Story in the Public Square

The saying goes that mothers and motherhood are the same all the world-over. Abigail Leonard puts that folk-wisdom to the test in a new book chronicling the first year of motherhood for four women from four different countries.   

Leonard is an award-winning international reporter and news producer, previously based in Tokyo, where she was a frequent contributor to NPR, Time Magazine, and New York Times video. Her stories have also appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and Vox. Before moving to Japan, she wrote and produced long-form news documentaries as a staff producer for PBS, ABC and Al Jazeera America. Stories she reported have earned a National Headliner Award, an Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism Award, an Overseas Press Club Award and a James Beard Foundation Media Award Nomination. She was a 2011 East-West Center Japan Fellow and 2010 UN Foundation Journalism Fellow. She served as First Vice President of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, a 2,000-member national press organization, and chaired its scholarship program.  

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Throughout the campaign of 2024, President Donald Trump promised to use tariffs to reset America’s global trade relationships, revitalize American manufacturing, and increase government revenues—and in the first months of his second administration, the president has used tariffs and the threat of tariffs to drive concessions even while raising antagonism and roiling markets. Kimberly Clausing helps us distinguish between the rhetoric and the reality of these tariffs.  

Clausing is an expert on the taxation of multinational firms. She served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, serving as the lead economist in the Office of Tax Policy during the Biden administration. She is a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Clausing has worked on economic policy research with the International Monetary Fund, the Hamilton Project, the Brookings Institution, the Tax Policy Center, and the Center for American Progress. She has testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Committee on Finance, the Senate Committee on the Budget, and the Joint Economic Committee. Her research examines how government decisions and corporate behavior interplay in the global economy. She has published numerous articles on the taxation of multinational firms, and she is the author of “Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital.”  

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Eighty years ago, mothers with sons and husbands at war in Europe could celebrate the end of the war there, even as they worried about the possibility their loved ones might be heading to the invasion of Japan. Tim Gray has made his life’s work about telling the stories of those heroes, their sacrifices, and their legacy.   

Gray is a documentary filmmaker and founder and president of The World War II Foundation. He has won 5 Regional Emmy Awards in the documentary film writing and outstanding documentary film categories. He has also received four Indie Film Fest Awards in that international competition and two Impact Doc Awards. Gray has completed 38 documentaries to date. Tim Gray Media films consistently rank nationally in the top 5 of most requested programs by PBS and Public Television affiliates. Gray also hosts the “From the Front to the Films” podcast, which features well-known actors, authors, filmmakers, veterans, and others connected to World War II. He has also been a frequent guest on FOX News’ national program, “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” where he contributes to the network’s coverage of WWII events, issues, and stories. Gray sits on the Advisory Board of Patriots’ Hall of Dripping Springs, a foundation established by Emmy Award-winning actor Kyle Chandler and his wife Kathryn. Patriots’ Hall is a permanent retreat and resource base for veterans of all ages and military branches to connect and find support. 

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Most of us can probably point to examples of people who suffered from racism, or who overcame racism.  But Keon West reminds us all that “the plural of anecdote is not data” and that science actually has a lot to say about the reality of racism today—if we take the time to consider it and really understand.   

West is a social psychologist and an Associate Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has also worked at the University of Leeds and the University of Roehampton, both in the U.K. His research interests include stigma, bias and perceptions of people from other groups. Much of his prior research specifically investigated the contact hypothesis and its derivatives. Recently, however, his recent research has developed a stronger focus on gender identity, perceptions of sexuality and sexual orientation, sexism and anti-LGBT prejudice. As well as publishing a number of scientific papers each year, West has disseminated his findings in the broader media. He has appeared multiple times in various national and international outlets including the Guardian and the BBC. Though he currently lives in London, he grew up in Jamaica and has also lived in the United States and France.  He received a B.A. in Psychology from Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, and a doctorate in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University. 

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We’re used to thinking of technology as politically neutral—the zeroes and ones of binary code that operate independently of partisanship.  But Marietje Schaake says that, increasingly, private technology companies are usurping the function of government and thereby posing a real threat to the health of Western democracies. 

Schaake is a non-resident Fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and at the Institute for Human-Centered AI. She is a columnist for the Financial Times and serves on a number of not-for-profit Boards as well as the UN's High Level Advisory Body on AI. Between 2009-2019 she served as a Member of the European Parliament where she worked on trade, foreign and tech policy. She is the author of “The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley,” which provides insight into steps government institutions can take to protect their citizens from emerging invasive technology.  

