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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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Recognizing Palestinian statehood and what that would mean for the war in Gaza – August 17, 2025

August 17, 2025 host

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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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Texas Re-districting ; Grandmother’s of Argentine’s disappeared – August 10, 2025

August 10, 2025 host

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.

Dual tone image of Abuelas of the Playa de Mayo in Argentina with book title of A Flower Traveled In my blood. By Haley Cohen Gilliland.

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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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Corporation of Public Broadcasting funding cuts – August 3, 2025

August 4, 2025 host

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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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Private Military Corporations and State responsibilities – July 27, 2025

July 29, 2025 host

Private Military Corporations have become a growing element of the warfighting landscape. States have historically had a monopoly on the use of military force. But private corporations challenge this monopoly. How much do they increase the lethality and likelihood of war? How much can private corporations be regulated? And what are the challenges to regulation? We explore the political, military, legal, and socioeconomic implications of private military corporations. [ dur: 58mins. ]

Ori Swed is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Texas Tech University. He is the editor of The Sociology of Privatized Security with Thomas Crosby. He is the author of “The Afghanistan War’s Legacy: The Reimagining of the Outsourcing of War and Security” and “No Accounting for Bad Contracting: Private Military and Security Contracts and Ineffective Regulation in Conflict Areas“
Sorcha MacLeod is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and member of the United Nations Working Group on the use of Mercenaries. She is the author of Certifying Private Security Companies: Effectively Ensuring the Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights?, Defining private security accountability and Regulating human rights in the context of outsourcing military logistics and armed security.
Christopher Kinsey is Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. He is the author of International Law and the Control of Mercenaries and Private Military Companies, Turning war into business: Private security companies and commercial opportunism and the book Corporate Soldiers and International Security: The Rise of Private Military Companies
Anna Leander is Professor and Chair of the International Relations and Political Science Department at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She is the author of The Power to Construct International Security: On the Significance of Private Military Companies and Militarization matters: rhetorical resonances and market militarism. She is co-editor of Handbook of Private Military-Security Companies with Rita Abrahamsen.

This interview was recorded in July 2023.

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

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Safe drinking water delivery in US ; Floods and aftermath in Ellicott City, Maryland – July 20, 2025

July 22, 2025 host

Although Access to safe drinking water is a human right, millions of people in the United States do no have access to safe water. Lead in the pipes is the most well-known cause but there are many others. What can be done to fix the nation’s water delivery systems? What have we learned from the Flint case? [ dur: 34mins. ]

Newsha Ajami is Chief Development Officer for Research at the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. She is the co-author of Building water resilience in the face of cascading wildfire risks and Infrastructure and the Digital Economy: Reinventing Our Role in the Design, Financing, and Governance of Essential Services for Society.
Benjamin J. Pauli is Associate Professor of Social Science at the Department of Liberal Arts at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. He is the author of Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis.

photo of flooding of the main street in Ellicott City, Maryland. Tile shown, After the Floods - The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City by Ken Conca.

Segment 2: Why did Ellicott City flood not once, but twice in 22 months (July 2016, May 2018)? How can “once in a thousand years’ rainfalls happen so close to one another? How do cities respond to extreme weather? We speak with Ken Conca author of After the Floods: The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City.[ dur: 22mins. ]

Dr. Ken Conca is Professor of environment, development, & health at American University. He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy and his recent book After the Floods: The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City.

Music clip by Sam Cooke – Change is going to come

Poetry by Rachel Dillon – Dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem

This show was originally published Oct. 2023

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

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Book Author interview – Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land ; Mining the Ocean Floor – July 13, 2025

July 18, 2025 host

The search for a safe haven for Jewish people in the early 20th Century led some Zionists to land on Galveston, Texas as a potential homeland for Jewish refugees.

Collage of jewish people in search of homeland

What was the Galveston Movement and what happened to it? We interviews the author of a new book MELTING POINT: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land. [ dur: 35mins. ]

Rachel Cockerell is a writer and historian.

