Off The Stage Podcast: Recent Episodes
The Hauenstein Center
Off The Stage is a new podcast series produced by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University. A hallmark of the Hauenstein Center is bringing experts from all over the country to our stage in Grand Rapids, Michigan to discuss the cultural, intellectual, and political challenges Americans face. This podcast series takes some of the brightest minds from various backgrounds and political ideologies off the stage to share the passion and curiosity behind their expertise and experiences, plus hear their answers to some fun questions asked by our listeners!
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on April 18, 2024. The Common Ground Initiative welcomed Yale political science professor Steven B. Smith, syndicated columnist and author Cal Thomas, and historian and novelist Elizabeth Cobbs, to discuss the definition of patriotism, debate what actions should be considered patriotic vs. unpatriotic, and consider the role of the institutions they represent in fostering a sense of patriotism among American citizens.
LINKS:
- Reflections On Patriotism Mini Podcast series
- Cal Thomas - Off The Stage
- Steven B. Smith - Off The Stage
- Elizabeth Cobbs - Off The Stage
For more info about this event: gvsu.edu/hc/patriotism.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Yale poltical science professor Steven B. Smith joins Maddy to discuss the Yankees, cats, working for a prestigious school and much more! You won't want to miss this one!
LINKS:
- Reflections On Patriotism Mini Podcast series
- Reflections on Patriotism - event!
- Cal Thomas - Off The Stage
- Elizabeth Cobbs - Off The Stage
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Ballet, Hamilton and how to be a good writer are all topics on this episode featuring historian and author Elizabeth Cobbs! Listen today!
LINKS:
- Reflections On Patriotism Mini Podcast series
- Reflections on Patriotism - event!
- Cal Thomas - Off The Stage
- Steven B. Smith - Off The Stage
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Celebrating 40 years of his column, Cal Thomas joins Maddy on the podcast to talk about his career, his love of broadway, and more! Enjoy!
LINKS:
- Reflections On Patriotism Mini Podcast series
- Reflections on Patriotism - event!
- Elizabeth Cobbs - Off The Stage
- Steven B. Smith - Off The Stage
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This final episode of this series features two guests alongside Maddy Miller & Kahler Sweeney...
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Hannah Hosfelt, BA in Special Education and Elementary Education student & CLA fellow
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Brooke Clement, director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum
On this final episode, Hannah shares how she’s seen the media have a big impact on the publics understanding of patriotism and Brooke shares how her background as the daughter of a dad who loved history kickstarted her sense of patriotism as well as her career path. Since it was the final episode, Maddy & Kahler add in their thoughts to the conversation, specifically what they’ve learned over the course of recording the last five episodes.
Reflections on Patriotism: April 18 | 6 pm | Loosemore Auditorium
Learn more & RSVP here!
Barbara McQuade Event!
Other Reflections on Patriotism episodes:
- Episode 1: Abby Sachs, Shelley Irwin, Neal Buckwalter
- Episode 2: Samuel Jacobs, Randy Cotts, Faye Richardson-Green
- Episode 3: Brooks Twist, Russ Climie, Mohamed Ndiaye
- Episode 4: Megan Rydecki, Claudia Bajema, Danmike Thompson
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here:Website |Instagram |Twitter |LinkedIn |Facebook
The fourth episode of this series features three guests alongside Maddy Miller & Kahler Sweeney...
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Megan Rydecki, director of the Hauenstein Center
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Claudia Bajema, GV retiree & Hauenstein Center advisory board member
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Danmike Thompson, pastoral ministry in Grand Rapids
In this episode, the group talks through the importance of allowing space for people to change their minds. Claudia says we have an obligation to use our talents to serve our communities and Megan brings in her insights from traveling around the world to the conversation. Danmike says “saying I’m really into politics but I only vote is like saying I’m really into food and I only eat once every four years.”
Reflections on Patriotism: April 18 | 6 pm | Loosemore Auditorium
Learn more & RSVP here!
Other Reflections on Patriotism episodes:
- Episode 1: Abby Sachs, Shelley Irwin, Neal Buckwalter
- Episode 2: Samuel Jacobs, Randy Cotts, Faye Richardson-Green
- Episode 3: Brooks Twist, Russ Climie, Mohamed Ndiaye
- Episode 5: Hannah Hosfelt, Brooke Clement
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here:Website |Instagram |Twitter |LinkedIn |Facebook
The third episode of the mini series features three guests alongside Maddy Miller & Kahler Sweeney...
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Brooks Twist, MS in Accounting student & CLA lead fellow
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Russ Climie, owner of Tiberius Images
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Mohamed Ndiaye, Interim Director of Development Services at GV
On this episode, the group agrees that everyone should pick up trash when they see it. Mo brings his perspective from being an immigrant from Senegal, Russ talks about respecting the first responders in our country and Brooks shares about his time working with the Republican Party in Grand Rapids.
Reflections on Patriotism: April 18 | 6 pm | Loosemore Auditorium
Learn more & RSVP here!
Other Reflections on Patriotism episodes:
- Episode 1: Abby Sachs, Shelley Irwin, Neal Buckwalter
- Episode 2: Samuel Jacobs, Randy Cotts, Faye Richardson-Green
- Episode 4: Megan Rydecki, Claudia Bajema, Danmike Thompson
- Episode 5: Hannah Hosfelt, Brooke Clement
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here:Website |Instagram |Twitter |LinkedIn |Facebook
This second episode features three guests alongside Maddy Miller & Kahler Sweeney...
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Samuel Jacobs, GV/CLA grad & Administrative Director at 616 Service
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Randy Cotts, AP government & history teacher at Byron Center High School
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Faye Richardson-Green, Meijer Endowed Chair at Frederik Meijer Honors College
On this episode, the group talks about the idea of “freedom for me but not for thee.” Faye brings up Colin Kapernick and how we cannot deny others the freedoms we enjoy, Samuel describes service as a part of citizenship and Randy shares some thoughts on patriotism from his high school AP government students.
Reflections on Patriotism: April 18 | 6 pm | Loosemore Auditorium
Learn more & RSVP here!
Other Reflections on Patriotism episodes:
- Episode 1: Abby Sachs, Shelley Irwin, Neal Buckwalter
- Episode 3: Brooks Twist, Russ Climie, Mohamed Ndiaye
- Episode 4: Megan Rydecki, Claudia Bajema, Danmike Thompson
- Episode 5: Hannah Hosfelt, Brooke Clement
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here:Website |Instagram |Twitter |LinkedIn |Facebook
Our very first episode of this mini series features three guests alongside Maddy Miller & Kahler Sweeney...
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Shelley Irwin, radio show host & producer
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Neal Buckwalter, Grand Valley professor
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Abby Sachs, program manager of the CLA
On this episode, Abby says she is undecided on considering herself a patriot, Shelley talks about being in Germany during 9/11 and Neal shares about how universities play a role in providing a space for sharing different points of view.
Reflections on Patriotism: April 18 | 6 pm | Loosemore Auditorium
Learn more & RSVP here!
Other Reflections on Patriotism episodes:
- Episode 2: Samuel Jacobs, Randy Cotts, Faye Richardson-Green
- Episode 3: Brooks Twist, Russ Climie, Mohamed Ndiaye
- Episode 4: Megan Rydecki, Claudia Bajema, Danmike Thompson
- Episode 5: Hannah Hosfelt, Brooke Clement
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here:Website |Instagram |Twitter |LinkedIn |Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on March 14, 2024. Brooke Barbier came to Grand Rapids to share about her book titled King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father. Listen now!
For more info about this event: gvsu.edu/hc/kinghancock
Off The Stage with Brooke Barbier
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Chex mix, beer and the Boston Red Sox are all topics on this episode of Off The Stage! Author and historian Brooke Barbier joins Maddy to discuss her career path and her touring agency, Ye Olde Tavern Tours. It's a fun episode - listen now!
LINKS:
- Ye Olde Tavern Tours
- Tavern Tours YouTube Short Videos
- Book: King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father
- Brooke's presentation at the Hauenstein Center
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on February 29, 2024, the 2024 Progressive / Conservative Summit. This particular episode is from the evening panel discussion, moderated by Jeffrey Rosen and featuring Ilan Wurman and Caroline Fredrickson. Listen now!
LINKS:
- 2024 Progressive / Conservative Summit
- The National Constitution Center's Constitution Drafting Project
- Jeffrey Rosen - Off The Stage
- Caroline & Ilan - Off The Stage
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on February 29, 2024, the 2024 Progressive / Conservative Summit. This particular episode is from Jeffrey Rosen's luncheon keynote on his new book The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. Listen today!
LINKS:
- 2024 Progressive / Conservative Summit
- Jeffrey Rosen - Off The Stage
- Caroline & Ilan - Off The Stage
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Two of our speakers for the 2024 Progressive Conservative Summit, Caroline Fredrickson & Ilan Wurman, join Maddy for a conversation about their career paths and a project with the National Constitution Center. Listen today!
LINKS:
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Constitution Drafting Project
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Under The Bus: How Working Women Are Being Run Over by Caroline Fredrickson
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The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment by Ilan Wurman
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2024 Progressive / Conservative Summit
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
American social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt joins Maddy for a short but special episode of Off The Stage. Jonathan's new book, The Anxious Generation, is centered around the effects of social media on Gen Z, Maddy's generation. The two discuss why social media is a threat to gen z, marketing trends, and what the intersection of empowered citizenship and social media looks like. It's a great episode - check it out!
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on February 20, 2024. Matthew Costello shares on his book Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture.
