The Dissidents

In this week's podcast, Mike Burke meets with Jewish intellectual Dmitri Shufutinsky to discuss his upcoming book, "Jew-Jitsu". The conversation ranges across a number of topics, including how to identify and push back against a worryingly widespread and apparently growing antisemitism and historic illiteracy.

Welcome to our the new monthly series of the Dissidents Podcast on the legacies of black pioneers, brought to you by the Black Institute of Liberal Values (a joint project of ⁠Free Black Thought⁠ and the Institute for Liberal Values). In this episode, Winkfield Twyman, Jr & Jennifer Richmond, speak with Mark Brown on his common cousin with Wink, Daniel Brown. According to Wink, who writes of Daniel often in his book with Jen, Letters in Black and White, Daniel was a “founding father” for his family.

Mark, Wink and Jen talk about the relevance of genealogy for seeing each other as “Old Americans”, the role of faith in this mission, the possibility of “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome”, and the curative effects of narrative therapy and writing for coming together across the color line.

Follow us on Circle for more resources and materials on black pioneers in American history.

Welcome to our the first episode of our monthly series of the Dissidents Podcast on the legacies of black pioneers, brought to you by the Black Institute of Liberal Values (a joint project of Free Black Thought and the Institute for Liberal Values). In this inaugural episode, Winkfield Twyman, Jr & Jennifer Richmond, speak with Bill Paine and Tom Miller, two descendants of the first ordained black minister, Lemuel Haynes. Jen & Wink talk about what it means for people to come together across the color line in celebration of pioneering ancestors and in community as “Old Americans”.

Lemuel Haynes Resources:

Sketches of the Life and Character of the Rev. Lemuel Haynes, for Many Years Pastor of a Church in Rutland, and Late in Granville, New York.  Timothy Mather Cooley. Publisher: John S. Taylor, NY. 1839

Black Puritan, Black Republican The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753-1833. John Saillant. Oxford University Press, 2003

Lemuel Haynes, a bio-bibliography.  Richard Newman. Lambeth, Press, NY. 1984

Black preacher to white America : the collected writings of Lemuel Haynes, 1774-1833 / edited by Richard Newman; introduction by Helen MacLam ; preface by Mechal Sobel.

Haynes, Lemuel, 1753-1833.

Brooklyn, N.Y. : Carlson Pub., 1989

In this week's episode Mike and Elizabeth talk about personal and institutional neutrality with academic librarian Pam Hayes-Bohanan.  While many of us think about free speech and academic freedom in the abstract, they are concrete and routine considerations for libraries and librarians.  Institutions release statements and professional organizations issue ethical guidelines, but no one knows better than librarians the often conflicting impracticalities these can pose.  We discuss the challenges of book bans, collection policies, socio-political culture, and what they mean for community and academic libraries and staff.  

In this week's episode we challenge liberal communicators to make better use of emotional language and imagery to boost their logical arguments.  Mike refers to philosophical and historical references to the conflict between reason and sentimentality.  Elizabeth describes what research in psychology has to say about the the important contributions of the brain's emotional system to everyday functioning. Reason and emotion are not in conflict; they work in concert.

n this week's episode, Mike and Elizabeth discuss diversity training, specifically an "Anti-Racist Fight Club" pamphlet, forwarded to us anonymously.  We go through the materials, click on embedded links, and fact check where appropriate. This is a long episode, but it could have easily been longer still. For example, we focused on aspects presented as objective information, but did not linger over portions that were clearly presented as the author's opinion.  We hope this episode may be helpful to listeners who are facing their own workplace DEI seminars.

Podcast Notes

Watch Coleman Hughes Colorblindness Ted Talk:

This week, Mike and Elizabeth talk about research linking ideology to our habits of attention and memory, including our interpretation of cues related to social status and behaviors.  The episode was recorded before Harvard’s president resigned, but our discussion is relevant to the ongoing controversy about her path to leadership and short lived tenure as president.  The conversation was inspired by a popular online opinion piece proposing that “pathological kindness” (the author’s term, not ours!) leads individuals to act in ways that are ultimately unproductive or socially harmful.  