Then, the search for minerals is leading some corporations to begin mining the ocean floor but scientists warn that this could devastate fragile ecosystems that will have repercussions that we still don’t understand. What is going on in the deep sea? What precautions should be taken to prevent devastating fragile ecosystems? [ dur: 23 mins. ]

Craig Smith is Professor of Oceanography at the University of Hawai’i.
Verena Tunnicliffe is a marine biologist at the University of Victoria in Canada where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Deep Ocean Research.

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

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Supreme Court decisions: Federal Injunctions and Religious belief exemption from public school curriculum – July 6, 2025

July 18, 2025 host

The US Supreme Court has decided numerous cases and announced their opinions in the past week. On today’s show we explore two cases.

The Court declared an end to national injunctions in a case involving birthright citizenship. [ dur: 28mins. ]

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).

Parents can remove their children from any class they deem in opposition to their religious beliefs. [ dur: 30mins. ]

Caroline Mala Corbin is Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law. She is the author of Regulating LGBTQ Speech in the Classroom and New Judicial Federalism and the Establishment Clause: Classroom Ten Commandments as a Case Study in State Constitutional Protection

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

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Aging & wars ; Peaceful use of nuclear power – June 29, 2025

July 2, 2025 host

Does the aging world population mean fewer wars in the future? What exactly is a geriatric peace?

book cover of the book the Geriatric Peace - population aging and the decline of war, blue cver with a white peace dove balanced on a walking stick

Our guest, Mark L. Haas, is the author of The Geriatric Peace: Population Aging and the Decline of War. [ dur: 30mins. ]

Mark L. Haas is the Duquesne Professor of Political Science at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He is the author of many books including The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security. His newest book is The Geriatric Peace – Population Aging and the Decline of War.

Then, we explore a new book on the peaceful uses of nuclear power: The Wretched Atom by Jacob Hamblin. [ dur: 28mins., recorded August 2021 ]

Jacob Hamblin is Professor of History at Oregon State University. His books include Poison in the Well: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, Oceanographers and the Cold War, Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism and his latest The Wretched Atom: America’s Global Gamble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology.

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

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Israel and Iran War – June 22, 2025

June 25, 2025 host

We look at the history of conflict and outcome in the past to understand the attacks between Israel and Iran to control Nuclear capabilities of Iran. What is the humanitarian and political impact of this war? On both Iran and on Israel. What is the impact on the region? Is this war legal, based on the laws of war? Principle of JUS AD BELLUM. And how would American intervention on behalf of Israel escalate the war, and complicate the war. [ dur: 58mins. ]

Note: This recording was made before US bombing of Iran’s Nuclear Facility on June 22, 2025.

Ervand Abrahamian is Professor Emeritus at City University of New York. He is the author of A History of Modern Iran and Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran and Syria.
Christian Henderson is Professor of International Law in the School of Law, Politics, and Sociology at the University of Sussex. He’s the author of U.S. And UK Military Strikes in Yemen and the Use Adbellum and The Use of Force in International Law.
Hamoud Salhi is Professor of Political Science at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He is commentator for Arabic media.

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

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The Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – US role in South Caucasus Armenia Azerbaijan peace treaty – August 24, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Recognizing Palestinian statehood and what that would mean for the war in Gaza – August 17, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Texas Re-districting ; Grandmother’s of Argentine’s disappeared – August 10, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Corporation of Public Broadcasting funding cuts – August 3, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Private Military Corporations and State responsibilities – July 27, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Safe drinking water delivery in US ; Floods and aftermath in Ellicott City, Maryland – July 20, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Book Author interview – Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land ; Mining the Ocean Floor – July 13, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Supreme Court decisions: Federal Injunctions and Religious belief exemption from public school curriculum – July 6, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Aging & wars ; Peaceful use of nuclear power – June 29, 2025

Scholars’ Circle – Israel and Iran War – June 22, 2025

By Maria Armoudian