All posts by host

Scholars’ Circle – Unleashing of Cyber-attacks that kill ; Green washing techniques we should know – September 22, 2024

September 23, 2024 host

Cyber operations and cyber threats have become a greater fear in world politics and everyday life. But just how much of a threat are they? And how have they changed the way nations interact and conduct diplomacy? Hosted by Doug Becker. [ dur: 26mins. ]

Brandon Valeriano is Assistant Professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University.
He is the co-author of Cyber Strategy: The Evolving Character of Cyber Power and Coercion and Cyber War versus Cyber Realities: Cyber Conflict in the International System.

Then, greenwashing culture. How journalism, the entertainment industry and museums impact our environment. Hosted by Maria Armoudian. [ dur: 30mins. ]

Toby Miller is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate Division at the University of California, Riverside and Director of the Institute for Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University London. He is the author and editor of over 40 books. His numerous publications include, Greenwashing Culture, Greenwashing Sports, The Routledge Companion to Global Cultural Policy (co-editor), and The Sage Companion to Television Studies (co-editor).

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Ways to Stop violence among Kids ; Addressing generational traumas experienced by children – September 15, 2024

September 15, 2024 host

School shootings have sadly become a part of American life over the last two decades. From the 2000–01 to 2021–22 school years, there were 1,375 school shootings at public and private elementary and secondary schools, resulting in 515 deaths and 1,161 injuries. What are the causes of all of this violence? What are the best ways to address this epidemic of violence, and stop these shootings? How effective can citing parents as liable and even bring charges against them when children shoot other children. [ dur: 34mins. ]

Ron Avi Astor holds the Marjorie Crump Chair Professorship in Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs with a joint appointment in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He is the co-author of Bullying, School Violence and Climate in Evolving Context and An eighteen‑year longitudinal examination of school victimization and weapon use in California secondary schools.

Mass shootings in the Unites States are unprecedented in advanced industrial democracies. We explore the psychological impact of these shootings on the survivors and witnesses, with a particular attention to the children who experience this trauma. What are effective actions to confront the traumas experienced by the children who survive school shootings? Overwhelming the response of mass shootings is to “do something.” But what should we as a society and as an electorate do in response to these mass shootings? [ dur: 24mins. ].

This is an excerpt from our June, 2022 interview, listen to the complete interview visit the post here.

Karla Vermeulen is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Disaster Mental Health and an Associate Professor of Psychology at SUNY New Paltz.She is the author of Generation Disaster: Coming of Age Post-9/11 and co-editor of Disaster Mental Health Case Studies: Lessons Learned from Counseling in Chaos.
Robin Gurwitch is a Professor in the Duke University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and is Senior Advisor for the Terrorism and Disaster Program of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. She is the co-author of Children in Disasters and Trauma-Directed Interaction (TDI): An Adaptation to Parent-Child Interaction Therapy for Families with a History of Trauma. Resource – National Child Traumatic Stress Network – Talking to children about shooting.
Heather Littleton is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado, at Colorado Springs, and Research Director at the Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience. She is the co-author of “PTSD near and far: Symptom networks from two to 12 months after the Virginia Tech campus shootings.” And “Can people benefit from acute stress? Social support, psychological improvement, and resilience after the Virginia Tech campus shootings” as well as numerous publications on sexual violence and the trauma of the LGBTQI+ community.

More resources are available at:

https://www.newpaltz.edu/idmh/

https://www.nctsn.org/resources/talking-children-about-shooting

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Refugees right to return in international law ; Effects of earth’s magnetism on birds, whales, bees and turtles – September 8, 2024

September 9, 2024 host

States have legal requirements to receive refugees and can return them after a conflict ends. But does this mean there is a right of return? What are the conditions of the right of return? Is it conditional on the provision of security for the state to which they are returning? [ dur: 40mins. ]

Susan Akram is Clinical Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. She directs Boston University Laws International Human Rights Clinic. Her published works include International Law and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: a Rights-Based Approach to Middle East Peace, “A Comparative Perspective on Safe Third and First Country of Asylum Policies in the United Kingdom and North America: Legal Norms, Principles and Lessons Learned” and Palestinian Refugees.

