politics

#463 Musa al-Gharbi: Academic Freedom, Trump and the 2016 Elections, and Political Polarization

Apr 30, 2021

Dr. Musa al-Gharbi is a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in the Department of Sociology, and a Mellon-Sawyer Fellow on Trust and Mistrust of Experts for the Interdisciplinary Center on Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE), in partnership with the American Assembly, at Columbia University. His research explores how knowledge is produced, transmitted, evaluated and put to use (or not) — and how people’s thinking is shaped by the social contexts they find themselves in. He applies these lenses to a range of topics including race, inequality, social movements, extremism, policing, national security, foreign policy — and more recently — U.S. political elections. More»
#459 Bear Braumoeller - Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age

Apr 22, 2021

Dr. Bear F. Braumoeller is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Ohio State University. He previously held faculty positions at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is or has been on the Editorial Boards of five major journals or series, and he is a past Councilor of the Peace Science Society. In the summer of 2016 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway. Dr. Braumoeller’s research is in the areas of international security and computational social science. His current research focus is on the relationship between international order and international conflict. He is the author of The Great Powers and the International System (winner of the 2014 International Studies Association Best Book Award and the 2014 J. David Singer Book Award) and Only the Dead: The Persistence of War in the Modern Age (Oxford University Press, 2019). More»
#456 Henry Greely - CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans

Apr 15, 2021

Dr. Henry Greely is currently the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor by courtesy of Genetics at Stanford University, and also an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He specializes in the ethical, legal, and social implications of new biomedical technologies, particularly those related to neuroscience, genetics, or stem cell research. He is a founder and president of the International Neuroethics Society; a member of the Multi-Council Working Group of the NIH’s BRAIN Initiative, whose Neuroethics Working Group he co-chairs; a member of the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of the National Academies; and chair of California’s Human Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee. He’s also the author of The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction, and more recently, CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans. More»
#452 Christopher Bail - Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing

Apr 5, 2021

Dr. Christopher Bail is Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Data Science at Duke University, where he directs the Polarization Lab. A leader in the emerging field of computational social science, Dr. Bail’s research examines fundamental questions of social psychology, extremism, and political polarization using social media data, bots, and the latest advances in machine learning. Dr. Bail is the recipient of Guggenheim and Carnegie Fellowships. His research appears in top journals, such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Sociological Review. His book, Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream, received three awards and resulted in an invitation to address the 2016 Democratic National Convention. He is the author of the recent book, Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing. More»
#439 Eric Kaufmann - Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities

Mar 5, 2021

Dr. Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He is principally interested in cultural politics: ethnicity, national identity and religion. He’s the author of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities. More»
#428 Stanley Fish - There's No Such Thing as Free Speech

Feb 8, 2021

Dr. Stanley Fish is Professor of Law at Florida International University and Visiting Professor of Law at Cardoso Law School. In addition to being one of the country’s leading public intellectuals, Professor Fish is an extraordinarily prolific author whose works include He has authored over 200 scholarly publications and books. While his research covers a variety of fields, Professor Dr. Fish has written for many of the country’s leading law journals. including Stanford Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Yale Law Journal, University of Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, and Texas Law Review. His books include Is there a Text in This Class? Interpretive Communities and the Sources of Authority (1980); There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too (1994); Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (1995); The Trouble with Principle (1999); How Milton Works (2001); and The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump (2019). More»
#425 Azar Gat - Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism

Feb 1, 2021

Dr. Azar Gat is the Ezer Weizman Professor of National Security at Tel Aviv University, in Israel. He is the founder and head of the University's International Program in Security and Diplomacy Executive Master’s Program in Diplomacy and Security. He’s also the author of books like A History of Military Thought, War in Human Civilization, and Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. More»
#417 Rick Shenkman - Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics

Jan 14, 2021

Rick Shenkman is the founder of George Washington University's History News Network, the website that features leading historians' perspectives on current events. He is a New York Times best-selling author of seven history books. His latest book is Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics. Mr. Shenkman is an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and the former managing editor of KIRO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Seattle. In 1997 he was the host, writer and producer of a prime-time series for The Learning Channel inspired by his books on myths. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. He gives lectures at colleges around the country on several topics, including American myths and presidential politics. More»
#250 Rachel Kleinfeld: A Savage Order; Decivilization, Dirty Deals, And Recivilization

Nov 1, 2019

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She’s a leading expert on how democracies – including the United States – can improve, with a particular focus on countries facing poor leadership, polarized populations, violence, and corruption. She advises governments, philanthropists, and activists on how democracies make major social change. In 2010, Time magazine named Dr. Kleinfeld one of the top 40 political leaders under 40 in America. She serves on the boards of various for-profit companies and social sector organizations that align with her passion for issues on the intersections of security, human dignity, and empowerment. From 2011–2014 she served on the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, which advised the Secretary of State quarterly. She’s the author of three books, the most recent one being A Savage Order: How the World's Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security. More»