The Scholars' Circle

Inflation is real. But the reporting on it has been remarkably uninformed. We talk about the real issues the US economy faces, what is driving the inflation rate, and what are the long term implications of it. [ dur: 30mins. ]

* Dean Baker is Senior Economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Research Policy. He is the author of The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive and co-author of Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People.

Arms control discourses are centered around western notions of modernity and civilization. What does it mean to decolonize the language around arms control? How is it accomplished? [ dur: 28mins. ]

* Ritu Mathur is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Geography at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the author of Civilizational Discourses in Weapons Control.

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

The pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of the supply chain, with its emphasis on lowering cost without regard to resilience of disruptions. Can government and industry cooperate to build resilience without adding prohibitive cost to production? How responsible is the government to managing the supply chain? What are the larger issues of global supply and production models? [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Christopher S. Tang is Distinguished Professor, Edward W. Carter Chair in Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean of Global Initiatives at UCLA. He is the co-author of Supply Chain Risk Management and the co-editor of Operations Management Models with Consumer-Driven Demand.

* Eleftherios Iakovou is the Harvey Hubbell Professor of Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University and the Director of Manufacturing and Logistics Innovation Initiatives at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station. He is the co-author of Sustainable supply chain management in the digitalisation era: The impact of Automated Guided Vehicles and, with Chelsea White, the co-author of How to build a more secure, resilient, next-gen U.S. supply chain.

* Chelsea C. White III is the Schneider National Chair in transportation and logistics and is a professor at the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is the co-author of Mobile Access Hub Deployment for Urban Parcel Logistics and How to build a more secure, resilient, next-gen U.S. supply chain with Eleftherios Iakovou.

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

After world leaders met in Glasgow to mitigate the climate crisis, what exactly did they discuss? What was in the agreement and what does that mean for the future of the planet? We break down some of the specific agreements and the language used to confront the climate crisis. How does a promise to “phase down” the use of coal fall short of the required action to confront the crisis? What role should indigenous peoples, largely unrepresented at the meetings, play at administering these carbon reductions? [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Reynaldo A. Morales is Assistant Professor at Northwestern University with a joint faculty appointment at the Medill School of Journalism & Media and the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. He is the author of Building Global Indigenous Media Networks: Envisioning Sustainable and Regenerative Futures Around Indigenous Peoples’ Meaningful Representation.

* Klaus Weber is a Professor of Management & Organizations and the deputy director of the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. He is also affiliated with the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern. He is the author of Organizational Structure from Interaction: Evidence from Corporate Sustainability Efforts.

* Shannon Gibson is Associate Professor of Political Science, International Relations, and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of the forthcoming book Politics of Global Environment.

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

Climate Change is an existential threat that demands bold action and a transformation of how humanity uses its resources. Concepts like “net zero” and “carbon offset” have done little toward decreasing the amount of greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere. Is the current legal and voluntary structure adequate to meet the challenge of climate change? Are we up to the challenge? [ dur: 58mins. ]

* William Moomaw is Emeritus Professor of international environmental policy and founding director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. He is the co-founder and current co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts. Professor Moomaw has been a lead author of five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports. He is the author of Intact Forests in the United States: Proforestation Mitigates Climate Change and Serves the Greatest Good and Scientist Diplomats or Diplomat Scientists: Who Makes Science Diplomacy Effective?

* LeRoy Westerling is Professor of Management of Complex Systems at Ernest and Julio Gallo Management Program at the University of California, Merced. He is the co-author of Greater Temperature and Precipitation Extremes Intensify Western U.S. Droughts, Wildfire Severity, and Sierra Nevada Tree Mortality.

* Christopher Wright is Professor of Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney Business School. He is the co-author of Climate Change, Capitalism, and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-Destruction.

* Prue Taylor is the Deputy Director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law. She is Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland. She is the author of Opportunity within Failure: Can the Global Pact for the Environment Learn from Responsibility to Protect? and a book chapter on Responsibility for the Ecological Integrity of the High Seas: The Role of Natural Law.

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

Algorithms reflect the biases of the society in which they exist and the programmers who create them. There has been a social and political reaction against their use. How do algorithms govern social and political interactions? What is the most proper use of algorithms? And what are the biases that persist in their use? [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Tina Eliassi-Rad is a Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University. She is also a core faculty member at Northeastern’s Network Science Institute and the Institute for Experiential AI. She is the author of Measuring Algorithmically Infused Societies and What Science Can Do for Democracy: A Complexity Science Approach.

