Justin Brooks: Why You Might End Up In Prison

Professor Justin Brooks, director of the LLM Program in U.S. Law in Spanish at the University of San Diego, discusses his book, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent. Prof. Brooks explains how bad lawyering, bad science, and inadequate investigations, lead to wrongful conviction. We look into how police interrogations and juries all contribute to a broken justice system, where innocence is no protection from incarceration. Professor Brooks directs the LLM Program in U.S. Law…

Jim Wallis: White Christian Nationalism and the Church

Jim Wallis, the founding Director of the Georgetown University Center on Faith and Justice, discusses his book, The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy. He argues that the civic promotion of fear, hate, and violence as the trajectory of our politics under a banner of Christian Nationalism, should be faced to contend with a greater response of a civic faith of love, healing, and hope to defeat it. Jim Wallis is the Chair in Faith…

Gian Maria Campedelli: Black Homicide Victims

Gian Maria Campedelli, research scientist at Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Italy, discusses his research article, “Homicides Involving Black Victims are less likely to be Cleared in the United States.” Drawing upon three databases the FBI’s national incident-based reporting system (NIBRS) and the Murder Accountability Project (MAP), Campedelli found that homicides with Black victims were between 3.4% and 4.8% less likely to be solved by police. Gian Maria Campedelli, a research scientist in…

Giuliana Perrone: Abolition’s Legal Failures

Giuliana Perrone, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, discusses her book, Nothing More than Freedom: The Failure of Abolition in American Law. Professor Perrone explains how emancipation and abolition stalled and were ultimately defeated in the Courts. After the Civil War, State courts became the location that set the terms of racial identity, civil rights, and national belonging. These decisions posed a purposeful resistance to the post-War reimagining of the American…

Gerald Horne: Texas: Race, War, Colonialism

Professor Gerald Horne discusses his book, The Counter-revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of American Fascism. Prof. Horne explains his thesis that Texas was a goldmine for Euro-Americans since it provided the dual economics of land speculation and the expansion of slavery, praxis for settler colonialism, and a built in challengers to white supremacy in Mexico and the Native Americans. Texas served as a lynchpin in the coming of the Civil War and a proving ground for…

Donald Yacovone: Teaching White Supremacy

Donald Yacovone, lifetime associate at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, discusses his book, “Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity.” He talks about the evidence of white supremacy’s deep-seeded roots in our nation’s educational system by looking at nearly 100 years of school textbooks. Yacovone finds that racism seeped in through Lost Cause narratives, exclusion of African Americans from the…

Felicity Turner: Proving Pregnancy

Felicity Turner, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Georgia Southern University, discusses her book Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America. Professor Turner explores the intersection of law and the emerging medical professionalization in cases of infanticide in the United States. By examining the legal documents, she is able to show how women's knowledge was invaluable to pregnancy and birth, often called to be expert witnesses…

Kathleen Crowther: History of Controlling Pregnancy

Kathleen M. Crowther discusses her book, Policing Pregnant Bodies: From Ancient Greece to Post-Roe America. She explores the deeply rooted medical and philosophical ideas that continue to reverberate in the politics of women's health and reproductive autonomy. From the idea that a detectable heartbeat is the voice of the unborn to why maternal mortality rates in the United States have risen. Abortion restrictions are based in a fetal primacy history that systematically wrote out of the…

Ekow Yankah: Deputization and White Violence

Ekow Yankah discusses his forthcoming Stanford Law Review article, "Deputization and Privileged White Violence." Prof. Yankah unpacks how the development of social and physical control of slaves necessitated laws and norms that allowed any white person the ability to police a person of color. This white privilege continues today in the self-deputization and citizen 's arrest interactions. Thinking themselves as enforcers of the law, white citizens elevate themselves to, sometimes,…

Jonneke Koomen: Teaching Black Internationalism

Jonneke Koomen discusses her two articles, “International Relations/Black Internationalism” and “Madness in the Classroom: Thomas Sankara’s Disobedient International Relations.” Professor Koomen shows how introducing W.E.B. du Bois’ essays and speeches by Thomas Sankara places teaching about international relations into conversation with its critics. Colonialism, white supremacy, and race based economic systems served as the foundations of International Relations theory and practice, but by…

