The Takeaway

The new book, “Crossing Borders: The Reconciliation of a Nation of Immigrants,” compiles the stories of people and families fleeing their homes in different parts of the world. Like many refugees today, the characters in this book are fleeing because of violence, corruption, poverty, or climate change. The book highlights many of the difficulties they face as they arrive at the doorstep of the United States, and the failures of American institutions to assist and protect them. 

We spoke to the book's author, Ali Noorani. He is a long time immigration policy expert and President and CEO of the National Immigration Forum.

It’s been 8 months since the Taliban re-captured control of Afghanistan, following the United States’ withdrawal from the country. Almost immediately, there were concerns over what this would mean for Afghanistan's women and girls. Since the Taliban regained power, there’s been a rollback of their rights, including banning them from government jobs and policing what they wear. 

Now education is under threat. Just last week, the Taliban announced that girls’ high schools will be closed indefinitely, meaning that female students above the sixth grade will not be able to attend school. 

This happened just a week after the education ministry announced that schools would open for all students. Schools will remain closed for girls until they can come up with a plan in accordance with Islamic law and Afghan culture. 

The Taliban’s decision has prompted outrage from the international community, as well as teenage girls in Afghanistan. They’re taken to the streets in protest in Kabul, demanding the right to education. 

For more on this, The Takeaway spoke with Shabana Basij-Rasikh, co-founder and president of the School of Leadership Afghanistan boarding school.

According to the United Nations, in Haiti, a country of over 11 million people, a rising food crisis is threatening nearly half the population with acute food insecurity and severe hunger.  Political instability, inflation, recurring disasters exacerbated by climate change, and challenges in Haiti’s agricultural capacity are all catalysts for the food crisis.  To make matters worse, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is also expected to drive food shortages around the world in a time where global food prices are at an all time high.  Because Haiti is a major importer of food and fertilizer, the disruption in the global market caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine is expected to exacerbate food insecurity in Haiti.

To learn more about the food crisis in Haiti, The Takeaway spoke with Roseval Supreme, Country Director for Action Against Hunger in Haiti.

On Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill – dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by opponents – into law. 

The law bans public schools from teaching kindergartners through third-graders about sexual orientation and gender identity, it also prevents teachers from discussing these topics in a manner that is “not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” LGBTQ advocates worry that language could extend to students beyond third grade. And the law allows parents to sue the school districts for violations.

Earlier this month, while the bill was moving through the Florida legislature, high school students across Florida staged walk outs to protest the bill. Last week, Disney employees in Burbank, California ​​walked off the job to protest Disney’s tepid response to the bill. On Monday, Disney released a statement condemning the law. And the bill even grabbed some attention at the Oscars last weekend.

A law like this could hurt LGBTQ students. A 2021 report from the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that helps prevent suicide in LGBTQ young people, says that LGBTQ youth who learned about LGBTQ issues in school were 23 percent less likely to report a suicide attempt.

It’s not just a hypothetical that a law like this could pass in states beyond Florida. According to The Hill, lawmakers in fifteen other states have introduced legislation limiting how gender and sexual orientation can be discussed in schools.

For more, we speak with Heather Wilkie, Executive Director of the Zebra Coalition, a nonprofit that helps support LGBTQ Youth in Central Florida. 

Maternity ward closures are increasingly common. According to recent reporting by Vox, many of these closures are happening primarily in rural areas and predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods.

For more on this, The Takeaway spoke with Alecia McGregor, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Politics at Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and Katy Backes Kozhimannil, professor at the University of Minnesota and director of the university’s Rural Health Program.

According to some estimates, millions of people in the U.S. could still be suffering from long Covid related symptoms, including brain fog, extreme exhaustion, and irregular heartbeat. But despite the widespread nature of the problem, many people have experienced challenges when attempting to qualify for disability benefits due to long Covid. We hear from Georgia Linders about her experience with long Covid and then speak with Washington Post reporter Christopher Rowland about his reporting on long haulers applying for benefits.

The 94th Academy Awards became quite tense on Sunday when Will Smith got on stage and slapped Chris Rock in response to an insensitive joke that Rock made about Jada Pinkett Smith. Shortly after the incident, Smith won the Oscar for Best Actor and gave a speech about family and protecting the people you love.

The takes on the incident have ranged from insightful to groan inducing to flat out racist. The Takeaway takes a step back and speaks with Mark Anthony Neal, James B. Duke Distinguished professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University and host of the podcast, "Left of Black," about what this moment revealed about Black masculinity and race in mass media.

Recent reporting from the American Association of University Professors has traced an uptick in the targeted harassment of faculty members, most often those accused of having a liberal bias and of teaching “controversial” topics. 

The Takeaway spoke with Eric Ruiz Bybee, associate professor in the department of teacher education at Brigham Young University, about his recent experience of being harassed by conservative groups after standing up for a colleague who assigned students coursework on whiteness.

Plus, Chris Surprenant, Professor of Ethics, Strategy, and Public Policy Director of the University Honors Program and Director of the Urban Entrepreneurship and Policy Institute at the University of New Orleans, shares how he has been targeted for receiving scholarly funding from a conservative philanthropy organization called the Charles Koch Foundation.

Across California, cities are dealing with a housing crisis that has resulted in dramatic increases to rent and housing prices. California’s state universities are also coping with a housing shortage.

Most recently, the lack of student housing has aggravated town-gown tensions in the city of Berkeley, California, where a group of local residents have sued the University of California, Berkeley for increasing campus enrollment, claiming that students seeking housing are now aggravating the existing shortage.

Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods sued UC Berkeley in 2018 under the California Environmental Quality Act. The lawsuit cited the university’s failure to adequately mitigate the environmental impacts of increasing enrollment. This included traffic, party noise, pricing out local residents, and diverting emergency services. Last year, Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods had a temporary win when UC Berkeley was ordered by a superior-court judge to freeze enrollment at 2020-2021 levels. An appeal on this case from UC Berkeley was rejected by the California Supreme Court earlier this month, which would have required the university to slash its admissions. But soon after, state legislators passed a bill that allowed Berkeley to move forward with its planned 2022 fall enrollment. Now UC Berkeley has 18 months after the court ruling to complete an environmental review.

We spoke with Phil Bokovoy, president of Save Berkeley’s Neighborhood and Harry La Grande, vice chancellor emeritus for student affairs at the University of California, Berkeley, and Interim Vice President of Student Experience at California Institute of the Arts. 

The UN OHCHR estimates that more than 1,000 civilians have already been killed in Ukraine by the Russian military.

We speak with Valerie Hopkins, reporter for The New York Times currently based in Ukraine, about the situation.