The Scholars' Circle

We re-broadcast an interview with William Greider based on his book Come Home America. He passed away on December 25 2019.

* William Greider an author, journalist. He was the author of Secrets of a Temple on the Federal Reserve Bank and Come Home America, the Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country.

Then, how successful is the UN in achieving its sustainable development goals for poverty reduction, economic development, environmental protection, and political empowerment? This interview is hosted by Doug Becker.

* Pamela Chasek, is a Professor of Political Science at Manhattan College. Among many publications, she is the author of Earth Negotiations: Analyzing thirty years of environmental diplomacy.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

First, why do people seem to know so little about politics? And what does that mean for democracy? We speak with Arthur Lupia author of Uninformed: Why People Know So Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It.[ dur: 27 mins. ]

* Arthur Lupia is the Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and Chair of National Research Council’s Roundtable on the Application of Behavioral and Social Science. He is the co-author of The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know?, Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality, and the author of his latest book Uninformed: Why People Know So Little About Politics and What We Can Do About It.

Finally, what is love? Is it emotional? Is it biological? Can it be summoned by rational decision and how does it play out in society? [ dur: 28 mins. ]

* Simon May is a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Kings College London. He is the author of Love: A History and Nietzsche’s Ethics and his War on ‘Morality’​.​

* Bennett W. Helm is a Professor of Philosophy at Franklin & Marshall College. H​e is the author of​ Love, Friendship, and the Self: Intimacy, Identification, and the Social Nature of Persons and Emotional Reason: Deliberation, Motivation, and the Nature of Value.

* Dr. Robert Epstein is a Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. He is currently working on a book called Making Love: How People Learn To Love, and How You Can Too, which is based on his research on how love emerges over time in arranged marriages. He is also the author of, Cognition, Creativity, and Behavior: Selected Essays.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

A study suggests that the powerful feel less empathy. Does it have implications for society? [ dur: 18mins. ]

* Michael Inzlicht is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He is co-author of Stereotype Threat: Theory, Process, and Application and co-author of the article Power Changes How the Brain Responds to Others

Then, while advances in neuroscience are making great leaps in understanding humanity, scholars and doctors disagree on what neuroscience does and does not tell us about what it means to be human. Are we our brains? Do we have free will? How far can neuroscience take us? [ dur: 40 mins. ]

* Dr. Sally Satel is lecturer at Yale University, a resident scholar at AEI and the staff psychiatrist at a methadone clinic. She is co-author of One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture Is Eroding Self-Reliance and Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience.

* Patricia S. Churchland is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. In 1991, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Her books include Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, and Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, Eastern Ukraine has been a site of conflict. Russophones in Ukraine, armed by Russia and joined by Russian nationals, launched a revolt to break from Kyiv. Following months of fighting, the area became a frozen conflict. Each week brings new casualties but little territory has changed hands. We spend the hour discussing the causes of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, the impact of the internationalization of the war, and potential pathways to peace. Doug Becker hosts. [ dur: 58 mins. ]

* Robert English is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War and The Other Side: How Soviets and Americans Perceive Each Other.

* Oxana Shevel, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science at Tufts University. She is the author of Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe and the book chapter Memory of the Past and Visions of the Future: Remembering the Soviet Era and its End in Ukraine.

* Dr. Tor Bukkvoll is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment. His publications include, Tools of Future Wars – Russia is Entering the Precision-Strike Regime and Fighting on behalf of the state – the issue of pro-government militia autonomy in the Donbas war.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Why do sustainable business initiatives so often fail? What fundamental changes we need from societies and the economic system to stem a climate change induced collapsed? What economic systems might work on a planet with a finite capacity to sustain life? [ dur: 58 mins.]

* Christopher Wright is Professor of Organisational Studies, Discipline of Strategy, Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney Business School.

* Daniel Nyberg is Professor of Management at Newcastle Business School and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney. Together they have co-authored Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations: Processes of Creative Self-destruction.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

We spend the hour on good food politics, the food revolution, and the movements to build equitable and sustainable food systems. First, we’re joined by Will Allen author of Good Food Revolution. [ dur: 25 mins. ]

* Will Allen is the author of Good Food Revolution and the founder of the non-profit Growing Power.

Then, our guests have studied the food system and what it means to have an equitable and sustainable system. What are the problems in the system and what are the solutions? [ dur: 33 mins. ]

* Saru Jayaraman is Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley . She is the co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United) which has more than 18,000 worker members, 200 employer partners, and several thousand consumer members in a dozen states nationwide. She is the author of Behind the Kitchen Door and her latest Forked: A New Standard for American Dining.

