Redistricting | The Scholars' Circle Interviews

The Voting Rights Act, or VRA, is viewed as the most important piece of legislation advancing civil rights in the 1960s. Passed in 1965, it was intended to redress the dis-empowerment of African Americans whose voting rights had been restricted due to several states legislation, ranging from poll taxes to literacy tests and other restrictions on voting. Throughout the Roberts Court, the VRA has been restricted and its protections stripped away. In 2026, perhaps the last of these provisions have been overturned, in a decision in the case Louisiana v Callais. On todays show, we will explore this decision and the impact it has on drawing Congressional districts, in an era of particularly aggressive gerrymandering. [ dur: 58mins. ]

Eric J. Segall, Ashe Family Chair Professor of Law and the Executive Director of Emmet J. Bondurant Center for Constitutional Law, Practice and Democracy at Georgia State University. He is the author of Originalism as Faith and Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court Is Not a Court and Its Justices Are Not Judges.
Seth C. McKee is a Professor of Political Science at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of The Dynamics of Southern Politics: Causes and Consequences and coauthor of Rural Republican Realignment in the Modern South: The Untold Story with MV Hood.
Christian Grose is a Professor of Political Science & Public Policy and the Academic Director of the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Independent Redistricting Commissions Increase Voter Perceptions of Fairness and co-author of Local Election Administrators in the United States: The Frontline of Democracy.

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

Politics and Activism, Elections, Redistricting, Voting Rights, Congress, Courts, Democrats, Republicans

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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.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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By Maria Armoudian

The Scholars' Circle Interviews

Tag Archives: Redistricting

Scholars’ Circle – Why SCOTUS Ruined the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – May 10, 2026

By Maria Armoudian