Matthew Costello - Off The Stage
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/mourningthepresidents.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Matthew Costello, chief education officer at the White House Historical Association, sits down with Maddy to make some suggestions about the famous BOQ, share his career journey and talk about the exciting things coming up at the White House Historical Association. Listen now!
LINKS:
- The People's House: A White House Experience
- Mourning the Presidents event recap (YouTube & Podcast)
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on February 16, 2024. Khalilah Burt Gaston & Stacy Stout take the stage to talk all things leadership.
Khalilah Burt Gaston - Off The Stage
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/kbg.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Khalilah Burt Gaston, founding executive director of the Song Foundation, sits down with Maddy to talk all things from office culture, to her career breakdown to her latest TV show binge. You won't want to miss it - listen today!
LINKS:
- The Song Foundation
- Khalilah Burt Gaston event recap (YouTube & Podcast)
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Maddy is joined virtually by this year's Progressive / Conservative Summit keynote speaker, Jeffrey Rosen, the CEO and President of the National Constitution Center. The two discuss Rosen's upcoming book, the story of President Taft getting stuck in a bathtub and so much more. Listen in!
LINKS:
- Join us for the 2024 Progressive / Conservative Summit on February 29!
- We The People Podcast by Jeffrey Rosen
- Jeffrey's new book: The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America
- William Howard TaftBiography by Jeffrey Rosen
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on January 25, 2024. The Common Ground Initiative convened a bipartisan panel moderated by Hauenstein Center Director Megan Rydecki and featured Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, Theresa Cardinal Brown of the Bipartisan Policy Center, and David Bier of the Cato Institute, to assess the problems facing our immigration system and identify potential solutions.
Check out Off The Stage episodes with our panelists:
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
Theresa Cardinal Brown
David Bier
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/immigration.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Maddy is joined by David Bier, one of the panelist for the Bipartisan Policy Panel on Immigration.
LINKS:
Bipartisan Policy Panel: Immigration - watch/listen to event
Theresa Cardinal Brown - Off The Stage
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick - Off The Stage
Check out: The Green Card Game
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Maddy is joined by Theresa Cardinal Brown, one of the panelist for the Bipartisan Policy Panel on Immigration.
LINKS:
Bipartisan Policy Panel: Immigration - watch/listen to event
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick - Off The Stage
David Bier - Off The Stage
Theresa's Podcast: This Week In Immigration
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Maddy is joined by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, one of the panelist for the Bipartisan Policy Panel on Immigration.
LINKS:
Bipartisan Policy Panel: Immigration - watch/listen to event
Theresa Cardinal Brown - Off The Stage
David Bier - Off The Stage
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on January 18, 2024. We invited TaRita Johnson to our stage to intertwine her story with the legacy of Dr. King.
Check out Off The Stage Podcast with TaRita Johnson.
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/taritajohnson.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Happy first podcast of 2024! Braving the snowy roads, TaRita Johnson joins Maddy to share more of her story. The two talk about TaRita's PhD journey, the essentialness of career centers in colleges and what it means to choose daily to be an empowered citizen. Listen today!!
Check out TaRita's talk here: gvsu.edu/hc/taritajohnson 🌟
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on December 1, 2023. We invited dean of the Kirkhof College of Nursing, Dr. Tricia Thomas to our stage to share her leadership journey.
Check out Off The Stage Podcast with Dr. Tricia Thomas!
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/triciathomas.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Dr. Tricia Thomas, dean of the Kirkhof College of Nursing at GVSU, sits down with Maddy to share wisdom from her incredible career. From an inspiring story about her travels to Japan to what changes she has helped make in the nursing curriculum, Dr. Thomas' stories are something you'll want to listen to!
Listen to the event here: gvsu.edu/hc/triciathomas
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on November 10, 2023, our celebration of Veterans Day. This year's celebration included a keynote by Lieutenant Jason Redman (ret.) on how he learned leadership and determination through his service.
Check out Off The Stage Podcast with Jason Redman!
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/veteransday23.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
First - to all our veterans, thank you for your service to our country! Next, Jason Redman joins Maddy on the podcast to talk about his life - his childhood, reasons for enlisting, the logistical aspects of being severely wounded and so much more!
Lastly, watch / listen to Jason Redman's keynote here: gvsu.edu/hc/veteransday23
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Professor and documentarian Nate Harrison joins Maddy on a new episode of Off The Stage to talk about his film Pour le Peuple and other projects.
gvsu.edu/hc/pourlepeuple
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on October 27, 2023, the 2023 CLA Alumni Panel. This year's panel featured Justin Arnold ’12, D’Shyla Hodge ’21, and Allyson Putt ’15, with moderation by Julian Sanders ’21.
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/claalum23.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on October 12, 2023. We welcomed four panelists to talk global citizenship: Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols, Dr. Polly Diven, Dr. Emily Conroy-Krutz & Dr. Jeffery Engel.
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/globalcitizenship.
Off The Stage Podcast episodes: Christopher McKnight Nichols | Polly Diven | Emily Conroy-Krutz
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
OSU professor of history Christopher McKnight Nichols joins Maddy on the podcast to talk about life accomplishments, how hard it is to become a professor and the nature of higher education, plus how it'd be nice to be able to talk to squirrels. The two also talk about what it's like to be a buckeye in the state of Michigan. Enjoy the episode!
Citizens of the World: Global Citizenship & U.S. Foreign Relations: gvsu.edu/hc/globalcitizenship
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on September 29, 2023. The Peter C. Cook Leadership Academy's Wheelhouse Talk Series partnered with the Meijer Honors College and brought in Faye Richardson-Green to present.
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/fayerichardsongreen.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
In her very first podcast appearance, Faye Richardson-Green sits down with Maddy to talk about different jobs she's had in her career and why her work is important. The two discuss the importance of connections, why volunteers are vital to the non-profit world and Faye shares advice on how to deepen your understanding of diversity. Listen today!!
Faye's presentation: gvsu.edu/hc/fayerichardsongreen
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
On this episode of OTS, Maddy is joined by MSU professor Dr. Emily Conroy-Krutz. With her expertise and passion for exploring the intersection of religion and diplomacy, Emily sheds light on the profound impact these two spheres have had on shaping the course of history and her work. Beyond her research, Emily shares her deep admiration for Michigan State University and why she finds it such an ideal environment for her work. Plus, she recommends a few books!
Check out our event on October 12: Citizens of the World: Global Citizenship and U.S. Foreign Relations
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
In this episode, Maddy and Kahler are thrilled to have Dr. Polly Diven, director of the International Relations Program, as a guest on the Off The Stage podcast. Join us as Dr. Diven takes us on a journey through her passion for global connections and her love for the Grand Valley community. Dr. Diven shares fascinating stories from her extensive travels overseas, giving us a glimpse into different cultures and experiences that have shaped her perspective on the world.
Check out our event on October 12: Citizens of the World: Global Citizenship and U.S. Foreign Relations
Hauenstein Center upcoming events!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on September 19, 2023. The Hauenstein Center celebrated Constitution Day with a keynote about religion and the constitution from Dr. Vincent Phillip Muñoz.
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/constitutionday23.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on September 7, 2023. Victor Davis Hanson and Eric Liu talk American citizenship.
Off The Stage with Victor Davis Hanson
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/citizenshipincrisis.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Historian and author Victor Davis Hanson joins Maddy and Kahler on the first Off The Stage podcast of the 2023-2024 academic year! The three discuss Dr. Hanson's Californian upbringing, how to deal with critism, and Dr. Hanson shares what podcasts he is listening to these days, including the importance of listening to perspectives that are different than his own.
Check out our event on September 7: Citizenship In Crisis: Re-Empowering The American Citizen
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on May 19, 2023. Together, author Richard Norton Smith and Hank Meijer explored Smith’s new book about our 38th President and Grand Rapids’ own, Gerald R. Ford.
00:01:19-Introduction
00:06:25-Presentation
01:08:44-Live audience Q&A
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/ordinaryman.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on May 11, 2023. This panel discussion was part of the 2023 Hidden Wounds of War Conference and featured Dr. Lea Didion's keynote addressing the increasing and mounting pressure faced by those in certain professions – such as journalists, first responders, and healthcare professionals.
00:01:19-Introduction
00:03:13-Presentation
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/hww23.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on May 11, 2023. This panel discussion was part of the 2023 Hidden Wounds of War Conference and featured Chris Antal, Peter Yeomans, Leroy Enck, and Hannibal Collick.
00:01:17-Introduction
00:03:24-Presentation
01:08:44-Live audience Q&A
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/hww23.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on April 27, 2023. This year’s graduation celebration keynote brought the voice and impact of the CLA front and center with a leadership lesson given by CLA alum Dana Eardley ‘16, Executive Director of the Fulton Street Farmers Market.
00:01:06-Introduction
00:02:06-Keynote
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/graduation.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on April 19, 2023. The 2023 Progressive / Conservative Summit brought policymakers and scholars together to find actionable common ground on issues facing our polarized democracy. This half-day event explored the theme of political violence in the United States and offered the opportunity for victims to speak about their experiences. This episode features a conversation between Fmr. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) and Dr. Adam London.
00:01:18-Introduction
00:02:15-Moderated Conversation
00:41:16-Live audience Q&A
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/progcon23.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on April 19, 2023. The 2023 Progressive / Conservative Summit brought policymakers and scholars together to find actionable common ground on issues facing our polarized democracy. This half-day event explored the theme of political violence in the United States and offered the opportunity for victims to speak about their experiences. This episode features a moderated conversation between Fmr. Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) and Fmr. State Rep. David LaGrand (D-MI).
