The devastating explosion in Lebanon last week is just one of many crisis causing profound suffering for the people there. The economic and political crises have been exacerbated by the Covid 19 pandemic bringing the country to the brink of collapse. What is behind these crises? What can be done? Doug Becker explores. [ dur: 58 mins. ]

• Bassel F. Salloukh is an associate professor of political science in the Department of Social Sciences at the Lebanese American University.  He is the co-author of The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon and Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World.
• Hannes Baumann is Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, Middle East Center. He is the author of Citizen Hariri: Lebanon’s Neoliberal Reconstruction.

This program is produced by the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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First, the difficulties of life under military occupation and a pandemic for the people of Kashmir. [ dur: 18 mins. ]

• 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.

Next, we revisit how privatization of militaries is compromising international conduct, and affecting international law and ethics in honour of Amy Eckert, who passed away this past week. She is the author of Outsourcing War: Just War tradition in the age of military privatization. [ dur: 39 mins. ]

• Amy Eckert is Professor of Political Science at the Metropolitan State University of Denver where she teaches and studies international ethics and international law. Her books include The Future of Just War: New Critical Essays and, her latest, Outsourcing War: Just War Tradition in the Age of Military Privatization.

This program is produced by the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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Federal troops occupy Portland despite local government’s demand that they leave. These troops often do not wear uniforms and have seized protesters off the streets in unmarked vans. We discuss the legal and political implications. We also examine the implications on democracy, civil liberties, and the protest movements that mark America’s cities. Doug Becker hosts. [ dur: 58mins. ]

• Jennifer L. Selin is a Kinder Institute Assistant Professor of Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. She is the co-editor of Sourcebook of United States Executive Agencies and co-author of Political Control and the Forms of Agency Independence.
• Nadine Strossen is John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School. She is the Immediate Past President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008). She is the author of HATE: Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship.
• David S. Meyer is Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Planning, Policy, and Design. He is the author of The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America and co-editor of The Resistance: The Dawn of the Anti-Trump Opposition Movement.

This program is produced by the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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What does the decisions made by the Supreme Court in 2020 mean for the future of American politics? What is the future of the Court? And how does this influence the relationship between the Supreme Court and the other branches of government? Doug Becker hosts. [ dur: 58mins. ]

• Sanford Levinson is W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas Law School. He is the author of many publications including Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It) and Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance.
• Erwin Chemerinsky is Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law and Dean at University of California Berkeley School of Law. His many publications include Closing the Courthouse Doors: How Your Constitutional Rights Became Unenforceable and We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century.
• Alison Dundes Renteln is Professor of Political Science, Anthropology, Public Policy and Law at the University of Southern California. She is the co-author of Global Bioethics and Human Rights and Cultural Law: International, Comparative, and Indigenous.

This program is produced by the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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States with controversial histories struggle to overcome the memories and how it influences contemporary politics. We explore whether the US is haunted by its racist past and what it must do to overcome this history. [ dur: 19mins. ]

• Jessica Auchter is UC Foundation Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She is the author of The Politics of Haunting and Memory in International Relations.

Universities want to appeal to their students, who increasingly look to their schooling as a training period for future employment. But this puts traditional liberal arts departments like philosophy at risk. We examine the future of liberal arts education in light of the trend to silo student training into pre-professional programs at the undergraduate level. [ dur: 37mins. ]

• Robert E. Williams, Jr. is Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University. He is the co-author of Seeking Security in an Insecure World and the co-editor of Arms Control: History, Theory, and Policy.
• Alexandra Monchick is Associate Professor of Musicology at California State University, Northridge. She is the author of Critical Thinking and Writing Strategies in the Music Bibliography Classroom.
• Michael Theune is Professor of English and University Writing Program Director at Illinois Wesleyan University. He is the co-author of We Need to Talk: A New Method for Evaluating Poetry.

