Trending Globally: Politics and Policy

This past November, Daniel Ortega was reelected as president of Nicaragua. He ensured his victory by imprisoning his political opponents and launching the largest crackdown on political dissent in the country in decades. This was just the most recent step in his multi-decade effort to transform Nicaragua from a budding democracy into an authoritarian regime. What can’t be forgotten is that just one year ago this horrific turn didn’t seem inevitable. On this episode, Dan Richards talks with two experts on the subject: one is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute, the other an activist in Nicaraguan politics who is currently living in exile. They explain how Nicaragua got to its current state of extreme repression, and what might be done to change it.  This is also a story with a special connection to the Watson Institute, which hosted a conference in 2019 marking the 40th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. Both of the guests on this episode were at that conference, as were multiple activists who are currently imprisoned in Nicaragua. For more context on this crisis you can listen to the Watson Institute’s limited podcast series Revolution Revisited, which told the story of the Sandinista Revolution from the people who lived it. Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Guests on this episode:Stephen Kinzer: Watson Institute Senior fellow in international and public affairs, and author of Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua.Luis Carrión: Political activist and democracy advocate, and former senior member of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.  

In this episode you’ll hear from Ieva Jusionyte, an anthropologist and associate professor of international security and anthropology at the Watson Institute. In addition to teaching and research, she also has a side job – as a licensed EMT. In May 2015 she combined these two passions. She moved to Nogales, AZ, to study emergency responders on the US-Mexico border. For two years she studied life along this border, and worked on it as an EMT herself. What she found became the subject of her book, ‘Threshold: Emergency Responders on the U.S.-Mexico Border.’ In it, she explores how the US-Mexico border – as a legal boundary, an idea, and a physical space – changes emergency response, and what these changes reveal about how borders affect people who live near them. Learn more about and purchase Ieva’s book. Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

Over the past few months, Russian President Vladimir Putin has built up a massive  military presence on Russia’s border with Ukraine. As a result, pundits, politicians, and casual observers of the news have all been asking the same questions: would President Putin actually invade Ukraine? And if so, what would that mean for the rest of the world? These are fair questions, of course. But Michael Kennedy, our guest on this week’s episode of Trending Globally, thinks this framing might actually obscure more than it illuminates.Michael is a professor of sociology at the Watson Institute and an expert on social transformation in Eastern Europe in the post-Cold War era. He’s written and taught extensively on Ukraine, and on this episode he helps make sense of this crisis that defies easy explanation. Despite the complexity of the situation, there’s one thing Michael wants us all to see clearly right now: the stakes of this crisis – for the Ukraine, the US, and democracies around the world – couldn’t be higher.  Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

The B-2 Spirit, known as the ‘Stealth Bomber,’ is one of the most advanced aircrafts in the US military. It has a fuel efficiency of about 4.2 gallons per mile. (That’s not a typo; it’s less than one mile per gallon.) Burning a full tank of gas in a B-2 releases roughly 250 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That’s more than 50 times what the average car releases in an entire year. And that’s just for one trip, for one plane in the US military – the world’s largest institutional consumer of fossil fuel. “The size of that consumption is kind of hard to get your head around,” says Neta Crawford on this episode of Trending Globally. Neta Crawford is a professor of political science at Boston University and co-founder of the Costs of War project, which is housed at the Watson Institute. The project works to uncover the financial, human, political, and environmental costs of America’s post-9/11 wars. This year Trending Globally has teamed up with the Costs of War project to explore what they’ve found.On this episode you’ll hear from Neta Crawford on her groundbreaking work calculating the size and scope of the US military’s carbon footprint. In the process of uncovering the extent of the military’s fuel consumption and carbon emissions, she also traces the long and complex relationship between national security, fossil fuels, and climate change. Learn more about Neta Crawford’s work. Learn more about the Costs of War Project.Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.

It’s been 12 months since a mob of American citizens, driven by the false belief that the presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, attacked the US Capitol. The insurrectionists couldn’t overturn the election results, but they did make us question basic assumptions about the state of American democracy.  On this episode, host Sarah Baldwin ‘87 and producer Dan Richards talked with experts at Watson and Brown about the attack. They asked scholars of political science and international affairs: what did the insurrection teach us about the state of American politics? How has it changed us? And, perhaps most important: what do we need to do to protect our institutions going forward?Guests featured on this episode:Wendy Schiller, Professor of Political Science and Director of the A. Alfred Taubman Center for American Politics and PolicyJuliet Hooker, Professor of Political Science at Brown University Rose McDermott, Professor of International Relations at the Watson InstituteStephen Kinzer, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson InstituteLearn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. Read what other experts at Watson had to say in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection. 

