A Public Affair Douglas Haynes, Ali Muldrow, Carousel Bayrd, Allen Ruff, & Esty Dinur

Philip Berrigan, American peace activist and Catholic priest, is remembered as courageous example of nonviolent resistance. Beginning in 1968, Berrigan organized against war, systemic racism, materialism, destruction of the environment, and nuclear weapons. His unyielding stances led to imprisonment and excommunication from the Catholic church.

In the recently published  A Ministry of Risk: Philip Berrigan’s Writings on Peace and Nonviolence, editor Brad Wolf has compiled a collection of writings. Wolf asks readers to consider what insights Berrigan’s writings offer into the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the climate crisis, a fraying social safety net, and desperate refugees at our southern border.

Wolf joins A Public Affair host Bert Zipperer to discuss the life and legacy of Philip Berrigan as well as the intersection of faith and resistance.



Brad Wolf is executive director and co-founder of Peace Action Network of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A former lawyer, prosecutor, professor and community college dean, he writes for various publications.



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A 2019 study found that Wisconsin is has one of the worst racial disparities for Black children in the US. How does that pan out for student’s living in Madison? Importantly, what is the actual experience for Black people who get their education at our schools?

Today we are spending the hour with a group of Black scholars who are working to expose a more complete history of Black Madisonians’ experiences in education. In that work, the Black Madison Voices Project aims to advance anti-racist curriculum, policies, and practices in our K-12 and higher-learning institutions. At the heart of the project are interviews with Black folks who went to school in Madison.

Five members of the group join host Ali Muldrow to discuss why they got involved and what they have learned from interviewees so far. 

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About our guests:

Dr. Maxine McKinney de Royston is an Associate Professor at UW-Madison in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction.  Her teaching and scholarship focus on developing and sustaining learning spaces that support the intellectual thriving and holistic well-being of Black students.

Ruby Bafu is a 6th year PhD candidate in Sociology studying students’ experiences in online learning spaces. 

Jalessa Bryant is a doctoral candidate in the Multicultural Education area of the Curriculum and Instruction Department at UW-Madison.

Dr. Aireale J. Rodgers is an Anna Julia Cooper Fellow and Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis department.

Yanika Davis is a second year Master of Public Health student at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

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April is National Poetry Month and as we approach the end of the month, we turn to the poets in our community. Host Douglas Haynes is joined by former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser, current Madison Poet Laureate Steven Espada Dawson, and current Wisconsin Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulig. We hear a poem from each and discuss poetry in community, the impact of a poet laureateship, and what it’s like to be, as Steven puts it, poetry’s cheerleaders.



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Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets, is a writer, photographer, and scholar. She is the author of six poetry collections including Ancient Light, Copper Yearning, and the bilingual Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Blaeser edited Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry and wrote the monograph Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. Her photographs, picto-poems, and ekphrastic pieces have appeared in exhibits such as “Visualizing Sovereignty,” and “No More Stolen Sisters.” An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, she is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation and grew up on the reservation. The 2024 Mackey Chair in Creative Writing at Beloit College and a Vassar College Tatlock Fellow, Blaeser is a Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee and an MFA faculty member for Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her accolades include a Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. Blaeser splits her time between her home in rural Wisconsin and a water-access cabin near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.

Steven Espada Dawson is a writer from East Los Angeles. The son of a Mexican immigrant, he received his MFA from Purdue University, where he studied under Kaveh Akbar, Marianne Boruch, Roxane Gay, Terese Marie Mailhot, and Donald Platt. He has served as a poetry editor for Sycamore Review and Copper Nickel. Recipient of a Pushcart Prize (XLVII), his recent poems have appeared in AGNI, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, POETRY, and Waxwing. He is a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow and the ’22 – ’23 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Fellow in Poetry at UW–Madison’s Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, where he teaches creative writing. He is the Poet Laureate of Madison, WI.

Nicholas Gulig is a Thai American poet from Wisconsin. He is the author of Orient (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2018), winner of the 2017 CSU Poetry Center Open Book Competition; Book of Lake (CutBank, 2016); and North of Order (YesYes Books, 2015). In 2011, Gulig was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Bangkok. He is also a recipient of the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award, the Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, and the Grist’s ProForma Award. Gulig is an associate professor of languages and literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and lives in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. In 2023, he was appointed poet laureate of Wisconsin through 2024. In 2023, Gulig received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.

Image by cromaconceptovisual from Pixabay

 

 

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Friday morning, Israel attacked Iran in the latest of mutual attacks. The first was an Israeli attack on April 1st of Iran’s embassy compound in Syria. Then on April 13th, Iran conducted a retaliatory strike of numerous missiles and drones, most of which were intercepted. These attacks have us all wondering if a Middle East-wide war is impending. 

Joining host Esty Dinur to talk about the likely hood of a regional war is journalist Richard Silverstein and International Crisis Group‘s Joost Hiltermann.  



Richard  Silverstein is an independent journalist who reports on Israeli national security affairs, including the Israel-Palestine and Israel-Iran conflicts.  He has published the Tikun Olam blog for the past 20 years.

Joost R. Hiltermann is Program Director, Middle East & North Africa for International Crisis Group.  Tthe International Crisis Group is an independent NGO dedicated to preventing deadly conflict. Hiltermann is author of A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (Cambridge, 2007), and Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton, 1991).

Image by BockoPix on Flickr, used under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons License.

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While campus protests over Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza have continued in recent months, so have attacks on academic freedom and free speech at universities across the U.S. In his recent piece for Truth Out, “Israel Has Formed a Task Force to Carry Out Covert Campaigns at US Universities” activist and scholar William I. Robinson argues that the attacks are part of an Israeli government campaign to shape US public opinion and neutralize opposition to Israel’s war.

Robinson points to a report by Israeli news outlet Ynetnews, that says the government is behind the covert campaign to harass and intimate students, campus journalists, faculty, and administration. He tells A Public Affair, “The  intent is to crush any dissent on U.S. campuses, any attempt at solidarity with Palestine, any attempt to oppose the genocide that’s being carried out.”



William I. Robinson  is an American professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He’s the author of a number of books including Can Global Capitalism Endure? (Clarity Press, 2022) and Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic (PM Press, 2022).

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

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Project 2025 is a sweeping policy blueprint for the first 180 days of next Republican president, written by the Heritage Foundation and supported by more than 80 conservative organizations. The goal of the plan is to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left.”

The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) calls the plan a threat to our democracy. President and cofounder Wendy Via joins host Nate Carlin to talk about the more than nine hundred page agenda. She argues that we have not recovered from the 2016 to 2020 presidency. “The idea that Americans can take for granted that our institutions will hold, that our democracy is so solid that nothing can happen to it. I think that is a mistake,” she tells listeners. “I do not want people to be afraid–I just want people to exercise their rights within our democratic process. Is it possible for a right wing president to get into office and destroy a lot of our democratic foundations? I think the answer is yes”



Wendy Via is an expert in the intersection of technology and far-right extremism and the effect on democracy as well as in achieving change and influencing narratives and actions around some of the most pressing civil and human rights issues of our time, including far-right extremism, systemic racism, economic inequality, immigration, criminal justice reform, and LGBTQ+ rights.

Image by David Peterson from Pixabay

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