In three decades under the leadership of Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch grew to a staff of more than 500, conducting investigations in 100 countries to uncover abuses--and pressuring offending governments to stop them. Roth has grappled with the worst of humanity, taken on the biggest villains of our time, and persuaded leaders from around the globe to stand up to their repressive counterparts.

The son of a Jew who fled Nazi Germany just before the war began, Roth grew up knowing full well how inhumane governments could be. He has traveled the world to meet cruelty and injustice on its home turf: he arrived in Rwanda shortly after the Genocide; scrutinized the impact of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait; investigated and condemned Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians. He directed efforts to curtail the Chinese government's persecution of Uyghur Muslims, to bring Myanmar's officials to justice after the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, to halt Russian war crimes in Ukraine, even to reign in the U.S. government. Roth's many innovations and strategies included the deployment of a concept as old as mankind--the powerful tool of "shaming"--and here he illustrates its surprising effectiveness against evildoers.

This is a story of wins, losses, and ongoing battles in the ceaseless fight to rend the moral arc from the hands of injustice and bend it toward good.

Kenneth Roth is the former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He has extensively investigated human rights abuses around the world, focusing especially on the world's most dire situations, the pursuit of international justice, the major powers' foreign policies, the work of the UN, and the global contexts between democracy and autocracy. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, and other major publications. He spends his time between New York and Geneva.

Roth will be in conversation with Missy Ryan, a national security reporter with the Washington Post who has covered the Pentagon and the State Department. She has reported from Ukraine, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Mexico, Peru, Argentina and other countries. She holds a Bachelor's degree from Georgetown University and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as a White House fellow.
 

*recorded 2/25/2025

In June 1936 James Lee Strother performed thirteen songs at the Virginia State Prison Farm for famed folklorist John Lomax and the Library of Congress. Rooted in the rich soil of the Piedmont region, Strother's repertoire epitomized the Black songsters who defy easy classification. Blinded in a steel mill explosion, which only intensified his drive to connect to the world through song, Strother drew on old spirituals and country breakdowns as readily as he explored emerging genres like blues and ragtime. Biographer Gregg Kimball revives this elusive but singular talent and the creative and historical worlds in which his dramatic life unfolded.

Myths surround Strother but, as Kimball reveals, the facts of Strother's life are just as compelling as the fanciful embellishments proffered by early folklorists. Musician, murderer, and beloved family member--Strother somehow played each of these roles, and more. And while the songster's comedic ditties, spirituals, and blues tunes reached a wide range of listeners (and were later covered by musicians like Pete Seeger and Jefferson Airplane), they carried a dark undercurrent that spoke directly to the experiences of Black Americans: sundown towns, Jim Crow segregation, and labor exploitation. As Kimball shows, Strother's powerful songs and remarkable, tumultuous life continue to influence and remain deeply relevant to American culture to this day.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780813952314?ic_referral=qjI7aOuTitu7kXQEdbKfnfInTgPB-_WpqVW-iu3-FX0wM65_SmIXUiizK9u2CYtm6Lz3ggX1Fz_3Rlm6JrrXgq2x50gXajJZX0UukVbyjJNKGb2yyQgg57H63sm0iB6ZBXsmFg

Gregg D. Kimball, Senior Consulting Historian for the Shockoe Institute, is a folk musician and the author of American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond.

*recorded 2/20/2025

In this groundbreaking biography, Mary Frances Phillips immerses readers in the life and legacy of Ericka Huggins, a revered Black Panther Party member, as well as a mother, widow, educator, poet, and former political prisoner. In 1969, the police arrested Ericka Huggins along with Bobby Seale and fellow Black Panther Party members, who were accused of murdering Alex Rackley. This marked the beginning of her ordeal, as she became the subject of political persecution and a well-planned FBI COINTELPRO plot.

Drawing on never-before-seen archival sources, including prison records, unpublished letters, photographs, FBI records, and oral histories, Phillips foregrounds the paramount role of self-care and community care in Huggins's political journey, shedding light on Ericka's use of spiritual wellness practices she developed during her incarceration. In prison, Huggins was able to survive the repression and terror she faced while navigating motherhood through her unwavering commitment to spiritual practices. In showcasing this history, Phillips reveals the significance of spiritual wellness in the Black Panther Party and Black Power movement.

