The Scholars' Circle

We spend the hour examining Brexit, what the election of Boris Johnson means for Brexit and a bitterly polarized British public and politics. What is the future of British economy? What the UK will likely look like in 2024? Doug Becker hosts.[ dur: 58mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

* Russell Foster is Lecturer in Britain and European Integration at King’s College London. His publications include Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George. Europe and the Limits of Integrating Identity, The Limits of Europe, and These Are Those That Faustus Most Desires: Identity, Iconography and Europe.

* Paul P. Craig is currently Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John’s College. His many publications include Brexit and the UK Constitution, The EU, Democracy and Institutional Structure: Past, Present and Future, and Brexit and Relations between the UK and the EU.

* Simon Radford is an independent scholar based in the UK. He is the author of Can donations buy you a British peerage: a study in the link between party, political funding and peerage nominations, 2005 – 2014.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

On the heals of more mass shootings in the United States, we examine the mindset, the trends and changes of a globally connected rightwing movement, then turn to solutions to the growing animosity between identity groups.[ dur: 58 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

* Dr. Lawrence Rosenthal is Chair and Lead Researcher of the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies. He is the co-editor of STEEP: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party, and The New Nationalism and the First World War.

* Brian Levin is Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism and Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University, San Bernardino. He is co-author of the book The Limits of Dissent and the publications and co-author of Report to the nation: hate crimes rise in US cities and counties in time of division and foreign interference and Posing the Why Question: Understanding the perpetration of racially motivated violence and harassment.

* Ervin Staub is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Founding Director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His extensive publications include Psychology of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, The Roots of Goodness and Resistance to Evil: Inclusive Caring, Moral Courage, and Altruism Born of Suffering, Active Bystandership and Heroism.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

First, how did corporations get civil rights? The two-hundred-year battle to give corporations personhood and constitutional protections. [ dur: 34 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

* Adam Winkler is Professor of Law at UCLA Law School. He is the author of Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms and We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights.

Then, how does privatization amount to what our guest calls a Constitutional Coup.[ dur: 23 mins. ]

* Jon Michaels is a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. He is the author of Constitutional Coup: Privatization’s Threat to the American Republic.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

First we looks at History of World Media Freedom. Jenifer Whitten-Woodring and Douglas A. Van Belle are the co-authors of the book Historical Guide to World Media Freedom – A Country-by-Country Analysis [ dur: 28mins. ]

* Jenifer Whitten-Woodring is an Assistant Professor of Political Science Department at University of Massachusetts Lowell.

* Douglas A. Van Belle is a senior lecturer in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.

Then we talk with one Stanford University scientist maps out the way to slow down climate change and even reverse some of the damage. [ dur: 30 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

* Marc 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)

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Contributing host Doug Becker takes on one of the most volatile international rivalries in the world, the conflict in South Asia between Pakistan and India. No issue embodies this rivalry more clearly than the region of Jammu and Kashmir. Resolving this issue would ease tensions between these two nuclear powers. What’s driving the conflict in Kashmir? Would granting the region independence lead to peace? How much is this conflict driven by local actions in the region and how much is it fueled by policies in Islamabad and New Delhi? How can we resolve it? [ dur: 58mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ.

* T.V. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. He is the author of numerous publications including his latest books Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era and The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era.

* Mona Bhan is Ford Maxwell Chair of South Asian Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Syracuse University. She is the author of Counterinsurgency, Development, and the Politics of Identity: From Warfare to Welfare? and co-editor of Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, with scholars from the Critical Kashmir Studies collective.

Report from Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Right on Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir. Link.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

We spend the hour looking at the environmental impact of the US military. How much does the US military pollute the environment? What is their role in climate change causing green house emissions? The military has taken some measures to reduce its impact on the environment and green gas emissions, but our guests say these measures do little to assuage the military’s bigger effects on climate change. What are these effects and what can be done about them?[ dur: 58mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

* Benjamin Neimark is Senior Lecturer at the University of Lancaster, United Kingdom. He is the author of Speaking Power to ‘Post-Truth’: Critical Political Ecology and the New Authoritarianism and co-author of Hidden carbon costs of the “everywhere war” Logistics, geopolitical ecology, and the carbon boot‐print of the US military.

* Oliver Belcher is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Durham University, United Kingdom. He is the author of Anatomy of a village razing: Counterinsurgency, violence, and securing the intimate in Afghanistan, and co-author of Hidden carbon costs of the “everywhere war” Logistics, geopolitical ecology, and the carbon boot‐print of the US military.

