Citations Needed

We've heard this scare story a million times: A theater group at Wesleyan won't perform The Vagina Monologues because it's offensive to trans women! Oberlin is banning classes featuring white authorsI Rich, sheltered college students, increasingly indoctrinated by radical Marxist professors, are asking for safe spaces!

But how much merit is there to the popular trope that college kids are hypersensitive and coddled? Is there really a free speech crisis America's campuses? What are the origins of this evergreen complaint? Who does the constant harping on the threat of "political correctness" and anti-free speech undergrads actually hurt? And more importantly, whom does it benefit?

Today's guest is David Palumbo-Liu, professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University.

The idea that there exists an ongoing effort to achieve a "two-state solution" in Israel and Palestine - often referred to as The Middle East Peace Process™ - is uniformly taken for granted by American media.

This "two-state solution" is always at different stages of viability, yet never quite works out. Presidents fail to achieve it; Palestinian violence makes it "more difficult"; Israeli settlements are "unhelpful" to it. But how honest is this effort? How are nonstop obituaries for a phantom "process" helping to maintain the status quo, or worse? How much does this infinitely regressive effort deliberately mask an ongoing and active policy of ethnic cleansing by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza?

In Part II of this two-part episode, we discuss this "two-state" racket with Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace.

The idea that there exists an ongoing effort to achieve a "two-state solution" in Israel and Palestine - often referred to as The Middle East Peace Process™ - is uniformly taken for granted by American media. This "two-state solution" is always at different stages of viability, yet never quite works out. Presidents fail to achieve it; Palestinian violence makes it "more difficult"; Israeli settlements are "unhelpful" to it.

But how honest is this effort? How are nonstop obituaries for a phantom "process" helping to maintain the status quo, or worse? How much does this infinitely regressive effort deliberately mask an ongoing and active policy of ethnic cleansing by the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza?

In Part I of this two-part episode, we discuss this "two-state" racket with Professor Noura Erakat.

Citations Needed is off this week, but we do have a fascinating interview with Hoda Katebi on her now-infamous WGN television segment. In this News Brief, we explore what it means to "sound American," the politics of women's clothing, and why everyone with even a single drop of Iranian blood is expected to be an expert on nuclear energy and international affairs.

The term "welfare" is thrown around so casually in political speeches and media coverage we hardly notice it anymore. CNN reports that "GOP will tackle Medicare, Medicaid, welfare in 2018," while The Washington Post insists that "Trump recently called on Congress to move to cut welfare spending after the tax bill." CBS News tells viewers that "Washington eyes welfare reform."

But what do these outlets and the Republican Party actually mean when they talk about "welfare"? What programs are they referring to? The exact definition of "welfare" – which supposedly ended over 20 years ago – remains unclear.

While the word "welfare" and the welfare state has a positive connotation in Europe, in the United States it's more often than not a malleable propaganda term meant to dog whistle programs for African-Americans and Latinos while signaling to whites that their checks and corporate handouts will remain untouched.

In this episode, we dig into the racist history of anti-welfare crusades, the political purpose of pathologizing poverty, and the meaninglessness of phrases like "welfare reform," with guest Sarah Jaffe.

Few words elicit such warm feelings as the term "Democracy." Wars are supposedly fought for it, foreign policies are built around it, protecting and advancing it is considered the United States' highest moral order.

Democracy's alleged opposite - broadly called "authoritarianism," "autocracy" or "tyranny" - is cast as the ultimate evil. The stifling, oppressive boot of the state that curtails liberties and must be fought at all costs. This is the world in which we operate and the one where the United States and its satellite media and NGO allies fight to preserve and defend democracy.

So how is "democracy" defined and how are those definitions used to justify American exceptionalism? Where do positive and negative rights come into play, and how do societal choices like illiteracy, poverty, and hunger factor into our notions of freedom?

On today's episode, we discuss the limits of democracy rankings, the oft-cited "Polity IV" metric devised by the CIA-funded Center for Systemic Peace, and more with guest George Ciccariello-Maher.

Here at Citations Needed we enjoy nothing more than ragging on corporate media - indeed, it's our primary job. But can constant snark and negativity breed cynicism? Recent feedback from some of our listeners has us wondering if the act of media criticism need also make room for some media complimenting, lest we succumb to the forces of defeatism.

In this episode, rather than critiquing the myriad problems with the corporate press, we decided to highlight two smaller media organizations fighting back against tremendous forces - in this case, environmental destruction of native lands and the carceral state – by building alternate systems of communication, news-gathering, storytelling, and organizing.

With guests Jade Begay of Indigenous Rising Media and Jay Donahue of Critical Resistance and The Abolitionist newspaper.