New Frontiers: Recent Episodes
Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs
New Frontiers brings together scholars, experts, and practitioners to discuss issues of international and global importance.
Produced by the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs at Middlebury College, the podcast tackles a wide range of topics— from big tech, environmental conservation, global security, and political economy to culture, literature, religion, and changing work patterns—that, when examined as a whole, offers a comprehensive survey of the world's most pressing issues.
International nongovernmental organizations (INGO’s) like Amnesty International, Care, Oxfam, or World Vision operate independently of governments around the world. But what do we really know about these organizations and their operations, behavior, effectiveness or limitations? What might they be doing or be unable to do, in a country like Ukraine, where many people are suffering and there are dire needs, and yet the war that Russia unleashed impedes their work?
In this episode, political scientist and INGO specialist Sarah Stroup lifts the curtain on international nongovernmental organizations to illuminate their function, efficacy, and constraints.
SHOW NOTES:
Music Credits
- Forte by Kestra - Summer with Sound Album
- Soul Zone by Kestra - Light Rising Album
Outro by Arjun Kumar '25
For information on Sarah Stroup's book , Borders Among Activists: International NGOs in the United States, Britain, and France (Borders Among Activists: International NGOs in the United States, Britain, and France (Cornell University Press, 2012), visit here.
For more information on Middlebury College and the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, visit here.
For months, hundreds of thousands of Israel citizens have taken to the streets to protest government plans to overhaul the judiciary—including plans that would vitiate checks on executive power, allow a simple majority of 61 in the 120-seat Knesset to override almost any ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court, and permit politicians to appoint most of the Court’s justices. Both the protests and proposed reforms take place against the backdrop of significant demographic changes which, in turn, find Israeli religious parties with much greater parliamentary representation. Given the Knesset’s current makeup therefore, the reforms will—at least indirectly—grant the religious parties extensive influence over Israeli society.
In this episode, Middlebury College political geographer and Professor of Geosciences Tamar Mayer explains why these plans for judicial reform have pitted the government against many of its citizens, what is at stake in this crisis, and why the roots of this crisis stretch far back into Israel’s past.
SHOW NOTES:
Podcast produced by Margaret DeFoor and Mark Williams.
Outro by Middlebury student Vee Syengo ‘25
Music Credits
- Forte by Kestra - Summer with Sound Album
- Soul Zone by Kestra - Light Rising Album
For more information on New Frontiers podcast episodes and guests visit the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs website.
Despite its long pedigree, Chinese slavery during medieval times has failed to attract wide scholarly attention. Hence, questions about it abound. What was slavery like in medieval China? How was it similar to—or different from—the institution of slavery found in other societies and at other times? Who werethe enslaved in the Chinese context, why were they enslaved, and what function did slavery serve in Chinese society? “In this episode of New Frontiers, Don Wyatt, John M. McCardell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of History at Middlebury College, sits down with Mark Williams to discuss these and other issues.
After six decades multiparty politics, Turkish democracy has collapsed. Yes, the trappings of democracy are still visible. Elections are held, parliament sits in session, the courts rule, and the elected executive leads. Yet, the substance of democracy moves ever further into the past. How did this happen? Why? And what implications does the unraveling of democracy in Turkey hold for political systems in other countries? In this episode, Mark Williams explores these topics with political scientist Sebnem Gumuscu, whose recent scholarship highlights the reality of democratic backsliding.
Sebnem Gumuscu is an associate professor of political science and a faculty fellow at the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs here at Middlebury College. In her capacity as a faculty fellow, Professor Gumuscu co-directs the Rohatyn Center’s program on Global Trends in Autocracy and Democracy which is supported by the Cangiano Family, in memory of Leon M. Cangiano Jr. Class of 1963. Much of her research has focused on political Islam, middle Eastern and north African politics, democratization, and democratic backsliding. Her first book, Democracy, Identity and Foreign Policy in Turkey, was published in 2014. Her second book, which is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press is titled Democracy or Authoritarianism: Islamist Governments in Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia. Today I'm delighted Sebnem’s agreed to stop by to discuss a topic that’s related to this larger book project. It's a recent article that appeared in the journal Party Politics. Professor Gumuscu co-authored this article with her colleague, Berk Esen, and it’s titled, Why did Turkish democracy collapse? A political economy account of AKP’s authoritarianism. Professor Gumuscu, welcome to New Frontier.
According to the US Space Force, only 2,000 of the 22,000 objects that have been tracked circling the Earth are fully operational, functioning satellites. Put differently, roughly 90 percent of the objects that can be tracked circling the globe is junk—space junk, or cosmic garbage. How did it get there, why does it keep accumulating, and how best might we address this global problem are all topics that Akhil Rao, Assistant Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, writes about in a co-authored article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In this episode of New Frontiers, Professor Rao speaks with Mark Williams about these issues and explains why adopting “orbital use fees” could be the best way to address the problem of cosmic garbage.
Show Notes:
Music Credits
- Forte by Kestra - Summer with Sound Album
- Soul Zone by Kestra - Light Rising Album
In this episode, Mark Williams talks with Will Pyle, the Frederick C. Dirks Professor of International Economics at Middlebury College, about recent findings he published in the journal Post-Soviet Affairs. Their discussion explores why Russians of a certain cohort—although liberated from the economic and political constraints of Soviet Communism—are not the strong enthusiasts of democracy and capitalism which many westerners believed they would become after the USSR collapsed.
Show Notes:
Music Credits
- Forte by Kestra - Summer with Sound Album
- Soul Zone by Kestra - Light Rising Album
“Asia First was an insistence that Pacific affairs receive as much, if not more attention than European Atlantic relations in the cold war. Its proponents, its supporters, many of whom were very powerful, conservative voices in the Senate and in Congress felt like U.S. foreign policy after World War II was neglecting mainland Asia and therefore imperiling the whole cold war.” — Joyce Mao
In this episode (2), Mark Williams, director of the Rohatyn Center, talks with Joyce Mao, Middlebury College associate professor of history, about the Asia First initiative and, in particular, the effects that US-China-Taiwan relations had on American domestic politics. Why were American conservatives so interested in Asia after WWII and in China particularly? In what ways, if any, did conservative concerns over China influence US foreign policy, and how did conservatives’ interest in China help shape the development of the political right in the United States? These are some of the issues examined in this New Frontiers episode "China and the American Right."
Joyce Mao’s book, Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism, was published in 2015 by the University of Chicago Press.
Show Notes:
Music Credits
- Forte by Kestra - Summer with Sound Album
- Soul Zone by Kestra - Light Rising Album
In this episode, Molly Anderson, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Food Studies at Middlebury College, joins Mark Williams, director of the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, to discuss her recent article titled “UN Food Systems Summit 2021: Dismantling Democracy and Resetting Corporate Control of Food Systems”. At issue is whether multinational corporations (MNC's) should have more influence and say in controlling/governing food systems than does civil society and its constituent parts most plagued by problems of food insecurity. Anderson believes MNC's should not enjoy such a privileged position over so vital a basic necessity, and offers a forceful critique of 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), which in her view helped ensure such corporate control.
SHOW NOTES
Music Credits
- Forte by Kestra - Summer with Sound Album
- Soul Zone by Kestra - Light Rising Album