Encounter - Voice of America Voice of America

On this year-end edition of Encounter, host Carol Castiel presents excerpts from our most memorable programs in 2021. From the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States of America to the ongoing struggle with the coronavirus pandemic and much more, we present key domestic and international highlights from 2021.

John Fortier, resident scholar at The American Enterprise Institute, and Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, take stock of US President Joe Biden’s first year in office. Despite his major accomplishments, including the Covid-19 relief bill and bipartisan infrastructure legislation, a couple of conservative Democrats in the evenly split Senate have thus far stymied Biden’s hopes for passing voting rights and “Build Back Better” legislation before the end of 2021.

A bill to create a commission to study the effects of slavery and discrimination in the United States has been stalled in the House of Representatives for more than seven months. In this encore edition of Encounter, host Carol Castiel talks with Jennifer Oast, professor and chair of the Department of History at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, and Noah Millman, political columnist for “The Week,” about the merits and drawbacks of reparations for descendants of slaves and why the debate has been revived in recent days. Listen to Encounter on the Voice of America!

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping attempted to fend off further escalation over contentious issues like Taiwan, human rights, and the global balance of power and reach some agreement on health security and climate change at a recent virtual summit. East Asia experts Richard Fontaine, CEO of The Center for a New American Security, and Dean Cheng, Senior Research Fellow at the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation talk with host Carol Castiel about the challenges ahead for the US-China relationship.

Olayemi Olurin, a public defender with the Legal Aid Society in New York City and Mollie Saltskog, an expert in disinformation and domestic extremism at the Soufan Center, discuss the ramifications of the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man charged with homicide in the deadly Kenosha, Wisconsin shootings of August 2020. Olurin tells VOA the self-defense argument was unsupported and Saltskog expresses dismay over the celebration of Rittenhouse as a “hero” among right-wing media/politicians and domestic and foreign terrorist groups. The guilty verdict for three white men who fatally shot a young Black jogger, Ahmaud Arbery, on the other hand, was hailed by civil rights leaders across the country.

Will Pomeranz, deputy director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, and Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior fellow and director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, discuss the motives behind Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko’s creation of an artificial migrant crisis on the border with Europe and the malign role played by Russian President Vladimir Putin in this ruse with host Carol Castiel. They also analyze the Russian troop buildup on the border with US ally Ukraine.