The National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) is dedicated to strengthening civic life in America. We pursue our mission through a nationwide network of partners involved in a cutting-edge civic health initiative, our cross-sector conferences and engagement with a broad spectrum of individuals and organizations interested in utilizing civic engagement principles and practices to enhance their work. Connecting people for the purpose of strengthening civic life is our goal. At the core of our joint efforts is the belief that every person has the ability to help their community and country thrive.
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Constitution Day gets far less fanfare than July 4, but defending the Constitution is every American's job. Here's how ordinary citizens can help.
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Defending the Constitution Is a Year-Round Responsibility
Oct 02, 2026
For 250 years and counting, Americans have celebrated Independence Day on July 4 through fireworks, concerts, parades, barbecues, and more. By contrast, Constitution Day arrives soon after, on September 17, with far less fanfare. It is not a time to hear patriotic medleys on the radio, enjoy 20% off a new air-conditioner, watch a hot-dog-eating contest, or exchange cheerful greetings with neighbors. The observance marks the anniversary of the moment when 39 delegates signed our nation’s founding document at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. Constitution Day came and went last month with little public awareness. But the observance should inspire all Americans to protect our cherished Constitution throughout the year.
Presidents of the United States recite an oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” This oath, familiar to many Americans who watch Inauguration Day ceremonies, is mandated by the Constitution itself (Article II, Section 1, Clause 8). Public officials, judges, service members, and lawyers like me also swear oaths to support the Constitution as part of their public or professional roles.
While oaths may obligate certain people to defend the Constitution, it is critical that all of us play a role in its defense. You can speak out and take action to help sustain our democracy. This is something we must never take for granted.
Ratified in 1791, the Bill of Rights, along with subsequent amendments, protects such crucial rights as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, due process, equal protection, and more. The Bill of Rights further declares that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people. Benjamin Franklin expressed his support for such popular sovereignty at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, declaring: “In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns.”
If you’re like most Americans and have not taken an oath to defend the Constitution, you might be hesitant to “get involved,” comparing yourself to activists or policy experts. But this is about our government, not your particular background. A résumé is not required to add your voice at a school board or town hall meeting, march in a peaceful protest, circulate a petition, or vote.
Defending the Constitution also isn’t reserved for any single political party or ideology. Throughout U.S. history, people with a range of values and beliefs have invoked the Constitution to advance their views. Doing so requires us to respect constitutional limits even when they conflict with our political opinions.
In 1770, John Adams took an enormously unpopular position by insisting that Captain Thomas Preston and the eight British soldiers implicated in the Boston Massacre get a fair trial and served as their attorney. Preston was acquitted, and the soldiers’ trial resulted in six acquittals and two lesser convictions of manslaughter rather than murder. This powerful story shows how one of America’s founders believed that consistent application of rights and the rule of law were essential for a healthy nation.
Defending the Constitution does not require us to think in lockstep. On the contrary, constitutional issues are often complicated, and it is the process of disagreement and debate that enables us to work through them. The Constitution itself was the product of disagreement and compromise, with Federalists and Anti-Federalists at odds throughout ratification.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned its own precedents. In 1896, the Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” principle. Nearly six decades later, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka rejected that principle, holding in 1954 that racially segregated public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that “separate but equal” has no place in public education.
The Constitution was designed to permit such change. As the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Through Article V, the Constitution established an amendment process, which has led to fundamental changes, including abolishing slavery, expanding voting rights, limiting presidential terms, and lowering the voting age to 18.
When we ignore the Constitution, or casually invoke it without understanding it, disagreements become harder to navigate because we lose our framework for resolving them. Soon after retiring as a Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor emphasized the importance of constitutional education in a 2007 interview, warning “You don’t inherit that knowledge through the gene pool.” Constitution Day exists in its current form in large part because a retired medical technologist, Louise Leigh, studied the Constitution and took action to encourage constitutional awareness.
As an attorney, I have heightened responsibility because of the oaths I have taken, and I have written this piece with those oaths in mind. But my oaths do not give me greater ownership of the framework of our self-government than any other American. Helping to uphold the Constitution, whether through speaking, writing, voting, petitioning, assembling, serving, learning, or teaching, is key to sustaining our constitutional democracy.
Constitution Day may be Independence Day’s quieter sibling, but it should serve as an annual reminder of our individual and collective responsibility. Constitution Day is September 17, but every day is an opportunity to express an opinion and play a role in shaping history’s next chapter. Through greater appreciation and understanding, we the people can ensure that our Constitution remains the meaningful vehicle for sustaining our democracy, and that it grows as we do.
