Press

Jacoby to Lead PPI New Ukraine Project from Kyiv

02.23.2023

Russia’s illegal invasion and brutal occupation of Ukraine will soon enter its second year. The Progressive Policy Institute is marking the occasion by launching a New Ukraine Project to report on the war, its impact on everyday life in Ukraine, and its wider implications for peace and international security.

Directing the project from Kyiv is Tamar Jacoby, a prominent journalist, author, and thought leader widely respected for her work on immigration, the struggles of working class Americans, and public school reform. In addition to her dispatches from the front lines of the conflict, her work will focus on the social, economic, and political reconstruction of Ukraine, as it seeks to take its place in Europe’s free and democratic community.

“Every American has a stake in Ukraine’s war of independence, which in many ways resembles our own break from a different empire,” said PPI President Will Marshall. “We are fortunate to have in Tamar Jacoby an astute witness to the history that is being made on the ground today in eastern Europe.”

See this dispatch from Jacoby just published in The Washington Monthly on what Ukrainians want to know about America’s support for their cause.

“The war in Ukraine isn’t just another regional conflict,” Tamar Jacoby said. “Everything we hold dear as Americans — our fundamental liberal values — hangs in the balance. Can the international order prevent brutal imperialist aggression? How should the West respond to an emerging nation willing to risk everything to embrace democratic ideals? What are and aren’t we willing to do to protect human rights and human dignity? And then, beyond ideals, there’s the actual threat: If we don’t stop Russia in Ukraine, where will the story end — who will Putin blackmail next, with oil or gas or grain or weapons of mass destruction? It’s a privilege to be on the ground witnessing what’s happening and telling the story for American readers.”

“Having Tamar interpret the daily successes and struggles of Ukrainians during this Putin invasion will help Americans appreciate that our commitment to Ukraine needs to go beyond the battlefields and well after the Russians retreat: helping Ukraine create a sustainable democracy is the victory the people of Ukraine deserve and the defeat that will define Putin failures,” said Lindsay Mark Lewis, Executive Director of the Progressive Policy Institute.

This is the third major international project for PPI, with PPI Brussels established in 2018, and the Project on Center-Left Renewal based in the U.K., established in January of 2023.

Tamar Jacoby is currently based in Kyiv, Ukraine. She is the president of Opportunity America, a Washington-based nonprofit working to promote economic mobility, and a former journalist and author. She was a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek and, before that, the deputy editor of The New York Times op-ed page. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard and Foreign Affairs, among other publications. She is the author of “Someone Else’s House: America’s Unfinished Struggle for Integration” and “Displaced: The Ukrainian Refugee Experience.” Her edited volumes include “Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means To Be American” and “This Way Up: New Thinking About Poverty and Economic Mobility.”

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.

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Media Contact: Aaron White; awhite@ppionline.org