The Ask

In this episode of The Ask, Malia K. Du Mont, Dumaine William, Danielle Riou, and Anwen Hughes join us for an urgent conversation about the detention of Bard College student and asylum seeker Ali Faqirzada, and what his case reveals about escalating enforcement and immigration policy shifts under the second Trump administration.

Our Episode Guests:

Malia K. Du Mont, Vice President & Chief of Staff, Bard College.

Malia K. Du Mont is Chief of Staff and Vice President for Strategy and Policy at Bard College. Previously, she was Co-President of Amur Equipment Finance and also held multiple civilian and military positions in the Pentagon.

An Afghanistan veteran, Malia serves as chair of Congressman Pat Ryan’s Veterans and Military Families Advisory Board. She received her B.A. in Chinese from Bard College and her M.P.P. from Harvard’s Kennedy School.

In addition to the World Affairs Council Mid-Hudson Valley, she also serves on the boards of the American University of Afghanistan. Arts Mid-Hudson, and Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley.

Dumaine Williams, Vice President for Student Affairs, Bard College.

Dumaine Williams is Bard College’s Vice President and Dean of the Early Colleges and Vice President for Student Affairs. In these roles Dumaine oversees aspects of student life at the Bard Annandale campus as well as academic programming for the Bard Early Colleges. 

Previously, he served as founding principal of the Bard Early College campus in Cleveland, Ohio and as the Dean of the Bard Early College campus in Newark, New Jersey. Dumaine, who is from Jamaica, graduated from Bard College with a degree in biology, received an MA in education leadership from Montclair State University, and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Stony Brook University. 

He then completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Mount Sinai School of Medicine, focusing on endocrinology, molecular pharmacology and systems therapeutics research. His areas of research and teaching include endocrinology, physiology, epidemiology and health inequity.

Danielle Riou (Associate Director, Human Rights Project)

Danielle Riou is the Associate Director of the Human Rights Project, where she oversees global and regional research partnerships and teaches practice-based human rights courses. Her areas of focus are human rights, technology, and migration. Her work has been supported by grants from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other foundations.

Anwen Hughes

Anwen Hughes is Director of Legal Strategy for Refugee programs at Human Rights First, where she has worked in various capacities since 1999.  She oversees Human Rights First’s refugee-related litigation and amicus work, mentors pro bono lawyers representing asylum seekers through HRF’s program, represents asylum seekers directly, and serves as a resource to lawyers on a range of asylum issues, with a particular focus on bars to protection.

Human Rights First

Anwen and her colleagues do indispensable work; partnering with attorneys to defend asylum seekers like Ali Faqirzada: men and women who might otherwise be forced to face the labyrinth of the U.S. immigration courts alone.

To learn how you can support Anwen and her team, and stand with asylum seekers like Ali, please visit Human Rights First’s website:

Find The Ask Podcast on Substack here: https://theaskpodcast.substack.com/

Find us on Bluesky here:
https://bsky.app/profile/theaskpodcast.bsky.social

In this episode of The Ask, several extraordinary guests join us for a discussion about the long, winding road ahead for America and the rest of the world in the wake of Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term as President of the United States of America.

For this episode, we have been undeservedly blessed with the presence of:

Author Elliot Ackerman

Former Marine Special Forces officer, White House fellow, and New York Times besettling author of Green on Blue, Places and Names, The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan , co-author of 2034 Elliot Ackerman is coming off Apple Studios, having optioned his next book, Sheepdogs, for an upcoming series to be produced by Tom Hanks’ production company, Playtone.

New York Times International Investigative Correspondent, Azam Ahmed

The author of Fear Is Just a Word via Penguin Random House, Azam Ahmed is an international investigative correspondent for the New York Times and has served as a Times bureau chief in Afghanistan, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. His investigative projects and reporting have received the Polk Award, the Michael Kelly Award, the James Foley Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism, and the Overseas Press Club Award. In May 2025, Azam won the Explanatory Reporting Pulitzer prize, together with Christina Goldbaum and Matthieu Aikins, for reporting on how the United States sowed the seeds of its own demise long before the war in Afghanistan ended.