Transcending the traditional male-centric study of the Black Panther Party, Black Panther Woman offers an innovative analysis of Black political life at the intersections of gender, motherhood, and mass incarceration. This book serves as an invaluable toolkit for contemporary activists, underscoring the power of radical acts of care as well as vital strategies to thrive in the world.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781479802937?ic_referral=RlY5ShshytcdedzNyZAVsUMiex-tha8_--wSuFGPV4kwM_BKZswvr_O8Pv9TKvfk7W3O5p-x8uvl-vAwdBBr5QvvtI3c9ffQg79EZBWpYW12BXaVub146OZ5QzYOapWcB9HRKA

Mary Frances Phillips is an Associate Professor of African American Studies Studies at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

Phillips is in conversation with Quito J. Swan. Swan is Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies at George Washington University. A scholar of Black Power and the African Diaspora, he has authored a number of books on Black internationalism, the latest being Born a Sufferah: Dancehall Music’s Insurgent Soundscapes (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025). His Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-Colonialism and the African World (NYU Press) received the Association for the Study of African American Life and History's 2023 Best Book in African American History Award. His Pauulu’s Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice (University Press of Florida) won the AAIHS 2022 Pauli Murray Book Prize. Swan has garnered fellowships from prestigious institutions such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, and Australia’s University of Queensland. His writings have appeared in the Radical History Review, the Journal of Civil and Human Rights, the Journal of African American History and the International Journal of Africana Studies.

*recorded 2/22/2025

Celebrate the life of poet, activist, and renowned legend Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni with fellow poets and writers based in Washington, DC. Bring one of your favorite Nikki Giovanni poems and a poem of your own to read aloud. We will have a sign-up sheet for people to read. This event will be one hour. Featured readers include Tricia Elam Walker, Nina Angela Mercer, Holly Bass, and María Fernanda.

Tricia Elam Walker, author of the acclaimed novel Breathing Room and two children’s books, Nana Akua Goes to School (2021 Ezra Jack Keats award, 2021 Children’s Africana Award) and Dream Street (NY Times 25 Best Children’s Books 2021), has written for National Public Radio, The Washington Post, The Root, Essence magazine, the Huffington Post and more. Tricia’s short stories and essays have been published widely and her plays have been produced in a community theater. She practiced law for sixteen years prior to her writing career. Tricia is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University and is working on more children’s books, plays, and a second novel. You can find her on instagram @triciawriting and her website is www.triciaelamwalker.com.

Nina Angela Mercer is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar. Her works for performance include GUTTA BEAUTIFUL; ITAGUA MEJI: A ROAD AND A PRAYER; A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING; MOTHER WIT AND WATER-BORN;  GYPSY AND THE BULLY DOOR; and the video poem, "Invocation," from the Visionary Aponte: Art and Black Freedom exhibition. These works have been produced at such theaters as National Black Theatre, The Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe, the Schomburg Center for Black Culture, and Target Margin Theatre among others.

Holly Bass is a multidisciplinary performance and visual artist, writer, and choreographer. Her work explores the unspoken and invisible social codes surrounding gender, class, and race. She received a 2024 Washington Award from the S&R Evermay Foundation. She is a 2022 MAP Fund recipient, a 2020–2022 Live Feed Resident Artist at New York Live Arts and a 2021–22 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. She studied modern dance (under Viola Farber) and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College before earning her Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. She has performed at the Seattle Art Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach (Project Miami Fair), and the 2022 Venice Biennale as part of Simone Leigh's Loophole of Retreat. Her visual artwork includes photography, installation, video, and performance. A Cave Canem Fellow, she has published poems in numerous journals and anthologies. She directed a year-round creative writing and performance program for adjudicated youth in DC’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services for four years and for six years was the National Director for Turnaround Arts at the Kennedy Center, a program which increases equitable access to the arts in Title 1 elementary and middle schools as a catalyst for fostering belonging.