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AI résumé screening can filter out qualified candidates before a human ever looks. Here's why transparency and human oversight in hiring matter.
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When AI Screens the Resume, Who Gets a Fair Shot at Work?
Oct 02, 2026
A job seeker can spend hours tailoring a résumé, checking qualifications and writing a thoughtful application, believing the next step will be a person deciding whether to schedule an interview.
Increasingly, that assumption may be wrong.
Before a recruiter reads a résumé, software may sort applications, identify keywords, rank candidates, answer screening questions or determine which applicants advance. Some systems are relatively simple filtering tools. Others use machine learning or artificial intelligence to evaluate applicants across multiple data points.
There is nothing inherently wrong with using technology to manage a hiring process. Employers have legitimate reasons to use it. A company receiving hundreds or thousands of applications cannot expect recruiters to manually examine every document with unlimited time and resources.
The harder question is what happens when efficiency becomes a substitute for judgment.
When an automated system influences who receives a chance to compete for a job, it is no longer merely an administrative convenience. It becomes part of the infrastructure through which people gain access to economic opportunity.
That deserves more scrutiny.
The first decision may happen before a human sees the candidate
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has examined the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence and automated systems in employment decisions, including recruitment and hiring. The agency has emphasized that existing employment-discrimination laws continue to apply when employers use automated technologies.
That distinction matters.
An algorithm does not need to explicitly discriminate against someone to produce a problematic outcome. A screening system can rely on criteria that appear neutral but function differently for different applicants.
Consider a candidate who took several years away from paid employment to care for a parent. Consider another who built skills through military service, community work or self-employment rather than through a conventional career path. Or consider someone whose experience is highly relevant but described using terminology that differs from the language used in a job posting.
A human recruiter might recognize the connection.
A rigid screening rule might not.
In testimony before the EEOC, ReNika Moore discussed how automated screening tools can filter or rank applicants using knockout questions, keyword requirements, specific qualifications and other criteria. Her testimony also raised concerns about systems that may screen for employment gaps or narrow descriptions of experience in ways that can exclude qualified candidates.
These are not arguments against technology. They are arguments against assuming that whatever is measurable is necessarily what matters.
A résumé is not a person
This is perhaps the most important limitation of automated résumé screening.
A résumé is an imperfect representation of a human being. It contains selected facts about someone's education, work history, skills and accomplishments. It does not contain the whole person.
Years of experience do not automatically equal competence. A particular job title does not guarantee ability. A missing keyword does not prove that someone lacks a skill.
Even sophisticated systems face a fundamental problem: predicting someone's suitability for a job from indirect signals.
The EEOC's examination of automated employment systems has highlighted concerns about screening tools that can reject candidates before human review, as well as systems that rely on highly specific credentials, job-experience descriptions or other rigid criteria.
That should make employers cautious about treating an algorithmic ranking as an objective measurement of merit.
A system can be consistent and still be wrong.
It can process thousands of résumés in seconds and still miss the person who would have been the best hire.
But the human process is hardly perfect
There is an understandable temptation to frame this as a choice between biased technology and unbiased human beings.
That would be a mistake.
Human hiring decisions are not automatically fair. Recruiters and hiring managers have their own assumptions, preferences and blind spots. Humans can overlook qualified candidates because of familiarity with certain employers, conventional career paths, educational credentials or simple fatigue after reviewing hundreds of applications.
Automation can sometimes reduce certain inconsistencies. It can help recruiters handle enormous application volumes and draw attention to qualifications that might otherwise be overlooked.
That is why the debate should not be “AI versus humans.”
The more useful question is: Where should technology make decisions, and where should humans remain accountable for them?
That is a much harder question, but it is also the one employers need to answer.
Efficiency should not become an excuse for opacity
The most troubling development would be a hiring system in which nobody can clearly explain why an applicant was screened out.
Job seekers generally cannot see how a company's hiring technology weighs their experience. They may not know whether a résumé was evaluated by a keyword filter, an automated scoring system, an assessment tool or a combination of technologies.
That creates an asymmetry of power.
The employer knows how the gate works. The applicant is simply told whether the gate opened.
Some jurisdictions have already begun addressing this issue. New York City's Local Law 144 requires covered employers and employment agencies using automated employment decision tools to satisfy requirements involving bias audits, public information about those audits and notice to workers or candidates.
Whatever one thinks about the details of such rules, the underlying principle is worth considering nationally: people should not be left completely in the dark when automated systems play a significant role in determining access to employment.
Transparency does not necessarily mean publishing an algorithm's source code.
It can mean something much simpler.
