Welcome back to Declarations!

In this episode, we’re joined by renowned journalist Kalpana Jain to explore how the media landscape has evolved and how press freedom is shifting across the globe. From the West to South Asia, we unpack the complex forces shaping what gets reported, whose voices are amplified, and how journalism is being redefined today. 

The media has undergone a seismic shift over the past two decades, technologically, politically, and economically. Today, journalism faces mounting constraints: declining independence, a shrinking space for investigative work, all amid escalating risks for journalists worldwide. At the same time, newsrooms are evolving rapidly to combat the rise of misinformation in an increasingly complex digital environment. 

About the guest:

Kalpana Jain is a senior journalist and currently senior ethics and religion editor at The Conversation US, a global news and commentary-based website.

She has covered a wide range of issues both in the U.S. and internationally. She was senior education editor at The Conversation US, before moving into her current role. She worked as a writer and researcher at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School  She was part of a small, select team for a flagship program of Harvard Business School researching 50 years of women at HBS.

She worked for many years as a reporter and editor at India’s leading national daily, The Times of India. Her reporting played a significant role in elevating public health as an important topic of news coverage. Based on her reporting, she was selected a Nieman Fellow in Global Health Reporting in 2009. 

She has taught case-writing at Harvard. She has conducted workshops teaching scholars at Harvard Divinity School, Stanford University, on how to write for the general public. She has also conducted such a workshop for religion scholars at the annual conference of American Academy of Religion.

She is an alumna of Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Kennedy School. She holds a  Master’s in Theological Studies and a Master’s in Public Administration.  In 2010, she was awarded William A. Starr fellowship for innovative thinking in journalism and John Kenneth Galbraith Fellowship for outstanding academic and professional achievements at Harvard.

Subscribe below for more regular and profound discussions. Connecting practitioners, activists, and students together to dissect the compelling intersections related to human rights and social justice.  

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Episode Credits 

Welcome back to the second episode of Season 9 of Declarations!

We are often informed to the terrorising, oppressive and distressing effects of Human Rights abuses across the continent of Africa.

However, what happens in the rare cases that citizens don't know they're being abused? By exploring the implicitly powerful weapon of censorship, misinformation and mass propaganda, we can observe how patriotic, anti-western narratives succeed in instilling hope and nationalistic pride, rather than terror, to these inhabitants. 

Farooq Adamu Kperogi is a Nigerian-American professor, author, media scholar, newspaper columnist, blogger and activist. Professor Kperogi's research broadly explores the intersection between communication in a global context and the singularities of the communicative practices of marginal groups within it. 

He is interested in the transnational, mass-mediated, online discourses of marginalised diasporas in the West, which he studies by examining the alternative and citizen online journalistic practices of previously disempowered Third World ethnoscapes whose voluntary geographic displacement to the Western core imbues them with the cultural and social capital to be vanguards for potentially transformative cross-border exchanges with their homelands. 

Subscribe below for more regular and profound discussions, connecting practitioners, activists, and students together to dissect the compelling intersections related to human rights and social justice.  

Share your thoughts using #declarationspodcast  

Email us at [email protected]  

Episode Credits 

Welcome back to Season 9 of Declarations!

This season we are looking at the notion of Human Rights and The Polycrisis.

In our first episode, Co-host Ed Parker sits down with Andrew Preston, an acclaimed historianof American foreign relations post 1890, to trace the role of human rights in American protest movements and foreign policy debates, asking whether humanitarian ideals have ever truly guided U.S. decision-making.

From campus protests against the Vietnam War to campaigns like Save Darfur, American activists have long invoked the language of human rights topress for change at home and abroad. But has this discourse meaningfully shaped U.S. foreign policy—or has it always taken a backseat to strategic interests?Together, they explore key moments when human rights language surged, examine its retreat in recent years, and consider how American power has influenced—and at times undermined—thebroader global human rights regime. Looking ahead, they ask whether we are witnessing a lasting shift in U.S. foreign policy priorities or simply thelatest chapter in a long cycle of competing values and interests.

We hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please check out our last season, available on all podcast platforms, or follow us on social media @DeclarationsPod

Share your thoughts using #declarationspodcast

Email us at [email protected]

Credits:Host: Ed Parker

Producer: Ed Parker and Sarah Awan

Executive Producer: Sarah Awan

Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel

Publisher and Comms Manager: Evie Nicholson

Editor: Max Parnell

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