Common Ground

This week, we hear from Jess Row, a Pushcart Prize and PEN/O’Henry award winning author who Granta named a "Best Young American Novelist" in 2007. Row's novel "Your Face in Mine" imagines a world in which racial reassignment surgery is a possibility, even a commonplace. In The New York Times, Dwight Garner writes that "Your Face in Mine" "puts [Row] on another level as an artist. He doesn’t shy away from the hard intellectual and moral questions his story raises, or from grainy philosophical dialogue, but he submerges these things in a narrative that burns with a steady flame. There’s some Jonathan Lethem in Mr. Row’s street-level awareness of culture. There’s some Saul Bellow in his needling intelligence."

In this episode, we hear from David Sehat, an intellectual and cultural historian of the United States at Georgia State University. I ask Sehat about one of his main skills as an historian: that is, his ability to identify certain myths about American history circulated—one might even say peddled—by politicians in order to prop up certain ideological or political agendas in the present. We also discuss Sehat’s excellent podcast MINDPOP, and the extent to which he brings his past experiences to bear on the questions he asks about American history.

In this episode, we hear from Clifford Siskin, the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English and American Literature at NYU, as well as Director of the Re:Enlightenment Project. Siskin discusses his recent book "System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge."

In this episode, we hear from Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and contributor to the Washington Post. Daniel identifies some key differences between the kind of thinker we might consider a “public intellectual,” and the one now commonly referred to as a “thought leader.” In our conversation, Daniel explores the differences between the public intellectual and the thought leader as he’s defined them. Dan also discusses the relationship between thought leadership and plutocracy, and explains why he thinks the Marketplace of Ideas has become what he calls the Ideas Industry.

Today we hear from Scott St. Louis, program manager of the Common Ground Initiative at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University. Scott explores what it would mean for the left and right to find, or even pursue, “common ground” in a time of political hyper-polarization, such as ours.

In today's episode, we hear from Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freud Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, on the promises and perils of anger in civic life.

Today, we hear from John Waters, Professor of Irish Studies at New York University, about the Easter Rising--that is, the 1916 rebellion of Irish nationalists and republicans against British rule in Ireland. John discusses the Rising and its aftermath; he also explores the role of Irish literary and cultural leaders, such as WB Yeats, in developing a certain kind of Irish nationalism that fueled revolutionary zeal.

This week, we hear from Katie Gordon, Program Manager of the Kaufman Interfaith Institute as well as Interfaith Services Coordinator with the Division of Inclusion and Equity at Grand Valley State University. In this episode, Katie discusses the current state of religious relations in America, and what it means to promote interfaith understanding.

In this episode, we hear from David Parsons, a social and cultural historian of 20th century America at New York University and host of The Nostalgia Trap. David discusses some of the historians and critics he’s had on The Nostalgia Trap. He also describes why he moved from being a fan of Rush Limbaugh as a kid to being a committed leftist at UC Santa Barbara, a shift he has not reversed. Finally, David talks a bit about what it’s like being a young scholar in the academy, and whether he thinks it’s incumbent upon scholars in the digital age to try to present their work to the public.

In this special episode of the podcast, we post for you an event hosted at the Hauenstein Center, in partnership with Grand Valley State University’s Division of Inclusion and Equity, that commemorated the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On January 17th, 2017, two prominent writers and commentators, Nikole Hannah Jones of the New York Times, and Jason Riley of The Wall Street Journal, met at the Hauenstein Center in front of a packed audience of students, faculty, and members of the community for a dialogue about race and the American Dream. The central aim of the conversation was to explore the progress that has been made since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the challenges that continue to exist, in the pursuit of a more equitable society.

Today we hear from Jeremy Young, an historian at Dixie State University and the author of The Age of Charisma: Leaders, Followers, and Emotions in American Society, 1870 - 1940. In this episode, Jeremy describe the role that charismatic leadership and emotional appeal have played, and continue to play, in American politics.

In today's episode, Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, discusses President Trump's first month in office.

This week, we hear from Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and co-founding editor of Jadaliyya, an online magazine produced by the Arab Studies Institute. Noura discusses her work in international law and refugee law, as well as on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We also get her take on President Trump’s demand for “extreme vetting” of refugees, as well whether his Middle East policy significantly differs from those of his recent predecessors.

This is the second installment of our two-part interview with James Panero, executive editor of the New Criterion. In this episode, we hear a bit more about the history of the journal, how it fit into the culture wars of the 80s and 90s, and what critics and editors like Victor Navasky of the Nation and Jed Perl of the New Republic have thought about it.

In today's episode, we hear from James Panero, executive editor of The New Criterion, about contemporary museum culture and art in the age of Trump.

In this episode, we hear from Emma Green, staff writer and editor at The Atlantic about religion in American politics, as well as about the election of Donald Trump and its potential effects on religious relations. We recorded our conversation a few days before President Trump made his executive order on immigration; however, Emma’s remarks provide some context for that decision and its potential effects.

In this episode, we hear from Caitlin Zaloom, co-founder and co-editor of Public Books, an online journal of diverse intellectual debate and one of the few forums, online or in print, dedicated to bringing cutting-edge scholarly thinking and criticism to a wide, public audience. Judith Butler on Public Books: "It is a rare and precious thing to discover such a compelling space for the written word and the thinking reader.

In this episode, we hear from Jonny Thakker, co-founder and co-editor of THE POINT, a magazine of philosophical writing and humanistic thinking whose vision is, in the words of its editors, a society where the examined life is not an abstract ideal but an everyday practice. Leon Wieseltier on THE POINT: it is "intellectually serious, independent, far-reaching, spirited and elegant—a stirring act of resistance against the shrinkage of intellectual life in our culture of takeaways and metrics.”

This week, we have something special: a look-back on some of our favorite episodes from our inaugural year as a podcast, the very eventful 2016. Our selections for this retrospective aren’t random, however. Given the great political significance of 2016, we’re going to focus today on some episodes that shed light on the presidential election. What happened to the Republican and Democratic Parties in 2016? More broadly, how has conservatism changed in the past forty years, and liberalism too? Given thee changes, how did Donald Trump become president-elect? And, finally, how will the left respond to Trump’s ascendance?

Today we hear from Rita Felski, William R Kenan Jr. Professor of English at the University of Virginia and the 2016 Niels Bohr Professor of English at the University of Southern Denmark. In our conversation, Felski discusses her recent book, The Limits of Critique, in which she examines, and is often critical of, the ways many scholars write about literature.