Letter from the Editors 

April 29, 2016 

To our readers, 

Where to start in a letter to our audience after a year-long endeavor? This journey began last summer with a conversation between our Editor-in-Chief, Erin Mullally, and me about how we could make this a transformative year for the Georgetown Public Policy Review. While typically a collection of academic papers released in print form every spring, GPPR’s annual Spring Edition was something we wanted to elevate to new heights of journalistic innovation and sophistication. Millennials are not only the most educated generation in history but are now the largest generational cohort, making them our primary audience and one in constant demand of content that engages their intellect and appeases their digital savviness.  

With these goals in mind, the GPPR editorial board agreed on a few things - we knew we wanted to make the Spring Edition digital and we knew we wanted it to be cool. We took the stereotype of millennial ideals and ran with them. From there, we began piecing together our vision - a publication that was more of a cohesive product than a mere collection of papers, content that was more visual and interactive than traditionally academic, and topics that were more of the future than of the past. With the release of our Call for Submissions this past fall, we posed that the footprint of the first global generation was taking shape and that the millennium had, and would continue to, uproot conventional expectations of national and international policy. From this, we wanted papers that together could paint the picture of a post-millennial nation. But, what does this really mean? What is post-millennial?  

When we hear the word ‘millennial’, a term arguably overused today in research and media, we envision the inspired, confused, and digitally-savvy generational cohort born from about 1980 to 1996. Millennials grew up alongside an increasingly global world, rapid gains in technology, and the proliferation of the college degree as a requirement for success in the labor market. Yet, the term ‘millennial’ is also defined as the anniversary or culmination of a thousand years. While not as lively of a definition, it offers just as much clarity, if not more, in how we wanted to redefine the future of GPPR.

So, as you embark on a journey through our digital debut, remember that ‘post-millennial’ doesn’t just reference the young people of today, who are now in their 20’s and 30’s and beginning to leave a formative footprint on the world, or the turning of the century, which has engendered new successes and challenges that are no longer confined to national borders. The term, which we christened early on as our theme for this year’s Spring Edition, also serves as our personal metaphor for a new era. The staff at GPPR view this 2016 Spring Edition, in its digital launch, as the beginning of an uncharted path for our journal, and words cannot express how excited we are to show it to you.

The papers in this edition bring our original vision to life, taking on an array of topics that only brush the surface of all the questions that define the future. Authors examine post-Arab Spring democratization in Egypt, highlight the variance in sexual assault rates across college campuses, deconstruct millennials’ experience in the labor market and in social entrepreneurship, illustrate the challenges to end-of-life care for aging Baby Boomers, and analyze the future implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as related to health.

On behalf of the rest of the Georgetown Public Policy Review staff, we are thrilled to share with you the launch of this site, and all of the papers and content within it. Together, it tells a compelling story about the changing world around us and we can only hope that you dive in as much as we did.  

Thank you,

Alexa Frank, Executive Spring Editor, and Erin Mullally, Editor-in-Chief

Georgetown Public Policy Review  

The Georgetown Public Policy Review

Volume 21 | Number 1 | Spring 2016

Stephen Edward McMillin & KeongWeon Lee & Sandra R. Naeger

Social entrepreneurship remains a stagnant field: approximately 70 percent of social enterprises in the United States were established more than 40 years ago.

However, a growing number of political actors promote modern social entrepreneurship as an important tool in solving complex social challenges while still functioning within the existing system of commerce. Using Kingdon’s multiple streams framework, this article analyzes the processes of problem definition, policy proposal, and political decision-making surrounding the relative dearth of millennial participation in social entrepreneurship.  Prominent problem definitions emphasize increases in student loan debt and competing interests as impediments to millennial participation in social enterprise.  Policy proposals to increase social entrepreneurship relevant to millennials emphasize networking, business incubators, and tax changes that provide education and opportunity to millennial social entrepreneurs without increasing their student loan debt.   Political factors relevant to millennials include uncertainty regarding loan forgiveness and tax credits for social entrepreneurs.  Implications for future millennial participation in social entrepreneurship are discussed.

Steven Keener

Approximately 1 in 5 women and 1 in 17 men will be sexually assaulted during their time in college; 95 percent of them will not report the incident. They have higher rates of PTSD and depression than Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

These numbers have pushed the issue of campus sexual assault, arguably a millennial driven issue, given the evolution of the college experience in the 21st century, to the forefront of the national policy agenda. Despite this attention, researchers have yet to take a comprehensive approach that utilizes student, institutional and community level factors to better understand the variance of sexual victimization rates across colleges and universities. This study first sets the foundation for this type of research by identifying a theoretical framework that can guide studies of this nature.

Andrew R. Hanson & Artem Gulish

Millennials have taken longer to launch their careers than previous generations, and some have failed to launch their careers altogether, while progress toward equity in education and the labor market has stalled.

These challenges were driven by the shocks associated with two recessions and long-term structural economic changes that increased entry-level job requirements. This paper explores these trends and how they have made it more complex for young adults to navigate the transition from school to career. To address these challenges, policymakers should expand access to college and strengthen the connections between education and careers. 

Eriko Sase & Christopher Eddy

THE REALITY OF DEATH PRESENTS UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGES TO QUALITY OF LIFE REQUIREMENTS AND IDEALS.

While end-of-life care, including hospice and palliative care, has rapidly evolved in the past decades, millennials will be dramatically affected by demographic and healthcare trends in a rapidly aging United States society. To ensure millennials are mentally, physically, and financially prepared for the burdens of either their parent’s, or their own, end-of-life processes, especially considering the current lack of health infrastructure surrounding this, we need to examine these issues though both a public health and human rights lens.

Eric A. Friedman & Lawrence O. Gostin

“We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet”

So pronounces the 2030 Agenda, the United Nations declaration on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted on September 25, 2015, succeeding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). If achieved, the SDGs will secure an improved level of health, development, and global justice. However, if the international community fails to live up to its commitments, an untold number of people will likely perish prematurely, people’s opportunities to thrive will be cut off, social dynamics will continue to leave people behind, and unsustainable environmental pathways will create risks to the health and well-being of generations to come.

Christopher Zambakari & Tarnjeet K. Kang

In 2011, a mass protest in Tunisia initiated what came to be called the Arab Spring.

It also set in motion other political struggles throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, before engulfing Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen, and subsequently spreading to Syria. As the largest Arab country in the region, Egypt has experienced mixed results in its democratic journey. In this article we set to interrogate the so-called “democratic failure” in Egypt by placing the Egyptian democratic process, epitomized by the youth-led uprising at Tahrir Square, at the center of our analysis. This article is structured around the following question: has democracy failed in Egypt?