How do birds, bees, whales and turtles use the earths magnetic field to guide their behavior? [ dur: 18mins. ]

Andres Vidal Gadea is Professor of Molecular Neuroethology at Illinois State University. He is the co-author of Magnetosensitive neurons mediate geomagnetic orientation in Caenorhabditis elegans and Factors that influence magnetic orientation in C. elegans. JCPA.

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

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Scholars’ Circle – Right of Self-Determination ; Civil War politics examined- September 1, 2024

September 1, 2024 host

Kamala Harris declared that the Palestinians must live in dignity, security and self determination. But what is the right of self determination? How has it been practiced legally and practically throughout history? And does self determination mean independence? [dur: 30mins.]

Hurst Hannum is Professor of International Law Emeritus at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is the author of, Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights, Rethinking self-determination and Rescuing Human Rights: A Radically Moderate Approach.

While the US Civil War ended slavery, it didn’t end the political issues that caused the war. What exactly happened in the immediate aftermath of the war?

Book Cover of Civil War by Other Means has an red X on the title of the book

The political divide in the US from the Civil War persists today. We discuss the history of the period and its impact on contemporary politics with Jeremi Suri author of the book Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight For Democracy . [ dur: 28 mins. ]

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.

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Scholars’ Circle – Bangladesh students revolt that ousted its president – August 25, 2024

August 25, 2024 host

What led to the overthrow of Bangladesh’s leader Sheikh Hasina? Were they political, economic, or social reasons? Or the promises of what advocates are calling a “second wave of independence”?
What does the new Bangladeshi government need to build upon this political moment? What can the government do to successfully democratize and economically develop the nation? [ dur: 58mins. ]

Ali Riaz is Distinguished Professor at the Department of Politics and Government at Illinois State University. He is the author of Pathways of Autocratization – The tumultuous journey of Bangladesh politics.
Mathilde Maitrot Senior Lecturer, Department of Social & Policy Sciences Centre for Development Studies at the University of Bath. She is the co-author of an article Discipline, development and duress: the art of winning an election in Bangladesh.

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Scholars’ Circle – Reforming Supreme Court of United States ; How proxy wars are dominating international relations – August 18, 2024

August 18, 2024 host

With the upcoming election Democrats have proposal to reform Supreme Court with term limits, ethics oversight and many more. Our panel look at how and why people are concerned over the influence peddling related to recent decisions. Hosted by Maria Armoudian. [ dur: 35mins. ]

Erwin Chemerinsky is the Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. His many publications include, most recently, Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights, and The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State (with Howard Gillman).
Andrew Koppelman is John Paul Stevens Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Increasingly Dangerous Variants of the “Most-Favored-Nation” Theory of Religious Liberty and The Supreme Court and the new religious aristocracy in the Hill.

Why do states choose to use third parties to intervene in other nation’s civil wars and political conflicts? On today’s show we interview Andrew Mumford on the legality, efficacy, and implications of the waging of proxy warfare. Hosted by Doug Becker. [ dur: 21 mins. ].

This interview was recorded in February 2020.

Andrew Mumford is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at The University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author about Proxy Warfare Counterinsurgency Wars and the Anglo-American Alliance.

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Scholars’ Circle – President Biden chooses to step down and Kamala Harris ascendancy to lead the Democratic Party into November 2024 election – August 11, 2024

August 11, 2024 host

We explore the choice of Kamala Harris as the Democratic party’s candidate despite not running in primaries, the choice of President Biden to withdraw from the race, whether he should step down and what the decision means for age and service in the US, and some of the policy implications such as Supreme Court reform and foreign policy. [ dur: 58mins. ]

Jeremi Suri is Professor in the Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office and his latest book Civil War by Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight For Democracy. He hosts the podcast This is Democracy.
Peter F. Trumbore is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Oakland University. He is the author of Brexit, the Border, and Political Conflict Narratives in Northern Ireland, with Andrew Owsiak. and Running on Foreign Policy? Examining the Role of Foreign Policy Issues in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 Congressional Campaigns.
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 and, with Cynthia Levinson, Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws that Affect Us Today.