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Every year, American popular culture focuses on recognizing the entertainment world’s hits and misses in Awards Season. Daniel D’Addario gives us a well-informed, if fictional, glimpse behind the smiles and glittering ceremonies to understand the personal and professional commitment of actresses at the top of their games.   

D’Addario is chief correspondent at “Variety,” writing features, profiles, and columns. He has won awards from the Los Angeles Press Club for profile writing and for political commentary and is among the moderators of Variety’s Actors on Actors video series. His debut novel, “The Talent,” follows five actresses as they navigate the complex world of Hollywood. D’Addario was previously the television critic for “Variety” and for “Time.” A graduate of Columbia University, he lives with his husband and two daughters in Brooklyn. 

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From the story of a young sex worker to one about an aging star, another about a transgender drug lord, and another about a troubled immigrant and brilliant architect, this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Picture tell stories that are both epic and intimate. Pete Hammond walks us through the nominees and what to watch for on Hollywood’s Night of Nights.   

Hammond, widely considered to be one of the pre-eminent awards analysts for both film and television, has for the past 14 years been Deadline's Awards Columnist covering the year-round Oscar and Emmy seasons. He is also Deadline's Chief Film Critic, having previously reviewed films for MovieLine, Boxoffice magazine, Backstage, Hollywood.com and Maxim, as well as Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide for which he was a contributing editor. In addition to writing, Hammond is also host of the PBS SoCal Cinema Series and the weekly PBS television series "Must See Movies." He previously held producing positions at "Entertainment Tonight," "Extra," "Access Hollywood," "The Arsenio Hall Show" and "The Martin Short Show." Hammond is only the second journalist to have received the Publicists Guild of America’s Press Award twice, in 1996 and 2013. 

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There was a time in American public life when “the news” was a nightly ritual, a 30-minute glimpse into the wider-world, a way to stay informed.  But Dr. Alice E. Marwick says that world is long gone, washed away in recent years with failing traditional news outlets and the rise of social media influencers.  

Marwick is the director of research at Data & Society. She is a qualitative social scientist who researches the social, political, and cultural implications of popular social media technologies. Her most recent book, “The Private is Political: Networked Privacy on Social Media,” examines how the networked nature of online privacy disproportionately impacts members of marginalized communities. Marwick has several other publications in the realm of communications and mass media. She is currently writing her third book on online radicalization, supported by an Andrew Carnegie fellowship. Marwick was previously associate professor of communication and principal researcher and co-founder of the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina. She was also Microsoft visiting professor at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. 

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Children’s and young-adult authors often explore the pain and loneliness of growing up.  Padma Venkatraman does it in an elegantly told story that also explores immigration, environmental change, and the power of friends to make everything better.   

Venkatraman is an award-winning author who was born in Chennai, India.  Before becoming a novelist, earned a Ph.D. in oceanography from The College of William and Mary.  She conducted postdoctoral research in Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and later worked in Germany.  She also served as head of Inwoods Small School, and taught oceanography and directed diversity efforts at the University of Rhode Island.  Venkatraman is the author of five novels including “Climbing the Stairs,” “Island’s End,” “A Time to Dance,” and “The Bridge Home.”  She has written several other books, including: “Double Stars: The Story of Caroline Herschel (Profiles in Science),” “Women Mathematicians (Profiles in Mathematics),” and the illustrated “Growing Gold,” “Born Behind Bars” and “Cleverest Thief.”  Her latest book is “Safe Harbor,” was published this month.   

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The world will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II later this year.  Richard J. Evans helps us understand the murderous leaders of Nazi Germany, and the people at every level of German society who did their bidding.

Evans is an historian of modern Germany and modern Europe and is the preeminent historian of the Third Reich today.  He has published over 20 books in the field, including his trilogy on the Third Reich. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature and the Learned Society of Wales, and an Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, Birkbeck, University of London, and Jesus College Oxford.  In 2022, he was made an Honorary Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.  He has been Vice-Master and Acting Master of Birkbeck, University of London, Chairman of the History Faculty in the University of Cambridge. He currently serves as Provost of Gresham College in London and a visiting Professor of History at Birkbeck University of London.

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