Tag Archives: democracy

Scholars’ Circle – Author interview on “Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census” – September 20, 2026

September 21, 2026 host

Data drives politics. But politics drive data. That is to say, we make political decisions based on data, often selected from mountains of available information.

collage of census questions with title of the book Data Are Made, Not Found by Danah Boyd

But how we gather data is an inherently political decision. And nowhere is this more clear than when the US collects the information about its population. Every ten years the Constitution mandates that the government conduct a census. And this process is complicated and inherently political. That is the message of our guest today, Danah Boyd is the author of a new book, Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census. . [ dur:58mins. ]

Danah Boyd is the Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, where she works on topics at the intersection of technology and society. She is also the founder of the research institute Data & Society and the author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens.

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

Politics and Activism, Democracy, Civil Servants, Policy making, US

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Votes counted in India, Mexico and South Africa – June 16, 2024

June 17, 2024 host

While much of the world is in a democratic backslide, some nations’ democracies are thriving. What do the elections in Mexico, South Africa, and India portend? We will examine the election of these three leading Global South nations, the impact of dominant parties losing some support, and the general state of democracy in each nation. How might the policies change? What was the impact of leadership personalities in the democratic developments in Mexico, South Africa and India? [ dur: 58mins. ]

Emily Edmonds-Poli is Professor of Political Science and International Relations, and Director of the Chapman Family Foundation International Program at the University of San Diego. She is the author of Contemporary Mexican Politics.
Ritu Mathur is Professor of International Relations at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the author of Civilizational Discourses in Weapons Control.
Carin Runciman is Senior Lecturer in the School Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. She is co-author of Decolonising and re-theorising the meaning of democracy: A South African perspective.

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

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Democracy is eroding in United States, why and how to stop the decline – December 10, 2023

December 10, 2023 host

Democracy is eroding in the United States? What are the causes and what should be done? Is the erosion of democracy because of political elites and specifically the reaction of the Republican Party to the 2020 election? Or does it run deeper? [ dur: 58mins. ]

Jacob S. Hacker is Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He is the co-author of Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality, American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper and the 2010 bestseller Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, all books co-authored with Paul Pierson.
Sigal Ben-Porath is a professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education Division of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Political Science. She is the author of Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice is Really About, Free Speech on Campus, Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship, and Citizenship under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict .
Martin Gilens is Chair of the Department of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Social Welfare at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is the author of Affluence & Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America and co-author, with Benjamin I. Page, of Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do about It.
Larry M. Bartels holds the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. He is the Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He is the co-author of Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (with Christopher Achen) and Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age.

Recorded February 2022.

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

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Emigrant’s positive effects on democracy -/- Foundations of Public Diplomacy – May 26, 2019

May 25, 2019 host

First, how emigration could lead to greater democratization in the world. [dur: 11 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

Margaret Peters is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at UCLA. She is the author of Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization, and the co-author of the research paper Restraining the Huddled Masses: Migration Policy and Autocratic Survival.

Then, today’s panel hosted by Professor Doug Becker, International Studies at University of Southern California (USC), lays the foundations of public diplomacy, its techniques, and its effectiveness. It then examines the role of new technologies in the digital age and how it poses new challenges and opportunities. [ dur: 45 mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ

Daniel Aguirre Azócar is Assistant Professor at Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile. He is the author of the book chapters Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela (forthcoming in the SAGE Handbook of Propaganda) and Public Diplomacy in Latin America: An Emerging Field of Practice? (forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy, 2nd Edition).
Nicholas J. Cull is Professor of Public Diplomacy and is the founding director of the Master of Public Diplomacy program at USC. He is the author of many books including The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945-1989, The Decline and Fall of the United States Information Agency: American Public Diplomacy, 1989-2001, and his latest Public Diplomacy: Foundations for the Global Engagement in the Digital Age.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.

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The Scholars' Circle Interviews

Tag Archives: democracy

Scholars’ Circle – Author interview on “Data Are Made, Not Found: A Story of Politics, Power, and the Civil Servants Who Saved the US Census” – September 20, 2026

Scholars’ Circle – Votes counted in India, Mexico and South Africa – June 16, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Democracy is eroding in United States, why and how to stop the decline – December 10, 2023

Scholars’ Circle – Emigrant’s positive effects on democracy -/- Foundations of Public Diplomacy – May 26, 2019

By Maria Armoudian