Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Brian Levy

@brianlevy387.bsky.social

70 followers 100 following 36 posts

Practitioner. Researcher. Humanist. Professor of Practice, SAIS JHU 2012-24. Academic Director, Mandela School of Gov, U of Cape Town 2012-19. Governance & growth World Bank1989-2012. Now UCLA. Website & blog at http://workingwiththegrain.com .. more

Videos

Economics 26%

Political science 25%

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · 8d

Good & bad news re LA homelessness.
Good news: Bold governance reforms provide a promising new platform for action.
Bad news: Trump budget cuts could produce a homelessness tsunami.
A trial by fire is coming. Will the reforms be up to the task ahead?
workingwiththegrain.com/2025/10/01/h...

Hope in the dark? LA’s bold governance reforms to address homelessness

The drumbeat of dispiriting daily news makes it difficult to look beyond immediate crisis. Where to find hope? Los Angeles’ ongoing homelessness crisis might seem an especially unlikely place to lo…

workingwiththegrain.com

Reposted by Brian Levy, Henry Jones

George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 @gtconway.bsky.social · 13d

Occam's Razor always rules. Always.

510 3.3K 16K

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Aug 11

Some role reversal here, Filipe - feeling especially bleak this morning, I find the solace of some optimism in your post 😢😎😇

Reposted by Brian Levy

David Kaye @davidakaye.bsky.social · Aug 11

this is not how the ICJ works, but the sentiment is admirable.

'Jews, rebel!': Ex-Knesset speaker calls on world Jews to take Israel to ICJ over Gaza

***

www.haaretz.com

11 58

Reposted by Brian Levy

cool calm and collected @zealerous.bsky.social · Aug 9

8 72 190

Reposted by Brian Levy

TWP Community of Practice @twpcommunity.org · Feb 18

January - February Newsletter now out.
Read the newsletter here 👉 open.substack.com/pub/twpcop/p...

1 2

Reposted by Brian Levy

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · Mar 16

Sunday reading: What Authoritarianism Means

I wrote about why even critical observers underestimated the speed and scope of the Trumpist assault, why they overestimated democratic resilience – about what America is now, and what comes next?

New piece:

What Authoritarianism Means

Even critical observers underestimated the speed and scope of the Trumpist assault, they overestimated democratic resilience. What is America now, and what comes next?

thomaszimmer.substack.com

26 250 520

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Jul 25

Happily, because in times like these "hope" matters a great deal, these are BIG "ONLY"'s ...........

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Jul 25

Filipe: even more than I feared a few months ago, we certainly are living under a government that acts with impunity, ignores all guardrails, and has repressive intent. But having lived for decades in a repressive, authoritarian (apartheid) state, this is not (yet) that. For now 11/26 matters.

1 1 15

Reposted by Shawn Cole, Brian Levy

Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · Jul 1

It’s one thing to say they want to deport 20 million people, it’s even one thing to go nuts brazenly doing whatever you can as the executive branch to make it happen, but the fact that they’re going to give ICE an additional 45B shows how committed they are to seeing this through.

140 640 2.7K

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Jun 20

I've lived through this before. Forced removals in Cape Town set in motion decades of protest, repression & dehumanization, & destroyed the city's soul. In vibrant, diverse LA, the consequences of forced removals will be devastating. How to avoid catastrophe? workingwiththegrain.com/2025/06/20/u...

‘Undocumented’ in LA – some stubborn facts

I’ve lived through this before. My first two decades of life were during peak apartheid in Cape Town, South Africa. Beneath the glistening surface of the city’s sunshine, mountains and ocean…

workingwiththegrain.com

Reposted by Kjeld Schmidt, Brian Levy

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Jun 9

Jeffries: "We will not be lectured by Donald Trump and anyone in the Republican Party about issues of law and order ... he pardoned hundreds of violent felons, criminals, who brutally assaulted police officers and attacked the Capitol on January 6. That's what Donald Trump did on day one."

