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

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.

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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.

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A 2017 Pew Research survey found that a quarter of Black Americans had faced online harassment due to their race or ethnicity. As our society moves more and more online, how do we cope with this reality?

In his new book, When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age, Dr. Rob Eschmann analyzes a wealth of data, interviews with students of color, and millions of social media posts to unpack the influence of online communication on face-to-face interactions. He joins host Ali Muldrow to discuss online racism and the way people choose to respond to it. 



Dr. Rob Eschmann is a writer, educator, filmmaker, and scholar from Chicago. He is an Associate Professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work and a Faculty Associate at at Harvard’s Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society. Rob wrote and directed “Choose Your Own Resistance”, an immersive, multi-perspective film about choosing to challenge racism. Additionally he writes on educational inequality, community violence, racism, social media, and youth wellbeing.

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Last week, President Biden unveiled his latest student loan forgiveness proposal while speaking at Madison College. He described a plan that would cancel debt for anyone who began repaying undergraduate loans more than 20 years ago and would cancel accrued interest for some borrowers.

Carole Trone and Benjamin Lee from the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt join host Douglas Haynes to talk about the proposed plan and the broader issues around student debt. The coalition is a nonprofit that aims to clarify student debt, college affordability, and loan repayment.

For confidential assistance, the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt help line can be reached at 833-589-0750. You can ask questions by email at studentloanquestions@debtsmarts.org

Additional support for student loan debt can be found at studentaid.gov



Carole Trone is the Interim Executive Director of the Coalition and Executive Director of Fair Opportunity Project, a nationally focused and student-led nonprofit organization with a mission to empower students to access and afford college. Prior to this role, she served as Senior Vice President for Educational Services at the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. She earned a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has taught and served in various roles there. Carole earned her undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University and is originally from Washington, D.C.

Benjamin Lee is a board member of the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt. He is also Associate Counsel at Ascendium Education Group, a nonprofit organization making education and training beyond high school a reality for more people. Benjamin’s focus includes compliance, bankruptcy, incident response, and risk management, and he is a frequent trainer and presenter on student loans. Benjamin received his law degree from the University of Minnesota, where he studied nonprofit, corporate, and consumer law, and took on student loans of his own.

 

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