Patricia Banks: How Corporate Philanthropy Leversage Black Culture

Patricia A. Banks is Co-Editor-in-Chief of Poetics and Chair and Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Mount Holyoke College. Professor Banks discusses her book, Black Culture Inc.: How Ethnic Community Support Pays for Corporate America. By examining how corporate support and giving to Black museums, cultural events, and music festivals, Prof. Banks details the complicated and often fraught relationship created by these gifts. Afropunk, Kool Cigarettes, and Dennys are all…

Alexandra Natapoff: Misdemeanor System

Alexandra Natapoff, Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is an award-winning legal scholar and criminal justice expert. Professor Alexandra Natapoff discusses her book, Punishment without Crime. How America's Misdemeanor justice system targets the innocent, taxes the poor, and generates revenue for the public and private sector. We discuss why people plead guilty to low level infractions and how that impacts minority and at-risk populations.

Eric Foner: Reconstruction's Consititution

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, is one of this country's most prominent historians. Professor Foner discusses his book "The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution." By looking at the history of debate and aftermath of each Post-War Amendments, Prof. Foner examines how each sought to permanently end American Slavery.

Ronnie Dunn: Racial Profiling and Traffic Stops

Dr. Ronnie A. Dunn recently assumed the role as the inaugural executive director of The Diversity Institute at Cleveland State University, where he has been an associate professor of Urban Studies since 2004. Dr. Dunn discusses his work on traffic patterns, driving populations, and police ticketing in Cleveland. His work was pivotal in exposing Cleveland Police's racial bias' in traffic ticketing and in the use of traffic cameras.

Browen Everill: Abolition and Ethical Capitalism

Bronwen Everill is the incoming Director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Gonville & Caius College. She is the author of Not Made By Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition and Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists from Europe to the United States to West Africa used new ideas of supply and demand, consumer credit, and branding to shape an argument for ethical capitalism. Prof.…

Jonathan Wells: Southern Manifesto

Jonathan Daniel Wells, Ph.D., is Professor of History in the Residential College, the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, and the Department of History at the University of Michigan.. His most recent books are Blind no More: African American Resistance, Free Soil Politics, and the Coming of the Civil War and The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War. Prof. Wells points to the Fugitive Slave Act and Northern resistance to the Federal Law as…

David Krugler: 1919 Year of White Terrorism

David Krugler is a historian and novelist. A professor of history at the University of Wisconsin--Platteville, he has published, in addition to two novels, nonfiction books on propaganda, Cold War civil defense, and black resistance to white mob violence after World War I. Professor Krugler discusses his book, 1919: the Year of Racial Violence and How African Americans Fought Back. We specifically focus on Chicago and Knoxville riots with an eye on how Black World War I veterans factored into…

Steve Luxenberg: Plessy V. Ferguson

Steve Luxenberg is an associate editor at The Washington Post and an award-winning author. Steve Luxenberg discusses his nonfiction book, "Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation," which was published in 2019 to critical acclaim. He discussed the people most influential in arguing and deciding the Supreme Court case - civil rights author Albion W. Tourgée, the Great Dissenter John Marshall Harlan, and Henry Billings Brown who wrote…

Ibriham Sudiata: Slavery and the 1619 Project

Professor Ibrahim K. Sundiata is Emeritus Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the researcher has traveled extensively in South America, the Middle East and Australia. Sundiata currently resides in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, where he has held a Fulbright Professorship at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA -Federal University of Bahia). He is the author of four books; his last is on the Garvey…

Jennifer Morgan: Motherhood and Slavery

Jennifer L. Morgan is Professor of History in the department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University where she also serves as Chair. She is the author of Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. Professor Morgan discusses recent journal article “Partus Sequitur Ventrem: Law, Race, and Reproduction in Colonial Slavery." Exploring how Virginia laws developed to codify enslaved women's reproductive labor, by defining and…

Richard Rothstein: Color Of Law

Richard Rothstein is a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He is the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, which recovers a forgotten history of how federal, state, and local policy explicitly segregated metropolitan areas nationwide, creating racially homogenous neighborhoods in patterns that violate the Constitution and require…

Randolph McLaughlin: Slavery in the Virginia Colony

Prior to joining the Pace Law School faculty in 1988, Professor McLaughlin was an attorney associated with Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, with whom he did litigation and labor law work. In 1978, he began his legal career at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil rights/civil liberties legal organization in New York City. For eight years he worked side by side with the renowned civil rights attorney William Kunstler fighting for the rights of activists and the communities across the…

Randall Balmer: Race and the Religious Right

Randall Balmer, the John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College, is the author of more than a dozen books. Professor Balmer discusses his book BAD FAITH: RACE AND THE RISE OF THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT. Professor Balmer debunks the myth that the Religious Right formed around opposition to Abortion. Instead, he finds that the movement coalesced around de-segregation of white's only Religious Universities. As the religious right fought to keep their white only segregation academies,…

Trevor Burnard: Demis of the Royal African Company

Trevor Burnard is Wilberforce Professor of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull and Director of the Wilberforce Institute. He is a specialist in the Atlantic World and slavery in plantation societies. He is the author of Only Connect: A Field Report on Early American History

Nancy Heitzeg: School to Prison Pipeline

Dr. Nancy A. Heitzeg is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Race/Ethnicity Program. Dr. Nancy Heitzeg discusses her research and book "The School to Prison Pipeline: Education, Discipline, and Racialized Double Standards." Dr. Heitzeg touches on police in schools, unfair suspensions, racialized biases, and the emergence of a system of medicalization that is different for white and black children.

