Story in the Public Square

It’s comforting to think about American political institutions as “transparent” and open to scrutiny.  However, this week on “Story in the Public Square,” Anna Massoglia describes a campaign finance system built, increasingly, on so-called “dark money.” 

Massoglia is a political influence expert and investigative journalist with more than a decade of experience exposing the hidden forces of money, power and politics. As the founder and author of “Influence Brief,” Massoglia helps readers to navigate the complex financial systems and influence networks shaping politics and public policy in the United States and across the globe. She also works as an independent consultant and advisor for various organizations, offering expertise in research, strategy and public policy. She is a director of investigations at the Sunlight Reseach Center, a nonpartisan journalism support organization that equips newsrooms to provide their communities fact-based, transparent investigative journalism holding power to account. 

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Eighty years ago, World War II ended in the Pacific with the first, and thus far, only use of nuclear weapons in warfare.  The widely popular decision to use the bomb at the time has become fodder for historians to debate in subsequent decades. Fred Borch helps us view the decision to drop the bomb from the perspective of American leaders in that summer of 1945.   

Fred L. Borch is a historian, lawyer and soldier by profession. He has three history degrees, three law degrees and an M.A. in national security strategy from the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He served on active duty as an Army lawyer from 1980 to 2005 in a variety of roles, at one point having chief responsibility for overall prosecution efforts against alleged terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After retiring as a colonel, Fred returned to the Army for a civilian position as the professor of legal history and leadership at The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has authored 10 books and more than 200 articles on legal and non-legal topics.  

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The history of humanity is the history of individuals making decisions, sometimes collectively, and sometimes individually. New artificial intelligence, AI, brings a new player into the mix: machines capable of making decisions alongside or instead of their human counterparts. Sean O’Callaghan and Paul Hoffman grapple with the theological implications of this new technology.   

Sean O'Callaghan is an associate professor of religious and theological studies at Salve Regina University, where he also serves as a coordinator of the AI Initiative. He previously served as director of the Ph.D. program in humanities and technology and is currently a faculty member in that program. He received his Ph.D. in systematic theology from the University of Liverpool in 2008.  

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Where five years ago, we were in the thick of the pandemic, with the bulk of the sickness and dying still to come, now, the U.S. federal government is poised to slash spending on public health, as well as basic research in science, healthcare and more.  Dr. Ashish Jha helps us sort through competing claims and make sense of it all. 

An accomplished and practicing physician, Jha is a trusted expert on major issues impacting public health, and a catalyst for new thinking and approaches. A long-time leader on pandemic preparedness and response, from directing groundbreaking research on Ebola to serving on the frontlines of the COVID-19 response, he has analyzed key issues and advised local and federal policy makers around the world. In March 2022, he was appointed by President Biden as White House COVID-19 response coordinator and led the work that increased the development of and access to treatments and newly formulated vaccines. He has served as a professor of medicine and is currently the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. 

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What if a secret gathering of luminaries concluded in the 1960s that the consequences of “peace” would be worse than continued war? Phil Tinline explains that in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, just such a story emerged, and its consequences reverberate to this day.  

Phil Tinline is a freelance writer and documentarian. He is the author of the 2002 book “The Death of Consensus,” which was chosen as The Times (London)’s Politics Book of the Year. Over the course of twenty years working for the BBC, he has made and presented many acclaimed documentaries about how political history shapes our lives. He has also written for The Times (London), The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph (London), The New Statesman (UK), BBC History Magazine, and Prospect. He is a graduate of Oxford University where he obtained a degree in English language and literature, and he currently lives in London. 

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Journalists chronicle the world in the so-called “first draft” of history. Michael Corkery is helping lead one of America’s great newspapers as it tells the story of President Trump’s second administration with a particular focus on its impact on the world of business and finance.   

Corkery is the finance editor at The New York Times, where he oversees a team of reporters writing on banks, private equity, corporate law firms and the stock market. Their coverage focuses on big news events and how Wall Street influences government and society. Prior to becoming an editor, he spent over 25 years as a reporter telling the stories of people from a range of political viewpoints, geographies and life experiences. Before he started at The Times in 2014, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, the Providence Journal and The Burlington (Vermont) Free Press. 

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It’s not unusual for friends, family members, and even good bosses to tell us, “practice some self-care.” But Nicole Karlis says that there are physical and emotional benefits to practicing care for others, too. 

Karlis is an award-winning journalist and author covering health and science. Currently, she’s a regular contributor at Salon where she’s covered women’s health, science and wellness culture since 2017. Before writing for Salon, she was a contributing editor at The Bold Italic, a culture magazine based in the California-Bay Area. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times. She is the author of the book “Your Brain of Altruism: The Power of Connection and Community During Times of Crisis.”  

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It’s been said that the great challenge of diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest ways. Frank Lowenstein uses his experienced eye to consider if this challenge rings true for the United States under the second Trump administration. 

Lowenstein is an international policy expert with a concentration in policy development, strategic communication and legal practice. He has served as a special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for the U.S. department of state and worked as a senior foreign policy advisor to Secretary of State John Kerry. He also directed the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East and South and Central Asian Affairs, a position which allowed him to travel extensively throughout the Middle East. Prior to this role, he was the director of national security policy for the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign and practiced law in Boston, Massachusetts. 

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It’s probably cliché to say that sport imitates life, but Hanif Abdurraqib traces the intimate details of basketball legends and faded school-yard stars in an unforgettable book about sport, life, and the places we call home. 

Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and author of the new book, "There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension,” is the selection for this year's Reading Across Rhode Island Statewide Read, sponsored by the Rhode Island Center for the Book. His first full length poetry collection, “The Crown Ain't Worth Much,” was released in June 2016 and named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, “They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. His book, “Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest” became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His 2021 book, “A Little Devil In America,” was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize.

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Humanity is capable of great dualities. Elizabeth MeLampy explores that in the way we both venerate animals, even while we exploit them. 

MeLampy is an attorney with experience in animal law and environmental law.  She worked on issues related to farmed animals, wild animals, and captive animals with Harvard’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic while she was in law school.  She served in the inaugural cohort of Emerging Scholar Fellows with the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy, where I worked on animal law scholarship.  After two clerkships with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Federal District Court in Arizona, MeLampy litigated with one of the top environmental nonprofits in the country.  

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