Was an automated tool used? What kind of decision did it influence? Was there a meaningful opportunity for human review? What happens when the system produces an obviously questionable result? How can an applicant request an accommodation or raise a concern?
Those questions are not anti-technology.
They are basic questions of accountability.
The burden cannot fall entirely on job seekers
There is already a growing expectation that applicants must learn how to “beat the algorithm.”
That phrase reveals something important about the system.
When people are encouraged to load their résumés with keywords, mirror the wording of job descriptions or restructure their professional histories primarily to satisfy an automated filter, the hiring process risks becoming a competition in algorithmic optimization rather than an assessment of who can actually perform the job.
Job seekers should certainly present their qualifications clearly. But they should not have to become amateur software engineers merely to ensure that a qualified human gets a chance to evaluate them.
The responsibility belongs elsewhere, too.
Employers should understand what their automated tools actually measure, validate whether those measurements relate to legitimate job requirements and regularly examine outcomes for evidence of unintended exclusion.
Technology vendors should be candid about limitations and give employers meaningful ways to monitor performance.
Recruiters and hiring managers should retain enough authority to question automated recommendations rather than treating them as final judgments.
And policymakers should focus on practical protections around accountability, notice, accessibility and discrimination without assuming that every form of workplace automation requires exactly the same regulation.
Human oversight should mean more than a human somewhere in the process
There is a difference between human involvement and human judgment.
A recruiter who automatically accepts an algorithm's ranking is technically part of a human-supervised process. But that does not necessarily provide meaningful oversight.
Real oversight means people can investigate unusual outcomes, challenge automated recommendations and reconsider candidates who may have been filtered out for reasons unrelated to their ability to perform the job.
This becomes particularly important when automated systems encounter candidates whose backgrounds do not fit conventional patterns.
Career paths are becoming less linear. People change industries. They return to work after caregiving. They acquire skills outside traditional degree programs. Veterans translate military experience into civilian occupations. Workers rebuild careers after layoffs. Immigrants bring professional experience from other countries.
A hiring system designed around yesterday's career path may have difficulty recognizing tomorrow's worker.
That is a governance problem as much as a technology problem.
The goal should be better hiring, not simply faster hiring
The pressure to make hiring faster is understandable.
But speed is only one measure of a successful hiring system.
A process can be fast, inexpensive and highly automated while still producing poor matches or excluding people who should have received consideration.
The better standard is whether technology helps employers identify qualified people while preserving fairness, accountability and meaningful human judgment.
AI may make parts of recruitment better. It can reduce administrative burdens, help employers process large applicant pools and potentially help recruiters focus more of their time on candidates rather than paperwork.
But realizing that promise requires a basic principle:
An automated hiring system should assist the decision-maker without becoming an invisible decision-maker.
The stakes extend beyond individual résumés.
Employment is one of the primary ways Americans gain economic security, independence and a sense of participation in society. When access to employment is increasingly mediated by technology, the design and governance of that technology becomes a public-interest issue.
The question is therefore not whether artificial intelligence deserves a place in hiring.
It does.
The question is whether the people affected by it will have a fair shot at being seen.
A résumé should open the door to consideration, not become the reason the door never opens.
Michelle Brenier is a SaaS and technology content writer specializing in AI, recruitment technology, emerging technologies and the changing nature of work. He contributes content expertise to Jump Resume Builder, where he focuses on career technology and tools that help job seekers navigate the modern hiring process.
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Piles of US $1 bills split into sections of various hieght, red abstract background
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The Genesis of America’s Debt Problem
Oct 02, 2026
Their [Trump Administration] new budget framework is the most irresponsible in modern history - and will put the American economy on a very dangerous trajectory.
The Brookings Institution, 2025
America’s growing sovereign debt problem threatens living standards.
A first step in crafting solutions to the problem is understanding the policy framework at fault. While partisanship colors that discussion, a consensus of economists places blame primarily on tax cuts over the past 25 years.
The American Sovereign Debt Problem
There is a bright mathematical line nations cross to have a debt problem. When the interest rate for servicing its sovereign debt exceeds the nominal rate of GDP growth, that debt begins compounding faster than a nation’s tax base is expanding, steadily raising debt, interest rates, and inflation.
Few are aware that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects the U.S. to cross that line in 2028 for the first time in its history. One group, however, is keenly aware, as described by the Brookings Institution’s budget expert, Jessica Reidl, in The Atlantic:
“The White House and congressional leaders I regularly brief know that Washington’s debt path is unsustainable. They also expect to be out of government when the bill comes due and see no reason to anger voters in the meantime by ending the tax-cuts-and-spending party.”
