The Scholars' Circle

Africa has experienced numerous coups in the last 2 years. Most recently, Niger and Gabon have both seen civilian governments toppled by militaries in the last month. What does this mean for the future of African governance? Hosted by Doug Becker. [ dur: 24mins. ]

* Brett Logan Carter is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California. He is the author of “Can Western Donors Constrain Repressive Governments? Evidence from Debt Relief Negotiations in Africa” , “Propaganda in Autocracies: Institutions, Information, and the Politics of Belief” ( co-authored with Erin Baggott Carter ) and the forthcoming article “How the New Cold War Will Shape Africa’s Future”.

The life of former Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Irving Robert Kaufman is the subject of a recent book. He condemned Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death. His life and times offer insight into how judges can sometimes act in unexpected ways in the pursuit of justice. Guest hosted by Tim Fadgen of the University of Auckland, NZ. [ dur: 24mins. ]

* Martin J. Siegel practices law in Houston, Texas. He teaches American Legal History at the University of Houston Law Center, where he also directs the Appellate Civil Rights Clinic. He is the author of Judgment and Mercy: The Turbulent Life and Times of the Judge Who Condemned the Rosenbergs.

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Mihika Chechi, Melissa Chiprin, and Sudd Dongre.

The criminal indictments of former President Trump have created a political crisis in their unprecedented nature. Historically, U.S. presidents have not faced criminal charges even in cases where there is a high likelihood of guilt, in large part due to respect for the office. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon embodies this norm.

What can the U.S. learn from other countries that have prosecuted former presidents? And what can we learn from American history about the prosecutions of political figures? Is the prosecution of former heads of state simply the weaponization of justice mechanisms? And how common is this political charge? [ dur: 58mins. ]

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Jeremi Suri is Professor in the Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office and his latest book Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight For Democracy. He hosts the podcast This is Democracy. 

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Tom Ginsburg is Leo Spitz Professor of International Law and Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. He is the author of the books The Endurance of National Constitutions, Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes,and co-author of the paper The Comparative Constitutional Law of Presidential Impeachment. 

* Ezequiel González Ocantos is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations, and a Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College, at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Shifting Legal Visions: Judicial Change and Human Rights Trials in Latin America, The Politics of Transitional Justice in Latin America: Power, Norms and Capability Building, and co-author of Prosecutors, Voters, and the Criminalisation of Corruption in Latin America(w/ Paula Muñoz, Nara Pavao & Viviana Baraybar).

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Mihika Chechi, Melissa Chiprin, and Sudd Dongre.

The economic conflict between Russia and the West started before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. How has the war in Ukraine affected it? How have the intense sanctions against Russia altered this economic war? Will the West remain unified in confronting Russia in this economic war?

In this episode, we will look at China, a potential Russian partner that could play a particularly significant role. Our discussion centers around a new book by Maximilian Hess, Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict between Russia and the West. [ dur: 58mins. ]

Maximilian Hess is a Central Asia Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the founder of the London-based political risk firm Enmetena Advisory.

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Mihika Chechi, Melissa Chiprin, and Sudd Dongre.

Farming around the world, and in particular in the US, has increasingly become centralized as large factory farming. What are the environmental, social, and philosophical implications of this mode of agricultural production? [ dur: 58mins. ]

Factory farming carry significant challenges on environmental protection, on pricing and the centralization of wealth, and on social issues such as animal welfare and animal rights. We discuss agricultural policies and the environmental impacts including carbon emission, climate change and pollution.

* John Ikerd is author, speaker and leader in sustainability. He is Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics from the University of Missouri. He is the author of the books Sustainable Capitalism: A Matter of Common Sense, Small Farms are Real Farms: Sustaining People Through Agriculture, Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture, and The Essentials of Economic Sustainability. Other publications –  Factory Farms–Things Everyone Should Know and Economic Realities of CAFOs.

* Kendra Coulter is Professor of Management and Organizational Studies at Huron University College and Fellow at Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She is the co-author of “Animal Protection: Organizational Constraints and Collaborative Opportunities,” author of Looking Forward to a Future Without Factory Farming, and Defending Animals: Inside the Front Lines of Animal Protection (forthcoming MIT Press, 2023)

* Gary L. Francione is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lincoln (UK). He is the author of Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals, The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? and Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation.

This show was recorded Aug, 2022.

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Mihika Chechi, Melissa Chiprin, and Sudd Dongre.

Do High profile cases like the Teamsters, UPS workers, unionization at Starbucks and Amazon signal a new labor awakening in American politics?

Labor organizers are using a large range of issues, including women’s rights, LGBTQ representation and pride, and environmental activism to attract new members. Is this changing the conceptual divide between “culture war” issues and economic issues? [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Lane Windham is Associate Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. She is the author of Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide and co-author of Explaining the erosion of private-sector unions.

