Monthly Archives: February 2016

Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle- Adapting to Climate Change -/- Genocides, causes and prevention – February 28th, 2016

First, planet earth is facing a sixth extinction. Can humanity rescue the planet that it has imperiled? [ dur: 30 mins. ]

  • Annalee Newitz is journalist and author of Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. She is the founding editor of the science and science fiction website i09.com.
  • Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff member at The New Yorker. She is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, and her latest book The Sixth Extinction.

Then on our Scholars’ Circle panel, we analyze the causes of genocide and possible means of preventing them. [ dur: 28 mins. ]

  • Ben Kiernan is Whitney Griswold Professor of History and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. He is the author of, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, and The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79.
  • Alex Hinton is Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights, and Professor of Anthropology and Global Affairs at Rutgers University. He is the co-author of, Why Did They Kill?: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide, and is the editor of Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation (The Cultures and Practice of Violence), and Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide.
  • Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is the author of, Zero Degrees of Empathy, and he is the editor of Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from developmental social neuroscience, and The Maladapted Mind: Classic Readings in Evolutionary Psychopathology.

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle- Money & Media effects on Politics-/-Prisoners, a concern of human rights – February 21st, 2016

First, the money-media election complex keeps destroying the democratic process. How did we get here? And where are we headed? Robert McChesney author of Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media-Election Complex is Destroying America. [ dur: 28 mins. ]

  • Robert W. McChesney is a professor of communication at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois. His books include, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy, Dollarocracy: How the Money-and-Media-Election Complex is Destroying America, and The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again.

Then, we explore the effects of solitary confinement and the impact of harsh prison conditions on guards and prisoners. [ dur: 28 mins. ]

  • Hope Metcalf is an associate research scholar in Law, and Director of the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program. She teaches a clinic on prisoners’ rights in the United States. She is the co-author of reports Administrative Segregation, Degrees of Isolation, and Incarceration: A National Overview of State and Federal Correctional Policies, and Gideon at Guantanamo: Democratic and Despotic Detention
  • Philip Zimbardo is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University and current *core faculty at Palo Alto University. He is the creator of the The Stanford Prison Experiment. He is the author of numerous publications including The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Psychology and Life, and The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence.
  • Dr. Stuart Glassian is a psychiatrist who has formerly taught at Harvard Medical School. His is the author of reports, Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement, and Effects of Sensory Deprivation in Psychiatric Seclusion and Solitary Confinement.
    He has served as an expert on class-actions lawsuits regrading solitary confinement.

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle- Russian Politics Analyzed, Part 2 -/- New Media and Social movements- February 14th, 2016

First, while many in the West decry the politics of the former Soviet Union countries as corrupt and anti-democratic, our guest Professor Henry Hale argues, that there are much better ways of understanding the processes and politics of patronal systems. Part two of a two part discussion with Professor Henry Hale author of Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective. Part 1 of this discussion can be found here: [ dur: 20 mins. ]

  • Henry E. Hale is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University. His books include Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective, The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World and Why Not Parties in Russia? Democracy, Federalism, and the State.

Then, how have social movements changed in the twenty-first century and how have new communication technologies facilitated change? What makes some social movements sustainable and successful while others are more short term? What is the future for social movements? [ dur: 33 mins. ]

  • James M. Jasper is a Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Protest: A Cultural Introduction to Social Movements, ​T​he Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements and The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts.
  • Todd Wolfson is a Professor of Journalism and Media Studies and the Digital Media Coordinator for the MCIS Program at Rutgers University. He is the author of Digital Rebellion: The Birth of the Cyber Left and co-author of The Great Refusal Herbert Marcuse and the Contemporary Cycle of Struggle​​.​
  • Anita Lacey is Senior Lecturer in Political Studies at the University of Auckland. She is the co-author of Governing the Poor: Exercises of Poverty Reduction, Practices of Global Aid and Networks of social justice: Transnational activism and social change.

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle- Russian Politics Analyzed -/- American Media History of Reform – February 7th, 2016

First, while many in the West decry the politics of the former Soviet Union countries as corrupt and anti-democratic, our guest argues that there are much better ways of understanding the processes and politics of patronal systems. Part one of a two part discussion with Professor Henry Hale author of Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective. [ dur: 20 mins. ]

  • Henry E. Hale is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University. His books include Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective, The Foundations of Ethnic Politics: Separatism of States and Nations in Eurasia and the World and Why Not Parties in Russia? Democracy, Federalism, and the State.

Then, Professor Victor Pickard traces the history of American Media, particularly in the crucial period of the 1940s and 1950s when citizens and political leaders held vigorous debates about how media could best serve the public. What happened to lead us to where we are today?[ dur: 38 mins. ]

  • Victor Pickard is Assistant Professor of Communications at Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.  He is author of America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform and co-editor of Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done To Fix It

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