María Fernanda (she/hers) is a poet whose work explores the intimacy of sisterhood, the anchor of intergenerational coexistence, and grief. Awarded the Norma Elia Cantú Award in Creative Writing, her most recent work appears in the Healing Verse Poetry Line, Cave Canem’s Dogbytes, and Cheryl Clarke's born in a bed of good lessons: poems inspired by the works of Lucille Clifton. As a creative producer, her latest collaborations with multidisciplinary artists have won Bessie Awards.

The title of this event comes from Nikki Giovanni's poem "My House," selected by the creative producer of this event, María Fernanda.

*recorded 2/9/2025

This event is in partnership with Jewish Currents.

In Peter Beinart's view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew?

Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations' efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life.

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative argument that will expand and inform one of the defining conversations of our time. It is a book that only Peter Beinart could write: a passionate yet measured work that brings together his personal experience, his commanding grasp of history, his keen understanding of political and moral dilemmas, and a clear vision for the future.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593803899?ic_referral=GOPG6_A1ry9Eb--Y6f-3byXX8Tr1aPkms218SISqS98wM0pQqPDTe1akyXIlOuNzxc-WfzQNIl7pG3aGdGs3gBlEv9AGHx4OWASkk5EEUFFQ2S4idGa5AOUiqFGrkshAXVnUtA

Peter Beinart is professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also editor at large of Jewish Currents, a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, an MSNBC political commentator, and a nonresident fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He writes the Beinart Notebook newsletter on Substack.com. He lives in New York with his family.

Beinart is in conversation with Karen Attiah, a journalist and columnist for The Washington Post, known for her insightful work on race, gender, human rights, and international affairs. A native of Dallas Texas, Karen is a former Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, and has a masters degree in international affairs from Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs. She has reported from countries including Nigeria, Curacao, Ghana, and Germany. Her work has appeared various global outlets including Associated Press. In 2016, she became The Washington Post’s founding Global Opinions editor, commissioning op-eds on global issues, and was named an Opinions columnist in 2021. Karen has received numerous awards, including the 2019 George Polk Special Award and NABJ’s Journalist of the Year, and Washingtonian Magazine’s “Star to Watch” Award. She was an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She is currently working on a book, Say Your Word, Then Leave, a book about the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Every single child diagnosed with measles represents a system failure--an inexcusable unforced error. The technology to prevent essentially 100 percent of measles cases has been in our hands since before the moon landing. But this serious airborne disease, once seemingly defeated, is resurgent around the globe. Why, at a time when biomedical science is so advanced, do parents turn away from vaccination, endangering their own children and the health of the wider population? 

Using a combination of patient narrative, historical analysis, and scientific research, Dr. Adam Ratner, pediatrician and infectious disease specialist, argues that the reawakening of measles and the subsequent coronavirus pandemic are bellwethers of forgotten knowledge--indicators of decaying trust in science and an underfunded public health infrastructure. Our collective amnesia is starkly revealed in the growth of the antivaccine movement and the missteps in our responses to the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, leading to preventable tragedies in both cases. 

Trust in medicine and public health is at a nadir. Declining vaccine confidence threatens a global reemergence of other vaccine-preventable diseases in the coming years. Ratner details how solving these problems requires the use of literal and figurative "booster shots" to gather new knowledge and retain the crucial lessons of the past. Learning--and remembering--these lessons is our best hope for preparing for the next pandemic. With attention and care and the tools we already have, we can make the world much safer for children tomorrow than it is today.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593330869?ic_referral=cCe1vLeAnudMX83uF4uOgz-KO7x74nX5x6aWss7Hk-UwM4L5VBwst0gDsCqAk5MSSmS_yAab3UIWpfadEwD4G5XA5F8xhlZDiGuCnG-RnWwp0Fu2WzQo4Lj-HtbpUCi38MlNsw

Adam Ratner, MD, MPH, is a professor of pediatrics and microbiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Hassenfeld Children's Hospital and Bellevue Hospital Center. In addition to practicing medicine, Dr. Ratner directs an active research group and teaches students, residents, and other trainees. He speaks widely in both academic settings and news outlets on topics relevant to vaccination and infections in childhood. His work has appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, PNAS, Pediatrics, and other venues. He edits a major textbook of pediatric infectious diseases, has chaired grant review panels for the National Institutes of Health, and serves on numerous advisory and editorial boards.

