Craig Gurian

Craig Gurian is the editor of Remapping Debate.  He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia College, his law degree from Columbia Law School, and a master's degree in United States history from the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Craig's published work includes Let Them Rent Cake: George Pataki, Market Ideology, and the Attempt to Dismantle Rent Regulation in New York.

He is also Executive Director of the Anti-Discrimination Center and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.

cg@remappingdebate.org
Even best medical reporting infected with “make do” bias
Press Criticism | By Craig Gurian | Health care
"Colonoscopies Explain Why U.S. Leads the World in Health Expenditures" is important reading and met some of its ambitions. But the article overplayed over-treatement and underplayed under-treatment, failed to appreciate the importance of searching for the best treatment, and needlessly overdramatized price variability. More
Bloomberg trumpets “bigger is better” but ignores quality of city life
Commentary | By Craig Gurian | NYC, Population, Urban Policy
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was ecstatic last week, announcing that the city’s population had swollen to an all-time high. Unfortunately, the mayor remains completely dissociated from the many negative consequences already arising from the city’s population “boom.” More
Inaugural flunks education history, limits aspirations
Commentary | By Craig Gurian | Education, History, Politics
In an address that otherwise reprised many of the noblest principles from this country's history, President Obama's remarks on education offered only a bleak vision of schools as training grounds for employers. Neither the principle that a good education is an essential requisite for developing active citizens nor the idea that education has intrinsic value independent of its utility in the job market made it into the speech. More
Disrespect for Senator McGovern at his final hour
Commentary | By Craig Gurian, By Lori Bikson | Media, Politics
Former Senator George McGovern, a life-long advocate for social justice and the 1972 Democratic candidate for president who issued a clarion call to “Come home, America,” died earlier this week. His obituary in The New York Times reflected all too well the problem of image over substance in our politics and failed — even at the distance of 40 years — to put the consequences of the 1972 election in perspective. More
Never select a political reporter for jury duty
Press Criticism | By Craig Gurian | Media, Politics
There are honorable exceptions, of course, but the rule holds true: most political reporters are either unable or unwilling to harness the cognitive and analytic effort involved in grasping basic evidentiary principles. Plausibility? Credibility? Inference? You might as well be speaking a foreign language. But figuring out what impact is more likely than not to flow from a tax cut or from switching Medicare to a voucher system really isn't so hard. More
Make globalization adapt to people, not visa versa
Commentary | By Craig Gurian | Alternative models, Globalization
The current system clearly hasn't been so good for those to whom the benefits were supposed to trickle down. But the U.S. remains a mighty economic force, one that could push back effectively if it wished to, and cross-national cooperation could yield a mutual defense pact to protect countries from having to compete in a race to the bottom. More
Nightmare on Meme Street: Uncertainty, fiscal cliffs, and grand bargains
Commentary | By Craig Gurian | Budget deficit, Corporate influence, Economy
Having become disoriented in the fog of Corporate Uncertainty, I was trying to find my way when, suddenly, over the Fiscal Cliff I went. I plunged straight down — deeper and deeper into the abyss. I thought all was lost. But then I saw the Grand Bargain waiting for me, beckoning to me. For a moment, I rejoiced. The Grand Bargain hovered below me, ready to break my fall. More
Does Congress have to tear down before it can build up?
Commentary | By Craig Gurian | Federalism, Law
The Medicaid expansion portion of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act was most fundamentally a decision to reorder the relationship between the federal government and the states, a decision to subordinate the idea of nationhood to judge-made deference-to-states theory. If the court had not interfered, state officials were free to have rejected Medicaid expansion and to have accepted the consequences of a full cut off of existing Medicaid funding, and voters everywhere could have, as usual, decided how to apportion credit and blame between those state officials and their federal counterparts. More

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