250 2.6K 8.4K

Reposted by Brian Levy

Dani Rodrik @drodrik.bsky.social · Jun 1

I’m saddened to learn of Stanley Fischer’s passing. He is known as a top economist of course. But I was lucky to observe him, long time ago, also as a diplomat and peacemaker getting Israelis and Palestinians to work together. His talents will be much missed.

1 4 42

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · May 10

A thought: Instead of an ongoing flood of annoying, thinly-disguised fundraising text messages, might it perhaps be helpful to the Democratic Party to send text messages that connected credibly with the substance and concrete organizing tasks of our current moment? One can dream......

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Apr 29

And here's a link to the earlier piece, written in February. workingwiththegrain.com/2025/02/13/p...

Protecting the guardrails of America’s democracy – some lessons from South Africa

Now what? Four weeks into the Trump administration, a wrecking ball threatens to wreak havoc with millions of peoples’ lives. A sense of urgency is in the air. Indeed, we urgently need to bea…

workingwiththegrain.com

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Apr 29

Here is an 'update' I wrote yesterday to an earlier piece on Trump's rule through a South African lens. It points to a more accelerated trajectory to authoritarianism than I'd anticipated. workingwiththegrain.com/2025/04/28/1...

100 DAY UPDATE: Protecting the guardrails of democracy – some lessons from South Africa

In early February, I wrote a blog post that laid out some lessons for today’s USA’s from South Africa’s efforts to protect the guardrails of democracy. Here is a link to the piece. A hundred days …

workingwiththegrain.com

2 2

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Apr 29

A suggested edit: ".......under a .... [wannabe]..... authoritarian regime......"
Even for the competitive authoritarian' variant, it isn't yet 'game over'........

1 2

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Apr 23

This quote from @adamprz.bsky.social hit home: The idea that "Hitler's crimes were inconceivable... applies above all to his contemporaries. They could at most feel what the Führer & his men were capable of. It is probably in the nature of a breakdown of civilization to be difficult to imagine it"

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Apr 17

The tide in academia has turned. Harvard’s unequivocal stand has brought others along. The process of finding a spine is interesting - but now equivocators have a lot more to lose by being spineless than by rediscovering their principles.

1 1

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Apr 16

Decades of good intentions gone wrong helped fuel Los Angeles' twin homelessness & affordable housing crises. Recent reform initiatives offer hope that progressive approaches to governance can become part of the solution. Introducing my new research project. workingwiththegrain.com/2025/04/16/f...

From crisis to renewal? Affordable housing and homelessness in Los Angeles

In dark times, I take inspiration from the great social scientist Albert Hirschman’s commitment to the search for ‘a bias for hope’, for “avenues of escape from exaggerated notions of a…

workingwiththegrain.com

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Apr 5

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/b... This is an outrageous article, with the main point buried at the end: combining regressive tariffs and the scaling back of progressive taxation is the “ideal” way of redistributing from the poor/middle to the rich, under the cover of economic nationalism

Republicans Like to Cut Taxes. With Tariffs, Trump Is Raising Them.

President Trump’s tariffs are scrambling the Republican plan for the economy, long centered on tax cuts and growth.

www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Paul D. Grauwe, Kevin O’Rourke, René Schalk , and 7 more Paul D. Grauwe, Kevin O’Rourke, René Schalk, Keith Grint, Micaël Castanheira, Jan Christoph Steckel, Hubert Zimmermann, Brian Levy, Jannie Møller Hartley, Thessa Jensen

Thomas Hansen @thomashansen.bsky.social · Mar 29

The former ambassador to Denmark for the United States, Rufus Gifford, posted this video on his Facebook account:

Ht: @hpsc24.bsky.social

200 3.7K 8.2K

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Mar 27

Thanks, Duncan. Useful, but….The challenge in the USA right now is not to push back against “a” bad thing, but a zone flooded with dozens (hundreds) of bad things. A different problem for which we also urgently need ideas…..

Brian Levy @brianlevy387.bsky.social · Mar 21

I cannot bring myself to read volumes 2 and 3 of Richard Evan’s magnum opus on the Third Reich, though I have just purchased volume 2.