Every week Grant Reeher, Political Science Professor and Senior Research Associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University, leads a conversation with a notable guest. Guests include people from central New York — writers, politicians, activists, public officials, and business professionals whose work affects the public life of the community — as well as nationally prominent figures visiting the region to talk about their work.
Christopher White on the Campbell Conversations
Aug 30, 2025
Christopher White( catholicsocialthought.georgetown.edu)
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is a scholar of Catholic thought. Christopher White is associate director of Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. Prior to that he was an award winning reporter for the National Catholic Reporter. He's with me today because he's written a new book. It's a new book on the new pope, it's titled, "Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy". Christopher, welcome to the program, congratulations on this book.
Christopher White: Thank you, Grant. It's good to be with you.
GR: I appreciate you making the time, so. Well, I want to start actually not with Pope Leo, but with the person who preceded him and that's Pope Francis, obviously. You've spent a lot of time following him, watching him, reporting on him. But if you could answer this question briefly, what do you think Pope Francis’ legacy is, at least at an early reading?
CW: Yeah, I think Pope Francis will be remembered as a pope who really saw it as his mission to open the Catholic Church up to the modern world. And he did so in large part by shifting some of the church's major priorities. You had two popes back to back John Paul and Benedict, whose focus (was) primarily on issues of sexual morality, family ethics. And Francis pivoted away from those issues. He didn't disagree with them, but he really focused primarily on issues concerning the poor, the marginalized, the environment and reshifting some of the Catholic Church's global priorities. And in doing so, bringing it I think into a perhaps a more engaged conversation with the world around it.
GR: Okay, thanks. And so let's talk about this process that chose Cardinal Robert Prevost as the new pope last May. As you note in your book, most people with any real impression of the process probably have their knowledge from the movie, “Conclave”. But my first question is, comparing it to that I guess at least, was there that much intrigue and behind the scenes maneuvering, even in a process that is itself behind the scenes?
CW: Yeah. I mean, conclaves always get a tremendous amount of attention because they are, in fact, the most secretive election process on earth. And so there's just a lot of palace intrigue. This year, it felt particularly, the stakes were heightened by the fact that this Hollywood film had come out a few months prior and everyone seemed to have seen the film and had something to say about the process and wanted to follow it closely. The film, I have to say, got a lot right about the actual process. They got the rubrics of the conclave correct. I think it was overhyped in terms of the backroom politicking that's involved. But what it did get right is the fact that it is both the spiritual process where the electors are engaged in prayer and discernment, but yet it is also a deeply political process. And there are serious conversations taking place. And, you know, money isn't being traded or anything of that sort, but there is a sense of you're assessing candidates. And that's where the film absolutely got correct.
GR: So what were the major fault lines or were there major fault lines that emerged in the process that chose Pope Leo?
CW: Well, in a sense, every conclave is a referendum on the pope who came before. And so what the cardinals were doing in the roughly two weeks between the time of Pope Francis's death and the time they enter the Sistine Chapel they were having, you know, honest conversations behind closed doors about what the last pope did well and what is needed in the new pope. And what I argue in the book is that this conclave was really a referendum on Francis's reform efforts to shift the Catholic Church's priorities away, as I mentioned earlier, to a more outward focus and also his overall efforts to make the church more welcoming, more participatory, so less concerned with just the role of the priest or bishops. But where all the Catholics can have a say in the life of their church. And that excited a lot of people under the 12 years of Francis's pontificate, but it certainly alarmed others. And that's what the 133 men who went into the Sistine Chapel were effectively asked to do is say, do we want to continue on this path that he initiated, or is it time for a course correction?
GR: Okay, and I want to talk to you a little bit later about whether you anticipate that there will be some kind of course correction. But let me ask you this different question. You already mentioned that there are politics necessarily in this process. One thing that we have seen in recent decades when it comes to the selection process for Supreme Court justices is a desire among presidents to try to nominate relatively younger candidates if possible. And the reason for that is they want to extend the time of their influence on the court and therefore public policy. And that trend well predates President Trump. I mean, Justice Clarence Thomas is a great example of this, for instance. Were there any similar desires among the conclave regarding that? Let's find a pope who's going to live a long time, in kind of a, relatively speaking, younger pope. I mean, you've got people in there well past 80 that are voting.