Associate Director for Science & Technology Ecosystem at Federation of American Scientists, Cole Donovan

Now at the Federation of American Scientists, Cole Donovan served as an International Affairs Specialist at the Office of Space Commerce. Cole previously served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as the Assistant Director for International Science and Technology and the Assistant Director for Research Security and Infrastructure and worked for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the State Department, where he covered major research infrastructures, research security and competition policy, and U.S. scientific and technical involvement with the EU, Africa, Southeast Asia, ITER, and CERN.

New York Times Opinion Columnist & Author, David French

A graduate of Harvard Law School and a constitutional lawyer long devoted to taking on religious liberty cases, David French has long been a leading conservative voice here in the United States.

A veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, David French was awarded the Bronze Star while serving with the Second Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, in Iraq from 2007 to 2008.

In 2015, he joined National Review as a senior writer, but left in 2019 to help start The Dispatch, a conservative media company. He’s also contributed articles to Time Magazine and The Atlantic. In 2023, he joined The Times as an opinion columnist.

His most recent book, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation, outlined the dangers of polarization and the need to engage with people who have opposing viewpoints.

Author Phil Klay

Marine Corps veteran and winner of the National Book Award, author Phil Klay teaches creative writing at Fairfield University. He is the award-winning author of Redeployment, Missionaries, and most recently, Uncertain Ground, a book of essays musing on an age of endless war.

Reuters News Chicago Bureau Chief, Emily Schmall

Emily Schmall, author of the upcoming book Girl, Goddess for Counterpoint Press, is currently the Reuters bureau chief in Chicago. Previously, Emily worked as a South Asia correspondent for the New York Times, reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic and many other topics from India, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Maldives. She also worked for The Associated Press and as a roving freelance foreign correspondent across five continents.

We’re also very pleased to share that we now have Substack and Bluesky accounts for The Ask podcast!

You can find us on Substack here: https://theaskpodcast.substack.com/

And you can find us on Bluesky here:
https://bsky.app/profile/theaskpodcast.bsky.social

In this episode of The Ask, award-winning author Elliot Ackerman discusses his work on Halycon.

From pivotal elections to crumbling marriages, from the Civil War to the Battle of Saipan, Halcyon is a profound and probing novel that grapples with what history means, who is affected by it, and how the complexities of our shared future rest on the dual foundations of remembering and forgetting.

Our Episode Guest:

Elliot Ackerman is the author of the novels Red Dress in Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing, Green on Blue, Places and Names, The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan and is the co-author with Admiral James Stavridis of the best seller 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. Ackerman is a former White House Fellow and Marine who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.

In this episode of The Ask, award-winning photographer Tony O’Brien takes us into the storm of the First Gulf War, from his perspective as a foreign correspondent for LIFE magazine.

Our Episode Guest:

Over the course of his decorated career as a photographer, Tony O’Brien has documented the lives of drug addicts on the streets of Washington, D.C., the struggle of Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet occupation of their country, and a British expedition climbing Mount Everest. 

As an overseas correspondent, his photographs have been featured in LIFE, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, and many other national and international publications. 

And he has two published books of his photography, Afghan Dreams: Young Voices of Afghanistan by Bloomsbury Publishing and Light in the Desert: Photographs from the Monastery of Christ in the Desert by the Museum of New Mexico Press

Tony’s photography has been exhibited at the Museum of Our National Heritage in Massachusetts, the Adham Center of Photography in Cairo, the Atrium Gallery at the Marion Center of Photographic Arts, and the Newseum, among others. 

In this episode of The Ask, award-winning author David French discusses his work on Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation

About the book:

Our Episode Guest:

A graduate of Harvard Law School and a constitutional lawyer long devoted to taking on religious liberty cases, David French has long been a leading conservative voice here in the United States.

A veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, David French was awarded the Bronze Star while serving with the Second Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, in Iraq from 2007 to 2008.

Today, David is a senior editor at The Dispatch, a contributing writer to The Atlantic, and the co-author of several books, including Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore, a New York Times bestseller.

