The Scholars' Circle

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The Scholars' Circle episodes

September 15, 2025Scholars’ Circle – Supreme Court allows deportation based on profiling ; The future of indigenous exhibits – September 14, 2025
How does the US Supreme Court decision to allow ICE to target immigrants based on language, accent, race, and employment affect the sweeps of undocumented immigrants in the US. And what are the social and economic impacts of Trump’s deportation policy? [ dur: 29mins. ]
Hiroshi Motomura is the Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States and his latest book Borders and Belonging: Toward a Fair Immigration Policy.
Tony Payan, Ph.D., is the Claudio X. Gonzalez Fellow in U.S.-Mexico Studies, the Françoise and Edward Djerejian Fellow for Mexico Studies and the executive director of the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. his publications include, Social and Economic Effects of Expanded Deportation Measures and TN Visa’s Role in the US Labor Market and Its Uncertain Future
Museums are changing their approach to exhibiting Native American artifacts. What is the new model and what is the impact? [ dur: 29mins. ]
Alaka Wali is the Curator of North American Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago. She is co-editor of The Future is Indigenous: Stories from the Native North American Hall at the Field Museum.
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.
59 min
September 07, 2025Scholars’ Circle – Threat to Freedom of expression in US ; Author interview on case for universal Child Care for working American – September 7, 2025
As part of an ongoing attack on free expression, Donald Trump is trying to criminalize flag burning. Is this proposed ban constitutional? [ dur: 29mins. ]
Dennis Baron is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a frequent commentator on language issues in the national media and has written a number of popular books, including What’s Your Pronoun? (2020).
Then, why is child care in America so expensive? This vital service that is so crucial for child and community development is among American families’ largest expenses. And why is child care so underfunded by the government? We speak with Elliot Haspel, author of Raising a Nation, 10 Reasons Every American Has a Stake in Child Care for All. [ dur: 29mins. ]
Elliot Haspel is a nationally recognized child care policy expert, a senior fellow at the think tank Capita. He’s the author of Crawling Behind America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It, but today we’re going to talk about his new book. The new book is entitled, Raising a Nation, 10 Reasons Every American Has a Stake in Child Care for All. Elliott Hospital is currently pursuing his PhD in early childhood policy at the University of Colorado, Denver.
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.
59 min
August 31, 2025Scholars’ Circle – Alien Enemies Act policy use to deport immigrants and asylum seekers – August 31, 2025
The Trump Administration is using the Alien Enemies Act to seize Venezuelans and ship them to a notorious prison El Salvador without due process. What can be done to protect and uphold the rule of law and human rights in the face of the Trump Administration’s rejection of them? What are some means of legal and political resistance when human rights are being violated? [ dur: 58mins. ]
Jennifer Selin is Associate Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. She’s written numerous articles, and in particular, Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador sparks light Legal questions likely to reach the Supreme Court.
Victor Narro is Project Director for the UCLA Labor Center and Core Faculty for the UCLA Department of Labor Studies. He teaches immigration law and is author of The Activist Spirit – Toward a Radical Solidarity and No One Size Fits All: Worker Organization, Policy, and Movement in a New Economic Age (Cornell University Press, 2018) and others.
Andrea Pitzer is an author and podcaster. She’s written One Long Night, a global history of concentration camps. This traces the idea of mass civilian detention without trial from its beginnings through Auschwitz and beyond, including up to today. She’s also the host of the podcast, Next Comes What.
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.
Recorded April, 2025.
58 min
August 24, 2025Scholars’ Circle – US role in South Caucasus Armenia Azerbaijan peace treaty – August 24, 2025
Will the so-called peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan legitimize ethnic cleansing? Will it bring peace to the two nations? Or is it a recipe for future conflict?
Military aggression and violations of the notion of sovereignty have marked the conflicts in the South Caucuses region over the last three decades. Will the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan continue this trend or will it avert claims to sovereignty?
This agreement brings the US directly into the South Caucuses. Will America answer the call if there is further military violence? [ dur: 58mins. ]
Anna Ohanyan is the Richard B. Finnegan Distinguished Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Stonehill College. She is the editor of Russia Abroad: Driving Regional Fracture in Post-Communist Eurasia and Beyond and her latest book The Neighborhood Effect: The Imperial Roots of Regional Fracture in Post-Communist Eurasia .
Narek Sukiasyan is Lecturer at the American University of Armenia. He specializes in foreign and security policy of Armenia and Armenia-Russia affairs. His publications include The Manifestations of Sunni Radicalism in Azerbaijan and Territorial Autonomy and Secession as Strategies of Conflict Management: Case of Nagorno Karabakh.
Steve Swerdlow, Esq. is Associate Professor of the Practice of Human Rights in the Department of Political and International Relations at the University of Southern California. He writes extensively as a human rights monitor for Human Right Watch in both the Central Asian region and in the Caucuses. He is the author of Commentary: Who’s Coming To Prague Castle For Dinner?.
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.
58 min
August 17, 2025Scholars’ Circle – Recognizing Palestinian statehood and what that would mean for the war in Gaza – August 17, 2025
After nearly two years of a war on Gaza, some countries in the West have indicated that they intend to recognize Palestine as its own state. What would such recognition mean for the conflict and how can the war end? [ dur: 58mins. ]
Mira Sucharov is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at Carlton University. She is the author of The International Self: Psychoanalysis and the Search for Israeli-Palestinian Peace and co-editor (with Aaron J. Hahn Tapper) of Social Justice and Israel/Palestine: Foundational & Contemporary Debates.
