In this episode of The Thought Project, host Tanya Domi speaks with Eno Agolli, assistant director of the Saul Kripke Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, about bringing philosophy out of the ivory tower and into public conversation.

Agolli is helping expand the reach of the Saul Kripke Center, named for the late Saul Kripke, a former distinguished professor at the Graduate Center who is considered one of the greatest American philosophers of the last half-century. One of Agolli’s newest initiatives is the Analytic Salon, a public series designed to make analytic philosophy accessible, lively, and welcoming. The salons require no homework and no background in philosophy. Instead, participants gather to consider big questions, about artificial intelligence, skepticism, morality, knowledge, and free will, through clear, jargon-free discussion.

The salons are carried out in the spirit of Kripke’s own philosophical practice, centered on sharp puzzles, rigorous reasoning, and questions that can be stated clearly in ordinary language. The response has been striking. The salons, capped at 35 people, have filled quickly, sometimes within minutes, and draw many repeat attendees. For Agolli, that enthusiasm points to a real public hunger for philosophy, and for spaces where people can think together.

In this episode of The Thought Project, host Tanya Domi speaks with Mordechai Levovitz, M.S.W., a Ph.D. student in the Social Welfare program at the CUNY Graduate Center, about being queer and Jewish, and about the search for safety, support, and acceptance within Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities.

Levovitz founded and served as executive director of JQY, Jewish Queer Youth, a nonprofit organization that provides crisis, communal, and clinical support for LGBTQ+ and queer teens growing up in Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish families. He discusses how LGBTQ+ Jews, including transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people, often face isolation when coming out, especially when family, religious law, and community expectations appear to leave little room for a queer life.

His work grows out of his personal experience and years of helping queer Jews find support, language, safety, and community. He entered the Social Welfare Ph.D. program to deepen that work through research, advocacy, and policymaking, with a focus on the needs of LGBTQ+ people in religious communities.

The conversation also explores how Judaism contains a more expansive history of gender than many people realize, including rabbinic discussions of seven or eight gender categories. For Levovitz, that history matters. So does the ability to change one’s name, an act that can affirm identity, dignity, and the right to be fully seen.

Professor Robert C. Smith of the CUNY Graduate Center and Baruch College and Manuel Castro, the former New York City commissioner of immigrant affairs and a Baruch graduate, join The Thought Project for a timely conversation about immigration policy at a moment of deep uncertainty. Smith draws on decades of research on Mexican migration, legal status, and intergenerational mobility, as well as his legal advocacy on DACA and birthright citizenship, to explain how current policy choices are reshaping the lives of immigrant families.

Castro brings the perspective of a former undocumented immigrant, longtime advocate, and city official who has worked at the center of New York’s response to immigrant communities. Together, he and Smith argue that today’s crisis did not emerge overnight: Comprehensive immigration reform has remained out of reach for years, leaving millions vulnerable to shifting enforcement priorities and legal uncertainty. They discuss asylum, mixed-status families, the limits of local protections, and why expanding access to citizenship and legal status remains essential. The episode connects scholarship, public service, and lived experience in a clear call for reform grounded in both policy and human consequences.

From mushroom leather to algae-based garments, Elizabeth Wissinger, a professor of Liberal Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and of social sciences at Borough of Manhattan Community College, explores whether bio-based materials can offer a real alternative to synthetic fabrics, fast fashion, and clothing waste.

On this episode of The Thought Project, she discusses the rise of bio-couture, the environmental problems driving interest in biodegradable textiles, and the ethical questions raised by using living organisms in design. She also examines the challenges these materials still face, including durability, scalability, and the possibility that, if they are made for short-term use and quickly discarded, they could reproduce the same wear-once, throwaway logic that defines fast fashion.

As Earth Day approaches, Ashley Dawson returns to The Thought Project for a sobering conversation about climate politics at a moment of global instability. Dawson, a distinguished professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, is a member of Public Power New York, a movement for a just, publicly controlled energy transition in New York. He was also the 2025 Climate Justice Fellow at the arts organization Culture Push, where he worked on a series of photographs and short films about the struggle to abolish polluting power plants, and he is currently a resident at the Center for Architecture Lab in New York City, where he is co-curating an exhibit on the infrastructure of energy transition in the city. In conversation with host Tanya Domi, Dawson examines renewed fossil fuel dependence, weakened environmental enforcement, and the battles over climate policy in New York and California, while also pointing to public power, offshore wind, and community-led solar as part of a more just and resilient future.

