This is Democracy

In this week's episode, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Dr. Julia F. Irwin to discuss American Humanitarian Assistance in the 20th and 21st century. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "The Old Colossus." Dr. Julia F. Irwin is the T. Harry Williams Professor of History at Louisiana State University.  She is a leading scholar of humanitarian assistance in US foreign policy and international history. Professor Irwin is the author of: Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (2013) and, most recently, Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century (2023).Professor Irwin is also the Co-Editor of the Journal of Disaster Studies.

In this week's episode, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Stephen Sonnenberg, MD, to discuss how collective trauma can affect people, groups and societies. Steve Sonnenberg, MD, is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and medical humanities and ethics scholar. At The University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School he serves as professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. He is also fellow in the Paul Woodruff Professorship for Excellence in Undergraduate Studies and chair of the faculty panel of the Bridging Disciplines Program “Patients, Practitioners, and Cultures of Care,” both in the University’s Undergraduate College. The Bridging Disciplines Program is designed to prepare healthcare undergraduates with the tools they will need later, as providers, to create a healthcare system where health is a human right and structural disparities in care are eliminated.

In this week's episode, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Dr. Daniel Hummel about the history of American Evangelicalism and its connection to both policy and theology. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "If Your God is a God of Truth" Dr. Daniel Hummel is the Director for University Engagement at Upper House, a Christian study center serving the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Daniel is the author of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation and Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations. Daniel has written about religion, politics, and foreign policy for the Washington Post, Christianity Today, and Religion News Service. His academic research has been published in Religion & American Culture and Church History.

In this week's episode, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Sanford Levinson to discuss the 2000 election, the Supreme Court decision that finalized it, and how this decision has had ramifications throughout modern history. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "The Court Has Stopped the Count" Sanford Levinson, who holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, joined the University of Texas Law School in 1980. Previously a member of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, he is also a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. Levinson is the author of approximately 400 articles, book reviews, or commentaries in professional and popular journals--and a regular contributor to the popular blog Balkinization. He has also written six books: Constitutional Faith (1988, winner of the Scribes Award, 2d edition 2011); Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (1998); Wrestling With Diversity (2003); Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It)(2006); Framed: America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (2012); An Argument Open to All: Reading the Federalist in the 21st Century (2015); and, with Cynthia Levinson, Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and teh Flaws that Affect Us Today (forthcoming, September 2017). Edited or co-edited books include a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking (6th ed. 2015, with Paul Brest, Jack Balkin, Akhil Amar, and Reva Siegel); Nullification and Secession in Modern Constitutional Thought (2016); Reading Law and Literature: A Hermeneutic Reader (1988, with Steven Mallioux); Responding to Imperfection: The Theory and Practice of Constitutional Amendment (1995); Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies (1998, with William Eskridge); Legal Canons (2000, with Jack Balkin); The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion (2005, with Batholomew Sparrow); Torture: A Collection (2004, revised paperback edition, 2006); and The Oxford Handbook on the United States Constitution (with Mark Tushnet and Mark Graber, 2015). He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Law and Courts Section of the American Political Science Association in 2010. He has been a visiting faculty member of the Boston University, Georgetown, Harvard, New York University, and Yale law schools in the United States and has taught abroad in programs of law in London; Paris; Jerusalem; Auckland, New Zealand; and Melbourne, Australia. He was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1985-86 and a Member of the Ethics in the Professions Program at Harvard in 1991-92. He is also affiliated with the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jewish Philosophy in Jerusalem. A member of the American Law Institute, Levinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. He is married to Cynthia Y. Levinson, a writer of children's literature, and has two daughters and four grandchildren.

In this week's episode, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Michael Kimmage to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "For a War of Worlds" Dr. Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. He is also a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and chair of the Advisory Council for the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. From 2014 to 2017, Kimmage served on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He publishes widely on international affairs, U.S.-Russian relations and American diplomatic history. Dr. Kimmage is the author of: The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (2009); In History’s Grip: Philip Roth’s Newark Trilogy (2012); The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy (2020). His forthcoming book is Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (2024).

This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Professor Salim Yaqub to discuss how the 1970s changed the Middle East, and how those changes are still relevant in the modern day. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "To Israel, a Widow" Salim Yaqub is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of UCSB’s Center for Cold War Studies and International History. He is the author of three books: Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.–Middle East Relations in the 1970s (Cornell University Press, 2016), and Winds of Hope, Storms of Discord: The United States since 1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He has also written several articles and book chapters on the history of U.S. foreign relations, the international politics of the Middle East, and Arab American political activism.

In this special 250th episode, Jeremi and Zachary discuss the current state of discourse and civil debate on college campuses, as well as how recent events have impacted the climate of these spaces. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "To Study"

This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Dr. Ruth Simmons to discuss her experiences and attitudes toward learning in the context of her new book, "Up Home: One Girl's Journey." Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "If The Leaves Could Speak." Dr. Ruth Simmons is the former president of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M University -- Texas's oldest Historically Black College and University.  She grew up in Grapeland, Texas, the youngest of 12 children born to sharecroppers.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Peter Beinart to discuss the ongoing conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces and the destruction left in its wake. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "For the Children of Israel, and the Ones Who Will Try to Forget." Peter Beinart is Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents, an MSNBC political commentator, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He writes the Beinart Notebook newsletter on https://substack.com. His first book, The Good Fight, was published by HarperCollins in 2006.  His second book, The Icarus Syndrome, was published by HarperCollins in 2010. His third, The Crisis of Zionism, was published by Times Books in 2012.  Beinart recently published an important essay in the New York Times (October 14, 2023): "There is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive."

This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Dr. William Jones to discuss the history of labor unions and the current ongoing strike by the United Auto Workers union. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "From The UAW Picket Line" William Jones is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, where he is a leading scholar of workers, unions, and race in the United States. Prof. Jones is the author of: The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South (2005) and The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights (2013).