Podcast

This episode explores the motivations for and the consequences of Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It features Dr. Rajan Menon, CCNY’s Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair Emeritus in Political Science; Director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities; Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University; and Global Ethics Fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs. Dr. Menon considers the geostrategic reasons, including NATO’s expansion, as well as potential psychological reasons for Moscow’s decision. He examines how Putin’s  war of aggression and his military’s atrocities on the ground in Ukraine have degraded Russia’s global position and the humanitarian and developmental consequences of this war for Ukraine and far beyond.  His 2015 book (with Eugene B. Rumer), Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (Boston: MIT Press), is available as an open access PDF at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q88is5bc7593tz7/9780262029049MenonRumerConflictInUkraine.pdf?dl=0. 

This episode features Matthew Reilly, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The City College of New York, and CCNY students Catie Hernandez and Eloisa Martinez Jimenez. Prof. Reilly and his students discuss the Hostile Terrain 94 initiative, a participatory global art installation that is part of the Undocumented Migration Project. The installation, located in the North Academic Center of CCNY (160 Convent Avenue, NY, NY), features a map of the US-Mexico border and the toe tags of more than 3,200 lost migrant lives, including those who remain unidentified. Prof. Reilly and the students engage such themes as forced migration stemming from a complex combination of climate change, neoliberal policy, and state fragility, and the process of humanizing mass loss of life resulting from 21st century survival migration and US policy.  

This episode focuses on the first days of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. Louis Charbonneau, UN Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), offers insight into HRW's monitoring of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, the crackdown on antiwar protestors in Russia, the UN's multifaceted response to the conflict, and the humanitarian crisis unfolding with already hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced persons. 

This episode is devoted to examining the crime of torture. It features the President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), Dr. Simon Adams. It delves into the erosion of international human rights and humanitarian law on a global scale as well as the work of CVT, particularly on the US Southern Border and with survivors of torture in the Middle East. Dr. Adams discusses impunity, the moral stain of Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp, the gendered dimensions of torture as well as the torture of children. Dr. Adams shares his experience as an activist in the South Africa’s African National Congress and familial experience with torture in Northern Ireland. 

This episode examines the adverse human costs of neoliberal globalization, particularly the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the lives of Mexicans and the food system. Drawing on her recently published work Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico, Dr. Alyshia Gálvez—Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College, and Professor of Anthropology and the CUNY Graduate Center—illuminates the relationship between free trade, skyrocketing diet-related chronic illness in Mexico, and forced migration within and across borders. She also examines the connections between NAFTA's impacts and the rise of white nationalism in the United States and the expansive US immigrant detention system.