Jonathan Haines: Genetics and Alzheimer's Disease

Jonathan Haines is a researcher and educator with experience in all aspects of genetic epidemiology, with a particular focus on illuminating the genetic architecture of complex diseases. We discussed his research into the genetic origins of Alzheimer's and dementia. His work seeks to include diverse and minority populations to expand the scope of what factors might contribute to disease prevention. He clarifies genetic research's purpose and use in the future. Dr. Jonathan Haines is…

Alexandra Urakova: Gift Giving in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Alexandra Urakova discusses her article, ""I do not want her, I am sure": Commodities, Gifts, and Poisonous Gifts in Uncle Tom's Cabin." Professor Urakova sees gift giving in Uncle Tom's Cabin as a disruption within the sentimental context of the narrative. Topsy and Orphelia, Eva and Tom, and Shelby and St. Clare are all complicated and compromised in the act of gift giving or receiving, especially by what it means to give the gift of an enslaved person.…

Grace E. Howard: Eugenics, Drugs, and Fetal Personhood

Grace Howard discusses her book, The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood . Professor Howard illustrates how our society has regulated and criminalized pregnancy, through the history of eugenic race science, the war on drugs, fetal personhood laws. Slowly, medical professionals fell in line with prosecutors and police to enforce fetal assault laws with increasing risks to women, families, and ultimately, society. Grace Howard is an Associate Professor of Justice Studies…

Jonathan Witmer-Rich: Cuyahoga County Bail Reform

Jonathan Witmer-Rich discusses his work on the ”Cuyahoga County Bail Task Force: Report and Recommendations.” Professor Witmer-Rich explains the bail situation in Cuyahoga County. Looking at cash bail as a means to secure future appearances and reduce risk, courts are actually preemptively incarcerating and punishing citizens who are presumed innocent. We talk about how the Ohio Supreme Court and Ohio voters responded to recommendations for felony bail reform. Jonathan Witmer-Rich is the…

Tracey L. Meares: Effective Policing

Tracey L. Meares discusses her article, “The Good Cop: Knowing the Difference Between Lawful or Effective Policing and Rightful Policing — And Why it Matters.” Prof. Meares describes the two traditional roles of policing as they function under the law and in fighting crime. These two roles place the responsibility of policing on the behavior of citizens. But Prof. Meares suggests a third role, rightful policing, that places the emphasis on procedure, fairness, and transparency of conduct of the…

Josh Cowen: History of School Vouchers

Josh Cowen discusses his new book, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers. Prof. Cowen traces voucher history startingvwith the ideological roots as a reaction to the Brown decision to how Christian nationalists use vouchers today to weaken the free exercise clause, As challenges to vouchers continue, the defense and advocacy moved into culture war rhetoric to distract from the dismal metrics about voucher success. Josh Cowen is a professor of education…

Kellie Carter Jackson: Black Resistance to White Supremacy

Kellie Carter Jackson, Professor of Africana Studies and the Chair of the Africana Studies Department Wellesley College, discusses her book, We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance. Prof. Carter Jackson explains how she sees black resistance to white supremacy falling to several categories — revolution, protection, force, flight and joy. To illustrate how each one works in history, she recounts stories of ordinary people's everyday refusals and rebellions, focusing on the activism…

Marcy Dinius: Legacy of David Walker's "Appeal"

Marcy Dinius discusses her book, The Textual Effects of David Walker's "Appeal": Print-Based Activism Against Slavery, Racism, and Discrimination, 1829-1851. David Walker's "Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829-1830)" was one of the first antislavery texts published that openly called for slave self-defense and resistance. Professor Dinius explores how Walker used research and typography to introduce varied levels of readership and understanding to…

Jessica Pishko: Constitutional Sheriffs

Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer who graduated from Harvard Law School and Columbia University’s MFA program. Jessica Pishko, journalist and lawyer, discusses her book, "The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy," in which she walks through the long history of the American Sheriff. Since the 1960s, sheriffs have consistently moved to the right, claiming to be the final and only authority to enforce and defend the Constitution. Since…

Leslie Schwalm: Civil War and Racial Medicine

Leslie Schwalm discusses her book, "Medicine, Science, and Making Race in Civil War America." Drawing on archives of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, recollections of Civil War doctors and medical, and testimonies from Black Americans, Professor Schwalm exposes the racist ideas the lent authority and prestige to Northern doctor's and other elites.  Leslie Schwalm is a Professor Emeritus of history and gender, women’s, and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa.

