, and a willingness to be strategic, as well as passion and imagination.
Striking the right balance is difficult. Developing a policy or program that is both ambitious and feasible is like threading the eye of a needle. On an individual level, each of us has to become an expert in American government—we have to study all the ways that our system is plagued by inertia, incompetence, and evil—and then we have to wake up every day believing in our hearts that a better world is possible anyway.
I hope that the op-eds, essays, research projects, and other articles that we publish in the Wagner Review reflect the hard work of being realistic and idealistic at the same time. Our first two stories of the year, about gun taxes and single-room occupancy apartments, are great examples of this synthesis. These articles discuss practical solutions with wild-eyed passion; they sacrifice neither clarity nor intensity. As we steel ourselves for long careers in public policy, each of us will have to master the tools and techniques required to make change, while also maintaining the energy and belief that got us into this work in the first place.
I am excited to take over as the editor of the Wagner Review this year, and I look forward to collaborating with the talented people in the NYU Wagner community to continue the Review’s history of publishing high-quality work. I encourage everyone reading this to submit an article. You can find more information in our submission form here. I can’t wait to read about your ideas—and how you’ll make them real.
Ben Hitchcock is a Master’s of Public Administration student specializing in Policy Analysis. He is the editor of the Wagner Review for the 2023-24 school year. Before attending Wagner, he was a journalist in his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.