CW: Yeah, it's one of those things where there's, no one says this out loud, but there's effectively a sweet spot they're looking for. They want someone young enough to do the job that can keep up with the demands of the office, which in the modern era has included a lot of travel. Popes tend to become jet setters after they take office. They're managing a huge bureaucracy, a 1.4 billion member institution. But as you know, it's a lifetime appointment. I mean, when Pope Benedict resigned in 2013, he was the first pope to voluntarily do so in 600 years. So for the most part you're looking to name someone who's going to be in there till they die. And so, most popes though, most cardinals who vote for popes are reluctant to give that assignment, that job to someone that's going to be in the position for too long because it's hard to have a regime change when you know someone's going to be there for life. And you know Pope John Paul II, who was pope for almost 30 years. And for many people they say perhaps that was a bit too long. So you're trying to look at someone who can, where is that sweet spot? And in the election of Cardinal Robert Prevost, who is 69 years old, they certainly aired younger. So you're looking at probably, you know, if he remains healthy at least a 20 year papacy. So they certainly didn't allow his youth to be held against him.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Georgetown University religion scholar Christopher White. He's the author of, "Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy". So with the relationship between popes and politics more generally is a complicated one, but it's inherent because of the things you've already said. You know, it’s 1.4 billion members, you have this high profile. Were there any concerns in the conclave about choosing an American as pope, given that many parts of the world right now have a problematic impression of America? And it's only that whole concern, I imagine, would have only been underlined by the fact that President Trump entered into the process of this decision making through his social media messaging. So were there concerns that you would detect about choosing an American?
CW: Yeah, I'd say for a long time the conventional wisdom has been that no American is going to be elected pope, you know, and that was for a few reasons. One, there was a sense that among the College of Cardinals, which is a diverse body of over 70 countries of, you know, men from over 70 countries, that America already has enough power in the world as it is. You know, it's a superpower, and they don't need the papacy and the presidency that's just too much, that would be a bridge too far. And I think there's a concern and has been a longstanding concern that in an institution like the Catholic Church that is vastly diverse, where it's growing most successfully is in the global south, that a pope from the United States would, in a sense diminish that the diversity of the global church. And that is why, you know, Cardinal Robert Prevost was in a sense the only American that would have been taken seriously because of his resume. He's a man who spent, he was born and raised in Chicago, but most of his adult life he's lived outside of the United States. The Italian papers referred to him as the ‘least American of the Americans’.
GR: (laughter)
CW: And so I think, you know, it goes to show you, there was some suspicion about an American, but because of his particular resumé, many cardinals chose to overlook that or geography wasn't really the major factor.
GR: And you've met Pope Leo when he was a cardinal, you write about that in your book. What are your impressions of him just as a person?
CW: Yeah, he's an interesting figure, I'd say. The very first time I met him, it was soon after he arrived in Rome to head up this very important office that Pope Francis had asked him to lead. I went in for a meeting with him, and I was just struck by this man who was kind but very, very determined and very serious about the work ahead of him. He asked very detailed questions and he just struck me as someone who walks into any room, any meeting, having done all of his homework and using that particular meeting to do more of it. I went in as a reporter with a list of particular questions and issues that I wanted to discuss. And I was struck how quickly he turned the conversation around and put me in the hot seat to ask me questions. And that really holds true, you know, with many people that I've interviewed that worked alongside him both in Rome and elsewhere, that he's a man of government, a man of governance. He's a real sort of manager. And in that sense, he's quite different from Pope Francis, who was an extrovert and the governance was secondary.
GR: Ah, I see, yeah, that's interesting. So, going back to our earlier conversation and your comments about perhaps a course correction or concerns or referendum on the previous pope, what does Leo's choice signify regarding those fault lines that you discussed?
CW: Yeah, I think it's fair to say that the Cardinals in electing Robert Prevost now, Pope Leo, chose to continue on the same path of reform as Pope Francis. Pope Leo is someone who shares Pope Francis’s same pastoral priorities and instincts. He was deeply shaped by his experience of Latin, you know, serving 20 years in Latin America. And I think his sort of vision of church is one similar to Francis where, you know, he sees the church's role as walking alongside the least of these, the most marginalized in society. So I think it's fair to say that he was fully supportive of Francis’s vision of opening the church up to the world around it, becoming a more dialogical institution. But where the major differences is in personality and approach to management. And I think that's why many of the people who were fully supportive of Pope Francis's vision said, okay, we have this pope that in a sense, opened everything up for us and he started all these new processes, but now we need someone who has the real skill set of a manager to come in and institutionalize these reforms for an unwieldy, complicated, I would say often, you know, archaic, antiquated institution. And let's now elect someone with a different skill set. And that's why they chose Robert Prevost, because they thought he blended those two worlds of the same sort of outlook on church life and the world around as Francis, but with a particular skill set geared toward management.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Christopher White. He's associate director of Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, and he's the author of a new book on the new pope. It's titled, "Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy". So I wanted to ask you, Chris, you know, each pope comes in, they choose a name, they rename themselves. And so what's the significance of Pope Leo's choice of Leo as a name given perhaps maybe previous Pope Leo's?