00:01:19-Introduction
00:03:04-Moderated Conversation
00:32:32-Live audience Q&A
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/progcon23.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on April 19, 2023. The 2023 Progressive / Conservative Summit brought policymakers and scholars together to find actionable common ground on issues facing our polarized democracy. This half-day event explored the theme of political violence in the United States and offered the opportunity for victims to speak about their experiences. This episode features professor Javed Ali's keynote presentation.
00:01:18-Introduction
00:02:21-Keynote
00:41:34-Live audience Q&A
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/progcon23.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode of The Rewind is from the Hauenstein Center's event on March 16, 2023. The Common Ground Initiative partnered with Housing Next to convene a panel of housing leaders to discuss potential solutions to the local housing shortage.
00:01:17-Introduction
00:03:00-Moderated Panel Discussion
00:46:40-Live audience Q&A
To learn more about this event, visit gvsu.edu/hc/housing.
Check out two episodes of Off The Stage Podcast: Brooke Oosterman & Shane Phillips!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Shane Phillips is a housing policy expert and author of The Affordable City. After a couple questions from the famous BOQ, Shane shares with Maddy about his career path, including the story of how he didn’t graduate from high school, going to undergrad for biochemistry, and making the switch to urban planning and public administration. Shane also talks about being car-free for 15 years, his blog Better Institutions and about his ongoing podcast called UCLA Housing Voice. This is a great episode you will not want to miss!
Check out our event Housing Solutions: What's Next?
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This podcast features Brooke Oosterman, the director of policy and communications at Housing Next, which is an organization that works to provide equitable housing right here in Grand Rapids, an area where rent is high and demand continues to outpace development. Maddy interviews Brooke about her time at Michigan State University, her incredible work experience and something she is most proud of. Brooke also shares why she thinks her work with Housing Next is important and her advice for women in business. All of this and more - listen today!
Brooke Oosterman LinkedIn | Housing Next website
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Journalist and author Kate Andersen Brower joins the Hauenstein Center for their Presidents' Day Celebration. Maddy interviews Kate about her childhood, choosing her major and her knowledge on the former presidents. The two also discuss Kate's most recent book, a biography of Elizabeth Taylor, the most famous movie star of the twentieth century. The episode ends with Kate discussing a challenge she faces in her career: being in a male-dominated field. This is a great episode - listen now!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Dara Richardson-Heron, who explains herself as a "physician by trade and an advocate by choice", joins the podcast alongside host Maddy Miller. The two first discuss how early is acceptable to eat lunch and learning to play the piano. Then Maddy asks Dara questions about how she decided she wanted to be a physician, why she has degrees in medicine and leaderships, what working at Pfizer during the pandemic was like, and what Dara would've said to Maddy when she was unsure about the COVID-19 vaccine. This episode is packed full of great reflections on leadership - you won't want to miss it!
This episode is a conversation between Maddy Miller and the Hauenstein Center's keynote speaker for their Martin Luther King Jr. Day Commemoration event. Dr. Mary Frances Berry is historian, writer, lawyer, professor and activist. She has done so much throughout her lifetime, winning many awards, writing several books and being an activists for civil rights, gender equality and social justice in our nation. On the podcast, Dr. Berry talks about her time working for the Jimmy Carter administration (including a funny story about a buffalo getting loose), her relationship with Coretta King, and her advice for people wanting to live a life of activism. This is one you won't want to miss - listen today!
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
James Romoser, editor of SCOTUSBlog, is in Grand Rapids for the Hauenstein Center event about the supreme court, and he joins Maddy on this episode of the podcast. James' twitter bio says "Briefly was a lawyer until I remembered I like journalism too much" and the two talk about his journey from law school back to journalism, along with the freedom of information in our country. James also shares about his other project Circuit Breaker and about his most energizing court cases to talk about.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Adam Liptak, supreme court correspondent for The New York Times, joins Maddy Miller on the podcast today. The two start out with some questions for the famous BOQ. Then Maddy asks Adam about his first job as a copyboy at The Times, going to law school after getting a degree in English, and about bias and misinformation in his field of work. In the end, Adam shares about his relationship with Floyd Abrams and his best advice for someone wanting to go into a similar field of work.
Learn more about the Hauenstein Center here: Website | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
This episode is a conversation between Maddy Miller and author, professor and researched Dennis Rasmussen. Dennis shares about growing up in Michigan, switching majors in college, his bone to pick with Lin Manuel Miranda and his best advice for someone wanting to go into political theory. The two also discuss Michigan sports and the disappointment that comes along with being a fan. Listen now!
Learn more about Dennis Rasmussen here!
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Thanks for listening to our new podcast series, Off The Stage Podcast! Maddy Miller, media specialist for the Hauenstein Center, sits down with retired Vice Admiral of the United States Coast Guard, Sandra Stosz. Sandra is the author of Breaking Ice & Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters, where she talks about her leadership journey through the Coast Guard and breaking down barriers, especially for women. In this episode, the two discuss Sandra's life and her accomplishments, like being the first woman to lead a United States service academy when she was chosen as the superintendent of the United States Coast Guard Academy. This episode is packed with great stories of Sandra's time in the Coast Guard and her sharing her life outside her career. Listen today, you won't want to miss it! Learn more about Sandra Stosz here!
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Thanks for listening to our new podcast series, Off The Stage Podcast! Maddy Miller, media specialist for the Hauenstein Center, sits down with co-authors John Kowal and Wilfred Codrington III, who published the book The People’s Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union. Maddy asks them questions about their favorite places in New York, how they became interested in constitutional law, the process of writing a book together, and much more. The episode is ended with some great advice from John and Wilfred themselves - you won't want to miss this episode!
Learn more about their book here!
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Welcome to the first episode of the new podcast series, Off The Stage Podcast! Hal Brands, a distinguished professor, scholar, historian, author and columnist, sits down and is interviewed by the Hauenstein Center's media specialist, Maddy Miller. Hal is asked questions about his perfect Saturday, what got him interested in foreign affairs and political science, his writing skills, how he stays positive despite having a somewhat gloomy professional expertise, his relationship with his dad, H. W. Brands and more. Thanks for listening!
Want to learn more about Hal's work? Visit his website!
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All you need to know about The Hauenstein Center's new podcast series, right here!
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The speaker in this trailer is the Hauenstein Center's media specialist, Maddy Miller.
Gleaves is joined by Christa Fernando. Christa is a recent graduate from GVSU's biomedical science program, and our Peter C. Cook Leadership Academy. She will join Gleaves to share her experience as a leader on and off-campus, and the role that faith has played in her leadership development.
Gleaves is joined by Dr. Shannon Duffy. Dr. Duffy is a professor of history at Texas State University. She holds a Ph.D. in colonial and revolutionary American history from the University of Maryland, and a Masters from the University of New Orleans. Her research interests focus on Revolutionary Boston, the Atlantic Enlightenment, and the Classical tradition in eighteenth-century America. Gleaves and Dr. Duffy will discuss the diversity of our founders, and the conflicts that arose because of that diversity.
Gleaves is joined by Cook Leadership Academy alumna Megan Sall. In addition to serving as the Board's Chair on Grand Valley's Board of Trustees, Megan is the Deputy City Manager for the City of Wyoming. She will join Gleaves to discuss her experience in the Cook Leadership Academy, and how it prepared her for a career of leadership and public service.
Gleaves is joined by Paul Isely. Paul is a professor of economics and associate dean of GVSU's Seidman College of Business. Gleaves and Paul will review the recent data and discuss the economic ramifications of COVID-19 in West Michigan.
Gleaves is joined by Dr. Jason Duncan, a professor in the Aquinas College History Department. Gleaves and Jason will discuss developments in the American presidency from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries until today.
Gleaves is joined by Ken James, Director of Inclusion at the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, will join Gleaves to discuss the intersection of Black Lives Matter with our business community. In this conversation, Ken and Gleaves will dive into racial inequalities within our nation, the current unrest and protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, and the impact and response that we are seeing here in our Grand Rapids community.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Nate Swanson, a recent graduate from GVSU's College Student Affairs Leadership program, and our Peter C. Cook Leadership Academy. Nate will join Gleaves to share his leadership journey, and discuss the challenges of leading higher education in a paradigm-shifting pandemic.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Cameron Jones, a recent Grand Valley State University Political Science and International Relations graduate, and was a 2019 Truman Scholarship finalist in recognition for his deep commitment to public service. He is also a recent graduate of our Peter C. Cook Leadership Academy. Cam will join Gleaves to discuss his work on campaigns and his reflections on leadership.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Brian Bowdle, an associate professor in the Grand Valley Psychology Department, specializing in cognitive psychology. Brian joins Gleaves to discuss what is missing in higher education today and what we can do about it. In their conversation, Brian will touch on wisdom and intellectual humility as concepts necessary for critical thinking.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Freshta Tori Jan, a current Cook Leadership Academy lead fellow candidate, and bilingual student from Afghanistan studying international relations. Freshta joins Gleaves to discuss how her personal journey through poverty, terrorism, and different forms of injustice have enabled her to be a voice for those who are not able to share their stories and those who are not able to receive the opportunities she has sought.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Ron C. White, a New York Times best-selling biographer and historian. Ron joins Gleaves to share his thoughts on leadership in tumultuous times, as well as to discuss his forthcoming book, Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President, set to be released on May 4, 2021. Ron will also give us a glimpse of his current project, a biography of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the famous Union officer from Maine who made a name for himself during the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Lucretia Dunlap, a recent graduate from GVSU with bachelor's degrees in psychology and sociology, recipient of the Robert Henderson Leadership Award from the psychology department, and a Cook Leadership Academy fellow. Lucretia joins Gleaves to discuss failure, resilience, and mental health in leadership.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Dr. Jeffrey Polet. Jeff is an author and professor of political science at Hope College in Holland. He joins Gleaves to discuss how COVID-19 is changing the way we think about politics, and the -isms that inform our politics (e.g. conservatism and progressivism).
