The Scholars' Circle The Scholars' Circle

Democracy is eroding in the United States? What are the causes and what should be done? Is the erosion of democracy because of political elites and specifically the reaction of the Republican Party to the 2020 election? Or does it run deeper? [ dur: 58mins. ]



Jacob S. Hacker is Stanley Resor Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He is the co-author of Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality, American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper and the 2010 bestseller Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, all books co-authored with Paul Pierson.

Sigal Ben-Porath is a professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education Division of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She also holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Political Science. She is the author of Making Up Our Mind: What School Choice is Really About, Free Speech on Campus, Varieties of Sovereignty and Citizenship, and Citizenship under Fire: Democratic Education in Times of Conflict .

Martin Gilens is Chair of the Department of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Social Welfare at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is the author of Affluence & Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America and co-author, with Benjamin I. Page, of Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do about It.

Larry M. Bartels holds the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. He is the Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He is the co-author of Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (with Christopher Achen) and Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age.



Recorded February 2022.



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

Over a half million Americans are currently homeless. What is causing this crisis? And what are the solutions? How do we get the resources to build the housing we need to address the homelessness crisis?



We discuss why services to address mental health and addiction are essential to resolving the homelessness crisis. [ dur: 58mins. ]



Deborah Padgett is a Professor at NYU Silver School of Social Work. She is the co-author of Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Changing Systems and Transforming Lives, with Benjamin Henwood and Sam Tsemberis, and Homelessness, housing instability and mental health: Making the connections.

Paul A. Toro is Professor of Psychology at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is the co-author of Research on homelessness and mental health: What we’ve learned from the United States and nations in Europe and Homeless Youth in the United States:Recent Research Findings and Intervention Approaches.



This recording is from December 2022.



This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Melissa Chiprin, Mihika Chechi, and Sudd Dongre.

How does deep listening to nature promote biodiversity and a deeper relationship with the natural world?



We discuss the book THE SOUNDS OF LIFE: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the World of Animals and Plants. [ dur: 34mins. ]



Karen Bakker ( 1971 - 2023 ) was Professor of Geography and Associate at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. She was Visiting Professor at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was the author of Smart Earth: A meta-review and implications for environmental governance, The human right to water revisited (in The Right to Water), and THE SOUNDS OF LIFE: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the World of Animals and Plants.

Professor Karen Bakker passed away on August 14, 2023 after a brief illness.



References to clips of nature sound recordings included in the interview with Karen Bakker :



Healthy Coral Reef

Seals among calving glaciers and colliding icebergs

Glacier Bay Humpback Whales



The American Thanksgiving story is one of cooperation and coexistence between white European settlers and the native peoples. But the real story is much darker.

How does this Thanksgiving narrative get the history wrong?



We discuss the history, the memory, and the meaning of Thanksgiving in the contemporary relationship between the United States and Indigenous people. [ dur: 24mins. ]



Robert J. Miller is Professor of Law at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He is Interim Chief Justice at Pascua Yaqui Tribe Court of Appeals. He is the author of American Indian Sovereignty versus the United States (in Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies) and A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma. You can access the Scholars' Circle interview on the book A Promise Kept here . He is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe.



This show was recorded November 27, 2022.



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

With the release of the critically acclaimed new film, Killers of the Flower Moon, there is a new interest in the murders of the Osage tribe following the discovery of oil on tribal lands. But how much do we know about the Osage, their history, and their life experiences? And how typical was this particularly gruesome set of murders on tribes in the US and in particular in Oklahoma. On Today's show, we will explore the history of the Osage. We will get to know their story in greater detail and ask, what did the film get right and what did it miss? [ dur: 35mins. ]



Robert Warrior is Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Kansas. He is a citizen of the Osage Nation. He is the author of Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions. He is past president of the American Studies Association and was the founding president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. Professor Warrior was the founding co-editor of Native American and Indigenous Studies and edits the Indigenous Americas series. In 2018, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Robert Miller is Professor of Law at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. He is Interim Chief Justice at Pascua Yaqui Tribe Court of Appeals. He is an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe. In 2014, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. He is the author of A Promise Kept: The Muscogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v Oklahoma. You can access the Scholars' Circle interview on the book A Promise Kept here. .



In addition to highlighting the violence against the Osage, the film Killers of the Flower Moon focuses on the distinctly gendered relationships between the Osage and their white spouses. The film itself focuses on Osage women (notably Lily Gladstone’s Molly) and their white husbands. So, what were the gender dynamics of the Osage people? [ dur: 23mins. ]



Tai S. Edwards is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Kansas Studies Institute at Johnson County Community College. She is the author of Osage Women and Empire: Gender and Power.





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

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.





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