CW: Yeah. So he's Leo the 14th and taking Leo is a nod most recently to Leo the 13th, who was the pope, who really had quite a significant reign at the height of the industrial revolution. And he wrote this, you know, what the Catholics call an encyclical. It's a fancy, you know, clunky word for a letter that really said, you know, this was at the height of the revolution saying the church has to stand with workers to be on the side of the workers, in the face of, you know, real dehumanization. And it was, it cemented in a sense, this new era of thought in church life, not as sort of modern Catholic social teaching, saying that the church stands with particularly the marginalized, the poor. And it's more complicated than that but that's the bird's eye view of it all. And Leo the 14th said he's taking that name because in this age, we are seeing a new revolution with technology, particularly artificial intelligence. And the Catholic Church is neither anti A.I. or pro A.I., but the Catholic Church's main concern is that the human person be at the center of conversations about technological development. And I think he sees a particular duty in this as we're seeing just, you know, massive technological change to sort of have a moral voice.
GR: Yeah, that's interesting. And probably something is going to tap a nerve as we go on and continue on with this change. You know, I wanted to ask you this question based on some recent experiences I've had. I was traveling in Eastern Europe, and I like to go to Catholic churches. I'm not Catholic, but I find them very interesting and beautiful. And one of the things that I was reminded of is the pride that people feel when a pope is chosen from their country or even just from their region of the world. I mean, I saw portraits of Pope John Paul II in Hungary and Slovakia for instance. Pope Francis obviously very important to Argentineans and South America more generally, he'll be remembered for a very long time. And as I just said, you know, I'm not Catholic, but I wanted to share with you, I don't get quite the same sense that here in the United States, something similar is going on regarding this new pope. There was a lot of excitement about it at first, but I just don't feel the same kind of, I don't know, what it is like almost like a soccer kind of thing that you that I got in Europe. Am I missing something? And if I'm not missing something, why is there a difference in the United States?
CW: I say yes and no. So on one hand, the Pope Leo story is an afterthought for most Americans, I think, because of Donald Trump, who sucks up all of the oxygen in the room, whether you're for or against the president, he is the biggest news story and he is leaves little room for anything else. So I think you're right that we don't detect the same sort of fervor or enthusiasm. That being said, in July, I spent some time out in Chicago launching the book. And there in his hometown, the excitement was quite palpable. You go down the street and gift shops, you know, that sell Chicago merch are now selling Pope Leo gear. You know, I did a number of events where, you know, just people, they're almost giddy at the prospect of his hometown, his homecoming. He's a White Sox fan, so just this week, they had a moment where they inaugurated this chair at the stadium where he once sat and they had a big sort of, you know, hometown celebration in June where I think that 20-30,000 people came out. So in his hometown, you do get the sense of that in the way that you might in Poland, where there's still sort of such energy and almost a cult around Pope John Paul II. Not the same degree here in Chicago, but it's more detectable there than I'd say in New York or Washington.
GR: Yeah, okay, interesting. So he's early in, but what changes have you noted so far, the biggest ones? And what changes do you anticipate from this new pope? Is it going to be this sort of institutional backfilling of Francis? What else might we expect?
CW: Yeah, I think it's fair to say we just passed the hundred day mark. And, you know, the hundred day mark is not anything that's a useful sort of category when it comes to the papacy, because, as we said, popes are elected for life. You know, if presidents are eager to, you know, show that they're capable of getting things done in the first hundred days, popes have for the most part, a fairly different approach to this and Leo certainly is following suit. He's keeping his cards very close to his chest. I monitor his schedule every morning to see who he's meeting with. And he's meeting with everyone from heads of state to heads of Vatican offices, people that would be seen as, you know, natural allies of him and Pope Francis and also those that perhaps were antagonistic to Francis. So he's showing early on that he wants to listen to everyone, but he hasn't made any consequential decisions. We don't know who his team is yet. He's effectively, you know, a president names a cabinet, his cabinet are effectively the holdovers from Pope Francis. He's reconfirmed everyone to their posts for the time being. And so in the coming months, we'll see him start forming his own team. One of the first big jobs he has to name is he has to decide who's going to replace him at the office that is responsible for identifying and vetting potential Catholic bishops around the world. It's a very powerful job. That will be the first real indicator of what he wants in a leader. And we'll see what he chooses, the profile of that person. So, so far, all we're really left to read are his public speeches. He speaks every Wednesday and then Sunday at the Vatican and then he gives addresses throughout the week. And I'd say the persistent theme so far has been peace. He's spoken more about Ukraine and Gaza than anything else. And that seems to be his front burner issue at the moment.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and my guest is Georgetown University's Christopher White. So you just made a comparison a few minutes ago to the presidency in talking about the pope. And one thing that strikes me as a political scientist in that similarity is that the person immediately becomes an institution, right? You've been talking about this person, Robert Prevost, but now he's got a different name. That actually speaks to what I'm talking about, you physically rename yourself. Former presidents often speak of their very first security briefing as the moment when this fact hits them: I am not just a person, I'm an institution. There's a wonderful video of President Obama when he travels for the first time on Air Force One. And you can see this just, you know, this just coming together in his head. I was just wondering if you have any reflections on that as it relates to the papacy, because I would think in some ways the hit of, now I'm this thing, is probably even bigger for a pope.