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Brent Reed, a recent graduate from GVSU with a master's degree in health administration and a Cook Leadership Academy fellow. Brent joins Gleaves to discuss his experience with leadership in crisis, telehealth, and healthcare reform.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Dr. Michael Kimmage in an extended edition of Lunch & Learn with Gleaves. Dr. Kimmage is an author, historian, and professor of history at the Catholic University of America. He joins Gleaves to discuss his new book, The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Ellie Harnden, a recent GVSU graduate in special education with an emphasis in cognitive and emotional impairments, and Cook Leadership Academy fellow. Ellie will join Gleaves to discuss school closures related to COVID-19 and children who experience trauma.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by H.W. Brands in an extended edition of Lunch & Learn with Gleaves. Bill is a long-time friend of the Hauenstein Center, a renowned historian, and best-selling author. He will join Gleaves to discuss his new book, Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Connor Cavallaro, a recent GVSU graduate in management information systems and Cook Leadership Academy fellow, to discuss his experience studying abroad in Italy as a Cook Leadership Academy Independent Initiative project.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Hank Meijer. Hank is the executive chairman of Meijer, Inc, a scholar-associate of the Hauenstein Center, and biographer. Hank, author of Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century, joins Gleaves to discuss Frank Murphy, who was mayor of Detroit, governor of Michigan, US attorney general, and justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Dami Olufosoye, an international student who in just a few days will earn her Master of Public Health and graduate as Peter C. Cook Leadership Academy Fellow. Dami will share her unique perspective of how two different federal health care systems are responding to this global pandemic.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Dr. Lisa Perhamus, director of Grand Valley State University's Padnos/Sarosik Civil Discourse Program, to discuss ways to create spaces that spark civil discourse.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Kahler Sweeney, a graduating Master of Public Administration major and Cook Leadership Academy fellow candidate, to discuss his commitment to serving in local communities in addition to his experience in the Michigan Army National Guard.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Dr. Michael Ryan. Dr. Ryan has spent more than four decades as a psychologist helping young people with learning disabilities. He also specializes in helping veterans cope with the trauma of their experiences in uniform. Dr. Ryan will discuss treatments and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on those who are suffering.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Nate Gillespie, an alumnus from the Cook Leadership Academy, to discuss the new organization he helped develop, Coronavirus Civilian Corps. This organization's goal is to aid individuals and communities who are suffering from COVID-19.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Gregory Dykhouse, history, Shakespeare, and drama teacher at Black River Public School in Holland, MI, to discuss how his students are faring in the new normal of "stay home, stay safe," and will share lessons he has gleaned from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by graduating Cook Leadership Academy fellow candidate, Riley Pearl, to share her leadership journey as a full time student battling cancer.
Gleaves Whitney is joined by Winston Elliott, Editor-and-Chief and President of the "Imaginative Conservative", and the Free Enterprise Institute, to discuss Homer's "The Odyssey".
Author Steve Luxenberg discusses with us his new book Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation.
Author David Roll comes to the Beyond Aporia podcast to discuss his newest book George Marshall: Defender of the Republic.
Danielle Allen, bestselling author of the book Our Declaration comes to our Beyond Aporia podcast to talk about the origins of the Declaration of Independence, and what it means for the country today.
President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, Jeffrey Rosen, comes to the Beyond Aporia podcast to discuss the current political situation in Washington, as well as the origins of one of our most beloved documents, the Constitution of the United States of America.
Bestselling author Lynne Olson comes to our new Common Ground Podcast, Beyond Aporia, to speak about her books Last Hope Island and Those Angry Days.
This week, we hear from Gerald Russello, editor of The University Bookman, a publication founded in 1960 by the traditionalist conservative Russell Kirk.
The University Bookman, like most conservative magazines and journals, is a site where, implicitly or explicitly, there is a debate about what the word “conservative” even means. A couple weeks ago, The Washington Post profiled a number of magazines on the right that have been forced, by the rise of Trump and Trumpism, to stake a claim: is Trump conservative? Is the Republican Party conservative? Who really gets to decide?
Gerald Russello provides an interesting perspective on this question because the publication he edits, the University Bookman, is really a review of books and culture. It doesn’t respond directly to the news cycle and rarely takes up specific matters of policy. I asked Gerald whether his and the publication’s bird’s eye view of Trump and the Republican Party helps him see the current debate over conservatism differently. I ask whether he thinks his publication is really political at all. Or whether it’s simply cultural—and if so, what does cultural conservativism even mean, since it too is a term bandied about so often that it could signify lot of different things. I start by asking Gerald what function Russel Kirk hoped the University Bookman would serve when he founded it in 1960, and whether that function has changed as the times have changed.
This week, we hear from Christy Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Coleman is a public historian. As you’ll hear in her lecture, her work is to take the findings, the interpretations, of academic historians and bring them to life for the public—as she says, to make the work relevant to contemporary audiences. She says in her talk that, inevitably, new generations will make new meanings of past events: Baby Boomers will understand the causes and significance of the Civil War differently than will millennials.
In her talk, Coleman addresses some of these changes. She starts by considering the ways in which the causes of the civil war have been vastly misunderstood: she helps make sense of that old refrain you used to always hear from self-appointed civil war buffs, that the war was really about states rights after all. Coleman addresses that reading, and then talks about her work at the civil war museum.
This week, we hear from Maggie Doherty, a critic and teacher at Harvard University. Maggie writes often for publications such as The Nation, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and N Plus One; her criticism often focuses on writers and feminists around the middle of the 20th century—familiar names are Mary McCarthy and Kate Millet. Maggie’s literary criticism blends questions of politics into her writing; she manages to marry the literary and the political in her writing in a careful and very helpful way.
In our conversation, I ask Maggie about her recent articles on Mary McCArthy and Kate Millet, as well as a book she’s working on. The book is titled The Equivalents, and it’s about a group of five women writers and artists who met at the Radcliffe Institute in the early 1960s. We talk particularly about one such Radcliffe writer, Tillie Olsen, and the insights she advanced into the ways writing is really work: that is, is labor. We talk about writing as work, and the economic situation—that’s to say economic contingency and precariousness—that writers and academics face today.
This week, we hear from Sophie Pinkham, a writer and academic who specializes in Russian and Ukrainian culture and politics. Sophie has recently published some review essays, primarily in The Nation, about the Russian Revolution and the legacy of communism in the West. One of her main concerns is the manner in which a given historian’s politics will affect their reading of the history and legacy of communism. Of course, it’s true that a historian’s reading of the past will inevitably be determined, at least to some extent, by their politics: a conservative will understand an event and its significance differently than a progressive. But Sophie Pinkham makes quite clear why the political assumptions behind this or that reading of the rise of Lenin, say, are uniquely important for us to understand and make clear.
Sophie and I talk about Anne Applebaum’s recent book Red Famine, for instance; we talk in particular about Applebaum’s effort to insist that communism and Nazism are equally bad, and I ask Sophie what she thinks about this proposed equivalence, and what she thinks, generally, about the often unstated assumption held by many critics often in the center and on the right that socialism inevitably leads to tyranny. Since it’s the centenary of the Russian Revolution, I ask Sophie what new or revised meanings we might take from the events of 1917.
This episode focuses on the role of the public intellectual, or even the academic, in cultural debate. We hear from Dan Drezner about the difference between public intellectuals and thought leaders, and what happens when we have too many of one over the other. In our conversation, Dan addresses the importance of expertise in cultural debate and discourse; he considers why respect for expertise seems on the decline.
But perhaps it’s not on the decline everywhere. In the latter half of this episode, we hear from Jo Livingstone about the ways she brings her academic expertise to bear on her criticism at The New Republic. In 2015, Jo received a PhD at NYU. She is an expert in medieval studies and literature, and she makes use of some of that expertise to the benefit of her readers.
This week, as an installment in our end-of-year retrospective series of episodes, we’re going to hear from Jonny Thakkar as well as from Cate Zaloom, co-founding editor of Public Books. I talked with Jonny and Cate at the beginning of the year.
Each of them co-founded publications that exist somewhere between the academy and the world of cultural criticism. Both of their publications are young: Jonny co-founded his in 2008, Cate hers in 2012. Both The Point and Public Books, then, have risen to prominence in what seems like, what feels like, a new renaissance in little magazines. We’re going to hear from Jonny and Cate about what they’ve hoped their publications could contribute to this moment. We’ll also hear about how their publications stand out, what they do that other magazines and publications don’t do. From Jonny, we’ll hear about the importance he and his fellow editors place on bringing a kind of humanistic thinking, a kind of broadly philosophical approach, to cultural criticism. From Cate, we’ll hear about the way in which her publication has sought to bring more academics, more scholars, into cultural criticism, in order to bring to bear many recent advances in scholarships on public debate.
This week we hear Ian Millhiser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, debate "Citizens United" with Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. The Hauenstein Center hosted the debate in 2015; the issues the debate addresses are still relevant today.
