The Makings of Mass Incarceration in the United States with Elizabeth Hinton
Air Dates: March 9-15, 2020 While the United States contains less than five percent of the planet’s population, it has nearly one-quarter of the world’s prison population. Elizabeth Hinton traces the politics and policy decisions since President Lyndon’s Johnson’s War on Poverty that created the nation’s reliance on mass incarceration. Elizabeth Hinton is Professor in the Departments of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Hinton’s research … Read More
Telling the Stories of the Voiceless with Sara Jordenö
Air Dates: March 2-8, 2020 In the course of producing “Story in the Public Square” each week, co-hosts Jim Ludes and G. Wayne Miller revel in the chance to sit down with incredibly gifted story-tellers and artists, to hear them describe their craft, and to benefit from their unique perspectives on the world. Sara Jordenö is all of those things and more. Jordenö is a filmmaker, visual artist and researcher … Read More
Experiencing Climate Change Through Story with Elizabeth Rush
Air Dates: February 24-March 1, 2020 Climate change is reshaping America’s coast-line—from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico; from Staten Island New York to California. For most of us, the change is invisible, but Elizabeth Rush tells us that is, in part, because we don’t know what we’re seeing. Rush is the author of “Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, and “Still Lifes … Read More
Pell Center and League of Women Voters, Newport County to Celebrate Centennial of Women’s Suffrage
See the Newport Daily News’ Coverage of this event. Newport, R.I. – The Pell Center at Salve Regina University and the League of Women Voters, Newport County will host Susan Ware, historian and leading feminist biographer to present “Why They Marched: Celebrating the Centennial of Women’s Suffrage” on March 3, 2020 as part of the Pell Center’s spring lecture series. The struggle for women’s suffrage raised fundamental questions about women’s roles … Read More
The Questions Matter
I watched the Democratic primary debate from Las Vegas last night. I don’t know if what we saw was good for Democrats, good for Republicans, or good for the country. I know politics is fierce. It’s bare-knuckled. It’s theatrical. And last night’s debate had its fair share of drama. But there are so many issues worthy of a national discussion that I’m mystified why debate moderators don’t ask better questions, … Read More
The Expanding News Desert with Penny Abernathy
Air Dates: February 17-23, 2020 It wasn’t so long ago that small and mid-sized American communities were served by multiple news outlets. Penny Abernathy warns of the expansion of “news deserts,” or areas without dedicated local coverage because of shifting technology and consumer behavior. Penelope (Penny) Abernathy is the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics at the University of North Carolina and former executive at The Wall Street … Read More
Our Republic is on the Ballot
The most important player in a republic—including ours—is the citizen. From our consent, leaders derive the authority to govern: to raise taxes, to declare war, to enforce laws and treaties, and to do all the things we expect of government. From the ranks of citizens, our government draws its judges, its soldiers, its officials at every level—including our representatives in the House and Senate as well as the White House. … Read More
Telling the Stories of War with Mark Jacobson
Air Dates: February 10-16, 2020 War stories—whether the stuff of memoir or fictional portrayals of people at war—are mainstays of literature across human history, and today, that extends to film. Mark Jacobson is both a historian and a veteran who seizes on the power of modern storytelling in film to educate the next generation about the realities of war. Dr. Jacobson is the John J. McCloy ’16 Professor of American … Read More
Our North Star
In May of 1952, John Foster Dulles, the man who would become Secretary of State to President Dwight Eisenhower, published an article in Life magazine titled “A Policy of Boldness.” It was both a critique of the Truman administration’s conduct of foreign policy and a description of the establishment views of the Republican party as it sought to regain the White House for the first time in two decades. I … Read More
What it Means to Be an American with Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
Air Dates: February 3-9, 2020 History, as a subject of study, is more than a linear progression of events—it’s ideas, currents of thought, institutions of learning, social movements, moral awakenings and more. In a brief, new book, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen traces the history of ideas that shaped the United States from its beginnings. Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison). She specializes in … Read More