The Dissidents

Welcome to the Radical Roots of Ethnic Studies, a series of the Dissidents Podcast, with your co-hosts, Jennifer Richmond and Brandy Shufutinsky. In this series we explore the radical roots of liberated ethnic studies, how extreme ideology is infiltrating our schools with the aim to indoctrinate instead of educate, and our search for solutions to empower parents, teachers and students, giving them the tools to embrace inquiry and to express their individuality.

Hamas’ recent terrorist attack in Israel has garnered the support of the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies (CLES), a group that is designing curricula for K12 education and is involved in teacher training, funded in large part by California taxpayers. In this episode we discuss CLES’ support of Hamas, the subtle and sloganized language used by CLES and Hamas supporters that conflates hatred and terrorism with “resistance”, CLES Ethnic Studies curricula’s ideological emphasis on Palestine, and the release of recent curricula surrounding the attack that fails to address the nuance and complexity of the conflict.

Coalition for Empowered Education

Institute for Liberal Values

Podcast Notes:

Neo-Confederacy & Palestinian Ultranationalism: How Prejudice is Justified Through the Myth of “Lost Civilization”, Dmitri Shufutinsky in ISGAP Flashpoint, Feb 27, 2023

The Cult of ‘Antizionism’, Izabella Tabarovsky in Tablet Magazine, Sept 19, 2023

*You can find Izabella’s Afterword to Letters in Black and White on the Truth in Between website.*

*You can find the Coalition for Empowered Education’s downloadable letter to California superintendents on the Institute for Liberal Values website.”

In this week's podcast Elizabeth Weiss, Professor of Anthropology and fellow at the Center for Academic Pluralism, joins us to talk about bones!  We discuss research ethics, respect for artifacts, the preservation of research materials, and academic freedom in anthropology and beyond. Current and future access to documents, laboratory spaces, databases, and physical objects are at risk. Also at risk is exposure to diverse and challenging ideas in anthropology research and education.  We talk about contemporary social and political challenges surrounding the categorization of bones and the related ideological hypocrisies the field is actively avoiding.  Elizabeth gives us a brief overview of her most recent cancellation experience: a panel discussion originally accepted for the American Anthropological Association conference was deemed potentially harmful and removed from the schedule.  She invites us to hear the canceled panel discussion on November 8, offered through Heterodox Academy.

Podcast Notes:

Sign up for "[UNCANCELED] Let's Talk About Sex Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains A Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology" by clicking here: https://t.co/hrsArQWnun Wednesday, November 8th at 4 - 6 pm ET

Books by Elizabeth Weiss: Reading the Bones: Activity, Biology, and Culture (2017) and Repatriation and Erasing the Past (2020).

Materials about the AAA cancellation: https://elizabethweiss74.wordpress.com/discussing-sex-is-no-longer-allowed-at-anthropology-conferences/

Elizabeth Weiss article in Quillette: The Problem of Sex Discrimination in Indigenous Archaeology (quillette.com)

Elizabeth Weiss piece in Spiked: There’s no such thing as a nonbinary skeleton - spiked (spiked-online.com)

Article by Kathleen Lowrey about the canceled AAA panel: https://compactmag.com/article/how-anthropology-canceled-sex

Executive Director of Speech First, Cherise Trump, and Elizabeth Spievak discuss the state of free speech on college campuses.  Cherise gives us an overview of her work at Speech First to promote open discourse as an essential component of a comprehensive education. We talk about the importance of being exposed to different and challenging ideas to build strength and resilience, as well as the difficulties faced by students and faculty alike in the current socio political climate.  Throughout, the issues and challenges of free speech are framed in the context of liberal values.

Podcast Notes

https://speechfirst.org/

https://twitter.com/cherisetrump

In this week's podcast, Mike and Elizabeth discuss an article about the responsibility of journalists in reporting, specifically reports about the war in Ukraine.  The authors suggest that consumers of the news may be traumatized by seeing 24/7 coverage, perhaps even more traumatized and demoralized than those who are living in a war zone. The description of potential harm and the fragility of readers or viewers is reminiscent of that which is leveraged by some social justice advocates, and the authors narrowly escape a call for censorship.

Podcast notes:

Su, Z., McDonnell, D., Cheshmehzangi, A., Bentley, B. L., Ahmad, J., Šegalo, S., da Veiga, C. P., & Xiang, Y.-T. (2023). Media-induced war trauma amid conflicts in Ukraine. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(4), 908–911. 

Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics: spj.org/ethicscode.asp

⁠Institute for Liberal Values⁠

In this week's podcast, Mike and Elizabeth discuss research on leadership and stress.  In what may at first seem like counterintuitive findings, military and government leaders had lower levels of the stress related hormone cortisol than non-leaders. A sense of control was a significant mediator of anxiety and stress. We talk about contemporary labor relations and social applications of the findings, as well as some similar research that clarifies who may benefit the most from a sense of control in the workplace. 