Winkfield Twyman Jr., former law school professor, writer, and Harvard Law School graduate, joins Elizabeth Spievak for a discussion about Claudine Gay.  Wink questions the moral courage of Harvard's president and has called for her resignation.  Gay's recent congressional testimony is discussed as an example of what is a larger problem on college campuses and beyond.  We talk about what it means to have a moral compass, historical and contemporary examples of moral courage, and what can and should be expected of leaders. Throughout, the issues and challenges are framed in the context of liberal values.

This week we talk culture, ideological politics, philosophy, and law with the celebrated author of Cynical Theories (Helen Pluckrose) and the Assistant Director at the Bi Foundation and editor-in-chief of Queer Majority (Rio Veradonir).  Helen and Rio speak with Mike and Elizabeth about challenges to liberalism, past, present, and future. They also share their reasons to celebrate and be hopeful. 

Podcast Notes:

Queer Majority: https://www.queermajority.com/

In this Liberal Conversation series of the Dissident’s Podcast, Mike and James discuss the history of liberalism, how power is abused by those factions traditionally associated with the left and the right and how those labels are themselves arbitrary rather than principled.

Welcome to the Radical Roots of Ethnic Studies, a series of the Dissidents Podcast， with your co-hosts, Jennifer Richmond and Brandy Shufutinsky. In this series we explore the radical roots of liberated ethnic studies, how extreme ideology is infiltrating our schools with the aim to indoctrinate instead of educate, and our search for solutions to empower parents, teachers and students, giving them the tools to embrace inquiry and to express their individuality.

This week we speak with Izabella Tabarovsky, a Soviet Jewish Immigrant who has dedicated her research to exploring the spread of Soviet propaganda throughout the modern world. In this podcast she shares with the Soviet origins of antisemitic & anti-zionist propaganda & tropes, both the right & left’s adoption of these ideologies, its influence in today’s American media landscape and education system, and how Hamas used the same protocols put forth by the Russians and subsequently the Nazis to justify a Jewish genocide.

In this week's podcast Armin Navabi, David Bernstein & Mike Burke discuss homophobia in relation to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, "pink washing", the future of the two state solution (or lack thereof) and the role that religion plays in how different cultures conceive of power and weakness.
Podcast Notes: 

In this week's episode, Mike and Elizabeth talk about a report that links receipt of undisclosed foreign donations with the erosion of tolerance on U.S. campuses. Larger donations from Middle Eastern and authoritarian countries appeared especially troublesome. Correlational results indicate that a lack of university transparency about their funding sources was concurrent with reported increases in antisemitism and with challenges to norms of free expression.  Elizabeth expresses skepticism regarding any causal inferences.  Mike shares his views about the likely goals of donors from authoritarian countries and specifically discusses funds from Qatar.  Both agree with the authors that more research is warranted.

Podcast Notes:

The Corruption of the American Mind: How Concealed Foreign Funding of U.S. Higher Education Predicts Erosion of Democratic Values and Antisemitic Incidents on Campus.

From the Network Contagion Research Institute:

In this week's episode, Mike and Elizabeth go back to basics with a discussion about balance. We begin and end with contemporary challenges to balance in our personal and professional lives, particularly those posed by DEI initiatives.  Sandwiched between is a deep dive on balance in international relations, with a focus on the Middle East.  Mike employs his background and training to take us through some of the most important historical challenges to balance in the region, from the Ottoman Empire to the crisis unfolding today.  

In this week's episode ILV fellows Mike, Elizabeth, and James discuss position statements and ILV's commitment to liberal conversations. First, Mike talks with Elizabeth who argues that organizational statements are of little practical use and may jeopardize the non-partisan and non-sectarian missions of consortiums like ILV.  In the second part of the podcast, Mike and James continue to discuss how dangerously close institutional statements can come to compelling speech. In both segments we talk about antisemitism, war, and the difference between personal and organizational neutrality. 

