Donald Trump has asserted himself with the power of the US into multiple ceasefires and conflict negotiations. How does this comport with US policy historically? What might be his motivation? [ dur: 58mins. ]

• Amy Skonieczny Professor at San Francisco State University in the International Relations Department. She is the author of a book chapter titled The Trump Shock: Populism and Changing Narratives of US Foreign Policy and author of Globalization and The Occupy Movement: Media Framing of Economic Protest
• Mary Jane Parmentier is a clinical professor in the School for the Future of Innovation and Society, and the College of Global Futures at Arizona State University. Her publication appears in Teaching Global Development edition. Author  of article Cross-National Active Learning in Global Development Studies: De-Colonizing the Curriculum .
• Lui Hebron, formerly of California State University. He is the editor of Asian Security in the Age of Globalization.

(continua…)

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Robert Redford’s passing reminds us that perhaps his greatest legacy is his support for independent film. So on today’s show, what is the impact of independent film on the industry? How has independent film changed in recent years. How has the major shift toward streaming affected our access to independent films? [ dur: 58mins. ]

• Cynthia Baron is a Professor of Arts in Department of Theater & Film at Bowling Green State University. She is the author of Modern Acting: The Lost Chapter of American Film and Theatre and Acting Indie – Industry, Aesthetics, and Performance.
• Sherry B. Ortner is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA. She is the author of Not Hollywood: Independent Film at the Twilight of the American Dream and Screening Social Justice – Brave New Films and Documentary Activism.
• Dan Mirvish  ( website ) is a director, screenwriter, producer and author. His films include 18 1/2 and Bernard and Huey. He is the author of The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking. He is also co-founder of Slamdance film festival showcasing independent films.

Suggestions of films made by independent film makers which broke new grounds in film making:

• Dan Mirvish : Bong Joon Ho’s ( link ) first film: Barking Dogs Never Bite , Chris Nolan’s ( link ) first film: Following the film that beat Chris’ film Following at Slamdance, Chi Girl by Heidi Van Lier another one I mentioned was Low, directed by Lise Raven, produced by Frank Hudec ( link ), Omaha (the movie) by Dan Mirvish.
• Sherry B. Ortner : Anything by Kirby Dick ( link ) and Charles Ferguson ( link ) – Inside Job . Documentaries from Brave New Films.
• Cynthia Baron : Films by Debra Granik film Winter’s Bone, films by Gus Van Sant ( link ), Films in the archive of LA rebellion ( link ) among them Charles Burnett ( link ), Juli Dash ( link ), Monona Wali ( link ) and Haile Gerima ( link ).

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.

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Political violence is on the rise, we get insight into why it happens and ways to mitigate it’s occurrence. With scholars of politics, social inquiry and criminal justice. [ dur: 58mins. ]

• Roger Petersen is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science at MIT. He is the author of Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, Resentment in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe, Death, Domination, and State-Building: The US in Iraq and the Future of American Military Intervention, and Emotions and backlash in US society and politics.
• David L. Altheide is a Regents Professor Emeritus on the faculty of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. He is the author of Terrorism and the Politics of Fear, The Media Syndrome and Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump.
• Brian Levin is Director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism and Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University, San Bernardino. He is co-author of the book The Limits of Dissent and co-author of the publications Report to the nation: hate crimes rise in US cities and counties in time of division and foreign interference, Posing the Why Question: Understanding the perpetration of racially motivated violence and harassment, and Fact Sheet: Anti-Asian Prejudice 2020 (March 2, 2021).

This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian and Sudd Dongre.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 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 between Armenia & Azerbaijan brings the US directly into the South Caucuses. Will American 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Arts and Humanities, Politics and Activism, Society and Culture, Communication, Radio Arts

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