Tag Archives: Politics and Activism

The small Southeastern European nation of Moldova sits at a crossroads. Once a part of the former Soviet Union, the nation has long ties to Central Europe (and in particular Romania). And recent political developments expose this tension. In October, the nation -reelected President Maia Sandu, despite allegations of Russian interference to aid her opponent Alexandr Stoianoglo. And the nation passed a referendum advocating membership in the European Union, but with a very slim majority. And it has seen ongoing conflicts that has separated a significant part of its Eastern territory, which has declared itself the breakaway republic of Transneister. So on today’s show, we will explore the nation of Moldova, its politics, its challenges and its human rights profile. [ dur:34mins. ]

Ecaterina Locoman is Senior Lecturer of Political Science at Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Moldova’s Critical Decision Between Europe and Russia Narratives of conflict: Russian media’s evolving treatment of Ukraine (2013–2022)
Christian Cantir is Associate Professor of Political Science at Oakland University. She is the author of ‘On the front line of the battle for reunification’: Nationalism and Romania’s identity paradiplomacy in Moldova and “Goodbye Moscow, Hello Brussels”: The City Diplomacy of Chișinău Mayor Dorin Chirtoacă.
Isabelle DeSisto is fourth-year PhD candidate in Politics at Princeton University. She is co-author of “Moldova chooses Europe again as Sandu wins re-election,” and “The high stakes in Moldova’s 2024 election,”

Following the re-election of Maia Sandu and the passage of a referendum on membership in the European Union, the nation’s human rights profile is particularly important. Membership in the EU requires substantial monitoring of human rights and a commitment to democracy. And while the election of October 2024 looks promising, the nation faces significant challenges. So we will discuss those challenges and the human rights commitments of the nation. [ dur: 24mins. ]

Nicolae Panfil is Program Director and Head of Election Observation Missions at Promo-LEX Association – an NGO dedicated to the advancement of human rights and democratic processes in the Republic of Moldova.

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Scholars' Circle Interviews

Scholars’ Circle – Abortion/reproductive rights & access post presidential election – November 17, 2024

November 17, 2024 host

In the 2024 election, voters reaffirmed the right to abortion in many states while the nation still elected an anti-abortion president, and anti-abortion majority in both the senate and the house of representatives. What does this mean for abortion rights in the US.

Aziza Ahmed is Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law. She is the author of The Future of Facts: The Politics of Public Health and Medicine in Abortion Law, Informed Decision Making and Abortion: Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Informed Consent, and the First Amendment, and Medical Evidence and Expertise in Abortion Jurisprudence .
Carole Joffe is Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the author of Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe v. Wade, Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients and the Rest of Us and co-author of Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America.
Robin Marty is Executive Director for the West Alabama Women’s Center and a freelance reporter. She’s the author of Handbook for a Post-Roe America and co-author of The End of Roe v. Wade: Inside the Right’s Plan to Destroy Legal Abortion.
Rachel Rebouché is the Interim Dean of Temple University Beasley School of Law and the James E. Beasley Professor of Law. She is the author of Abortion Rights as Human Rights, co-author of “Eugenic Abortions” and the Problematic Popularity of the Reason-Based Ban and The New Abortion Battleground.

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Scholars’ Circle – Insights on 2nd Trump Presidency – November 10, 2024

November 10, 2024 host

Election Day 2024 has come and gone. And the US elected Donald Trump and a huge red wave that turns every branch of government and every lever of power to the Trump-dominated Republican Party. What does this mean for the nation and the world? We look forward today at the US and the world in 2025 and beyond.

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.
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.
Hamoud Salhi is Professor of Political Science at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He is commentator for Arabic media.

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Scholars’ Circle – LGBTQ communities and their impact on global politics – November 3, 2024

November 3, 2024 host

LGBTQ communities are marginalized in so many places around the world. While their presence in international politics is growing, they still face quite a lot of threats and challenges. We explore LGBTQ communities and their impact on global politics.

S. N. Nyeck is Associate Professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of African(a) Queer Presence: Ethics and Politics of Negotiation (Palgrave 2021) and co-author of Frontiers and pioneers in (the study of) queer experiences in Africa Introduction.
Nick Mulé is Professor in the School of Social Work and the School of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies at York University, Canada. He is the author of Mental Health Issues and Needs of LGBTQ Asylum Seekers and Refugee Claimants, and Refugees in Toronto, Canada, The Growing Presence of LGBTQIs at the UN: Arguments and Counter Arguments and Politicized Priorities: Critical Implications for LGBTIQ Movements.
Manuela Picq is Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Political Science and Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College and Professor of International Relations at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador). She is the author of Vernacular Sovereignties: Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics (University of Arizona Press 2018) and (with our other guest) Sexualities in World Politics: How LGBTQ Claims Shape International Relations , co-editor with Markus Thiel (New York: Routledge, 2015).
Markus Thiel is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University, Miami and director of FIU’s Jean Monnet Center of Excellence. His publications include ‘The EU’s international LGBTI rights promotion: promises & pitfalls’ (Routledge, 2021) and co-author of The Politics of Social In/Exclusion in the EU: Civic Europe in an Age of Uncertainty.