Podcast notes:

Sherman, G. D., Lee, J. J., Cuddy, A. J. C., Renshon, J., Oveis, C., Gross, J. J., & Lerner, J. S. (2012). Leadership is associated with lower levels of stress. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(44), 17903–17907.

Welcome to a new series of the Dissidents Podcast with your co-hosts, Jennifer Richmond and Brandy Shufutinsky. In this series we explore the radical roots of liberated ethnic studies, how extreme ideology is infiltrating our schools with the aim to indoctrinate instead of educate, and our search for solutions to empower parents, teachers and students, giving them the tools to embrace inquiry and to express their individuality.

This week we speak with David Smolansky, a mayor in exile from Venezuela. David tells his personal story living through the transition from democracy to socialism in Venezuela. His experience guides our discussion on various trends in education then & there in Venezuela to the here & now in the United States.

Podcast References:

David’s Victim’s Of Communism Witness Video: https://victimsofcommunism.org/witness/david-smolansky-urosa/

Politicization of the Classroom: From Radical Roots to Government Mandate Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnUmScJhEKs&t=5s

In this week's podcast Elizabeth and Mike talk with Lee Jussim about the new "Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry."  Lee, distinguished professor of psychology at Rutgers, joined an interdisciplinary group of professors from many institutions in creating a set of principles that offer contemporary guidelines for the revitalization of higher education's core mission.  The document addresses the special and honorable duties of universities to foster freedom of thought and to actively avoid becoming political or ideological battlegrounds.  We alternate between frustration, worry, and hope in our discussion and examples of the challenges ahead for ensuring access to a truly liberal education.

Podcast Notes

Princeton Principles: 

https://jmp.princeton.edu/princeton-principles-campus-culture-free-inquiry

Chicago Statement: 

https://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/FOECommitteeReport.pdf

Kalven Report: 

https://provost.uchicago.edu/reports/report-universitys-role-political-and-social-action

Political Compass: 

https://www.politicalcompass.org/

Society for Open Inquiry in Behavioral Science: 

https://openinquirybehavio.wixsite.com/oibs

Lee's Substack: 

Unsafe ScienceSocial science, common sense, and skepticism applied to controversial topics, and

Welcome to a special “Liberal Conversations Series” of the Dissidents Podcast. 

In this series we invite guests who have resources, ideas, and viewpoints that will challenge us to reflect on liberal values, what they are, how they are applied, their impact on us as individuals, and why they matter for the larger communities in which we live.  

In this episode, Brandy Shufutinsky and Elizabeth Spievak discuss intercultural and academic opportunities that can enhance liberal democratic ideals. Brandy gives us an overview of her upcoming course and its usefulness for teachers, parents, and laypeople.  The course and our discussion of current challenges in education, from the broad and sociopolitical to the personal and specific, are framed in the context of liberal values. 

Podcast Notes

https://freeblackthought.substack.com/p/i-am-not-your-negro

https://sapirjournal.org/education/2022/08/day-schools-and-dei-a-parents-perspective/

https://www.jns.org/jns/antisemitism/23/6/11/294273/

Register for Brandy’s course starting October 26, 2023:

https://bit.ly/464tnH8

In this week's episode Mike and Elizabeth discuss the group based emotions we experience as a result of our membership in, or identification with, a group. The article we chose focuses on the motivations for those emotions: first, it feels good to feel like we belong, and second, experiencing group emotions enhances our sense of connectedness. We discuss the good and the bad of group emotions, and explore examples that span the abstract and philosophical, to the personal and political.   

Podcast Notes:

Porat, R., Tamir, M., & Halperin, E. (2020). Group-based emotion regulation: A motivated approach. Emotion, 20, 16–20.

Welcome to a new series of the Dissidents Podcast with your co-hosts, Jennifer Richmond and Brandy Shufutinsky. In this series we explore the radical roots of liberated ethnic studies, how extreme ideology is infiltrating our schools with the aim to indoctrinate instead of educate, and our search for solutions to empower parents, teachers and students, giving them the tools to embrace inquiry and to express their individuality.

This week we speak with Kofi Montzka, an attorney, wife and mother. In March, Kofi spoke out at a Minnesota Legislature assembly against a bill mandating ethnic studies. According to Kofi, radical or critical ethnic studies may assuage white guilt, but teaches kids of color a hopelessness that affects their ability to succeed. These educational agendas institutionalize a bigotry of low expectations, amounting to a new form of racism in our schools.

https://empowered-ed.org/

Podcast References:

Teaching Hopelessness to Kids of Color

Kofi Montzka Addresses the MN Legislature