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Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect and The Daily Beast, is a Spencer Fellow in education reporting at Columbia University. Her work on politics, women’s issues, and education has appeared in BusinessWeek, Slate, The New Republic, and The Nation.

Recent Articles

"Destiny" and the Kennedy Women.

Dana GoldsteinAug 28, 2009

Coverage of Ted Kennedy's death has been suffused with the narrative that he was a man held hostage by a sense of family destiny. In 1959, then-Senator JFK said, "Just as I went into politics because Joe died, if anything happened to me tomorrow, Bobby would run for my seat in the Senate. And if Bobby died, our young brother, Ted, would take over for him."

The New Yorker Hits Teachers' Unions -- Hard.

Dana GoldsteinAug 27, 2009

The New Yorker's big political story this week is an attack on the New York City teachers' contract, by Steven Brill. By now, most people who follow education news know about the "Rubber Rooms" in big city school districts -- reassignment centers for teachers who have been found guilty of misconduct or incompetence but who continue to earn a regular paycheck and accrue pension benefits. Brill visits one such Rubber Room and highlights the cases of a few teachers inside. One is an alcoholic whom the United Federation of Teachers falsely claimed was removed from her job due to discrimination against older teachers. Another has a history of filing merit-less lawsuits.

Will Health Reform Mean Easier Access to Abortion?

Dana GoldsteinAug 26, 2009

In his recent Time piece on abortion and health reform, Mike Scherer confuses the issue. As he writes, under the current House compromise, both private and public health plans operating in the exchanges would not be able to use government subsidies or taxes to provide abortion -- abortions would have to be paid for from the pool of self-paid consumer premiums.

Limbaugh's Masculinity Very Threatened.

Dana GoldsteinAug 26, 2009

Sadly, I'm going to have to interrupt our Very Serious coverage of torture and Ted Kennedy's death to point out that Rush Limbaugh, referencing the CDC's consideration of circumcision as an HIV prevention method, has said:

"If we need to save our penises from anybody it's from Obama."

--Dana Goldstein

Ted Kennedy, In His Own Words.

Dana GoldsteinAug 26, 2009

Senator Kennedy died early this morning at the age of 77. Here, some excerpts from his 1980 speech to the Democratic Convention, in which he conceded defeat to Jimmy Carter. The speech is incredibly rich; it is about economic justice as the center of the progressive movement, and about cities as the center of the American economy and culture. (It was delivered in New York.) It touches on the history of American liberalism, and how its successes have been co-opted, in generation after generation, by the conservatives who initially opposed progress:

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