Here’s a quick brush up: In "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission," the Supreme Court decided that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures made by corporations and labor unions in elections. Those in favor of the decision say it’s a victory for political speech in this country; opponents say it gives corporations and the rich unlimited power over the democratic process.
On December 7th, just a day ago, Andy Kroll suggested in Mother Jones that Citizens United has a lot to do with this tax bill the GOP has gotten through Congress. Kroll claims that the very political culture which supports and provides foundation for the Citizens United decision also justifies what he takes to be the worst aspects of this tax bill. Kroll writes “When I say that Citizens United explains the GOP’s tax-bill frenzy, I really mean the big-money political climate that Citizens United helped create and, broadly speaking, embodies.”
This week we hear from Jo Livingstone, the culture staff writer at The New Republic and a recent PhD in English at New York University.
I mention Jo Livingstone’s PhD because that’s a major topic of our conversation. Livingstone’s writing at The New Republic has the kind of agile, supple thinking and prose you’d want from a critic who has her thumb on the pulse of culture, but she blends that style of criticism with the erudition, the specialized knowledge, of a scholar. You can spot this blend in Livingstone’s recent writing on white nationalists, whose attempt to reach back into a kind of imagined and popularized medieval past Livingstone is eager and more than able to critique.
Throughout our conversation, Jo and I discuss what it took for her to make the jump from the academy to the world of cultural criticism and magazine writing. We talk a lot about what makes a good academic writer and a good cultural critic. We talk, as well, about the plight of adjunct faculty and the ways in which the distinction between scholarship and cultural criticism seems to be blurring.
This week, we hear Dan Varner, President and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Greater Detroit, deliver a Wheelhouse Talk. Varner leads efforts to support 900+ local businesses in Detroit with a reliable workforce, and helps empower trainees with skills for workplace success. Before joining Goodwill, Dan served as the CEO of Excellent Schools Detroit, a partnership of city organizations working to improve Detroit’s public education system.
In this episode, the historian Hank Meijer talks about the work and influence of Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the Republican from Michigan who, at the dawn of the Cold War, worked with Democratic administrations to build congressional support for huge foreign policy endeavors, including the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the United Nations.
This week we hear from Andrew Hartman, a professor of history at Illinois State University. Andrew is currently hard at work on a book about Karl Marx. I asked him to come on the podcast because the name Marx seems to be in the air right now. It’s not just that we’ve come up the centenary of the Russian Revolution. People seem to want to talk about, or at least debate once again, the merit of Marx’s ideas and the form of economic and cultural analysis that he inaugurated. Consider the many books that have recently come out, like China Mieville’s "October," re-assessing the October Revolution and wondering if it inevitably led to Stalinism; consider also the many articles and essays in periodicals not just like Jacobin and the Nation, but also The New York Times, reintroducing Marxist concepts into the national debate as a way to assess and critique what is called neo-liberalism.
In this episode, we hear from Juliet Fleming, Professor of English at New York University and author, most recently, of "Cultural Graphology: Writing After Derrida," out from the University of Chicago Press. I ask Juliet to defend Derrida against skeptics both inside and outside the academy. She talks about what she says when she is called upon, at cocktail parties and in academe, to "explain" Derrida. We talk about the use and importance of Derrida's thought generally. We talk about his politics, as well as his contemporary followers and interpreters, and also his legacy.
In this episode, we hear from Erik S McDuffie, professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois.
Just the other day, the Hauenstein Center posted a call for papers for the fourth "Finding the Lost Region" conference to be held on June 6th, 2018. The problem the conference seeks to address is the lack of institutional support for the study of Midwestern history. Why don't more historians, and more cultural critics generally, acknowledge and discuss the importance of the Midwest to American history, culture, politics?
In his talk, Erik S McDuffie argues that the Midwest plays a crucial role not just in African American history but in the history of black diaspora. A major focus of his talk: Garveyism, and the revolutionary role played by women such as Louise Little, the mother of Malcolm X.
Today, we hear, to begin with, a portion of a recently released documentary about President Gerald R. Ford. The documentary premiered on National Geographic. The portion we are about to hear was presented to a packed audience at the Hauenstein Center on October 3, 2017, as part of the Center’s Character and the Presidency Series. A sponsor of that series is also a producer of the Ford documentary: he’s former ambassador to Italy Peter Secchia.
Secchia and President Ford were friends. Following the screening, Secchia gave brief remarks about President Ford’s character; he says he’s always thought that Ford’s presidency should be taken a bit more seriously by historians, and that Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon was a testament, in fact, to his character. That’s the view explored in the documentary.
After Secchia’s address, we hear from David Brooks, who needs no introduction—everyone’s familiar with his widely read column in the New York Times as well as his bestselling book The Road to Character. Brooks talks with presidential historian Ronald White about character and the presidency generally. They ask what qualities a good leader, a good president, should have. Their discussion is moderated by Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center.
Today we hear from Rebekah Warren, a Michigan state senator from the 18th district. Considered by some to be the most liberal member of the Michigan State Senate—after all, Ann Arbor, the home of the University of Michigan, is in her district—Senator Warren is in fact known for her ability and her willingness to reach across the aisle. By working effectively with Republicans on the senate, Warren has been able to champion bipartisan legislation on human rights and the environment.
Today, we hear from Andrew Spear, a professor of philosophy at Grand Valley State University. More specifically, Andrew is an epistemologist. His primary interest is in knowledge—he asks how we come to our beliefs about the world; how we come to know things, or believe that we know things; how we justify our beliefs.
I wanted to talk with Andrew because I wanted to know how his work as an epistemologist has responded to our present anti-epistemological political moment: “fake news,” Kellyanne Conway's “alternative facts.” All facts are politicized; what one chooses to believe seems entirely dependent on one’s politics. Andrew and I talk about the dangers of this state of affairs. One such danger: to become addicted to what Andrew calls, quite aptly, epistemic porn. In this episode, Andrew offers a definition of epistemic porn. We discuss the implications of the definition, as well as the definition itself.
In today’s episode, we offer a conversation between Janet Napolitano—21st Governor of Arizona, former secretary of homeland security, and current president of the University of California system—and Christine Todd Whitman, 50th governor of New Jersey and former administrator of the EPA. The pair talk about how they each got involved in politics at the local and state level, and what it ultimately took to win their gubernatorial races. They discuss what life was like once they got into office: how their leadership styles evolved and adapted to the demands of their roles.
Today, we hear from Martha Jones, the Society of Black Almuni Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and formerly a professor at the University of Michigan. Jones brings some of her experience especially at that latter institution to bear on our topic today: politics on college campuses.
We’re lucky she does. There’s been a lot of talk about campus politics, on both the left and right. On the right, we often hear about so-called liberal snowflakes who can’t bear to hear arguments that they don’t agree with, so they attempt to banish conservative speakers from their campuses and threaten to undermine the principle, the right, of freedom of expression. And on the center-left, we hear from some critics that identity politics is the problem: that students are so obsessed with the dynamics of personal identity and are thus incapable of or uninterested in the hard work of coalition building, sustained organizing, especially on the left.
This latter position was stated pretty succinctly by the liberal critic Mark Lilla recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education, in an article titled “How Colleges Are Strangling Liberalism.” Martha Jones and I reference that piece because it does sum up the critique from the center-left quite well, and it relates to Lilla’s widely discussed and debated piece in the New York Times, “The End of Identity Liberalism.” We also address the future of free expression on campus: where Jones thinks that debate is headed, and how, in the wake of Charlottesville, it’s entered the mainstream.
Today, we hear from Scott St. Louis not so much about the Common Ground Initiative itself, or about the Hauenstein Center. Instead, we hear from Scott about his decision, at least right now it’s his decision, not to work exclusively down the traditional career path of a tenure-track professor in the humanities--more specifically, down the path of a professor of history.
It’s a significant decision to Scott because, for a long time, that’s precisely what he wanted to do: earn a tenure-track professorship in conventional fashion. But the academic job market for folks in the humanities, history or otherwise, isn’t right now, well, even a market. There are so few jobs; the jobs that do exist are generally adjunct professorships, which are contingent, pay very little, offer pretty much no benefits. There are so many terrific PhDs on the market who are forced to take these jobs. And there are just as many graduate students working right now who are facing the reality that, when they try to enter the academic job market, there might be even fewer positions available, and fewer prospects for doing any kind of fulfilling work in or around the academy.
I wanted to talk with Scott to learn how his plans, his ambitions, have changed. I wanted to ask about the future he imagines for himself and strives for as a devoted historian. If the conventional path down the tenure track isn’t necessarily viable, what’s next for him? What’s next for any students of the humanities like him?
This week, we’re bringing you the first installment of a new series for the podcast. We’ll offer some clips taken from lectures given as part of the Hauenstein Center’s Wheelhouse Talk Series. In that series, Gleaves Whitney, along with the program manager of the Cook Leadership Academy, Chadd Dowding, invite leaders from the community—sometimes professors at Grand Valley, or folks in politics or law or business, to come and talk to undergraduate and graduate students about leadership. Now, speakers can take these talks in many directions: their goal is, simply, to bring to bear their own experiences on the question—what does it mean to be an ethical, effective leader. Sometimes speakers lay out a set of points or principles. But often, they talk about something more personal. Sometimes, and often in a really moving way, speakers use their talks as occasions to think about what it means to lead a good life.
From the archive! A conversation between Cornel West and Robert George.