CW: Yeah. I'd say there are two moments that I'll point to. The first we've already seen, it's the moment when the pope appears on the balcony. That happens typically after about an hour after their election. So they don't have a lot of time to prepare. I mean, you know, this conclave was 24 hours and I think it's fair to say from my own reporting in the book that Robert Prevost probably went to bed on the evening of May 7th with the good sense that he might wake up and be elected pope the next day. His chances on that very first ballot were quite strong. Even so, you know, from the time you're elected to the time you're introduced to the public, it's really 60 minutes, 70 minutes. He gave a short speech, it was about 500 words that he quickly wrote himself but there's no chance to talk to advisers. And so you get a sense of the man and his priorities in that first public appearance. He said the word peace nine times. You could just tell that's kind of what was keeping him up at night and that's his chance to introduce himself to the world. We certainly saw that with Francis in 2013 as well. You know, those initial speeches are moments where you make a first impression. But then I would say related to your anecdote of Obama, papal travel, it's just a chance where you see a pope being forced to have these often unscripted moments. You see them with people at every turn and hopefully he will have his first international trip later this year. It looks like it'll be at the end of November to Turkey and possibly Lebanon. And those are the first moments where he will have a press conference, typically on the way back to Rome. Where, you know, he's put in the hot seat and that's when you get another sense of the man and his priorities and how comfortable he is sort of being unscripted and what he's willing to say. So I'm just saying, you know, for now, stay tuned.
GR: Well, one of the things that that struck me as you were talking and the difference between presidents and popes is they haven't had a year or more of a campaign and a team, it's just this guy. And so it's not like he's, yeah, it's interesting that he doesn't have advisers and he's got 60 minutes to come up with what he wants to say. Yeah, that's quite something.
CW: Including, you know, he's asked, you know, do you accept the election? And then the second question is by which name would you like to be called?
GR: Oh, wow.
CW: And so, you know, even a name which has tremendous weight to it, it’s not a tremendous amount of time to give that consideration.
GR: And then you say, let me think about it, I'll get back to you? (laughter)
CW: (laughter)
GR: That's not going to work in that instance. Okay, so we've got about 2 minutes left. I wanted to put one, perhaps two questions to you, depending on how long you spend on the first one. This first one, you may not be comfortable answering, but I really want to ask it. Were you personally pleased with the choice or were you in a sense rooting for somebody else?
CW: I think I was one of the few journalists that was making the case that Robert Prevost was a real contender. And I have to say I took a lot of flak for that from a number of colleagues, those that thought that I was, in a sense, playing up the idea of an American pope for an American audience. And what I had detected in the ten days or so leading up to the election is that people just didn't see him as an American and geography wasn't going to be a strike against him. And if you remove that from the equation, he ticked all the boxes. And so in that sense, I felt vindicated. I think he has tremendous assets and gifts, and I think he has the potential to be a great leader. So in that sense, yes, I was pleased. As an American, I'm delighted as well. I think at a moment in which we see increased isolationism and sort of resistance to sort of the multilateralism that sort of defined the post-World War II era, to have an American as pope who believes in those things, I think is a very necessary counterweight at the moment.
GR: That's a really interesting observation, I hadn't thought of that at all so I think that's a good place to leave the conversation. That was Christopher White and again, his new book is titled, "Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy". I'd say it's very informative and it's also a very good read. Chris, thanks again for making time to talk to me. I really enjoyed this, really learned a lot.