* John Logan is Professor and Chair of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University. He is the author of Crushing Unions, by Any Means Necessary: How Amazon’s Blistering Anti-Union Campaign Won in Bessemer, Alabama, a Model for Labor’s Renewal? The Starbucks Campaign and High Octane Organizing at Starbucks.

* Leon Fink is Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the editor of Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History and author of In Search of the Working Class: Essays in American Labor History and Political Culture.

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Melissa Chiprin and Sudd Dongre.

Science is under attack. Who and what are behind the attacks? While we face catastrophic climate change and other pending disasters, how can we restore the public’s understandings about scientific realities? We explore disinformation and ways to communicate with non-scientists to loosen the grip the disinformants have on so many people. [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Lee McIntyre is with us. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a recent Lecturer in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He is the author of How to Talk to a Science Denier , Post-Truth, and the forthcoming On Disinformation (MIT Press, August 2023),

* Christopher Reddy is a senior scientist in the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and faculty member at MIT of the MIT/Woods Hole program in oceanography. He is the author of SCIENCE COMMUNICATION IN A CRISIS: An Insider’s Guide (Routledge; May 10, 2023).

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Melissa Chiprin and Sudd Dongre.

Private Military Corporations have become a growing element of the warfighting landscape. States have historically had a monopoly on the use of military force. But private corporations challenge this monopoly. How much do they increase the lethality and likelihood of war? How much can private corporations be regulated? And what are the challenges to regulation? We explore the political, military, legal, and socioeconomic implications of private military corporations. [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Ori Swed is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Texas Tech University. He is the editor of The Sociology of Privatized Security with Thomas Crosby. He is the author of “The Afghanistan War’s Legacy: The Reimagining of the Outsourcing of War and Security” and “No Accounting for Bad Contracting: Private Military and Security Contracts and Ineffective Regulation in Conflict Areas“

* Sorcha MacLeod is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and member of the United Nations Working Group on the use of Mercenaries. She is the author of Certifying Private Security Companies: Effectively Ensuring the Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights?, Defining private security accountability and Regulating human rights in the context of outsourcing military logistics and armed security.

* Christopher Kinsey is Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. He is the author of International Law and the Control of Mercenaries and Private Military Companies, Turning war into business: Private security companies and commercial opportunism and the book Corporate Soldiers and International Security: The Rise of Private Military Companies

* Anna Leander is Professor and Chair of the International Relations and Political Science Department at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She is the author of The Power to Construct International Security: On the Significance of Private Military Companies and

We interview the author of a new book CALIFORNIA, A SLAVE STATE (Yale University Press; June 27, 2023). Professor Jean Pfaelzer shows that, since the very first colonizers crossed the border, the Golden State was and still is powered by slavery – a piece of American history that many still try to bury.

* Jean Pfaelzer is a public historian, commentator, and professor of American studies at the University of Delaware. Her books include Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans, (Random House; University of California Press) as well Parlor Radical: Rebecca Harding Davis and the Origins of American Social Realism and The Utopian Novel in America. She lives in Washington, DC.

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Melissa Chiprin and Sudd Dongre.

The rights of persons with disabilities is a growing and important area of human rights. But what does it mean to ensure equal treatment under the law? What exactly is a disability, and who makes the judgment? And what do we mean by ableism? [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Lydia X. Z. Brown is Core Faculty in the Disabilities Studies Program at Georgetown University as well as Adjunct Professional Lecturer in the Critical Race, Gender and Culture Studies Program at American University. Lydia is the author of Ableist Shame and Disruptive Bodies: Survivorship at the Intersection of Queer, Trans, and Disabled Existence.

* Michael Ashley Stein is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. He is the editor of the book Mental Health, Legal Capacity and Human Rights.

* Joel Michael Reynolds is a senior advisor to The Hastings Center and an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Disability Studies at Georgetown University. He is the co-author of The Harm of Ableism: Medical Error and Epistemic Injustice and the author of Three Things Clinicians Should Know about Disability.

This interview was recorded in October, 2021.

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Melissa Chiprin and Sudd Dongre.

In the wake of the US Supreme Court decision that weakened the EPA’s capacity to protect wetlands, we explore the role of wetlands in sustainability, biodiversity, and the economy. What might the decision mean for our environment, and economy? We examine Sackett vs. EPA, in a broader context what this means for the implementation of the Clean Water Act, what it means specifically for wetlands. What is the implication of framing the EPA as being against economic development?

What exactly does “waters of the United States” mean as discussed in this decision? [ dur: 58mins.]

* David Keiser is Professor in the Department of Resource Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the co-author of The low but uncertain measured benefits of US water quality policy, Consequences of the Clean Water Act and the Demand for Water Quality and Economic effects of environmental crises: Evidence from Flint, Michigan.

* Richard N. L. (Pete) Andrews is a Faculty Fellow of the Institute for the Environment and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Public Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is the author of Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy.

 

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Melissa Chiprin, Mihika Chechi, and Sudd Dongre.