When they came to the Hauenstein Center in 2014, West and George were both professors of philosophy at Princeton. Beyond that, the two shared, and still share, quite little in common. West was and is a progressive political philosopher, race theorist, and democratic socialist. George is a conservative Catholic philosopher of jurisprudence and natural law.
We hosted the two at the Hauenstein Center because they had established a reputation at Princeton as unlikely friends. They team-taught a class in which they read with students the works of St Augustine, Alexis de Tocqueville, WEB Du Bois, and others. We asked the two to come out and essentially model the kind of dialogue and debate that they have in class: we wanted them to show us how two politically opposed thinkers could examine a host of issues, maintain disagreement about most of them, but still in the end learn from one another.
From the archive! The Hauenstein Center hosted a debate in 2008 between Christopher and Peter Hitchens. Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein, did his best to moderate the brothers as they exchanged their quite distinct views about the Iraq War and the existence of God. The event was held in a large Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the crowd sometimes got involved.
This week, we hear from Kate Medina, Executive Vice President, Associate Publisher, and Executive Editorial Director at Random House.
Kate describes her career at Random House, where she’s worked with such writers as EL Doctorow, John Irving, Anna Quindlen, John Meacham, Nancy Reagan, and many others. She tells us what it takes to work in publishing: an entrepreneurial spirit, for one, plus a commitment to creative, intimate relationships—even friendships—between writers and editors.
Our conversation starts with Kate describing her first encounter with James Joyce’s "Ulysses" while she was a student at Smith, and how it inspired her, ultimately, to become an editor.
Here's the second half of our conversation with Sam Anderson, critic at large at the New York Times Magazine.
Last episode, we heard about how Sam became interested in magazine writing and criticism, and how he tends to approach texts and subjects. In this episode, we hear about Sam’s gradual shift from doctoral work at NYU to writing from time to time for Slate and then full time at New York Magazine, where he wrote mostly about sports before becoming book critic. We also get back to the question of whether Sam is a generalist. That topic allows us to address some of Sam’s favorite subjects: the people he’s written about and is endlessly fascinated by: we move from Dostoesky to Michelangelo, Samuel Beckett to Mark McGuire, the baseball player.
We touch on all these folks because there’s something about each of them—their work, their stories—that preoccupies Sam. But what is it? We ask that. We consider some of the themes around which Sam’s writing tends to orbit. I ask whether he feels he has some real writerly mission, some main idea to get across, main insight to relate.
For this week: the first half of our convesation with Sam Anderson, critic at large at the New York Times Magazine.
We talk about Sam’s time as an undergraduate at Oregon State and LSU, how he became a sort of auto-didact. We talk, as well, about his early admiration for old New Yorker writers like James Thurber and E.B. White. Sam describes life as a PhD student in English at NYU, where he started to pitch articles to magazines almost entirely in secret. Sam describes his habits as a reader and critic, what he sees in Jacques Derrida’s command not to “double the text,” and how criticism itself should be a creative act.
In this episode, we hear from Teresa Mathew, a journalist and writing fellow at The Atlantic’s City Lab, who writes a good deal about religion and race, particularly about the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, in India as well as America. We discuss some of the cultural differences between faiths in India, as well as between the same faith, Catholicism, in India and America. Teresa considers what it means to inherit a faith and culture and tradition, as well as what it’s like to fear losing them. Teresa also talks about what it’s like to work as a freelance journalist in Brooklyn, and wonders how on earth anyone can be good at Twitter.
In our last episode, you heard three writers and editors on the left debate and discuss with three writers and editors on the Right. In this episode, you’ll hear the second part of that panel conversation. We begin with the left’s response to the right’s remarks about the possibility of fusion, or of coalition building—both within the ranks of one’s political movement, and outside those ranks. In this episode, we first hear from Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin Magazine, then Sarah Leonard and David Marcus of THE NATION. Then, on the right, we hear Ingrid Gregg, then Winston Elliot of The Imaginative Conservative and Dan McCarthy of The American Conservative.
We hear from these speakers, we also get some good questions from the audience, including one from David Sehat, past guest on the podcast and host of Mindpop.
On May 5th, right in the middle of the Hauenstein Center’s Conservative / Progressive summit, three writers and thinkers on the right met with three on the left to discuss the significance of election 2016. What did the victory of Donald Trump, as well as the rise of Bernie Sanders on the left, mean for American politics? Was the center being pulled apart, and could that, in their view, be a good thing?
It comes as no surprise that our panelists, separated ideologically, don’t agree about many points of politics or, as we in fact hear in this episode, culture. Still, they do have in common a critique of the so-called neoliberal center, or at least most of them share a similar distrust for it. They haggle over some of the key differences between their respective positions. They also talk about the opportunities they see in building new coalitions post-2016, and how they go about articulating the alternatives to the political status-quo for which they advocate.
Panelists include:
Sarah Leonard at The Nation Bhaskar Sunkara at Jacobin David Marcus at The Nation Daniel McCarthy at The American Conservative Ingrid Gregg at the Archbridge Institute Winston Elliott III at The Imaginative Conservative
In this episode, we hear from Keisha Blain, a professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, senior blog editor at the African American Intellectual History Society, and editor of the Global Black History section of "Public Books."
Keisha Blain has, as much as any scholar, redefined what it means to be a publically engaged academic in the 21st century. She’s senior blog editor at the African American Intellectual History Society, and has contributed significantly to the fast rise in significance and influence of that organization among historians and folks interested in the history of African American thought. She is also one of the co-founders of the #Charelstonsyllabus, a movement on Twitter that offered a detailed reading list, crowdsourced among historians, to offer a detailed history of racial violence in the US. That syllabus drew a ton of attention, at the New York Times and elsewhere. We talk about Charleston syllabus, as well as the Trump 2.0 syllabus, which Blain also co-authored.
We also discuss what it’s like for Blain, as a professor on a college campus, to lead class discussions about race as well as gender. We take up the common refrain heard in magazines and in the mainstream media that students these days are “liberal snowflakes” who can’t bear to consider ideas opposed to their own. Blain offers her own take on this issue.
In this special episode, guest interviewer Winston Elliott talks with Christopher Nelson, president of St. John's College, about his work at St John’s, and about the unique kind of liberal arts education offered there.
Today we hear from Peter Kalkavage, a tutor at St John’s College and author of The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Peter and I discuss his writing about philosophy and music.
Reading Peter’s writing, you can tell that one of his aims isn’t just to think about music as a fine art, but to think about music as itself a way of thinking. His approach allows him to write about and think through music in some surprising or perhaps just unfamiliar ways: he asks how music contributes to the formation of one’s opinions, one’s beliefs about the world. But then he also writes about music in ways that are familiar, but that require a great deal of imagination and precision. Peter asks why music, particularly classical music and sacred music but also some rock n roll thrown in, why music makes us feel certain ways, gives form to our emotions—in a sense, helps us feel our own emotions.
Today we hear from Jon Lauck, a Midwestern historian and the author, most recently, of "From Warm Center to Ragged Edge: The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Regionalism."
The book get its title from a line in the first chapter of "The Great Gatsby." Nick Carraway, the narrator, is a Midwesterner who’s decided to go East to New York to learn the Bond business. He’s just returned to America from World War I, and notes that, “Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe.”
That’s an attitude plenty of Midwesterners seem to take to their region of birth—at least, that’s one perspective about the Midwest we often encounter in American fiction and literary criticism. Jon Lauck’s book examines this trope, one might call it a cliché; as does Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Gilead, who says that Lauck’s book “exposes the origins of this extraordinarily potent cliché.” Robinson liked the book; so did other Midwesterners such as Tom Brokaw, who writes that his own prarie roots “roots have served me well in the intellectual and concrete canyons of the eastern seaboard and it is good to be reminded why.”
In this episode, we hear from Chadd Dowding, program manager of the Cook Leadership Academy at the Hauenstein Center. I ask Chadd how he goes about identifying emergent leaders in their early 20s and how he helps them develop their projects and initiatives. I also ask Chadd how the students he works with, especially those involved in politics, have responded to election 2016. We also hear from Micaela Cole and Matthew Oudbier, two student-fellows in the academy. Micaela is on her way to getting an undergraduate degree in political science, and Matt is about to start a phd program in philosophy. I ask how they define leadership in their respective fields. And they clue us in on the ways they’re trying to orient their work to the changing political climate in America.
This week, we hear from Jess Row, a Pushcart Prize and PEN/O’Henry award winning author who Granta named a "Best Young American Novelist" in 2007. Row's novel "Your Face in Mine" imagines a world in which racial reassignment surgery is a possibility, even a commonplace. In The New York Times, Dwight Garner writes that "Your Face in Mine" "puts [Row] on another level as an artist. He doesn’t shy away from the hard intellectual and moral questions his story raises, or from grainy philosophical dialogue, but he submerges these things in a narrative that burns with a steady flame. There’s some Jonathan Lethem in Mr. Row’s street-level awareness of culture. There’s some Saul Bellow in his needling intelligence."
In this episode, we hear from David Sehat, an intellectual and cultural historian of the United States at Georgia State University. I ask Sehat about one of his main skills as an historian: that is, his ability to identify certain myths about American history circulated—one might even say peddled—by politicians in order to prop up certain ideological or political agendas in the present. We also discuss Sehat’s excellent podcast MINDPOP, and the extent to which he brings his past experiences to bear on the questions he asks about American history.
In this episode, we hear from Clifford Siskin, the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English and American Literature at NYU, as well as Director of the Re:Enlightenment Project. Siskin discusses his recent book "System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge."
