Coefficient Giving Awards $25,000 Grant to Support The Reconstruction Papers

I am very excited to announce that Liberal Currents has received a grant of $25,000 from Coefficient Giving (formerly known as Open Philanthropy) for The Reconstruction Papers.

A few months ago, when looking for authors to write about science and innovation for the project, I reached out to Matt Clancy, whose work on that subject I had followed for a few years. Matt made some recommendations, but it also emerged that he was now leading the Abundance Growth Fund at Coefficient Giving. I discussed the nature of the project with him further.

The bulk of what we'll publish is relatively orthogonal to their interests—the political theorist Kevin Elliott's essay on reforming the Senate, for example, or Y. L. Al-Sheikh's new foreign policy vision—but several are in their core area of concern. Aishwarya Khanduja and Stuart Buck's essay on reimagining the public funding of science obviously is; I found them through Matt's recommendation. Maia Mindel's essay on economic policy includes a strong YIMBY pillar focused on housing. Brendan Cantwell's framework for reforming higher education includes considerations of how to put university research on firm footing. Steve Randy Waldman offers a vision of free but balanced trade in contrast to both the new protectionism and the old, dysfunctional neoliberal approach that hollowed out America's manufacturing capacity.

As one of our subscribers put it, we're a publication that has always been "pro-trans and pro-transit." Pushing liberal democracies to foster their ability to build housing, transit, and energy infrastructure is a big part of our overall project, and that will be reflected in The Reconstruction Papers. We thank Coefficient Giving for recognizing the value of that work, and providing us with resources that will help us with our first ever print run.

And here's the good news for you, the Liberal Currents reader: part of our agreement with Coefficient Giving to receive the grant is that we will offer a PDF of The Reconstruction Papers for free, and will charge at cost for the print version.

Since we had originally intended to charge a low price for the PDF and offer it for free for our Supporting Subscribers, we will now also be offering our Supporting Subscribers a complimentary copy of the print edition.

We hope to open up for pre-orders later this month. But if you can't wait to put yourself on that list, consider redeeming this offer for 50% off of our Supporting Subscriber tier. That will also enable you to join our book club discussion next week.

Beyond the grant, we are making good progress on The Reconstruction Papers. Final copy editing is being conducted on the lion's share of the essays, with two additional essays expected to come in that we commissioned late in the process. All in all, however, things are on schedule for a late June release, letting people get The Reconstruction Papers in their hands in time for America to hit its 250th year since independence.

One thing we have finalized is the cover design:

I hope you're as excited to read this as we are to share it with you.

Thank you again to Coefficient Giving for their generous grant for this project, and thank you to our community, without whom we couldn't have even dreamed of producing work like this.