The Thought Project Podcast At The Graduate Center

This week’s guest is Christopher Putney, a master’s student in political science at The Graduate Center, CUNY and a lecturer at Hunter College. His research is focused on American political development and political theory. He is the recent author of a London School of Economics blog post titled “Trump’s likely impeachment acquittal shows just how much the Constitution has decayed.” Putney discusses the undermining of the separation of powers in federal government and how it has effected the impeachment of President Trump.

Dána-Ain Davis is a professor of urban studies and anthropology at Queens College and The Graduate Center and the director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society. Davis focuses on black feminist ethnography and the dynamics of race and racism. She discusses her latest book, "Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy and Premature Birth" (NYU Press, 2019), which asserts that black women suffer from medical racism resulting in the highest maternal morbidity rates in America and their babies suffer the highest rates of prematurity, yielding lifelong consequences. This conversation and her book break new ground on how persistent racism has unique and devastating effects upon black women and birthing in America. Davis received her Ph.D. in anthropology from The Graduate Center.

Philip Luke Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is also a political science writing fellow at The Graduate Center and a former adjunct instructor at Hunter College. Johnson joined The Thought Project podcast for a wide-ranging discussion about the convergence and role of organized crime and state terrorism in Mexico, which is part of a growing global phenomenon. Johnson’s case study of the Zetas criminal syndicate that massacred migrants in San Fernando, Mexico, in 2010 was published in "Perspectives on Terrorism."

Our guest this week is Katina Rogers, co-director of the Futures Initiative at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is also the co-director of the CUNY Humanities Alliance, which was created in 2015 to support humanities education at LaGuardia Community College and prepare Ph.D. students for careers as faculty members and higher education leaders. With a new $3.15 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the alliance is expanding to encompass three additional CUNY community colleges: Borough of Manhattan Community College, Guttman Community College, and Hostos Community College. Rogers is about to publish her first book, "Putting the Humanities Ph.D. to Work: Thriving in and Beyond the Classroom", and in this wide-ranging conversation, she touches on the hot topics of current discourse about universities in America.

This week’s Thought Project guest is Heath Brown, associate professor of public policy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is author of several books including "Immigrants and Electoral Politics" and the "Tea Party Divided: the Hidden Diversity of a Maturing Movement." In 24 days the Democratic presidential primaries begin with the Iowa caucuses. Brown weighs in on the primaries, the rise of foreign policy in the 2020 election, and which candidate is most likely to win the Democratic Party’s nomination.

This week’s guests are Graduate Center Professor Matthew K. Gold (English and Digital Humanities) and Luke Waltzer, director of The Graduate Center’s Teaching & Learning Center. Both are deeply involved in the CUNY Academic Commons, an academic social network designed to connect faculty, students, and staff throughout the 25 campuses of The City University of New York. Gold is the director of the Commons, and Waltzer is the director of community projects for the Commons. Gold and Waltzer return to The Thought Project podcast to celebrate and discuss the 10th anniversary of Commons, which achieved their goal to establish a generative platform that enhances the intellectual life of CUNY. Tune in to hear about their plans for the next 10 years.

Graduate Center, CUNY Professor Van C. Tran (Sociology), a former refugee and a graduate of Hostos Community College, Hunter College, and Harvard, talks about the joy of returning to CUNY and fulfilling one of his dreams: to teach at The Graduate Center. He revels in his research of immigrant-rich New York City, where he has explored the experiences of second-generation Latinos. Another area of scholarly interest is Asian immigrants in the U.S. and their beliefs about affirmative action. Tran talks about CUNY’s commitment to public scholarship and what that means to him.

Charles Tien is a professor of political science at Hunter College and at The Graduate Center, CUNY and an expert on the U.S. Congress and national politics. In this episode of The Thought Project, he weighs in on the House Select Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. The inquiry is now in its second week of hearings.

Jean Halley is a professor of sociology at The Graduate Center, CUNY and the College of Staten Island. She earned her doctorate in sociology at The Graduate Center and her master’s in theology at Harvard University. She is the author of several books, including her latest, Horse Crazy: Girls and the Lives of Horses, a blend of personal narrative and research into why girls fall in love with horses and how it shapes their lives.

Merima Ključo, an acclaimed accordionist and vocalist Jelena Milušić have a new creation, which they will be performing at The Graduate Center this week. Their duo album, Lume, is a conceptual work consisting of 10 love songs from different parts of the world, five of which were composed by Ključo, based on Romanian, Croatian, Kosovarian, and Sephardic traditional pieces. In different languages, "lume" has various meanings:  the world, life, source of light, illusion, fire, spark, lover, humanity, more than love. The link connecting the songs is the universal theme of love.

