Markle Fellows at the New America Foundation
Date Initiated: November 1999
In November 1999, the Markle Foundation created the Markle Fellowship Program at the New America Foundation . The fellowship program funded nine scholars, known as the Markle Fellows. These fellows all worked onwriting and publishing original works about policy problems and the possibilities of information technology in society. This Fellows program was designed to support the next generation of public intellectuals tofoster fresh ideas and contribute to the national and international dialogue on these issues.
The New America Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan policy institute based in Washington, D.C., was founded to bring promising new voices and ideas into the public discourse. The Markle Fellows program continued the aims of the Foundation and supported those leading young thinkers who wanted to concentrate exclusively on issues of information technology and society.
Some of the Fellows were resident in Markle's offices. The Markle staff drew heavily on Fellows' research as a resource tool fortheir own program areas and used the work of the Fellows to enrich their own program work at the Foundation.
Sampling of Markle Fellows at New America Foundation:
Karen Kornbluh joined New America after several years in government, having worked as Director of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs at the Federal Communications Commission during the implementation of the Telecom Act of 1996, and, most recently, as Deputy Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, where her areas of expertise ranged from e-commerce to international trade. Ms. Kornbluh is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and earned a Masters of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. As a Markle Fellow at New America, Ms. Kornbluh wrote on issues ranging from spectrum and Internet policy, to the application of New Economy organizational innovations to the delivery of government services. She also explored the new pressures facing families as the New Economy transforms daily life, arguing that the enormous social promise of the Internet has yet to be realized in areas such as education, health care and democratic participation. In her writing, Ms. Kornbluh challenged conventional wisdom on several critical Internet and communications policy topics by demystifying the technology and exposing the economic and social stakes involved.
Brendan I. Koerner As Senior Editor at U.S. News & World Report, Mr. Koerner has written more than 100 articles, including six cover stories, on subjects ranging from higher education, urban renewal, business and technology, and religion. His cover stories include A Lust for Profits, a study of the Internet pornography industry, and Can Hackers be Stopped, a special report on cyber-attacks. As a Markle Fellow, Mr. Koerner used his insight into the digital underground to examine some of the most critical issues affecting the future of information technology and the new economy - including the commercialization of the Internet; the struggle over copyright and patent law; the ethics of free speech on the Internet; and the increasing concerns over cyber-security.
Jonathan GS Koppell A PhD. Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Koppell's dissertation examined the government's increasing reliance on public/private hybrid organizations, such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and federally-backed venture capital funds. Mr. Koppell's work has been published in academic journals such as Public Administration Review and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. He has also published articles in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and was a regular contributor to The Industry Standard (now defunct). As a Markle Fellow, Mr. Koppell brought insights gained in his academic work to a broader audience through non-academic publications. In addition to continuing his work writing about the successes and failures of various efforts to "reinvent government," he to examined the expansion of the Internet and its implication for the future of governance. In doing so, Mr. Koppell challengedmany of the widely held assumptions about the public policy implications of the proliferation of information technology.