Dr. Ratner is in conversation with Dan Diamond. Diamond is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He was previously a national health reporter covering politics, policy and public health. He joined The Post in 2021 after covering the Trump administration for Politico, where he won a George Polk award for investigating political interference in the pandemic response. His investigations into a range of topics, including Trump officials' use of taxpayer-funded charter jets, not-for-profit hospitals' spending and how Congress stripped Pacific Islanders of their health coverage, have also been honored with several journalism awards.

*recorded 2/23/2025

In Square Moon, Larry Trung La recounts his extraordinary journey from the war-torn streets of South Vietnam to the vibrant culinary scene of Washington, D.C. As one of the "boat people," Larry and his family escaped the devastation of the Vietnam War, enduring a perilous journey across the South China Sea in search of a new life.

Arriving in America with little more than hope, Larry's determination and relentless work ethic propelled him from humble beginnings in a Malaysian refugee camp and small-town Tennessee to becoming the driving force behind D.C.'s beloved Mei-Wah restaurant. His memoir is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, the immigrant experience, and the power of community in the pursuit of the American Dream.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9798991665919

Larry Trung La, an ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, came to the USA as a refugee “Boat People.” Larry is the founder and CEO of Meiwah Restaurant Group. Meiwah restaurants have repeatedly won many annual food critics awards and been voted the Best Chinese Restaurant by numerous media outlets. Concurrently, Larry is the Founder, Partner and VP Business Development of the U.S.-Asia Links, LLC, a diverse and accomplished international team with the goal of stimulating economic growth, improving international relations and promoting trade between US and some Asian countries. Larry speaks Cantonese, Hakka, Mandarin and Vietnamese; therefore, he is welcomed in the diverse Asian-American community. Larry has a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from East Tennessee University in Johnson City, Tennessee. He attended the National Business School of Saigon, Vietnam.  Hometown is Erwin, Tennessee. Larry resides in Rockville, Maryland with his wife of thirty-seven years, Diana La. They have two children, Alisa and Timothy.

Larry is in conversation with Mike Abramowitz. Abramowitz a veteran journalist and NGO executive who has worked at The Washington Post, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Freedom House and Voice of America. He is also a Washingtonian whose family has been dining regularly at Meiwah for three decades. He is a big fan of the Crispy Shredded Beef.

*recorded 2/23/2025

Europe is a place of free movement among nations--or is it? The Schengen area, established in 1985 and today encompassing twenty-nine European countries, allows people, goods, and capital to cross borders without restraint. Schengen transformed European life, advancing both a democratic project of transnational citizenship and a neoliberal project of international free trade. But the right of free movement always excluded non-Europeans, especially migrants of color from former colonies of the Schengen states. In Europe without Borders, Isaac Stanley-Becker explores the contested creation of free movement in Schengen, from treatymaking at European summits and disputes in international courts to the street protests of undocumented immigrants who claimed free movement as a human right.

Schengen laid the groundwork for the making of a single market and the founding of the European Union. Yet its emergence is one of the great untold stories of modern European history, one hidden in archives long embargoed. Stanley-Becker is among the first to have access to records of the treatymaking--such as letters between France's François Mitterrand and West Germany's Helmut Kohl--and Europe without Borders offers a pathbreaking account of Schengen's creation. Stanley-Becker argues that Schengen gave a humanist cast to a market paradigm; but even in pairing the border crossing of human beings with the principles of free-market exchange, this vision of free movement was hedged by alarm about foreign migrants. Meanwhile, these migrants--the sans-papiers--saw in the promise of a borderless Europe only a neocolonial enterprise.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780691261768?ic_referral=4PdMwp3wpcu2NcuIRQxH07hDKPAMLjpj1-lle2lj3BEwM83qQ24xUSmzdUd9rbBZxX0zhNV_LyDeKrqtwrUDNOhBTkm5zZO6fXJP0t1jh8Ww_3iyjsgNCgQkbbNBEBw6OBbxUA

Isaac Stanley-Becker is an investigative reporter for the Washington Post who has reported from across Europe and the United States. He earned a PhD in history from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

Stanley-Becker is in conversation with Ishaan Tharoor. Tharoor is a columnist on the foreign desk of the Washington Post, where he authors the Today's WorldView newsletter and column. In 2021, he won the Arthur Ross Media Award in Commentary, a prize administered by the American Academy of Diplomacy. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York. He also periodically teaches an undergraduate seminar at Georgetown University on digital affairs and the global age.