What does it mean when immigration enforcement begins to look and feel like policing, but operates under a different set of rules? On this episode of The Thought Project, host Tanya Domi speaks with criminal justice scholar and lawyer Candace McCoy, a professor emerita at the CUNY Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice, about ICE’s expanding role in carrying out U.S. immigration policy.

McCoy argues that ICE officers are not police in the traditional sense: Their mission is not to protect human life or investigate crimes, but to enforce administrative immigration law. That distinction, she says, has major consequences for how the agency operates, from the use of masks and militarized gear to detention practices, federal-state conflicts, and broad legal protections for officers acting within the scope of their authority. The conversation also explores the limits of court intervention, the friction between federal enforcement and state power, and the deeper questions ICE raises about accountability, democratic governance, and the rule of law.

Professor Elizabeth Wissinger explores whether bio-based materials can offer a real alternative to synthetic fabrics and the wear-once, throwaway habits of fast fashion on “The Thought Project” podcast.

From mushroom leather to algae-based garments, Elizabeth Wissinger, a professor of Liberal Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and of social sciences at Borough of Manhattan Community College, explores whether bio-based materials can offer a real alternative to synthetic fabrics, fast fashion, and clothing waste.

On this episode of The Thought Project, she discusses the rise of bio-couture, the environmental problems driving interest in biodegradable textiles, and the ethical questions raised by using living organisms in design. She also examines the challenges these materials still face, including durability, scalability, and the possibility that, if they are made for short-term use and quickly discarded, they could reproduce the same wear-once, throwaway logic that defines fast fashion.

In this episode of The Thought Project, CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College Professor David Bloomfield reflects on the political, legal, and structural pressures confronting public education in New York City and across the nation.

He examines the pandemic’s aftereffects on schools, including staffing shortages, student well-being, and the continued dominance of high-stakes testing, while arguing that schools must be understood as civic institutions as well as sites of instruction. He also considers the challenges facing Mayor Zohran Mamdani as he navigates the governance of the nation’s largest school system, particularly the tensions surrounding mayoral control and the demands of accountability, equity, and transparency.

As Bloomfield retires from teaching at CUNY, the episode also marks a transition in his career: Though leaving the classroom, he makes clear that he will remain an active public voice on K-12 and higher education issues affecting New York City and the nation

Abortion attitudes can look deeply personal, but sociologist Amy Adamczyk’s research suggests they are also powerfully shaped by the places we live.

On this episode of The Thought Project, host Tanya Domi speaks with Adamczyk, a professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and John Jay College, about her award-winning book Fetal Positions: Understanding the Cross-National Public Opinion About Abortion. Drawing on survey data from over 200,000 people across 88 societies, plus interviews in the United States and China, Adamczyk unpacks why views about abortion vary so widely and why national context, especially religiosity and gender equality, can influence people’s attitudes even when their personal beliefs do not. She also discusses what is shifting in the U.S. after Dobbs, how China’s one-child policy still echoes in public opinion, and what her findings suggest about access, agency, and the future of reproductive rights.

In this episode of The Thought Project podcast, CUNY Graduate Center social media coordinator Coralie Carlson reflects on a career that has spanned the Associated Press, NBC New York, and the classroom at Hunter College. A journalist since her teens, Carlson sees her work on the Graduate Center’s channels as reporting in a new format, one with its own fast, shifting news cycle.

She describes how earning her M.A. at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism last December helped her learn new formats and return to hands-on journalism. Carlson also shares what she teaches in Hunter College’s Journalism for Non-Journalists news literacy course: Investigate who is behind an outlet, use “lateral reading” to verify claims, and be skeptical without becoming cynical.

At the Graduate Center, she applies those same principles to amplify research, promote this podcast, and help the Office of Communications and Marketing cut through misinformation with clear, credible posts for audiences.