* Neta C. Crawford is Professor of Political Science and Department Chair at Boston University. She is the author of the book Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post-9/11 Wars and the research paper Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change,and the Costs of War

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

First, how one man infiltrated the Nazi cells and foiled their plots to sow chaos in Los Angeles. Steven J. Ross is the author of Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America.[ dur: 33mins. ]

* Steven J. Ross is Professor of History at USC. He is the author of Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics and Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America.

Then, how have our ancestors dealt with earlier changes in the climate and environment? What does it tell us about our current situation? [ dur: 23mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

* Professor Simon Holdaway is the Head of School, School of Social Sciences, at the University of Auckland. He is the author of A Record in Stone: The Study of Australia’s Flaked Stone Artefacts and Geoarchaeology of Aboriginal Landscapes in Semi-arid Australia. His publications also includes, The Effects of Holocene Landscape Changes on the Formation of the Archaeological Record in the Fayum Basin, Egypt

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Then, climate change is here. How does climate change affect conception? [ dur: 15 mins. ]

* Alan Barreca is Associate Professor at the Institute of the Environment & Sustainability at UCLA. He is the author of the research papers Does hot weather affect human fertility? He is the co-author of Maybe Next Month? Temperature Shocks, Climate Change, and Dynamic Adjustments in Birth Rates , and Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the U.S. Temperature-Mortality Relationship over the 20th Century

Then, designing peace in divided societies. How do you make peace after fatal conflicts and loss of lands? What is the role of identity in conflict and peacemaking? [ dur: 43 mins. ]

* Neophytos Loizides is Professor and Chair in International Conflict Analysis in the School of Politics & International Relations (POLIR) at the University of Kent. He is the author of The Politics of Majority Nationalism: Framing Peace, Stalemates, and Crises and Designing Peace: Cyprus and Institutional Innovations in Divided Societies. He is also the co-editor (with Oded Haklai) of Settlers in Contested Lands: Territorial Disputes and Ethnic Conflicts.

* Dr. Madura Rasaratnam is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the Department of International Politics at City University of London. She is the author of Tamils and the Nation: India and Sri Lanka Compared.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

First, how is international law changing for human rights and for war? Our guest says we are moving from protecting state security to increasingly protecting individual security. The shifts are influenced by the human rights frame and are reshaping what she calls “humanity’s law.” [dur: 15mins. ]

* Ruti Teitel is Professor of Comparative Law at the New York Law School and Visiting Professor at London School of Economics. She is Chair of Global Law and Justice Colloquium and Founding Co-Director of the Institute for Global Law, Justice and Policy at New York Law School. She is the author of numerous publications including Humanity’s Law and Globalizing Transitional Justice.

Then, the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is the most broad sweeping attempt to ban nuclear weapons. Guest host Doug Becker looks at the motivations behind the treaty, its relative importance on nuclear states decisions, and its prospect for eventual adoption.[ dur: 42mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

* Ira Helfand, MD is co-chair of the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)’s Nuclear Abolition Committee. He is also a member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)’s International Steering Committee. He has co-authored PSR’s “Nuclear Famine: 2 billion at Risk?“

* Wayne Glass is Professor Emeritus in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He is the former Senior Defense Policy Advisor to Senator Jeff Bingaman on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

Is the age of privacy over? We spend the hour on technology, spying and privacy, exploring how privacy, and the lack of it, affects security, democracy and society. What exactly is at stake when we lose our privacy? [ dur: 58 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

* Helen Nissenbaum is Professor of Information Science at Cornell Tech. She is the author of Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life, and co-author of Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest and Values at Play in Digital Games.

* Michael Patrick Lynch is Professor of Philosophy & Director of the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data, True to LIfe: Why Truth Matters and In Praise of Reason.

* Bruce Schneier is Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He is the author of 14 books including the New York Times best-seller Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World, and The Electronic Privacy Papers: Documents on the Battle for Privacy in the Age of Surveillance. His blog is “Schneier on Security.”

* Joshua A.T. Fairfield is William Donald Bain Family Professor of Law at Washington and Lee School of Law. He is the author of Owned: Property, Privacy and the New Digital Serfdom, Privacy as a Public Good , and Smart Contracts, Bitcoin Bots, and Consumer Protection.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.