In this episode of The Ask, award-winning author Elliot Ackerman discusses his work on The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan

About the book:

The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week, the week the war ended.

Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves a personal history of the war’s long progression, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11. It is a play in five acts, the fifth act being the story’s tragic denouement, a prelude to Afghanistan’s dark future.

Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war’s trajectory will find a trenchant account here. But The Fifth Act also brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, American and Afghan, who fought the war with courage and dedication, and at great personal cost.

Ackerman’s story is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.

Our Episode Guest:

Elliot Ackerman is the author of the novels Red Dress in Black and White, Waiting for Eden, Dark at the Crossing (a finalist for the National Book Award), and Green on Blue (a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize), as well as the memoir Places and Names, and is the co-author with Admiral James Stavridis of the best seller 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. Ackerman is both a former White House Fellow and Marine, and served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.

Get Involved:

The struggle to help at-risk Afghan allies continues. Here are links to several ways you, your friends, and your community can help out:

6 Ways to Welcome Our Afghan Allies – via whitehouse.gov

Join the national effort to help families fleeing from Afghanistan and Ukraine land on their feet – via welcome.us

In this episode of The Ask award-winning author and US Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay discusses his work on Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War

About the book:

From the National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment and Missionaries, an astonishing fever graph of the effects of twenty years of war in a brutally divided America, Uncertain Ground, is a powerful series of reckonings with some of our country’s thorniest concerns, written in essay form over the past ten years.

In the name of what do we ask young Americans to kill, and to die? In the name of what does this country hang together? As we see at every turn in these pages, those two questions have a great deal to do with each another, and how we answer them will go a long way toward deciding where our troubled country goes from here.

Our Episode Guest:

Phil Klay is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. His short story collection Redeployment won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics’ Circle John Leonard Prize for best debut work in any genre, and was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times. 

His nonfiction work won the George W. Hunt, S.J., Prize for Journalism, Arts & Letters in the category of Cultural & Historical Criticism in 2018. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and the Brookings Institution’s Brookings Essay series. 

He currently teaches fiction at Fairfield University. His debut novel, Missionaries, was released in October 2020 with Penguin Press.

In this episode of The Ask Peabody and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Doug Shultz discusses his work on THE LINE.

About the film:

U.S. Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher stood accused by his own platoon in the biggest war crimes trial in a generation. Now a new, four-part docuseries will examine the case and the blurred line between right and wrong.

Our Episode Guest:

Doug Shultz is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who has been creating provocative film and television for over 20 years. His work has screened at over 60 film festivals around the world and seen on outlets such as Netflix, Apple TV+, ABC, CNN, PBS, National Geographic, Discovery and Viceland, among others.

Doug has a reputation for bringing a cinematic eye and an unconventional edge to a wide range of subjects, from social and environmental issues, science and natural history to large-scale docudrama. He most recently directed and produced THE LINE, a four-hour investigative series exploring Navy SEAL Team 7 Alpha Platoon’s deployment to Mosul, Iraq and the war crimes trial of Chief Edward Gallagher, set to premiere on Apple TV+ in November 2021.

He also recently directed and shot the international Netflix series PANDEMIC: HOW TO PREVENT AN OUTBREAK, nominated for an EMMY for Outstanding Science & Technology Documentary, and produced the ABC / National Geographic Earth Day event, BORN WILD: THE NEXT GENERATION. Doug also recently directed the CNN series CHASING LIFE with Dr. Sanjay Gupta – also nominated for a 2020 EMMY for Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary – and an investigation into water scarcity and conflict, PARCHED: GLOBAL WATER WARS, for National Geographic.

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In this episode of The Ask we to speak to journalists Igor Kossov and Anna Myroniuk about their careers as journalists, the shocking changes at the launch of the Kyiv Independent in the aftermath of the turmoil at the Kyiv Post. And the looming Russian threat on the borders of Ukraine.