Omar Dajani is Carol Olsen Professor of International Law at the University of the Pacific. He is the editor of FEDERALISM AND DECENTRALIZATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EAST and Rethinking Oslo: How Europe can promote peace in Israel-Palestine. Omar Dajanhi was part of the Palestinian negotiation team at Camp David II in 2000 and has worked with the UN in peacebuilding initiatives, with a particular emphasis on building legal and judicial reforms in Palestinian governance.
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.
58 min
August 10, 2025Scholars’ Circle – Texas Re-districting ; Grandmother’s of Argentine’s disappeared – August 10, 2025
First, will Donald Trump’s and the republican party’s efforts to redraw electoral maps give them a permanent majority? [ dur: 24mins. ]
Jeremi Suri is Professor in the Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the co-author of “Problems with President Records are Not Just About Trump” with Kenneth Osgood. He is also the author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office. He is the host of the podcast This is Democracy.
Then, during the so called “dirty war,” Argentina’s military dictatorship kidnapped and disappeared its own citizens. But a dedicated group of activists, mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared, dedicated their lives to finding those who were stolen from their families. Who were the Abuelas of the Playa de Mayo? And what happened in their quest to reunite the disappeared with their families? We speak with the author of A FLOWER TRAVELED IN MY BLOOD: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children. [ dur: 34mins. ]
Haley Cohen Gilliland is a journalist and the director of the Yale Journalism Initiative. She is the author of A FLOWER TRAVELED IN MY BLOOD: The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children.
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.
58 min
August 05, 2025Scholars’ Circle – Corporation of Public Broadcasting funding cuts – August 3, 2025
Congress has now clawed back the funding it had allocated for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. What does this mean for the future of publicly funded broadcasting in the USA? How will it affect news, public affairs and other vital information delivery?
We will explore the role of public broadcasting in a democracy. What role does money play at ensuring an independent media? What is the status of public funding and even government owned media throughout the democratic world? [ dur: 58mins. ]
Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy and also the co-director of the Media Inequality and Change Center At the University of Pennsylvania. He’s the author of Democracy Without Journalism, Confronting the Misinformation Society. And America’s battle for media democracy, the triumph of corporate libertarianism, and the future Of media reform.
Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin is Associate Professor with the School of Public Service’s Global Studies program and the Frank and Bethany Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs for the Frank Church Institute at Boise State University. She has written, Decoding the Digital Church, Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump and last month published PBS and NPR are generally unbiased, independent of government propaganda And provide key benefits to U.S. Democracy.
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.
59 min
July 29, 2025Scholars’ Circle – Private Military Corporations and State responsibilities – July 27, 2025
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 Militarization matters: rhetorical resonances and market militarism. She is co-editor of Handbook of Private Military-Security Companies with Rita Abrahamsen.
This interview was recorded in July 2023.
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.
58 min
July 22, 2025Scholars’ Circle – Safe drinking water delivery in US ; Floods and aftermath in Ellicott City, Maryland – July 20, 2025
Although Access to safe drinking water is a human right, millions of people in the United States do no have access to safe water. Lead in the pipes is the most well-known cause but there are many others. What can be done to fix the nation’s water delivery systems? What have we learned from the Flint case? [ dur: 34mins. ]
Newsha Ajami is Chief Development Officer for Research at the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. She is the co-author of Building water resilience in the face of cascading wildfire risks and Infrastructure and the Digital Economy: Reinventing Our Role in the Design, Financing, and Governance of Essential Services for Society.
Benjamin J. Pauli is Associate Professor of Social Science at the Department of Liberal Arts at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. He is the author of Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis.
Segment 2: Why did Ellicott City flood not once, but twice in 22 months (July 2016, May 2018)? How can “once in a thousand years’ rainfalls happen so close to one another? How do cities respond to extreme weather? We speak with Ken Conca author of After the Floods: The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City.[ dur: 22mins. ]
Dr. Ken Conca is Professor of environment, development, & health at American University. He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy and his recent book After the Floods: The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City.
Music clip by Sam Cooke – Change is going to come
Poetry by Rachel Dillon – Dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem
This show was originally published Oct. 2023
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Maria Armoudian, Ankine Aghassian, and Sudd Dongre.
59 min
July 18, 2025Scholars’ Circle – Book Author interview – Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land ; Mining the Ocean Floor – July 13, 2025
The search for a safe haven for Jewish people in the early 20th Century led some Zionists to land on Galveston, Texas as a potential homeland for Jewish refugees.
What was the Galveston Movement and what happened to it? We interviews the author of a new book MELTING POINT: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land.[ dur: 35mins. ]
Rachel Cockerell is a writer and historian.
Then, the search for minerals is leading some corporations to begin mining the ocean floor but scientists warn that this could devastate fragile ecosystems that will have repercussions that we still don’t understand. What is going on in the deep sea? What precautions should be taken to prevent devastating fragile ecosystems?[ dur: 23mins. ]
Craig Smith is Professor of Oceanography at the University of Hawai’i.
Verena Tunnicliffe is a marine biologist at the University of Victoria in Canada where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Deep Ocean Research.
This program is produced by Doug Becker, Maria Armoudian, Ankine Aghassian, and Sudd Dongre.
58 min