In this episode, we hear from Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and contributor to the Washington Post. Daniel identifies some key differences between the kind of thinker we might consider a “public intellectual,” and the one now commonly referred to as a “thought leader.” In our conversation, Daniel explores the differences between the public intellectual and the thought leader as he’s defined them. Dan also discusses the relationship between thought leadership and plutocracy, and explains why he thinks the Marketplace of Ideas has become what he calls the Ideas Industry.
Today we hear from Scott St. Louis, program manager of the Common Ground Initiative at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley State University. Scott explores what it would mean for the left and right to find, or even pursue, “common ground” in a time of political hyper-polarization, such as ours.
In today's episode, we hear from Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freud Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, on the promises and perils of anger in civic life.
Today, we hear from John Waters, Professor of Irish Studies at New York University, about the Easter Rising--that is, the 1916 rebellion of Irish nationalists and republicans against British rule in Ireland. John discusses the Rising and its aftermath; he also explores the role of Irish literary and cultural leaders, such as WB Yeats, in developing a certain kind of Irish nationalism that fueled revolutionary zeal.
This week, we hear from Katie Gordon, Program Manager of the Kaufman Interfaith Institute as well as Interfaith Services Coordinator with the Division of Inclusion and Equity at Grand Valley State University. In this episode, Katie discusses the current state of religious relations in America, and what it means to promote interfaith understanding.
In this episode, we hear from David Parsons, a social and cultural historian of 20th century America at New York University and host of The Nostalgia Trap. David discusses some of the historians and critics he’s had on The Nostalgia Trap. He also describes why he moved from being a fan of Rush Limbaugh as a kid to being a committed leftist at UC Santa Barbara, a shift he has not reversed. Finally, David talks a bit about what it’s like being a young scholar in the academy, and whether he thinks it’s incumbent upon scholars in the digital age to try to present their work to the public.
In this special episode of the podcast, we post for you an event hosted at the Hauenstein Center, in partnership with Grand Valley State University’s Division of Inclusion and Equity, that commemorated the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On January 17th, 2017, two prominent writers and commentators, Nikole Hannah Jones of the New York Times, and Jason Riley of The Wall Street Journal, met at the Hauenstein Center in front of a packed audience of students, faculty, and members of the community for a dialogue about race and the American Dream. The central aim of the conversation was to explore the progress that has been made since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the challenges that continue to exist, in the pursuit of a more equitable society.
Today we hear from Jeremy Young, an historian at Dixie State University and the author of The Age of Charisma: Leaders, Followers, and Emotions in American Society, 1870 - 1940. In this episode, Jeremy describe the role that charismatic leadership and emotional appeal have played, and continue to play, in American politics.
In today's episode, Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, discusses President Trump's first month in office.
This week, we hear from Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and co-founding editor of Jadaliyya, an online magazine produced by the Arab Studies Institute. Noura discusses her work in international law and refugee law, as well as on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We also get her take on President Trump’s demand for “extreme vetting” of refugees, as well whether his Middle East policy significantly differs from those of his recent predecessors.
This is the second installment of our two-part interview with James Panero, executive editor of the New Criterion. In this episode, we hear a bit more about the history of the journal, how it fit into the culture wars of the 80s and 90s, and what critics and editors like Victor Navasky of the Nation and Jed Perl of the New Republic have thought about it.
In today's episode, we hear from James Panero, executive editor of The New Criterion, about contemporary museum culture and art in the age of Trump.
In this episode, we hear from Emma Green, staff writer and editor at The Atlantic about religion in American politics, as well as about the election of Donald Trump and its potential effects on religious relations. We recorded our conversation a few days before President Trump made his executive order on immigration; however, Emma’s remarks provide some context for that decision and its potential effects.
In this episode, we hear from Caitlin Zaloom, co-founder and co-editor of Public Books, an online journal of diverse intellectual debate and one of the few forums, online or in print, dedicated to bringing cutting-edge scholarly thinking and criticism to a wide, public audience. Judith Butler on Public Books: "It is a rare and precious thing to discover such a compelling space for the written word and the thinking reader.
In this episode, we hear from Jonny Thakker, co-founder and co-editor of THE POINT, a magazine of philosophical writing and humanistic thinking whose vision is, in the words of its editors, a society where the examined life is not an abstract ideal but an everyday practice. Leon Wieseltier on THE POINT: it is "intellectually serious, independent, far-reaching, spirited and elegant—a stirring act of resistance against the shrinkage of intellectual life in our culture of takeaways and metrics.”
This week, we have something special: a look-back on some of our favorite episodes from our inaugural year as a podcast, the very eventful 2016. Our selections for this retrospective aren’t random, however. Given the great political significance of 2016, we’re going to focus today on some episodes that shed light on the presidential election. What happened to the Republican and Democratic Parties in 2016? More broadly, how has conservatism changed in the past forty years, and liberalism too? Given thee changes, how did Donald Trump become president-elect? And, finally, how will the left respond to Trump’s ascendance?
Today we hear from Rita Felski, William R Kenan Jr. Professor of English at the University of Virginia and the 2016 Niels Bohr Professor of English at the University of Southern Denmark. In our conversation, Felski discusses her recent book, The Limits of Critique, in which she examines, and is often critical of, the ways many scholars write about literature.
This week, we hear from Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale University and the author of The Constitution Today: Timeless Lessons for the Issues of our Era. Amar discusses the origins and importance of the Constitution: when it was written, why it was written, why he calls it the “political equivalent of the Big Bang.” Amar also talks about the important constitutional debates raging today, and frequently offers his take on not yet then president-elect Donald Trump.
Today we hear from Sarah Leonard, senior editor at The Nation and co-editor of The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century. Leonard provides her take on this year’s election. She also describes, and weighs in on, a variety of the debates that are going on among Democrats and on the left in the wake of Trump’s victory.
In this episode, we hear from Mark Carnes, Professor of History at Barnard College and the creator of “Reacting to the Past,” a new style of teaching in college classrooms that immerses students in the events and debates that shaped the past. This pedagogical method aims not just to help students learn about the past, but to deepen their capacity for historical, political, and cultural empathy.
Today, we hear from Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center at Grand Valley State University and producer of this podcast. Gleaves discusses the results of the presidential election, and considers what a Trump presidency might mean, what it could look like, and how the Democratic and Republican parties will both have to change significantly to adjust to the new political and cultural landscape.
Today, we hear from Professor Hendershot about her recent book on William F Buckley’s famous political talk show Firing Line, which ran from 1966 through 1999 and thus chronicled the massive political and cultural changes in America from the 60s onward. The book is called Open to Debate: How William F Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line, and we talk about it. We also discuss the effect of the media on the political process today, and how it might be improved.
In this episode we hear from Martha Jones, professor of history and of Afroamerican and African studies at the university of Michigan, as well as director of the Michigan Law Program in Race, Law, and History. Professor Jones discusses a book she recently co-edited, Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women. We also explore the significance of that work in light of the current political situation in America, especially given the recent election of Donald Trump to the presidency.
This interview was recorded in October, 2016.
In this episode, Bhaskar Sunkara, founding editor and publisher of Jacobin Magazine, talks about the short history of his publication and how it has thus far tried to differentiate itself from other magazines of liberal-left opinion. He also discusses the current election and explores the possible reasons for, and implications of, the rise of Sanders on the left and Trump on the right. Finally, Sunkara considers the near future of the American left.
This interview was recorded on October 27, 2016.
Most Americas seem to agree that our country is facing a kind of political and ideological realignment. This state of affairs has conservatives and progressives looking to the future, but also to the past—to the thinkers and activists both left and right who shaped their respective traditions. An important question to ask is whether we can, or should, resurrect the ideas of the past and apply them today? But then, we should also ask whether we can learn from the mistakes and the faults of past thinkers too.
Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center, asks these questions about a major conservative thinker under whom he studied as a graduate student in history at the University of Michigan: the intellectual historian Stephen Tonsor. Even in the 80s, Tonsor seemed out of place as a conservative intellectual in a mostly liberal public university. But he found community among conservative thinkers of the day: William F Buckley and Russel Kirk, for instance. Gleaves explores Tonsor’s effect on American conservatism from the 60s to the 80s; he also discusses the many differences between the form of conservatism that Tonsor embraced, and the sorts of conservatism that are prominent today.
This interview was recorded on October 25, 2016.
In the 1950s, American conservatives felt like they were on the ropes: faced with a liberal consensus at home and radical ideologies abroad, conservatives were fractured, broken, and, they thought, largely voiceless. According to historian Bradley J. Birzer, it took the publication of one book, Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, to help change the tide. Hailed by political thinkers and writers on the right, such as William F. Buckley, the book set out certain first principles for postwar conservatives, chief among them belief in a transcendent order, trust in the rule of law and in the link between property and freedom, and, importantly, a conviction that change may not always be good.
Kirk was a major thinker in the postwar era, but Birzer points out, his influence has waned. Anyone looking for prescriptions about the best tax policy, or defenses of someone like Trump, won’t find them in Kirk. Birzer discusses what this might mean for the future of the American Right, and whether conservatives in the coming years might take another look at Russell Kirk.
This interview was recorded on October 18, 2016.
Andrew Hartman, author of A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, joined us on October 6, 2016 to discuss the major political shifts of the 60s, the culture wars of the 80s, and the related political and cultural collisions today. We talk about debates over race, gender, religion, economics, and higher education. We also consider what the candidacies of Trump and Clinton might mean for the near-future of American culture and politics, and whether the rise of Sanders points to a split in the Democratic party that will have consequences well beyond this election season.