CW: A real pleasure. Thank you, Grant.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Chris Berdik on the Campbell Conversations
Aug 16, 2025
Chris Berdik(Mark Lavonier)
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today has written a book that's very near and dear to my heart. It is a screed against noise. Chris Berdik is a reporter and a writer who has a new book out, it's titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back.” Chris, welcome to the program and thank you very much for writing this book.
Chris Berdik: Well, thank you. Grant, thanks for having me on.
GR: We really appreciate it. So I have to say right off the bat, in recent weeks, I don't know, maybe it's because I'm looking for it, paying more attention, but I've heard or I've read a few stories about the problems with noise. So I was wondering, is the concern about this a new emerging issue? Is it something that the media and the public is now looking at more, or am I just looking at it more, you know, looking for it?
CB: Yeah. I mean, some of it may be that you're keeping your eye out for it now. You know, noise has been around us, you know, for as long as we've been around. And it's been a thing that we complain about for nearly that long. You know, but the thing that's been happening and why I feel like, you know, I felt like this was a book to write now is, you know, we are in a growing planet with more and more people producing more and more noise, living closer together, more roads, cutting through our rural areas. And while there is more planes overhead, there's just a math equation going on here. And then the other part is that, you know, as we've been doing this, we've been sort of sonically shortsighted about how we plan our cities, how we build our buildings and create our spaces. We haven't thought about the sonic implications of all of this. So, you know, it's not a new problem. I do think it's a growing problem.
GR: Sonically short sighted, I love that phrase, I'm going to remember that. Thinking back, was there a historical turning point or inflection point in the problem with noise, you know, where you can go back and say, okay, now it starts to become a problem?
CB: Yeah, I would say that's a complicated question, actually, because, you know, we don't have a global decibel meter or anything like that to sort of say, okay, this is when, you know, we went up ten decibels worldwide. You know, there are plenty of places that are probably quieter now than they were a hundred years ago. You know, I'm from Pittsburgh, and we used to have steel mills up and down the rivers there, and they've all disappeared, you know, but what we e do have, you know, like I said, we have a diminishment of quiet areas, a diminishment of places where we are not set upon by noise. And we also have, I think, now some sort of digital noise to go with our audible noise. I think this is something that is important to keep in mind that this is not just a metaphor when we talk about, you know, the online cacophony that we're dealing with now. Our brains have to sort through all of that, all of those signals and it is an exhausting thing. I think they kind of accumulate.
GR: Yeah, that's an interesting point. I hadn't really thought about that aspect of it. I mean, I have sometimes kind of feel like I have many traumatic reactions when my cell phone goes off because it just kind of just startle(s) me. Well, let's, you know, let's get into some of the problems that that you deeply dive into in your book. First of all, what are the problems with noisy environments for people? You know, what does it do to us?
CB: Yeah. You know, there are a few things that it does to us. And I'll sort of start as I do, you know, with the inner ear. And this is where decibels, which is how we commonly understand noise which I think is kind of overly narrow, but this is where decibels really matter a whole lot. At this point, noise is just brute force acoustic intensity that can damage your inner ears, whether you like the sound or don't like the sound. If there are enough decibels, what starts to happen is that the connections, the nerve endings between your inner ear anatomy and your brain, they basically explode. They're filled with too much glutamate, which is kind of the signal, the neurotransmitter that is, you know, taking what is a vibration coming through the air and turning it into a signal to your brain. It's too much of that, those nerve endings can't handle it. And then what do you start to do is you lose the fine grained pieces of being able to hear, to be able to distinguish your friend's voice from another voice, to be able to hear a noise. You know, when people say that they can hear you but they can't understand you, this is what starts to happen. And then after that, you start to really lose your hearing and you start to need hearing assistance. So the World Health Organization estimates that about 2.5 billion people on the planet will have hearing loss through noise and aging by 2050. So that's the hearing part. But then at a lower decibel level, you start to have disturbances of sleep and chronic stress building up from noise exposure. You don't even need to wake up for your hearing to pay attention to noise in your sleeping environment, because hearing is a defensive mechanism, a defensive sensory system, your eyes are closed, but you're hearing is still awake. And you know, at around 45 decibels worth of say, transportation noise, you start to lose the restorative piece of sleep so when you're sleeping your heart rate goes down, your blood pressure drops. But those perk up again when noise comes into play and over time in a chronic way, that builds up has impacts on increasing cardiovascular disease risk, increasing hypertension, a range of issues that go well beyond hearing.
