Pell Center

The Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina is a multidisciplinary research center focused at the intersection of politics, policies and ideas.

April 5, 2021: Michael Oppenheimer

Some call it climate change, others call it a crisis, and still others call it a hoax. Dr. Michael Oppenheimer tells us to take seriously the impact climate change will have in all of our lives.

March 22, 2021: Vanessa Otero

Anybody on social media has seen it: dueling posts, arguing over a hot political issue. The protagonists in these online debates are generally sincere in their convictions, but Vanessa Otero says that too many of us remain unaware of the media biases that shape our understanding of the world.

March 15, 2021: Christine Montross

The intersection of America’s criminal justice system and mental health is long and, often, misunderstood. Christine Montross tells us that America’s largest mental health institution isn’t a psychiatric hospital, it’s Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois.

February 22, 2021: Sam Pollard & Benjamin Hedin

In the 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation spied on civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sam Pollard and Benjamin Hedin tell that story in a powerful documentary that shines a light on race, power, and the politics of personal destruction.

March 1, 2021: Dan Barry

It’s been one year since the coronavirus pandemic upended life across the globe. Dan Barry reminds us that behind the headlines and the previously unimaginable counts of cases and deaths, there are stories of individual lives interrupted and, all too often, cut short by the pandemic.

March 8, 2021: S.E. Cupp

In the first months of the Biden administration, we’ve seen an intentional effort by the new president to return the country’s politics to some sense of “normal.” S.E. Cupp is a conservative voice who yearns for a return to substance in American politics.

January 25, 2021: Chris Frantz

The music scene in the 1970s and 1980s is now the stuff of legend—from disco to the rise of hip hop, punk, and new wave, innovation and artistry dominated pop music. Chris Frantz was in the middle of it all as a founding member of Talking Heads.

February 1, 2021: Kashmir Hill

We live in an age increasingly defined by the intrusion of technology in our lives. Kashmir Hill is a technology journalist whose work explores the looming tech-dystopia—and how we can avoid it.

February 8, 2020: Tom Ricks

Political divisions are as old as the republic, itself. But Tom Ricks says that if we’re serious about preserving the union, there is much we can learn from the founders study of the ancient republics in Rome and Greece.