Channy Chhi Laux joins us to discuss her perspectives on communism, free speech, individual rights and responsibilities, and contemporary challenges to liberal values. Channy was just 13 when the Khmer Rouge seized Cambodia in 1975. She endured 4 years of starvation, forced labor, and disease before arriving in Lincoln, Nebraska as a Cambodian refugee who spoke no English and who had been denied 4 years of education. Channy went on to earn an advanced degree in Applied Mathematics and spent 30 years working in Silicon Valley as an engineer. She is the founder of Angkor Cambodian Food, and works with schools and other organizations, like the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, to promote awareness of the Cambodian Genocide.   

On October the 5th Brandy Shufutinsky, David Bernstein and Mike Burke met to discuss the growing problem of antisemitism on both the political left and right. Little could any of them know what was about to happen just a couple of days later on October the 7th, which was the worst attack on the Jewish people, since the Holocaust. In an addendum to the original recording, made just a few days later but in what felt like a totally different era, Mike and Brandy included a follow-up conversation on the outpourings of antisemitic madness erupting across Western world, including direct incitements to violence by academics at prestigious universities, hordes of people taking to the streets to celebrate some of the worst of atrocities of the 21st century and schools in London having to temporarily close due to the very real fear of violent mobs attacking Jewish children.

Podcast Notes:

Podcast notes:

Welcome to the Radical Roots of Ethnic Studies, a series of the Dissidents Podcast, with your co-hosts, Jennifer Richmond and Brandy Shufutinsky. In this series we explore the radical roots of liberated ethnic studies, how extreme ideology is infiltrating our schools with the aim to indoctrinate instead of educate, and our search for solutions to empower parents, teachers and students, giving them the tools to embrace inquiry and to express their individuality.

Hamas’ recent terrorist attack in Israel has garnered the support of the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies (CLES), a group that is designing curricula for K12 education and is involved in teacher training, funded in large part by California taxpayers. In this episode we discuss CLES’ support of Hamas, the subtle and sloganized language used by CLES and Hamas supporters that conflates hatred and terrorism with “resistance”, CLES Ethnic Studies curricula’s ideological emphasis on Palestine, and the release of recent curricula surrounding the attack that fails to address the nuance and complexity of the conflict.

In this week's podcast Elizabeth Weiss, Professor of Anthropology and fellow at the Center for Academic Pluralism, joins us to talk about bones!  We discuss research ethics, respect for artifacts, the preservation of research materials, and academic freedom in anthropology and beyond. Current and future access to documents, laboratory spaces, databases, and physical objects are at risk. Also at risk is exposure to diverse and challenging ideas in anthropology research and education.  We talk about contemporary social and political challenges surrounding the categorization of bones and the related ideological hypocrisies the field is actively avoiding.  Elizabeth gives us a brief overview of her most recent cancellation experience: a panel discussion originally accepted for the American Anthropological Association conference was deemed potentially harmful and removed from the schedule.  She invites us to hear the canceled panel discussion on November 8, offered through Heterodox Academy.

Podcast Notes:

Executive Director of Speech First, Cherise Trump, and Elizabeth Spievak discuss the state of free speech on college campuses.  Cherise gives us an overview of her work at Speech First to promote open discourse as an essential component of a comprehensive education. We talk about the importance of being exposed to different and challenging ideas to build strength and resilience, as well as the difficulties faced by students and faculty alike in the current socio political climate.  Throughout, the issues and challenges of free speech are framed in the context of liberal values.

Podcast Notes

https://speechfirst.org/

In this week's podcast, Mike and Elizabeth discuss an article about the responsibility of journalists in reporting, specifically reports about the war in Ukraine.  The authors suggest that consumers of the news may be traumatized by seeing 24/7 coverage, perhaps even more traumatized and demoralized than those who are living in a war zone. The description of potential harm and the fragility of readers or viewers is reminiscent of that which is leveraged by some social justice advocates, and the authors narrowly escape a call for censorship.

