Marc Dunkelman argues in the New York Times that Trump’s assertive use of executive power exposes progressives’ conflicting views on government authority and should push them to rethink how public power is exercised.
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Marc J. Dunkelman
Fellow in International and Public Affairs
Areas of Interest
Politics, community, infrastructure.
Biography
Marc J. Dunkelman is a fellow at Brown University’s Watson School for International and Public Affairs and a former fellow at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. During more than a decade working in politics, he worked for Democratic members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives and as a senior fellow at the Clinton Foundation. The author of Why Nothing Works and The Vanishing Neighbor, Dunkelman’s work has also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Atlantic, and Politico. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Publications
- “To fend off the far right, democracy needs to deliver,” Financial Times, August 27, 2025.
- “The Question Progressives Refuse to Answer,” The Atlantic, April 2, 2025.
- “How Decades-Old Progressive Reforms Helped Usher in a Culture of Police Impunity,” Time, February 27, 2025.
- “Massachusetts Wants Clean Energy. Why Is It So Hard to Make It Happen?” Politico Magazine, Feb. 23, 2025.
- “How Progressives Broke the Government,” Atlantic, February 16, 2025.
- “Why the government built only 58 EV charging stations in three years,” Washington Post, February 10, 2025.
Recent News
How to Fix It with John Avlon
America’s New Crisis: We Can’t Build (interview with Marc Dunkelman)
In an interview with How to Fix It, Marc Dunkelman tells John Avlon that America’s inability to build—from EV chargers to rail projects—stems from a fragmented, veto-heavy system that stalls progress and must be reformed to work again.
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The Master of Public Affairs (MPA) Program offers two distinctive programs that enable students to build connections and deepen their MPA experience. The MPA Research Fellows Program emphasizes faculty engagement and hands-on research, while the Equity in Policy Scholars Program stresses interaction with policy practitioners and leadership development.
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The New York Times
Why Can’t New York Fix Penn Station? (comments by Marc Dunkelman)
Marc Dunkelman comments for The New York Times, “We’ve got a system that doesn’t have anyone who can actually make the decision."
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The Atlantic
The NIMBY in Chief (written by Marc Dunkelman)
Marc Dunkelman writes in The Atlantic that by blocking major New York infrastructure projects through burdensome regulations, Donald Trump has become the nation’s “NIMBY in chief,” undermining the development he once promised to accelerate.
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Marc Dunkelman writes in the Financial Times that the rise of authoritarianism stems less from ideology than from democracy’s repeated failure to deliver effective governance.
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