GR: It's interesting now that you say that, and I'm thinking back again on my own experiences, but there was a time when I was working temporarily but regularly in a city environment which was different for me in my life. And I would always be about two weeks in, you know, it would just sort of hit me like a wall of stress. And I think it might have been having to do with the noise. It's very, very interesting to think about that. So there's levels of problem here for humans. It's psychological, it's the health that comes from some of those things. And then it's actually your ear and your hearing itself. So it gets you on all these different dimensions.
CB: Yeah. It really infiltrates, you know, it starts in your ear, then starts to, you know, cause a whole lot of distraction issues, which we haven't really discussed, but that's a big one. Distraction and being cut off from people create stress. And then, of course, the sleep deprivations that contribute to a number of health problems.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with the reporter and writer Chris Berdik and we're discussing his new book, it's titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”. So in your research on this, did you find that some kinds of noises are worse than other kinds of noises? I mean, I understand what you're saying about decibel level and the destructive effects it has, but I guess I'm thinking more psychological, you know, any kind of any kind of patterns there?
CB: There are a couple of patterns. You know, I would dig into these noises, as some people have, talking about their acoustic properties like, are they tonal noises? Now, what tonal noises means is that there's a single frequency band that has the most energy to it. So if you think about a high frequency whine or buzz or a low frequency rumble, research has shown that those types of noises, you know, are very disturbing to most people, that they, you know, can't ignore them, that, you know, especially the low frequency tonal sounds can penetrate walls and travel far distances and you feel them in your chest, you know, that kind of a thing. And, you know, that is a big piece of it. You know, the, how long do these sounds go on for and what is the timing of them if they are at night versus during the day? You know, context is a huge deal. We love to listen to bird songs when we're walking in the woods and it's all part of the experience there with the leaves under your feet and the greenery that you can see and the smell of the fresh air. But some people that have tried to use biosphere like nature inspired sounds in indoor spaces like workspaces have found that birdsong, people can't stand it. They get distracted by it. You know, they don't want to have to hear birds chirping when they're facing a deadline and they're sweating an important project so, you know, it's not just the sound, it's the sound in a particular context that matters a lot.
GR: Yeah, that's interesting. And I don't want to turn this into a half hour of a therapy session for me about noise with you. But, this feeds directly into this as I'm thinking about it, one of my pet peeves in life is noises that I can't control, which kind of relates to your birdsong in the workplace kind of thing. I mean, if it were up to me, I'm speaking, you know, tongue in cheek here, but I'd make wind chimes, I think, a felony. And playing music at a beach or a campground or while you're hiking along a trail, I think I might make that a capital offense. But I'm thinking about this, there's an aspect to this I want to ask you about. I'm fortunate to live where it's pretty quiet, relatively speaking, except in some of my neighbors, you know, break out their power tools for working on the yard. And then I also spend a lot of time in another place that's super quiet, but that's a luxury that a lot of people don't have. Is there a social justice element to this problem with noise do you think?
CB: There is. You know, the research is new on this. They have looked at it in the aggregate, which is looked at census track data, you know, demographics, and compare that to noise exposure based on transportation noise. There's been a big national study of transportation noise exposure. A lot of it is model based on, you know, how many airplanes are going over what the flight routes are, where the highways are, etc. And the research on that level shows that when you are in a wealthier and whiter census tract, you have less exposure to that noise. On a more kind of granular level at the city scale, people have done a lot of research into communities that were previously redlined, which was the practice in the 30’s and 40’s to assign risk for investment into certain areas. And it was, you know, often based basically on, you know, the ethnicity and the racial background of the people living there. And those studies, city after city, have found that in formerly redlined communities, they have more noise pollution in addition to other pollution.
GR: Yeah, I would think it might even extend to how the buildings are built. You know, someone has the money to live in a much more expensive apartment complex. I'm guessing the walls are thicker, the soundproofing is better.
CB: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the other part of it. You know, there's an issue of exposure and then there's this vulnerability side. So, you know, if you are in a more affluent neighborhood or just have the means, you will have better windows and walls and soundproofing, you'll have more green space around you to block the sound and also to give you a kind of an acoustic respite.
GR: Yeah, yeah. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Chris Berdik. He's a reporter and writer and the author of, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back” and we've been discussing the book and the issues that it raises. So before the break, we were talking about humans, the impact on humans, but there's also a lot of impact on animals that are important. And tell us a little bit about some of the ways that noise has a negative effect on animals.