Andrea Alù is the founding director of the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY; Albert Einstein Professor of Physics at the Graduate Center, and a professor of electrical engineering at The City College of New York. Alù has received numerous awards and widespread recognition for his breakthroughs in invisibility cloaking — a technology that makes objects undetectable to monitoring signals — and sound cloaking. Alù’s leapfrog discoveries are powered by his work to create novel methods for manipulating light waves and soundwaves.

Kevin Gardner is the founding director of the Advanced Science Research Center (CUNY ASRC) at The Graduate Center, CUNY’s Structural Biology Initiative and the Einstein Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The City University of New York and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Gardner’s team at the CUNY ASRC explores critical questions about the structures and functions of molecules within cells to better understand how cells work: how they respond to their surroundings, how they duplicate, and what determines the balance between health and disease. The answers they unearth become bedrocks for developing novel drugs and therapies. Gardner spoke with The Thought Project host Tanya Domi about the role of basic research in fueling scientific advances that change our lives and how the CUNY ASRC is contributing to this work as it celebrates its fifth anniversary.

Today’s guest is Professor Margaret Chin of Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. She has been at the center of the recent Harvard race-conscious admissions case in which the court ruled in support of Harvard’s “whole person review,” allowing for race to be considered as one factor among many in undergraduate admissions. Chin, a Harvard graduate, testified in the case and also contributed to writing a declaration in support of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard.

This week’s guest, Annette "Nina" C. Gray, recently joined The Graduate Center as associate dean for the sciences and the new executive director of the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY (CUNY ASRC). Gray earned her Ph.D. from Brown University, where she was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow, and completed her postdoctoral work at Brandeis University where she researched synaptic plasticity — the way neurons in the brain communicate with each other in response to new information. She discusses the fifth anniversary of the CUNY ASRC and her evolution from a research scientist to a university administrator shaping the development of future scientists.

This week’s guest is Professor Ashley Dawson (GC/CSI, English). He currently works in the fields of environmental humanities and postcolonial ecocriticism. He is the author of two recent books: Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso, 2017) and Extinction: A Radical History​ (OR Books, 2016). He weighs in on the climate change debate, the impact of climate change in New York City, and the youth-led global movement that captured attention during U.N. General Assembly’s annual meeting last month.

Professor Charles Tien (GC/Hunter, Political Science) weighs in on the congressional impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s admitted efforts to secure from the Ukraine president an investigation of Vice President Joe Biden and his son for alleged corruption. A former congressional staffer, Tien studies American politics with a particular focus on U.S. Congress and the representation of women and minorities.

This week’s guest is Distinguished Professor John Mollenkopf (Political Science and Sociology), who directs The Graduate Center’s Center for Urban Research. He also coordinates our interdisciplinary concentration in public policy and urban studies. He weighs in on the presidential election and the unusual number of mayors vying for the Democratic nomination.

This week’s guest is James Muyskens, who has been serving as interim president of The Graduate Center since July. He is a distinguished educational leader with a commitment to public higher education as both a teacher and administrator. His recent appointment marks his return to The Graduate Center, where he taught philosophy at the start of his career and later served as a University Professor following his 12-year presidency at Queens College. Muyskens talks about his priorities for The Graduate Center and what inspired him to take on his new role.

This week’s guest is Professor Susan Opotow, a member of the faculty at both The Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Opotow, along with several doctoral students and her co-editor Zachary Baron Shemtob, recently published New York After 9/11 (Fordham Press, 2018). The collection of essays and papers offers a detailed and interdisciplinary look at New York's ongoing recovery from the terrorist attacks. As we approach the 18th anniversary of the tragic event, Opotow shares what she and her collaborators learned about how 9/11 changed New York and New Yorkers.

Amber Scorah, a current CUNY BA student talks about her life and best selling memoir Leaving the Witness: Exiting a Religion and Finding a Life(Viking, June 2019). Scorah shares a remarkable journey of leaving the Jehovah Witness faith while on mission in China. Leaving her faith as a third generation Jehovah Witness was fraught with a multitude of challenges. For beginners, severing her ties to the church, by default she ended her marriage too. Ironically, being in China gave Scorah the emotional space and physical distrance to be able to carve out a path to a remarkable new life. Enchanted with New York City, Scorah seeks a new beginning where she sustains a tragedy that would stagger the strongest among us. She is studying Psychology of Mind Control and Group Dynamics at Hunter College. She is a Thomas Smith Academic Fellow.