* Raj Patel is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy – a New York Times and international best-seller – and his latest, co-written with Jason W. Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. He co-hosts the fortnightly food politics podcast The Secret Ingredient .

Raj Patel and Saru Jayaraman are contributors to The Nation magazine’s special issue, “The Future of Food: Setting the table for the next generation“.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Since March, 2014, Ukraine has been in the grips of a bloody civil war in the Eastern part of its country. Forces loyal to Kyiv fight forces loyal to Moscow, with international interference a primary feature of this conflict. How has the Trump Administration’s foreign policy complicated ongoing peace efforts in Ukraine? We examine the causes of this conflict. Hosted by Professor Doug Becker. [ dur: 27mins. ]

* Robert English is Associate Professor of International Relations, Slavic Languages and Literature and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals and the End of the Cold War and The Other Side: How Soviets and Americans Perceive Each Other.

Then, scholars note that the world is waging fewer wars, but that the wars that are waged are more brutal and intractable.[ dur: 30mins. ]

* George A. Lopez is the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is the editor of The Sanctions Enterprise: Assessing a Quarter-Century of UN Action for Peace, Security and Human Rights.

* Ervin Staub is Professor of Psychology at the University of Massettuces, Amherst. He is the author of The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others.

* Norrin M. Ripsman is Monroe J. Rathbone Professor in the International Relations Department at Lehigh University. He is the author of Peacemaking from Above, Peace from Below: States, Societies, and Peace Between Regional Rivals and the co-editor of The Political Economy of Regional Peacemaking.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Does Trump use Nazi-Style rhetoric? Our guest says yes. [ dur: 17 mins. ]

* David Livingstone Smith is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England. He is the author of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, How Biology Shapes Philosophy and Why We Lie: Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind.

Then, what are the causes of the rapid rate of species extinction and what can be done. [ dur: 41 mins. ]

* Anthony Barnosky is Executive Director of Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, and an Emeritus Professor of Integrative Biology at University of California Berkeley. He is the author of Dodging Extinction—Power, Food, Money and the Future of Life on Earth and co-author of Tipping Point for Planet Earth—How Close Are We To The Edge (with Elizabeth Hadly).

* Stuart Pimm is Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University. He is the author of A Scientist Audits the Earth, The Balance of Nature? Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities, and Patterns in Nature: The Analysis of Species Co-Occurences.

* David Wilkie is Director of Conservation Measures for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He is the author of Hunting for consensus: reconciling bushmeat harvest, conservation, and development policy in West and Central Africa, Valuation of consumption and sale of forest goods from a Central American rain forest, and Impacts of protected areas on local livelihoods in Cambodia.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Why were CIA agents reading French philosophy? [ dur: 22mins. ]

* Gabriel Rockhill is a philosopher, cultural critic and political theorist. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University and Founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop at the Sorbonne. In this interview, we ask about his published paper The CIA Reads French Theory: On The Intellectual Labor of Dismantling The Cultural Left. In it, he focused on the reasoning behind why the CIA wanted to dismantle cultural left in France soon after the end of World War II. He is the author of Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy, Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics and Radical History and the Politics of Art.

What is the Code Economy and what does it have to do with the future of work. Some people argue that machines will take over jobs. But our guest argues that perhaps humanity will reinvent work in a way that’s more aligned with what it means to be human. [ dur: 36mins. ]

* Philip Auerswald is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. He is the author of The Code Economy: A Forty-Thousand Year History, The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Economy and he is the editor of Iraq, 1990-2006 3 Volume Set: A Diplomatic History Through Documents.

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

First, we speak with Steven Weisman, editor of the book “Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary” which weaves compelling read of carefully selected from a 10,000 page collection of Senator Moynahan’s correspondence, housed at the Library of Congress. [ dur: 18 mins. ]

* Steven Weisman is a vice president for publications and communications at Peterson Institute for International Economics and formerly served as chief international economics correspondent of the New York Times. He is the editor of the book Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary.

As California burns, oceans rise, storms intensify, and Greenland’s glacier’s melts, we explore solutions to the climate change problem with Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson. He is the author of the just released study The health and climate impacts of carbon capture and direct air capture.

* Mark Jacobson is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University. He’s also the Co-Founder of The Solutions Project, 100.org, and the 100% Clean, Renewable Energy Movement. He is the author of A path to sustainable energy by 2030 (Scientific American, 2009); 100% clean and renewable wind, water, sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States (Energy & Environmental Sciences, 2015; 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for 139 countries of the world (Joule, 2017); and 100% clean, and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for 53 towns and cities in North America (Sustainable Cities and Society, 2018)

This program is produced with generous contribution from Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.