Podcast notes:

Su, Z., McDonnell, D., Cheshmehzangi, A., Bentley, B. L., Ahmad, J., Šegalo, S., da Veiga, C. P., & Xiang, Y.-T. (2023). Media-induced war trauma amid conflicts in Ukraine. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(4), 908–911. 

In this week's podcast, Mike and Elizabeth discuss research on leadership and stress.  In what may at first seem like counterintuitive findings, military and government leaders had lower levels of the stress related hormone cortisol than non-leaders. A sense of control was a significant mediator of anxiety and stress. We talk about contemporary labor relations and social applications of the findings, as well as some similar research that clarifies who may benefit the most from a sense of control in the workplace. 

Podcast notes:

In this week's podcast Elizabeth and Mike talk with Lee Jussim about the new "Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry."  Lee, distinguished professor of psychology at Rutgers, joined an interdisciplinary group of professors from many institutions in creating a set of principles that offer contemporary guidelines for the revitalization of higher education's core mission.  The document addresses the special and honorable duties of universities to foster freedom of thought and to actively avoid becoming political or ideological battlegrounds.  We alternate between frustration, worry, and hope in our discussion and examples of the challenges ahead for ensuring access to a truly liberal education.

Podcast Notes

Princeton Principles: 

Welcome to a special “Liberal Conversations Series” of the Dissidents Podcast. 

In this series we invite guests who have resources, ideas, and viewpoints that will challenge us to reflect on liberal values, what they are, how they are applied, their impact on us as individuals, and why they matter for the larger communities in which we live.  

In this episode, Brandy Shufutinsky and Elizabeth Spievak discuss intercultural and academic opportunities that can enhance liberal democratic ideals. Brandy gives us an overview of her upcoming course and its usefulness for teachers, parents, and laypeople.  The course and our discussion of current challenges in education, from the broad and sociopolitical to the personal and specific, are framed in the context of liberal values. 

Podcast Notes

Welcome to a new series of the Dissidents Podcast with your co-hosts, Jennifer Richmond and Brandy Shufutinsky. In this series we explore the radical roots of liberated ethnic studies, how extreme ideology is infiltrating our schools with the aim to indoctrinate instead of educate, and our search for solutions to empower parents, teachers and students, giving them the tools to embrace inquiry and to express their individuality.

This week we speak with Kofi Montzka, an attorney, wife and mother. In March, Kofi spoke out at a Minnesota Legislature assembly against a bill mandating ethnic studies. According to Kofi, radical or critical ethnic studies may assuage white guilt, but teaches kids of color a hopelessness that affects their ability to succeed. These educational agendas institutionalize a bigotry of low expectations, amounting to a new form of racism in our schools.

https://empowered-ed.org/ https://ilvalues.org/

Podcast References:

Welcome to a new series of the Dissidents Podcast with your co-hosts, Jennifer Richmond and Brandy Shufutinsky. In this series we explore the radical roots of liberated ethnic studies, how extreme ideology is infiltrating our schools with the aim to indoctrinate instead of educate, and our search for solutions to empower parents, teachers and students, giving them the tools to embrace inquiry and to express their individuality.

In this week's episode, Mike and Elizabeth talk with Ken Pope, CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Ken had a 34 year career in the US Army, consulting and academia.  While in uniform, he served in a variety of Foreign Area Officer assignments in Russia, Europe, the Middle East, and Central America. He had over 12 years of operational fieldwork with a variety of assignments in Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kosovo. We discuss a broad range of topics relevant to communism and democracy in the world, including Russia, China, and the current state of US military recruitment and training.  We think listeners will agree that there is much more to learn from Ken, so we hope this is just the first in a series of appearances on The Dissidents Podcast!

Podcast Notes:

Link to Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation website: 

https://victimsofcommunism.org/

Report of the National Independent Panel on Military Service and Readiness: