Trending Globally: Politics and Policy

From The United Nations’ 'Decade of the Girl-Child' to the White House’s ‘Let Girls Learn,’ investing in education for girls has become a global priority. On this episode of Trending Globally, Sarah Baldwin talks with Shenila Khoja-Moolji [https://www.bowdoin.edu/profiles/faculty/skhoja/], Professor of Gender studies at Bowdoin College, about questions regarding girls' education that are often overlooked: which girls do we choose to teach? What sort of subjects should they learn? What do governments and NGOs hope for when investing in girls education? Perhaps most important: what do the girls hope for when they sit at their desks? Shenila Khoja-Moolji asks these questions and more in her book in ‘Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects In Muslim South Asia’ [https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520298408/forging-the-ideal-educated-girl]. *CORRECTION: Khoja-Moolji's book is titled 'Forging the Ideal Educated Girl: The Production of Desirable Subjects in Muslim South Asia' [https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520298408/forging-the-ideal-educated-gir]. The book is referred to 'Forging the Educated Girl' in the interview* You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://watson.brown.edu/files/watson/imce/news/podcast/trending-globally/transcripts/E71_Khoja-Moolji_mixdown.pdf]

On this episode, we revisit one of our favorite interviews from 2018. Watson Professor Rose McDermott [https://watson.brown.edu/people/faculty/mcdermott] spoke with journalist Sebastian Junger about his book 'Tribe,' [http://www.sebastianjunger.com/tribe-by-sebastian-junger/] and about what military culture can teach us when it comes to rebuilding our civic life back home. You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://watson.brown.edu/files/watson/imce/news/podcast/trending-globally/transcripts/E70%20-%20Sebastian%20Junger%20%28Holiday%29_mixdown.pdf]

In this episode, Mark Blyth talks with Watson economist John Friedman [https://watson.brown.edu/people/faculty/JFriedman] about his work charting social mobility in America. He and his colleagues have created the “Opportunity Atlas,” [https://opportunityinsights.org/] an interactive tool that uses U.S. Census Bureau data to map social mobility in great detail. It measures the likelihood of moving up in society based on where people live -- down to the block they grew up on [Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/upshot/maps-neighborhoods-shape-child-poverty.html]. The findings are highly detailed and often surprising, and they’re changing the discussion about mobility in America. You can read a transcript of this episode here: [https://watson.brown.edu/files/watson/imce/news/podcast/trending-globally/transcripts/E69_DAN%20REV%20-%20Blyth%20-%20Opportunity%20Atlas_mixdown.pdf]