Sheryll Cashin: Housing Segregation

Cheryll Cashin is an author and the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice at Georgetown University. Currently she teaches Constitutional Law, Race and American Law, and a writing seminar about American segregation, education and opportunity. Her new book — White Space, Black ‘Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality — is about the role of residential segregation in producing racial inequality.

Paula Ioanide: Racism's Emotional Economy

Dr. Paula Ioanide is a mother, teacher, scholar, and organizer who strives to counter the social and spiritual ills produced by systemic racism and build new worlds rooted in reparative justice. She is the author of The Emotional Politics of Racism: How Feelings Trump Facts in an Era of Colorblindness and co-editor of the free, open access book, Antiracism Inc.: Why the Way We Talk About Racial Justice Matters. Professor Ioanide discusses her book The Emotional Politics of Racism: How Feelings…

Paul Finkelman: Slavery and the Supreme Court

Paul Finkelman, the Chancellor of Gratz College, is the author of more than 100 law review articles, 100 other scholarly articles and more than fifty books. He is a specialist on slavery, civil rights and race relations, African American history, American Constitutional and legal history, the American Civil War, religious liberty, the history of religion in the U.S., American Jewish history, and legal issues surrounding baseball. The United States Supreme Court has quoted and cited his work in…

Cullen Sweeney: Race and the Justice System

The Cuyahoga County Office of the Public Defender has been led by Chief Public Defender Cullen Sweeney since January 2021. Chief Public Defender, Cullen Sweeney, discusses the role of the Public Defender’s role in advocating for systemic criminal justice reform. We discuss bail reform, race equity, police and prosecution discretion, and sentencing reform.

Eric Herschthal: Dr. Rush's Leprosy Theory

Eric Herschthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of Utah. Professor Eric Herschthal discusses his article "The Science of Antislavery in the Early Republic: The Case of Dr. Benjamin Rush." Prof. Herschthal examines how the medical theories of Dr. Rush informed his advocacy for the American Revolution and the end of American Slavery. While some of the ideas Dr. Rush came up with seem far-fetched or deplorable today, during his lifetime, his thinking was immensely…

Vida Johnson: Police Bias and Testimony

Vida B. Johnson is an Associate Professor of law at Georgetown Law where she teaches in the criminal defense clinics. She writes about policing and criminal procedure. She received her law degree from NYU and her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Johnson discusses her two articles on police bias. First, we talk about her article, "Bias in Blue: Instructing Jurors to Consider the Testimony of Police Officer Witnesses with Caution" where…

Philip Reichel: Slave Patrols: Origins of the Police

During his more than 45 years in academia, Professor Reichel has received awards for teaching, advising, service, and scholarship. He is the author of several textbooks and has authored or co-authored more than forty articles and book chapters. His areas of expertise include comparative justice systems, transnational crime generally, and human trafficking more specifically. Professor Reichel discusses his articles "Southern slave patrols as a transitional police type" and "The…

Laura Bieger: Essay as Politics

Laura Bieger is Professor of American Studies, Political Theory and Culture at the University of Groningen, where she co-directs the Research Center for Democratic Culture and Politics. In this interview, Prof. Bieger discusses her essay “The 1619 Project as Aesthetic and Social Practice

Adam Malka: Rise of Baltimore Police

Adam Malka is an Associate Professor of U.S. History at the University of Oklahoma. Professor Malka discusses his book "The Men of Mobtown" exploring how the free black population of the antebellum South came to be controlled and policed. We explore the roles and expectations of white citizens and how black freedom came to define criminal behavior.

Atiba Ellis: Polley V. Ratcliff

Atiba R. Ellis is a Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School. Professor Ellis discusses his essay "Polley V. Ratcliff: A New Way To Adress an Original Sin?" A fascinating court case, recently resolved, involving kidnapping, slavery, and freedom which might serve as a roadmap for a type of Truth and Reconciliation style reparation. Prof. Ellis explains how the past is still alive and able to be resolved today.

Manisha Shina: History of Reparations

A historian of the long nineteenth century, her research interests lie specifically in the transnational histories of slavery, abolition, and feminism and the history and legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She is currently writing a book on the Reconstruction of American democracy after the Civil War. Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft…

Alex Reinert: 8th Amendment Debate

Alex Reinert is the Max Freund Professor Litigation and Advocacy at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Prof. Reinert discusses his article "Reconceptualizing the Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, and 'Cruel and Unusual' Punishment." Prof. Reinert talks about "the law of slavery" and how little we have travelled from the 1870s to today when it comes to the understanding of "cruel and unsual" punishment as the standard of imprisonment.

Thomas Craemer: Estimating the Cost of Reparations

Thomas Craemer obtained a political science doctorate in 2001 from the University of Tuebingen in his native Germany, and a PhD from Stony Brook University, New York, in 2005. He teaches at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy. His experience of growing up in post-World-War II Germany motivated his research on implicit racial attitudes and race-related policies including slavery reparations. In 2015, he published an article titled Estimating Slavery Reparations that has…

Reginald Bell: Black Slave Owners

Reginald L. Bell is a Professor of Management in the College of Business at Prairie View A&M University. Bell received his PhD in Business Education from the University of Missouri at Columbia. Bell writes mostly in the management communication area, which is his research focus. Bell has more than 80 articles published in peer reviewed journals and trade publications. He is the author, with Jeanette S. Martin, of three books on Managerial Communication. Dr. Bell discusses his article…

Michael Conklin: Public Opinion of Reparations

In this interview we discuss Prof. Conklin's paper An Unhill Battle for Reparationists: A Quantitative Analysis of the Effectiveness of Slavery Reparations Rhetoric. Prof. Conklin walks us through his research on normal citizen's attitudes toward granting or recieving reparations. The findings are often at odds with conventional assumptions.