This sanguinity of President Trump and Congressional leaders (meaning Republicans since 2025) reflects their obsession with tax cuts. It also reflects comfort with credit-card budgeting - they are financing 25% of federal spending nowadays with new debt. While a financial market reckoning is not imminent, this fiscally irresponsible leadership has put the U.S. on a quite dangerous trajectory – a trajectory established in 2001.
The Genesis
It was a remarkable, auspicious moment in 2001 with CBO projected elimination of the entire national debt by 2006.
Yep, all of it. Zero, zilch.
That remarkable touchstone reflected decades of responsible fiscal policies pursued by most Republican and Democratic Presidents alike since World War II.
That fiscal nirvana was not to be.
In March 2026, the national debt-to-GDP ratio passed 100%. An alarmed CBO worried that the “debt is currently at the highest level in American history and keeps rising,” the CBO Director declaring that the nation’s budget trajectory is not sustainable.
This stunning fiscal collapse reflects 25 years of serial tax cuts and recessions in 2007 and 2020 that sent the national debt soaring. Most impactful were five large tax cuts by George W. Bush and Trump that caused federal tax revenues to decline from an average of 18.6% of GDP from 1995-2001 to only 16.4% of GDP since 2002.
The abandonment of historic Republican Party balanced budget orthodoxy can best be marked by a single moment: January 25, 2001. Alan Greenspan, leading economic strategist for the new President George W. Bush, was testifying before Congress. Thanks to decades of fiscal discipline, experts agreed that America would pay off its entire national debt in six years.
All President Bush had to do was, well … nothing. Just continue President Clinton’s fiscal policies producing budget surpluses.
But Greenspan and the Republicans had another, higher priority. By then, the Republican Party had become dominated by its wealthy donor base. They supported balanced budgets prior to Reagan. But that changed in 1981 with the introduction of trickle-down Reaganomics. As Kansas proved, it was a fantasy popularized by President Reagan that tax cuts magically do not reduce tax revenues or add to the national debt.
Greenspan’s Congressional testimony astonishingly warned of the “peril” of eliminating the national debt - and urged tax cuts.
The consequence has been 25 years of Republican tax cuts - two Bush cuts in 2001 and 2003, and the even larger Trump cuts in 2017, 2020, and 2025. Skewed to benefit elites, the corporate tax rate was cut from 35% in 2000 to 21% now.
Adding to the debt was Greenspan’s ideological decision as Federal Reserve Board Chairman to deregulate Wall Street – especially squirrelly subprime mortgages. That blunder precipitated the 2007 Great Recession, forcing compensatory government spending to spike – which ballooned budget deficits.
Responsibility for the Soaring National Debt
Republicans deflect accountability for the rise in debt due to their tax cuts by blaming demographics (too many baby boomers) plus government spending by Democrats Obama and Biden. However, that additional spending was primarily a consequence of the 2008 and 2020 recessions – temporary one-time counter-cyclical spending to ameliorate the downturns. In contrast to the Democrats, the five Bush and Trump tax cuts were permanent, engineered debt-drivers of choice, financing tax cuts for elites - saddling Federal budgets with permanent structural revenue shortfalls forever.
Economists at the Center for American Progress have determined, for instance, that the five tax cuts account for “more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded….Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts, debt as a percentage of the economy would be declining permanently.”
The Tax Cut Reckoning
Any debt crisis for the powerful American economy is years away. However, accruing sizable sovereign debt does portend slower economic growth. CBO calculates that the rising debt is adding about 0.6% (6/10th) of a percentage point to Treasury bond interest rates - raising mortgage and other household interest costs while crowding out private investment. CBO also projects that every additional dollar of government debt reduces private investment by 33 cents in R&D and new, more productive factories and jobs. Consequently, it projects that American living standards will begin deteriorating, with GDP growth declining to only 1.8% in the years ahead from an average of 2.4% since 2016.
That means all of America’s key economic variables – budget deficits, national debt, interest rates, debt servicing costs, GDP growth - are moving in the wrong direction.
Responsible Leadership to Corral Debt
The scale and scope of America’s sovereign debt problem requires a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts. True, America has a window of a few years to craft solutions. A clear understanding that tax cuts have been the primary cause of the fiscal collapse since 2001 is the first building block.
Even so, the political parties are far apart on answers - and crafting remedies in these polarized times could require years. Moreover, history is not particularly encouraging, with the best past solution involving a bipartisan commission that was only a partial success.
George Tyler is a former deputy assistant treasury secretary and World Bank official. He is the author of books including Billionaire Democracy and What Went Wrong.