*recorded 2/22/2025

The artistic vision and business acumen of Michael Kahn, the founding Artistic Director, largely catalyzed this transformation, but so too did the forces of neoliberalism and, more recently, globalization and new media. Accordingly, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company not only examines directorial decision-making but also 3 decades of social and economic change in the nation's capital, from the complexities of gentrification to the arts policies of successive administrations.

In addition to discussions of directorial practice, this book examines the ambivalence of American theatre artists toward their British cultural inheritance. Analyses of representative productions and interviews with Kahn and his British successor, Simon Godwin, illuminate this complex relationship: one that aspires to a cosmopolitan Anglophilia while positioning classically trained American actors as worthy rivals to their counterparts at the RSC and the National Theatre of Great Britain.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781350352681?ic_referral=CTwN4cOdfTchQoNBJM0I07poHkh26uZRw7H7uxBQt_EwM06isspnqbxym6LkJ7fYPvcCzdMmRNk5k-8w3FllyjLjqBQ--mWmO7HwzkiE6d9sMX8HqADkuWP3OxCyesokx0bicw

Drew Lichtenberg has been resident dramaturg at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, USA, since 2011. He has worked as a dramaturg, literary manager and translator-adaptor with the Royal National Theatre, Public Theater, Roundabout, La Mama, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theatre Center, Yale Rep and Baltimore Center Stage, among others. As an educator, he has taught courses at Catholic University of America, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University, and Eugene Lang College at the New School. His publications include The Piscatorbühne Century (2021).

Deborah C. Payne is Professor Emerita of Literature at American University, USA. She was the Humanities Research Consultant at the Shakespeare Theatre Company from 2000 – 2009, and she has dramaturged for Studio Theatre, Arena Stage, the Kennedy Center, and the Bach Sinfonia. Her publications include Shakespeare in the Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company (with Drew Lichtenberg, The Arden Shakespeare, 2024), The Business of English Restoration Theatre, 1660 – 1700 (2024), Revisiting Shakespeare’s Lost Play (2016), Four Restoration Libertine Plays (2005), The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre (2000) and Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theatre (1995).

Lichtenberg and Payne are in conversation with Trey Graham. Graham is a D.C.-based journalist who covered theater for the Washington City Paper for two decades. He received the George Jean Nathan Award for distinguished drama criticism in 2004.

*recorded 2/22/2025

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Black girls and women faced a harsh career landscape. Domestic labor and sharecropping--which were the least regulated and lowest paying occupations for women in the US economy--were the few available ways for Black women and girls to make a living in Jane Crow America. In response to these circumstances, Nannie Helen Burroughs, the pioneering Black American educator and civil rights leader, established the National Training School for Women and Girls (NTS) in Washington, DC. Nannie Helen Burroughs tells the story of the powerful labor movement that resulted from Burroughs's work at the NTS and in the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. The NTS proved to be a revolutionary labor and educational initiative that redefined household employment as a profession where social justice for the Black community could be achieved. The NTS was integral to a Black clubwomen's labor movement that paved the way for a broader transformation of the economic landscape for Black women and girls. Nannie Helen Burroughs establishes Burroughs as one of America's most influential labor leaders in the twentieth century and reveals the powerful lessons her work and ideas still offer for America's laborers, labor organizers, scholars, and women's rights and racial justice activists today. It also establishes Burroughs and her colleagues in the National Association of Colored Women as the architects of an unprecedented labor movement.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781647125288?ic_referral=8BFlFaWELUYHzZbntiVeWOpFQvfDEDC28lgO1WRgjYQwM9-mqVogDPow5yUNAFrC6RsnfTYTUiEEukyvvSBg2pNuBmLsrH-gC6RHjJLekT9A3fqOPhn_EnX0FcGvIpeurohDig

Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, PhD, is associate professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She is the recipient of the National Women's Studies Association's Sara A. Whaley Book Prize for Putting Their Hands on Race (2020).

*recorded 2/21/2025