In this October 5, 2016 interview with Matthew Continetti, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, Mr. Continetti offers perspective on conservative journalism and commentary. He also provides us his take on the current election and describes what he thinks a Clinton presidency or a Trump presidency might mean for the nation.
Today we hear an interview from February, 2016 with H.W. Brands about the life and legacy of Ronald Reagan. We also discuss Brands’ early takes on the 2016 presidential race, and discuss how he has managed to author so many award-winning books, and still find time, on the side, to write an entire history of the US, in haikus, on Twitter.
In this special episode of the Common Ground podcast, we’ll play for you a dialogue held at Grand Valley State University on September 8th, 2016, between two internationally renowned interfaith leaders: Abdullah Antepli, imam and Chief Representative of Muslim Affairs at Duke University, and Donniel Hartman, orthodox rabbi, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and author of Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself. Hosted collaboratively by the Hauenstein Center and the Kaufman Interfaith Institute, the dialogue took up one of the most challenging questions facing the international community: might Israelis and Palestinians be able to find sufficient common ground to resolve their decades-old conflict? Antepli and Hartman pursue this question honestly, and admit some of their reservations. At least, they call attention to the many obstacles that need to be surmounted before either side could even glimpse some possible common ground and common purpose. Nevertheless, the conversation was civil, principled, and, for these reasons, deeply instructive.
A special thanks to the Kaufman Interfaith Institute for partnering with us and for co-hosting this dialogue. To learn more about that terrific institute, visit gvsu.edu/interfaith.
For more about the Hauenstein Center, visit www.hauensteincenter.org or follow HauensteinGVSU on Facebook and Twitter.
In today’s episode we hear a September 6, 2016 interview with Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, assistant professor of History at the New School, podcast host, wellness expert, and the author of Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture. Natalia talks about debates over education in America, and how they can shed light on our country’s shifting political landscape from the 1960s to the present.
Today’s episode features an August, 2016 interview with Jonathan White, an internationally recognized terrorism and criminal justice expert and the executive director of the Homeland Defense Initiative at Grand Valley State University. Dr. White discusses the recent terrorist attacks in Nice and Orlando, as well as what he thinks most Americans don’t understand about the nature of modern terrorism. This special episode of the Common Ground podcast commemorates September 11, 2001.
Today's episode concludes our "Back to School" series and features two perspectives on issues faced by higher education today. Our interview with Alan Charles Kors, recorded on March 16, 2016, explores issues of free speech and academic freedom. Our interview with Louis Menand, recorded on December 11, 2016, focuses on issues of specialization and graduate studies.
This interview, recorded on May 16, 2016, features Eva Brann, tutor and former dean at St. John's College. We look at the model of St. John's College as a possible alternative to address issues in higher education today, and we also hear details of Ms. Brann's personal philosophy and history.
This interview with the Midwestern History Association's Jon Lauck, recorded on June 1st, 2016, explores the often overlooked field of Midwestern history and the movement that seeks to revive it.
This episode is going to be just a bit different from the others. We’re going to play for you a series of short presentations by three historians--Raymond Haberski, Paul Murphy, and Natalia Mehlman Petrzela. These historians were on a panel at an April 16, 2016 summit, hosted by the Hauenstein Center, that entertained the possibility of common ground between progressives and conservatives, as we do.
These three presentations were perfect for that summit—as well as for this podcast—because they took up certain relatively recent cultural debates that, in some cases, highlight the value of common ground between the left and right, but in others, reveal how such common ground might not always be possible or even valuable. For instance, in the first presentation, Raymond Haberski discusses what he calls America’s “civil religion of war,” and examines whether common ground between liberal and conservatives about war—particularly the Iraq War—is or has been all that valuable. Following that, Paul Murphy talks about key early 20th century American thinkers, together known as the New Humanists, who embodied the progressive/conservative split as we understand it today. Finally, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela talks about the culture wars, from the 60s to today, as they’ve played out in classrooms and at school board meetings across the nation.
In today’s episode, we hear a June 29, 2016 interview with Daniel Oppenheimer, a writer and documentarian, and the author of Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Shaped the American Century. In his book, Daniel Oppenheimer writes about the political conversions of six figures whose names might be familiar—Whitaker Chambers, James Burnham, Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, and Christopher Hitchens. Though each of these figures defected from the left in one if not all ways, their stories are certainly not identical: whereas Chambers and Burnham were both committed Marxists at one point, Reagan was never really of full-fledged lefty. And Hitchens, though a supporter of the Iraq War and a friend of neoconservatives, always bristled at the accusation that he was in any way on the Right. Still, despite the differences between these figures, studying their respective apostasies can reveal something valuable and instructive about the changing political landscapes of the 20th century. And in a broader sense, the question their stories raise is really about us, today: how and why, our guest Daniel Oppenheimer asks, do we come to believe in certain political positions at all—either on the left, the right, or somewhere in the middle?
Today’s episode of Common Ground features George H Nash, an historian and author whose book The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 has largely defined academic understanding of intellectual conservatism for the last thirty years. Today, Nash explains the development as well as the fracture of conservatism in America, and offers some suggestions for conservatives who want to regain their bearings in the age of Trump.
Few people have so influentially described the changing landscape of American politics, or helped a political group define their own place on that landscape as our guest, George Nash. Nash is, to be sure, highly regarded in the academy; at the same time, it’s hard to overstate his impact on conservatives themselves. Jonah Goldberg, a columnist at NATIONAL REVIEW, has called Nash’s work “indispensible” and admits that he’s read Nash’s major work at least “thirty-seven times.” Likewise, The American Conservative has called Nash “the preeminent historian of the intellectual Right.”
We recorded this conversation with George in April 2016, well before Donald Trump was the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Still, the impact of Trump’s rise was not lost on Nash at the time—he saw pretty clearly the causes of Trump’s appeal, and what it might mean for the Right. So, if you’re still scratching your head at the recent shifts in the Republican Party, or if you simply want to learn about these shifts from the perspective of an historian of conservatism, this episode is for you.
This episode features a May 17, 2016 interview with Ian Millhiser, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Editor of ThinkProgress Justice, and author of Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted.
In the past year, we’ve seen a lot of drama on the Supreme Court. In 2015, the Court decided in Obergefell v Hodges that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. In 2016, the hugely influential conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died; and, in his wake, Senate Republicans have refused to hold hearings to consider President Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia, the federal judge Merrick Garland. These major events have brought attention to the Court and its legacy. Ian Millhiser’s book Injustices takes up that legacy, but certainly doesn’t glorify it. Millhiser’s main contention: “Time and time again, the justices have taken the trust our Constitution places in them and wielded it to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. They’ve read doubtful ideologies into the Constitution’s vaguest phrases. And they’ve ignored provisions intended to protect the unpopular and the least fortunate.”
In this episode, we hear a May 18, 2016 interview with Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, critic-in-residence at Georgetown University, and author of So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. Corrigan talks about the life and work of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, and describes to host Joseph Hogan just what exactly makes a Great American Novel so, well, great. Finally, Corrigan discusses the state of literary criticism and the teaching of literature today, and examines the place contemporary literature has in the national conversation.
Sensitive Content: Description of suicide from 10:00 to 10:50.
In this introductory episode, we listen to a keynote address by Michael Ignatieff, the Edward R. Murrow Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and former Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, delivered at the Hauenstein Center in April, 2016.
Ignatieff has a strong critique of American politics today – he condemns our politicians’ tendency toward spectacle over substance, especially this year, 2016, and accuses pundits on the left and right of exaggerating and exacerbating our differences. As remedy, Ignatieff prescribes a form of principled centrism. He revives and slightly revises the old idea of the vital center, defining it as the place where the left and right clash and collide, but sometimes do come together.
In this episode, EJ Dionne Jr., a columnist at the Washington Post, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and frequent commentator at NPR, MSNBC, and PBS, talks about his most recent book, Why the Right Went Wrong.
In his book, EJ tracks the fracture of the Republican Party from the Goldwater Movement in the early 60s all the way up to Donald Trump. In our conversation, EJ outlines that fracture and emphasizes the significance of Trump’s revolt on the right. We discussed the Trumpification of the Right, the past and future of American conservatism, and what Burkean or moderate conservatives such as David Brooks or Michael Gerson should do in the face of a Trump takeover. This interview was recorded on May 17, 2016.
In this episode, we hear a May 19, 2016 interview with Daniel McCarthy, editor of The American Conservative.
In 2002, a small group of writers and politicians on the right, including Reagan’s former senior advisor Pat Buchanan, founded a magazine called The American Conservative. Established in opposition to the Iraq War, the magazine would feature the writing of traditionalist or paleoconservatives: that is, thinkers on the right who, unlike the so-called conservative establishment, generally detest military adventurism abroad and think that American culture has sadly neglected its roots in the cultural and religious tradition of the West.
Though not as widely circulated as mainstream conservative publications such as National Review, The American Conservative has a loyal following on the right, and is known, in the words of conservative commentator Reihan Salam, “as a sharp critic of the conservative mainstream.” In this interview, Dan McCarthy describes his magazine’s role as a critic of the mainstream right, as well as what he thinks of the current fracture of the Republican Party.
Common Ground, the podcast of the Hauenstein Center, explores the cultural and political landscape shared by the left and right. Every other week, Joseph Hogan, the podcast’s host, talks with public intellectuals, political leaders, scholars, critics, and writers-at-large about American life, ideas, and identities. Soon to be published, Common Ground can be found on iTunes by searching for “Common Ground Initiative.”