Talkin' in the Free World: Recent Episodes
Mariam Memarsadeghi
Talkin’ in the Free World is a conversation series on the future of democracy and countering the threat from resurgent authoritarianism across the globe.
The series is hosted by MLI Senior Fellow Mariam Memarsadeghi and features prominent thinkers, practitioners and political leaders committed to safeguarding freedom.
Hillel Neuer has made a career out of giving a voice to the voiceless; his leadership in fighting for human rights, justice, and peace has been internationally lauded. Now, as the Executive Director of UN Watch, Neuer is focused on keeping the United Nations honest and ensuring that the international body is held accountable to its founding principles.
Neuer joins MLI Senior Fellow and Cyrus Forum Founder and Director, Mariam Memarsadeghi, to discuss these issues and more.
Azar Nafisi, who is the critically acclaimed author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, a New York Times bestseller that is published in thirty-two languages. Nafisi reflects on the effect of education, ideology, and the corporate mentality on the preservation of democracy, focusing particularly on political divides in the US. Mariam and Azar dive into the philosophical underpinnings of freedom, democracy preservation in the US, and the fight for democracy in Iran. Nafisi is also known for her other works including, Things I’ve Been Silent About, Republic of Imagination, That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile, and most recently The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times. She has held various teaching posts across the world including at Johns Hopkins University, Oxford University, and Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai.
Independent Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk joins us today to discuss her wartime journalism, stories coming from the frontline, the greater meaning of Ukraine’s fight for freedom and democracy, and to debunk Russia’s narratives about Ukraine.
Nury Turkel, author of No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs, speaks to us today about China’s use of technology in the Uyghur genocide and the threat of such technologies to global democracy and freedom. Turkel highlights what the international community needs to do to support the Uyghur people and hold authoritarians to account.
Turkel is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and is Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He is the first U.S.-educated Uyghur-American lawyer, foreign policy expert, and human rights advocate. He was born in a re-education camp at the height of China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution and spent the first several months of his life in detention with his mother.
This program was originally recorded as Democracy Matters on April 22, 2022. Danielle Pletka joins us today to discuss how the US can institute a Pro-Democracy foreign policy, which she argues has been lacking. Danielle Pletka is a distinguished senior fellow in foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she focuses on US foreign policy generally and the Middle East specifically. Until January 2020, Ms. Pletka was the senior vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Concurrently, she also teaches US Middle East policy at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. Before joining AEI, Ms. Pletka was a senior professional staff member for the Middle East and South Asia for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
This program was originally recorded as Democracy Matters on March 25, 2022.
"The End of Europe" author Jamie Kirchick on rising threats to freedom in democracies.
This program was originally recorded as Democracy Matters on February 24, 2022.
Eli Lake joins Mariam Memarsadeghi to discuss how the West can stand up to Russian aggression and stand up for its core values on the international stage. Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI. Lake has reported from Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, India, Egypt and Israel.
This program was originally recorded as Democracy Matters on February 8, 2022.
Mariam Memarsadeghi interviews Bill Browder, author of Red Notice, investor, and anti-corruption activist, to discuss the role of sanctions in influencing oligarchs. Mr. Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, when he was denied entry to the country and declared “a threat to national security” for exposing corruption in Russian state-owned companies.
In 2008, Mr. Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a massive fraud committed by Russian government officials that involved the theft of US $230 million of state taxes. Sergei testified against state officials and was subsequently arrested, imprisoned without trial and systematically tortured, dying after one year of imprisonment in 2009. Since then, Mr. Browder has sought justice outside of Russia and started a global campaign for governments around the world to impose targeted visa bans and asset freezes on human rights abusers and highly corrupt officials. The US, Canada, the UK, the Baltic states, the European Union and most recently Australia have passed their own versions of the Magnitsky Act.
This program was originally recorded as Democracy Matters on November 1, 2021.
Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow Kaveh Shahrooz on how a prison massacre was formative to his worldview and his career in pursuit of human rights, about the nefarious influence of Iran's regime in the free world, the downing of flight PS752, Oberlin College's employment of a former Iran regime official responsible for covering up rights abuses, and more.
This program was originally recorded as Democracy Matters on October 28, 2021.
Iran expert Alireza Nader joins Mariam Memarsadeghi to discuss what democracies must do to hold the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accountable for its global terror and crimes against humanity. Mr. Nader was an International Policy Analyst at the Rand Corporation and author of a number of reports for the Rand Corporation on Iran. He subsequently worked as an advisor to the Anti-Defamation League. He currently serves on the ADL's Task Force to Protect Minority Communities of the Middle East.