In doing so, they can push the broader policy sector-including government and philanthropic donors-to do the same. But they can change their own practices: namely, they can change how they assess expertise and who they recruit and cultivate as policy experts. Think tanks alone cannot change the larger cultural and societal forces that have historically limited access to certain fields. And in specific fields like Economics, from which many think tanks draw their experts, just 0.5 percent of doctoral degrees go to Black women each year. These hiring preferences alone leave many people out of the debates that shape their lives: if think tanks expect a master's degree for mid-level and senior research and policy positions, their pool of candidates will be limited to the 4 percent of Latinos and 7 percent of Black people with those degrees (lower than the rates among white people (10.5 percent) or Asian/Pacific Islanders (17 percent)). Think tanks may be slower to adapt because of long-standing biases around what qualifies someone to be a policy “expert.” Traditionally, think tanks assess qualifications based on educational attainment and advanced degrees, which has often meant prioritizing academic credentials over lived or professional experience on the ground. As the broader policy ecosystem adjusts to a post-2020 world, think tanks that aim to provide the intellectual backbone to policy movements-through research, data analysis, and evidence-based recommendation-need to change their approach as well. But elected officials are not the only ones who need to evolve. After an era-defining pandemic, which itself served as backdrop to a generations-in-the-making reckoning on racial injustice, the era of policy incrementalism is giving way to broad, grassroots demands for structural change. We are in the midst of a great realignment in policymaking.
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