David S. Brown: Hell of a Storm Coming of the Civil War

David S. Brown discusses his new book, "Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War." With chapters on Emerson, Stowe, Thoreau, and Fitzhugh, alongside with a cast of presidents, abolitionists, and black emigrationists, Professor Brown shows how political, cultural, and literary history foreshadow the coming of the Civil War. David S. Brown, is a Horace E. Raffensperger professor of history at Elizabethtown College.

Anne Quaranto: Dog Whistles and Coded Speech

Anne Quaranto discusses her article, "Dog Whistles, Covertly Coded Speech, and the Practices that Enable Them." Dog whistles are words or phrases that seem ordinary but send hidden, often derogatory messages. These forms of coded speech are often used by pundits, politicians, and public figures. Why do they use them and what do they mean? On the one hand, it seems possible to dog whistle unintentionally, merely by uttering certain expressions. On the other hand, the intention of the…

Kali Gross: Vengeance Feminism

Kali Gross discusses her book, Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women's Fury in Lawless Times. Prof. Gross looks at the stories of Black women who hit back—not always figuratively, and not always legally either. Reckoning with women who lied, robbed, and cheated a racist, misogynistic world, these women's stories illustrate how they grappled with the daily violence of their lives. Kali Gross is the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of African American Studies at…

Kate Weisburd: The Carceral Home

Kate Weisburd discusses her article, The Carceral Home. As prison walls are replaced with parole and probation rules that govern every aspect of private life, invasive surveillance technologies are used to monitor intimate information. Where does that leave the private home's primacy as first among equals? Data collection, audio recording, and GPS technologies are expanded to punish people in open society. Professor Wesiburd explores how these issues interact with each other and complicate…

Christopher Span: Book Learning and Slave Education

Christopher Span, Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discusses his work, “Sam’s Cottonfield Blues” and “Quest for Book Learning: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom.” He discusses why literacy was so feared by white enslavers and crucial to slaves. Detailing how slaves subverted the rules to learn to read while enslavers punished those who did. Prof. Span’s own family provides a powerful example of the rhythm and style of…

Lasana Kazembe: Mohonk Conference and Black Education

Lasana Kazembe, discusses his article, “The Steep Edge of a Dark Abyss: Mohonk, White Social Engineers, and Black Education.” Professor Kazembe discusses the key objectives of the First Mohonk Conference on "the Negro Question" and how this built the education standards for Black Americans. Emerging from the Conference sessions and speakers were themes of racial fear, social engineering, and economic exploitation that supported white supremacy rather than black integration. Lasana…

Khiara M. Bridges: Race and the Roberts Court

Khiara M. Bridges has written many articles concerning race, class, reproductive rights, and the intersection of the three. Today’s episode focus on her 2022 Harvard Law Review article, “Race in the Roberts Court”. Professor Bridges talks about Dobbs, Bruen, and the fate of Affirmative Action in relation to how each uses arguments about black history and freedom in contradictory and problematic ways. The Roberts Court's leans on racial skepticism to up end established precedent. Khiara…

Emily Widra: Police Contact and Disparity

Emily Widra discusses her article, "Despite fewer people experiencing police contact, racial disparities in arrests, police misconduct, and police use of force continue." By looking at the newly released Bureau of Justice Statistics report that collects data of police contact in 2022, she finds that even while fewer people interacted with police than in prior years troubling police behavior remains consistent. Emily Widra is a Senior Research Analyst at the Prison Policy…

César García Hernández : Immigration Detention

César García Hernández talks about his book, Migrating to Prison America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants. Professor Hernandez lays out the history of immigration imprisonment and detention through the lens of politics and law. Additionally, noting the way in which the way immigration changed during the 1970 and 80s during the Cuban and Haitian influx. As detention and deportation roar back into the headlines, this history takes on a renewed relevance. César García Hernández is the…

Spencer Sunshine: Neo-Nazi Counterculturalism

Spencer Sunshine, PhD discuss his book, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege. Sunshine describes how Ohio native and lifelong Neo-Nazi James Mason's newsletter Siege, which praises terrorism, serial killers, and Charles Manson, influenced today's generation of hate groups and alt-right influencers. Spencer Sunshine, PhD, has written extensively about the U.S. Far Right, from militias to neo-Nazis. He has been documenting…