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U.S. President Donald Trump answers questions from reporters before boarding Air Force One on August 21, 2026 in Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Trump’s White House Press Ban Violates 1st Amendment
Oct 02, 2026
The principle is simple. Just like politicians are not supposed to pick their voters, government officials don’t get to pick the reporters who cover them.
If they did, the First Amendment would be meaningless. and we would no longer live in anything resembling a constitutional republic. That is why President Trump’s September 18 announcement that he is banning reporters from CNN, MSNow, and Politico from the White House is so dangerous.
Whatever one thinks of the quality of their news coverage, all of us have a stake in resisting the president’s brazen attempt to silence and punish news outlets who refuse to bend a knee to him. Because it is a form of viewpoint discrimination, the ban violates the First Amendment, and I expect that the courts will soon say so.
But whatever the courts do, other members of the Whiter House Press Corps should pack their bags and reuse to give President Trump the coverage he so clearly craves.
The American public learned of the president’s intention from a post on Truth Social. “I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW (who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility!), and Politico (The recipients of an illegal and ridiculous $8 Million Dollar subscription, an All Time Record, directly from the United States Government, under Crooked Joe Biden, in order to keep them “alive.” Seems like corruption to me!), from the White House as a result of their constant “reporting” FAKE NEWS!”
“Media Outlets,’ he continued, “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America. Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
Actually, the First Amendment gives broad scope to the press to publish false information so long as they don’t do it with “actual malice.” In its 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan a unanimous Supreme Court held that “When a statement concerns a public figure… it is not enough to show that it is false for the press to be liable for libel. Instead, the target of the statement must show that it was made with knowledge of or reckless disregard for its falsity.”
The president hates that decision and would love to see it overturned
As Justice William Brennan noted, “In the effort to persuade others to his own point of view, the pleader, as we know, at times resorts to exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been, or are, prominent in church or state, and even to false statement. But the people of this nation have ordained, in the light of history, that, in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of the citizens of a democracy."
“That erroneous statement,” Brennan observed, “is inevitable in free debate, and that it must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the ‘breathing space’ that they ‘need . . . to survive.’"
The president hates that decision and would love to see it overturned.
And, in an Oval Office meeting with reporters after his Truth Social Post, the president made clear that what irked him about reporters from CNN, MsNow and Politico was that they are “people to write purposely negative stories….”
While the welcome mat is out for reporters who write positive stories about him and his administration. If a reporter does not toe the line, then “that’s fine, but I don’t have to let them into my — into the people’s house.”
Put aside the telling slip of the tongue and what remains is a boldfaced assertion of a presidential prerogative to punish news outlets because of what they say and the viewpoint they express. There is nothing more central to the First Amendment than that.
Indicators of viewpoint discrimination include official action that “singles out particular speakers may be aimed at restricting certain content or certain viewpoints… (or that) restricts only a particular form of expression may be aimed at suppressing a particular viewpoint.” Excluding three news outlets because of their “negative coverage” is about as clear an indication of viewpoint discrimination as one could get.
As the famous Judge Learned Hand once explained “The First Amendment presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many, this is, and always will be, folly, but we have staked upon it our all."
The president and others in his administration have made it abundant clear that they have no interest in hearing a “multitude of tongues.”
And this is not the first time the president has tried to exclude a reporter whose coverage he did not like. In November 2018, closed to the halfway point of his first term his White House suspended the press credentials of CNN’s Jim Acosta after Acosta “challenged the president on his characterization of the migrant caravan moving through Mexico as an ‘invasion.’"
CNN sued and Federal District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House to restore Acosta’s credentials on the ground that it hard deprived him of due process by taking it away in a summary fashion.
He based his ruling on a 1977 decision by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. As that court explained, “denial of a White House press pass to a bona fide journalist violates the first amendment unless it furthers a compelling governmental interest identified by narrowly and specifically drawn standards…(and) that denial of a White House press pass constitutes a deprivation of "liberty" without due process of law within the meaning of the fifth amendment because it interferes with the free exercise of the profession of journalism.”
It added, “notice, opportunity to rebut, and a written decision are required because the denial of a pass potentially infringes upon first amendment guarantees. Such impairment of this interest cannot be permitted to occur in the absence of adequate procedural due process.”
Apparently, the president has not learned his lesson. Or maybe he thinks that when he took the oath of office, he became the decider who could do whatever he wants to whoever he wants.
It looks like he will again have to be disabused of that notion in a court of law and hopefully by the solidarity of the White House Press Corps. But ultimately it will be up to voters to send the message that he is the president in a constitutional republic, not a monarch.
In the meantime, all of us should remember, even if the president does not, Thomas Jefferson’s admonition that "(O)ur liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost… (and that) were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
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