About the Kyiv Independent:

The Kyiv Independent is Ukraine’s English-language media outlet, created by journalists who were fired from the Kyiv Post for defending editorial independence. The Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s global voice, went silent on Nov. 8, 2021, days after celebrating the 26th year of its uninterrupted run.

The publication was shut down by the owner in his attempt to take full control of the newsroom that has always followed the principle of editorial independence.

Yet, the editorial team of the independent Kyiv Post refused to be silenced. If we couldn’t save the Kyiv Post brand, we could save its values. On Nov. 11, 2021, over 30 ex-Kyiv Post employees decided to continue the Kyiv Post’s legacy by launching a new publication – the Kyiv Independent.

Support the Kyiv Independent:

We would like to invite you to consider supporting unbiased and critical investigative English language journalism in Ukraine by subscribing to the Patreon for the Kyiv Independent. Your donations will help Anna, Igor and the rest of their team continue to hold the powerful accountable and be a voice for the powerless in Ukraine. You can learn more about the Patreon of the Kyiv Independent here:

https://www.patreon.com/kyivindependent/

Our Episode Guests:

Anna Myroniuk is the head of investigations at the Kyiv Independent. Anna has run investigative projects on human rights, healthcare, illicit trade as well as investigated presidents and oligarchs. She used to cover the war in the Donbas on the ground. Anna has written for Kyiv Post, Coda Story, OCCRP, The Independent and OpenDemocracy. She holds a Masters in Investigative Journalism from the City University of London, is a Chevening Scholar, and a finalist of the 2020 Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award.

Igor Kossov is an editor and investigative reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He has been an international journalist for over a decade, having covered conflict in the Middle East, investigated corruption in Ukraine and man-made environmental damage in Southeast Asia, along with many other topics. He has been published in the Kyiv Post, USA Today, The Atlantic, Politico, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy and other outlets.

Our Episode Guest Co-Host:

Cliff W. Gilmore, PhD, an honorably retired U.S. Marine Corps officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cliff holds a doctorate in organization and management with a specialization in leadership, strategic and crisis communication, and media relations.

Cliff now lives with his wife and ten-year-old daughter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he is a writer, consultant, and leadership coach.

In this episode of The Ask we to speak to Peabody awarded journalist, bestselling author and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sebastian Junger about his latest book: FREEDOM.

About the book:

In part based on an epic trip Sebastian undertook with three friends to walk the rail lines from Washington DC to Pittsburgh, Freedom is a deep dive into history, anthropology, sociology, psychology and sports science that asks the question:

What does it truly mean to be free?

What does it take to fight for it?

And what does it take to keep it?

Our Episode Guest:

Sebastian Junger is the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of THE PERFECT STORM, FIRE, A DEATH IN BELMONT, WAR, TRIBE and FREEDOM.   As an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a special correspondent at ABC News, he has covered major international news stories around the world, and has received both a National Magazine Award and a Peabody Award. Junger is also a documentary filmmaker whose debut film “Restrepo”, a feature-length documentary (co-directed with Tim Hetherington), was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.   

“Restrepo,” which chronicled the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, is widely considered to have broken new ground in war reporting.  Junger has since produced and directed three additional documentaries about war and its aftermath. “Which Way Is The Front Line From Here?”, which premiered on HBO, chronicles the life and career of his friend and colleague, photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed while covering the civil war in Libya in 2011.  “Korengal” returns to the subject of combat and tries to answer the eternal question of why young men miss war.   “The Last Patrol”, which also premiered on HBO, examines the complexities of returning from war by following Junger and three friends–all of whom had experienced combat, either as soldiers or reporters–as they travel up the East Coast railroad lines on foot as “high-speed vagrants.”

He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and has been awarded a National Magazine Award and an SAIS Novartis Prize for journalism. He lives in New York City

Our Episode Guest Co-Host:

Cliff W. Gilmore, PhD, an honorably retired U.S. Marine Corps officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cliff holds a doctorate in organization and management with a specialization in leadership, strategic and crisis communication, and media relations.

Cliff now lives with his wife and ten-year-old daughter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he is a writer, consultant, and leadership coach.