CB: Sure. So there is some research into how very loud sound can cause a certain amount of hearing damage to animals, but that is somewhat limited. The sort of larger issue is how noise that humans bring into the environment, in particular, say, shipping noise in the oceans, that sort of constant noise shrinks their sensory worlds. That is something that, you know, we don't think about because we're not under the water very long, typically, as long as our breath lasts, I guess. But down there, especially when you're in the depths where the light doesn't penetrate the sounds of those places are very important to aquatic species that need to hear one another to communicate, to find their way when they're navigating, migrating, I should say, to find food, to avoid predators. Animals have to listen. We up here, if we're bothered by noise, we put on our noise canceling headphones where we get in the car and drive somewhere quieter, but animals don't have that luxury. And so the big problem a lot of people, the conservationists have talked about is, they term it sensory smog. So this is both from our noise and our artificial light, just making the world that these animals navigate smaller. And that's a big problem.
GR: Yeah, sensory smog, okay, I'm going to add that to sonically short sighted, this is great. I had read somewhere too that that kind of background noise like you were talking about with shipping in the ocean, but also above ground, really interferes with animals’ abilities to mate because they use sound, and the one thing I think I remember reading about this was frogs, you know, that they use sound in order to mate, the calls that they put out. But for animals, that are living close to traffic, you know, they just can't find each other anymore.
CB: Yeah. I mean, they will, the research has shown that the birds near roads will try to sing louder and similar with the whales, when the shipping goes by, they'll try to call out louder and stay above the background din. But there's a limit. The whales can only shout so much, the birds, likewise. And some species, will just go quiet because they're waiting it out. Like, you know, we might when an airplane flies over too close when we’re in the middle of our conversation, we just stop.
GR: And what about plant life and the planet more generally? Because you've got this argument that it's, you know, it's affecting everything. I mean, I don't want to be again too cheeky, but in the 70’s and the 80’s there was this big concern about you have to talk to your plants, you know, but don't yell at your plants, you talk to your plants. So tell us what you found in that realm.
CB: Sure. I know that there is research directly into how sound directly impacts plants. My research really looked at how sound it affects plants in an ecosystem sort of way in as much as, you know, nothing changes in isolation when we're in nature. There was a study in New Mexico at these natural gas wells where some of them had noisy air compressors to kind of keep the pressure in the gas lines, and some of them didn’t. And the researchers had noticed that at the noisy wells, these two birds, there was a jay bird and another bird, I can't remember the species of it, but these two birds were steering clear of these particular noisy wells. And then they thought, well, these two birds are really important for spreading the seeds of the plants in this area, these trees. So then they put out about a hundred or so plots they demarcated around the noisy wells and the quieter wells and they watched them for 12 years. And over those 12 years, they found that at the noisy wells, you know, there was something like 80% or 90% fewer tree seedlings because the birds had stayed away, they hadn’t spread the seeds. So these things ripple out in ecosystems.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Chris Berdik, and we've been talking about his new book. It's titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”. So we can't turn back the clock on everything, we kind of have the world we have now. We can't shut all of these things down, we can't shut shipping down. So I guess I wanted to ask you to talk a bit in the last part of our conversation here about what we can do to manage it and to make it better. How can we be more, you know, to go back to, sonically sophisticated? And let's take this at the individual level first, and then we'll take it out to, you know, in terms of planning and building and the social level. But first of all, how as we as individuals can do a better job of not making ourselves crazy?
CB: Yeah, well, I always say that the first thing we could do, and this is very easy, is to take better care of our ears. Before I started researching this book, I didn't protect my ears whatsoever, using power tools, going out to loud concerts and things like that. Now, I am much more careful following the advice of all the audiologists I’ve been talking to, all the hearing researchers. You know, you start with the little foamy ear protection you can buy them by the bag at CVS. But there's also even a little bit of a step up there. Musicians earplugs, these cost about $30 a pair, but what they do is they block about ten decibels worth of sound at every frequency level so you can hear the music, let's say you're going to show, just as clearly as you would without them, but just a little they take the edge off of it. So I use those a lot and I think you know, the research shows that outside of work environments where hearing protection is sort of required in the loudest environments, Americans use hearing protection about 8% of the time when going out to do loud things. This is a study I think a 2018, a nationwide survey. And so, you know, there's a lot of room for improvement there. And I think we're seeing some of it with a lot of the new devices that are focused on hearing, you know, like the AirPods, Apple AirPods Pro 2. These things kind of have some hearing protection built into them. But yes, we could do a lot better job there. That's the first part.
GR: What about just, I just think also making it important to be in quiet spaces. I mean, is that, is just something like an awareness of that important here too?
CB: Yeah, I think so. I think taking the time to be in those quiet spaces. And, you know, I had to chuckle when you were talking about the folks who now are hiking with the Bluetooth speakers. Because it seems to me to be sort of beside the point where when you're out there, you should take the time to enjoy that quiet. Have a moment to give your ears and your brain that peace of restoration.