This program is produced by the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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One of the most fundamental features of the Trump Administration is a policy of limiting immigration and reversing previous US policy on work visas, asylum, and deportation policy. Today we examine the status of this policy in light of recent US Supreme Court decisions and the Covid-19 Pandemic. Hosted by Douglas Becker, Assistant Professor (Teaching) of International Relations and Environmental Studies at USC, Los Angeles, CA. [ dur: 58 mins. ]

• Peter J. Spiro is a Professor of Law at Temple University, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. He holds the Charles Weiner Chair in international law. He is the author of Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization (Oxford University Press 2008) and Citizenship: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press).
• Hiroshi Motomura is a Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA, Los Angels, CA. He is a scholar of immigration and citizenship, with influence across a range of academic disciplines and in federal, state, and local policymaking. He has authored many books including Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (Oxford 2006) and Immigration Outside the Law.

This program is produced with contributions from the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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With the world facing multiple crises, we speak with three preeminent scholars from psychology, anthropology and philosophy about the crossroads before us and ways that we can navigate them for the betterment of humanity. [ dur: 58mins. ]

• David Livingstone Smith is a professor of philosophy at the University of New England. He is the author of Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind, The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others, and his latest On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist it.
• Ervin Staub is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His numerous publications include Overcoming evil: Genocide, violent conflict and terrorism, The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence, and The roots of goodness: Inclusive caring, moral courage, altruism born of suffering, active bystandership and heroism.
• Doug Fry is Professor & Chairperson in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. With Riane Eisler he has co-authored, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Minds, Lives, and Future. He is also the author of ,Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace and the editor of War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views.

This program is produced with contributions from the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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Tensions along the India/China border have left soldiers killed, emotions high, and the risk of war increasing. We examine the cause of these tensions and the importance of de-escalation on today’s show. Doug Becker hosts. [ dur: 34mins. ]

• Ritu Mathur is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Geography at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the author of the upcoming book Civilization-al Discourses in Weapons Control.

Then, how does privatization amount to what our guest calls a Constitutional Coup. [ dur: 24mins. ]

• 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.

This program is produced with contributions from the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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In days after the killing of George Floyd, protesters have made several demands to counter police violence and racism in the United States. Some of the demands directly relate to the history of race and violence in the nation, with a particular emphasis on the memory of the US Civil War. We explore the renewed campaigns to remove racially offensive public memorials. Hosted by Doug Becker [ dur: 27 mins. ]

• Brent Sasley is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas, Arlington. He is the co-author of the book Politics in Israel: Governing a Complex Society and the journal article Theorizing States’ Emotions.

In 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and overthrew the genocidal Khmer Rouge government. What have been the consequences of that decision and its impact? Hosted by Dough Becker. [ dur: 29 mins. ]

• Kosal Path is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Chair of Master’s Program in International Affairs and Global Justice at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is the author of the book Vietnam’s Strategic Thinking During the Third Indochina War.

This program is produced with contributions from the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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The brutal police killing of George Floyd, a middle-aged, unarmed, Black man, provoked a massive wave of protest across America. How did this killing come to represent a much broader set of injustices in American life? Will the protests lead to anything? To get some answers, David S. Meyer interviews scholars Dana Fisher and Rashawn Ray of the University of Maryland. [ dur: 48mins. ]

• Dana R. Fisher is a Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on questions related to democracy, activism, and environmentalism — most recently studying climate activism and the American Resistance. Her research employs a mixed-methods approach that integrates data collected through open-ended semi-structured interviews and participant observation with various forms of survey data. She is the author of the book, American Resistance. Twitter handle: @fisher_danar .
• Rashawn Ray is Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR) at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also one of the co-editors of Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public. Formerly, Ray was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, he is a Rubenstein Fellow at the Brookings Institute. He is co-author of How Families Matter: Simply Complicated Intersections of Race, Gender, and Work. His recent article titled, Bad apples come from rotten trees in policing.

Then, how power can breed immorality and hypocrisy. [ dur: 10mins. ]

• Adam Galinsky is the Chair of Management Department and Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School at Columbia University. He is the co-author of FRIEND AND FOE: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both​.​

This program is produced with contributions from the following team members: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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