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Scholars’ Circle – Catastrophic consequences of Factory Farming – August 4, 2024

August 5, 2024 host

Farming around the world, and in particular in the US, has increasingly become centralized as large factory farming. What are the environmental, social, and philosophical implications of this mode of agricultural production? [ dur: 58mins. ]

Factory farming carry significant challenges on environmental protection, on pricing and the centralization of wealth, and on social issues such as animal welfare and animal rights. We discuss agricultural policies and the environmental impacts including carbon emission, climate change and pollution.

John Ikerd is author, speaker and leader in sustainability. He is Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics from the University of Missouri. He is the author of the books Sustainable Capitalism: A Matter of Common Sense, Small Farms are Real Farms: Sustaining People Through Agriculture, Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture, and The Essentials of Economic Sustainability. Other publications – Factory Farms–Things Everyone Should Know and Economic Realities of CAFOs.
Kendra Coulter is Professor of Management and Organizational Studies at Huron University College and Fellow at Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She is the co-author of “Animal Protection: Organizational Constraints and Collaborative Opportunities,” author of Looking Forward to a Future Without Factory Farming, and Defending Animals: Inside the Front Lines of Animal Protection (forthcoming MIT Press, 2023)
Gary L. Francione is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lincoln (UK). He is the author of Why Veganism Matters: The Moral Value of Animals, The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation? and Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation.

This show was recorded Aug, 2022.

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Scholars’ Circle – A book author interview: History of California as a Slave State – July 28, 2024

July 28, 2024 host

We interview the author of a new book CALIFORNIA, A SLAVE STATE (Yale University Press; June 27, 2023). Professor Jean Pfaelzer shows that, since the very first colonizers crossed the border, the Golden State was and still is powered by slavery – a piece of American history that many still try to bury. [ dur: 58mins. ]

Jean Pfaelzer is a public historian, commentator, and professor of American studies at the University of Delaware. Her books include Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans, (Random House; University of California Press) as well Parlor Radical: Rebecca Harding Davis and the Origins of American Social Realism and The Utopian Novel in America. She lives in Washington, DC.

This interview was recorded July 2023.

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Scholars’ Circle – Book Author interview : Informers Up Close, case-study of Communist Czechoslovakia (1945-1989) – July 21, 2024

July 21, 2024 host

Autocratic regimes often use people throughout the population to serve as informants. Why do people choose to become an informant and collaborate with autocracies? And what constitutes justice against these informants once the state democratizes? We discuss a new book on the topic Informers Up Close with its authors Mark Drumbl and Barbora Hola. [ dur: 58mins. ]

photo of a windows on a multi-tenenat building with tile of the book Informers up close , stories from Communist Prague.

Mark Drumbl is Professor at Washington and Lee University, School of Law, and Director of the University’s Transnational Law Institute. He is the author of Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law , Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy and he is the co-editor of Sights, Sounds and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecution with Caroline Fournet.
Barbora Hola, Senior Researcher, NSCR & Professor Department of Criminal Law & Criminology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is a Senior Researcher at the NSCR. She has an interdisciplinary focus and studies transitional justice after atrocities, in particular (international) criminal trials, sentencing of international crimes, rehabilitation of war criminals and life after trial at international criminal tribunals. She is co-editor of Punishment in International Society: Norms, Justice, and Punitive Practices.

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The Scholars' Circle Interviews

All posts by host

Scholars’ Circle – Unleashing of Cyber-attacks that kill ; Green washing techniques we should know – September 22, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Ways to Stop violence among Kids ; Addressing generational traumas experienced by children – September 15, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Refugees right to return in international law ; Effects of earth’s magnetism on birds, whales, bees and turtles – September 8, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Right of Self-Determination ; Civil War politics examined- September 1, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Bangladesh students revolt that ousted its president – August 25, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Reforming Supreme Court of United States ; How proxy wars are dominating international relations – August 18, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – President Biden chooses to step down and Kamala Harris ascendancy to lead the Democratic Party into November 2024 election – August 11, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Catastrophic consequences of Factory Farming – August 4, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – A book author interview: History of California as a Slave State – July 28, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Book Author interview : Informers Up Close, case-study of Communist Czechoslovakia (1945-1989) – July 21, 2024

By Maria Armoudian