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Scholars’ Circle – Election by gerrymandering and a tribute to Professor Philip Zimbardo – October 27, 2024

October 27, 2024 host

First, we discuss gerrymandering and redistricting and what it means for the upcoming elections on First Tuesday of November 2024.

Christian Gross He’s professor of political science and public policy at the University of Southern California. He’s the academic director of the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy. He’s the author of Congress in Black and White, Race and Representation in Washington at Home, and co-author of numerous pieces, including campaign finance transparency affects legislators election outcomes and behavior.
Jonathan Cervas he’s assistant teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He’s the co-author of the forthcoming Partisan Gerrymandering Cases and State Supreme Courts in the 2020s redistricting Round and also has served in many roles as a consultant on redistricting, including the special master who drew the New York state and congressional maps for 2022.

Then, we pay tribute to Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the infamous Stanford experiments. He died at home in San Francisco on Oct. 14, 2024 he was 91 in San Francisco. This excerpt from his interview with Scholars’ Circle in Feb. of 2016. You can find his full interview here.

Philip Zimbardo was Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University and *core faculty at Palo Alto University. He is the creator of the The Stanford Prison Experiment. He authored numerous publications including The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Psychology and Life, and The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence.

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Scholars’ Circle – Election issues of Tariff on imports and Childcare affecting Economy and Workforce – October 20, 2024

October 20, 2024 host

“the most beautiful word in the English language is tariff.” That is a direct quote from former President and current Republican candidate for President Donald Trump. On most issues that involve funding, when the former President is asked how he intends to pay for a proposal, his response is to increase tariffs. In 2018 the US initiated a round a tariffs and a trade war with China. And after his election in 2020, President Biden has left most of the tariffs in place and increased tariffs in other areas. So what are tariffs and what are their impact on the US economy? Who pays them? What is their effect on the one issue that most Americans use to define economic health—inflation. And what do the two candidates propose as the future of US tariff policy following the 2024 elections. [ dur: 38mins. ]

Iva Bozovic She is Associate Teaching Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. She is co-author of “Scaffolding: Using formal contracts to support informal relations in support of innovation.”
Lui Hebron, formerly of California State University and currently an academic coach at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. He is the editor of Asian Security in the Age of Globalization.

For many Americans, the cost of child care is a significant challenge to parents returning to the job market. And this has a particular importance to working women, who are traditionally expected to be the children’s primary care giver. According to the US Census Bureau child care prices for a single child ranged from $4,810 a year for school-age home-based care in small counties to $15,417 for infant center-based care in very large counties. When adjusted for inflation, this equals between $5,357 and $17,171 in 2022 dollars. These price ranges were equivalent to between 8% and 19.3% of median family income per child in paid care. And while the number is increasingly, only 13% of American corporations offer onsite child care. What can be done to control the cost of child care? What does this increased cost mean for women’s ability to work? And what should the US government do to increase access to child care across the nation? [ dur: 20mins. ]

Elizabeth Palley. She is Professor of Social Work at Adelphi University. She is co-author of In Our Hands, The Struggle for US Child Care Policy.

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Scholars’ Circle – Water issues and challenges faced by voters in 2024 US elections – October 13, 2024

October 13, 2024 host

As part of our ongoing series on the important issues that confront the US in the 2024 election we look at access to safe water and lessons learned from the Ellicott city floods.
Segment 1: 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.

Segment 2: Why did Ellicot 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: 24mins. ]

Dr. Ken Conca is the 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.

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Scholars’ Circle – Foreign Policy differences of candidates in 2024 Presidential elections – October 6, 2024

October 6, 2024 host

From now until November’s American election, we will cover issues that confront the nation and the world and on which we expect people will vote. For today’s show, we will explore the differences between Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee for President in their foreign policies. What are likely the different ways each candidate would address foreign policy issues if elected President. It was also said during the Cold War that “politics stop at water’s edge” in American foreign policy. But it is quite clear that, if that ever was true, it no longer is in 2024. SO we will discuss the differences.

Robert Williams, The Social Sciences Divisional Dean and Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University. He is the author of Seeking Security in an Insecure World, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), with Dan Caldwell and “Jus Post Bellum: Justice in the Aftermath of War“.
Janicke-Stramer-Smith is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Weber State University. She is the author of Socio-economic factors and political mobilization in the Maghreb: Lessons from the Arab Spring and The Language of War: George W. Bush’s Discursive Practices in Securitizing the ‘Western Value System.’.
Brent Steele, Professor of Political Science at the University of Utah. He is the author of Race, Religion and the Echoes of Status Insecurity in US foreign policy and Restraint in International Politics.

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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 – 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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Tag Archives: Politics and Activism

Scholars’ Circle – Moldova Election 2024 – November 24, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Abortion/reproductive rights & access post presidential election – November 17, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Insights on 2nd Trump Presidency – November 10, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – LGBTQ communities and their impact on global politics – November 3, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Election issues of Tariff on imports and Childcare affecting Economy and Workforce – October 20, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Water issues and challenges faced by voters in 2024 US elections – October 13, 2024

Scholars’ Circle – Foreign Policy differences of candidates in 2024 Presidential elections – October 6, 2024

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

By Maria Armoudian