* Damien Patrick Williams is PhD candidate in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. He is the author of Why AI Research Needs Disabled and Marginalized Perspectives, Fitting the description: historical and sociotechnical elements of facial recognition and anti-black surveillance, and Constructing Situated and Social Knowledge: Ethical, Sociological, and Phenomenological Factors in Technological Design.

* Henning Schulzrinne is Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Colombia University. He is the co-author of Mobility Protocols and Handover Optimization: Design, Evaluation and Application, Bridging communications and the physical world and Future internets escape the simulator. He was nominated as Internet Hall of Fame Innovator in 2013. He was Chief Technology Officer for the FCC under the Obama Administration.

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

Cameroon has seen increased violence and an ongoing civil war based on its linguistic, sectarian divide. Can the nation survive? How much is this a democracy deficiency and how much is this failure of leadership? How can Cameroon overcome its governance challenges? Then we examine the civil war in Cameroon which continues with clashes between the Franchophone and Anglophone populations, protests against violations of federalism agreements were met with state led violence. What were the impacts? We’ll hear from one of the organizers.

Earlier this month, an oil spill devastated parts of the ecosystems off the coast of Southern California. We explore how to limit the destruction arising from oil production and spills during the transition away from fossil fuels. [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Deborah Gordon is Senior Principal in the Climate Intelligence Program at Rocky Mountain Institute where she leads RMI’s Oil and Gas Solutions Initiative. She is also a senior fellow at the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University and the principal investigator for the Oil Climate Project. She is the author of No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World.

* Ron Tjeerdema is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology and the Donald G. Crosby Endowed Chair in Environmental Chemistry in the College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences at University of California, Davis. He is the co-author of A Tale of Two Spills: Novel Science and Policy Implications of an Emerging New Oil Spill Model, Environmental variations and toxicological responses and Effects of dispersed and un-dispersed oil on developing topsmelt embryos.

* Jill Sohm is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of the Program at the University of Southern California. She is the co-author of Microbial mats of the Dry Valleys: oases of activity in the cold desert and The distribution and relative ecological roles of autotrophic and heterotrophic diazotrophs in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica.

* David Ginsberg is Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California. He is the co-author of Effects of depth-cycling on nutrient uptake and biomass production in the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera and Methane Reduction Potential of Two Pacific Coast Macroalgae During in vitro Ruminant Fermentation.

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

David Lloyd speaks with the world-renowned Kenyan novelist, playwright and poet, critic and widely influential postcolonial theorist, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. They explore the problem of colonization of languages, his commitment to writing in his native language, and his incarceration and exile for political dissidence. And with the panel they discuss a new book of essays on his work, Ngũgĩ in the American Imperium. [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Timothy J. Reiss is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at New York University and recently a visiting scholar at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. His many books include Against Autonomy: Global Dialectics of Cultural Exchange. He is the editor of Ngũgĩ in the American Imperium.

* Noenoe K. Silva is Kanaka Hawai’i from Kailua, O’ahu, and professor of Hawai’ian and Indogenous Politics in the Department of Politics and Cooperating faculty Kawaihuelani Center for Hawai’ian Language at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She is the author of Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawai’ian Resistance to American Colonialism and The Power of the Steel-Tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawai’ian Intellectual History. She is a contributor to Ngũgĩ in the American Imperium.

* Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine. Among his many writings are Decolonising the Mind, Globalectics and his memoir Detained recently recast as Wrestling with the Devil. His most recent novel is Murogi wa Kagogo, published in English as Wizard of the Crow. His rendering of the Gikuyu epic, The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi, appeared in 2019. He has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes.

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, David Lloyd, and Sudd Dongre.

The death penalty in the United States has faced increased opposition based on ethical, political, and legal concerns. Several states have outlawed it, but the federal government has returned to its use with a feverish wave of state executions last year. We discuss the implications of the use of the death penalty in the US and examine additional forms of extreme sentencing, such as life without parole. [ dur: 58mins. ]

* Frank R. Baumgartner is the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He is the co-author of The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence and Deadly Justice: A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty.

* Lee Kovarsky is Bryant Smith Chair in Law and Co-Director of the Capital Punishment Center at The University of Texas in Austin School of Law. He is the author of The Trump Executions and the co-author of The Death Penalty: Concept and Insight.

* Jenny-Brooke Condon is a Professor of Law in the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall Law School. She directs the Equal Justice Clinic. She is the author of When Cruelty is the Point: Constitutional Restraints and Remedies for Family Separation and Denialism and the Death Penalty.

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