In 1996, Keith Harper began to work on a lawsuit against the US government. It was a class action suit filed by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Confederacy in Montana. She claimed something that many people had long known to be true, but that had never been directly addressed in the US legal system: the US government owed many, many Native Americans a lot of money.Keith Harper - who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation - became a lead prosecutor for the plaintiff class, which grew to include hundreds of thousands of Native Americans. The case, known as Cobell v. Salazar, became one of the largest class action suits in US history. It awarded a total of $3.4 billion dollars to Native Americans across the country. But as Keith explained to Sarah on this week’s episode of Trending Globally: “It was an important milestone. But we should recognize, it was a mere measure of justice, and not full justice.”Keith would go on to serve as the US Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council under President Obama starting in 2014. He was the first Native American ever to be appointed to an ambassadorship. This year he’s serving as a senior fellow at the Watson Institute, and on this episode we explore both the groundbreaking case Cobell v. Salazar and what Keith sees as the relationship between Native American rights, international law, and human rights more broadly. Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

While there’s a lot to be thankful for this fall and winter (such as an effective Covid-19 vaccine) many Americans are still living in the middle of a crisis when it comes to housing. It’s one that’s been brewing for far longer than the pandemic -- and looks like it will outlast it, too. Too many Americans live in unstable housing, or go for stretches of time without any home at all. It’s one of our most embarrassing shortcomings as a country, and addressing it has proven to be one of our most vexing policy problems. This week we’re rereleasing one of our favorite episodes on the topic: part three of Less to Lean On, a series on housing in America that Trending Globally produced in collaboration with the media collective Signs of Providence.This particular episode follows one woman as she tries to navigate the world of affordable housing in Rhode Island. Her story reveals the complex web of forces that keep so many Americans from finding stable housing, and why it’s disastrous not just for individuals, but for our society as a whole. If you like this episode, we recommend you go back and listen to the rest of the series, which covers housing, eviction, and homelessness from a variety of angles. Listen to Part 1Listen to Part 2Listen to Part 4Learn more about Signs of ProvidenceLearn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

On November 16, a $1 trillion infrastructure bill was signed into law by President Biden, marking the biggest investment in the country’s infrastructure in decades. At the same time, an even larger social spending bill sits in a state of limbo in Congress, with no resolution in sight.  What happens in the US Congress over the next few months should matter to everyone, not just the political hobbyists. With proposed government spending on everything from fighting climate change to supporting new industries in the US, the success or failure of President Biden’s legislative agenda will have a huge effect not just in America, but around the world. On this episode Sarah Baldwin ’87 and Dan Richards talk with two experts to get a sense of how President Biden’s agenda has been making its way through Congress, and how the process fits into the bigger picture of US electoral politics. Guests:Carrie Nordlund is assistant dean for undergraduate programs at Brown University, and co-host, with Mark Blyth, of the (aptly titled) podcast, Mark and Carrie. Wendy Schiller is a professor of political science at Brown and director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, which is housed at the Watson Institute. Learn more about the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy.  Learn more about Watson’s other podcasts, including Mark and Carrie. 

Dr. Kakenya Ntaiya is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute and the founder of Kakenya’s Dream, a female empowerment and education non-profit based in the rural Masai Mara of Kenya. Kakenya grew up in the Masai Mara, in a community where it was expected that women wouldn’t go to school beyond childhood. They’d be subject to early, arranged marriages, and worse. Yet, incredibly, Kakenya forged a different path. On this episode of Trending Globally, you’ll hear Kakenya’s story in her own words, and learn how it led her to develop a new model for girls' education in rural Kenya. It’s a model based on a premise that her life story also affirms: that the education of girls and the health of a community are deeply intertwined. Learn more about Kakenya’s DreamLearn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

In the world of international affairs, there’s perhaps no concept more fundamental than human rights. Yet despite that, these rights seem to be under greater threat in more places than we’ve seen in a long time. In order to understand how we might better promote human rights around the world, we at Trending Globally wanted to take a step back and explore the very concept of ‘human rights.’ Sarah Baldwin ‘87 and Dan Richards spoke with two experts -- one a political scientist, and one a neuroscientist -- about where exactly this concept comes from, and where it might be going. Guests on this episode:Nina Tannenwald, Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Brown UniversityTara White, Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown UniversityRead Tara White’s paper on ‘Dignity Neuroscience.’Learn more about the Watson Institute's other podcasts on our website.