GR: So let's bring it out. What can we do more societal and more in terms of how we construct our world to make this better?
CB: We can do a lot more to be sound aware when we are designing our products and our spaces. One great example is with restaurants. These became much noisier in the last 20 years or so because restauranteurs decided they wanted to prioritize kind of a modern industrial look. They took away all of the upholstery and drapes and they put the kitchens in the middle of the dining areas and jacked up the music. And you know, the result was that, you know, people can't talk to one another when they're having a meal. And this has been noticed more and more in reviews and people have elevated it in the Zagat surveys, you know, noise is the number one complaint, it's not bad food or high prices. So what can we do about it? Well, you know, there are now tools that allow people to simulate these spaces before they're built, before they're all put together and dealing with the noise is a bigger problem. To actually, you know, put in the parameters. You have certain materials, a certain number of people and you're going to have your music at this level. What's that going to sound like? And you simulate it and if it's a problem, if people can't have a conversation then you can add sound absorption bit by bit. So you still have the buzz of a kind of a nice, lively atmosphere but it's not the kind of thing that's going to, you know, make you have to sit there in silence while you eat. And so these kinds of tools can be used for restaurants for office spaces, you know, all these places where noise is a problem. It's just part of thinking proactively is kind of how I put it.
GR: Yeah. That's fascinating about the restaurants and the construction of them, the interior, because I have noticed in my life and I thought maybe I was, you know, losing my hearing, but I don't think I am yet, I'm sure it's not what it was when I was young but it's become impossible in many restaurants if there's a table of ten to have a conversation with someone who's not directly in front of you, you just give up. You pretend you hear them when they're talking and you just, you know, go ahead with what you're doing. Well, let me ask you this, are there any countries that are kind of ahead of the curve on this and are doing more than other countries or maybe thinking about the United States? Are there any states that are doing innovative things or is this just something that's in its infancy, this kind of sound awareness?
CB: Well, it is in its infancy. And I would say that in Europe, they have started to focus a lot more, they've already been focused on noise, you know, in a comprehensive way that, you know, they are, they require cities of a certain size throughout the European Union to create these five year noise reports that kind of track where the noise hotspots are in their cities, typically based on transportation noise sources. And they also, if they're a big enough city, ask these places to designate quiet areas, places that have, you know, much lower decibels and to protect those places from noise encroachment. So that is, you know, been a great source of awareness. The question is, what do these cities actually do beyond putting these noise maps together on paper? You know, and when it comes to quiet areas, what is the purpose of a quiet area if all you have is a handful of them in the sort of deepest parts of the largest park on the outskirts of your city? Maybe there's more that you could find that, you know, places that are not just based on decibels but are based on, you know, the greenery of the place there or that people have reported that they find it relaxing in different ways. And there's been some effort to kind of make them more accessible. So there's you know, some places have started to recognize that soundscapes are important and not just decibel levels. The question is, what are the tools that can be used to improve and assess these soundscapes? Those are all very much in their infancy. Those things, you know, the decibel is easy, it's just one number. A soundscape is much more complicated.
GR: Yeah, well, it is complicated. And it is something that I think we're going to need to keep thinking about. That was Chris Berdik and again, his new book is titled, “Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back”, very important book on a very important topic. Chris, thanks again for making the time to talk with me, I learned a lot and again, thank you for writing a book like this.
CB: Grant, I appreciate it. Thanks so much.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Nancy Rosenblum on the Campbell Conversations
Aug 09, 2025
Nancy Rosenblum(Robert Adam Mayer www.robertadammayer.com)
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today appears to be something of a political soothsayer. Nancy Rosenblum is a Professor of Ethics in Government and Politics at Harvard University, and the coauthor with Russell Muirhead of a book called, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos”. Professor Rosenblum, welcome to the program and congratulations on this obviously timely new book.
Nancy Rosenblum: Thank you, Grant. I'm happy to be here.
GR: Well, we're glad you made the time. So let's just start with some basic term definitions. What exactly is ‘ungoverning’ and where does its recent form get its start in our political history?
NR: Well, I think that is, it really is unique to Trump's first term. That is, there are many ways of governing democracy well and many ways of failing to govern democracy well, uncompromising this and, you know, people who are clients not representing their people and so on, we can all think of failings of government. But ‘ungoverning’ is literally the attempt to destroy the capacity for governing. It's vandalizing the machinery of government, and it's unprecedented. And it's so unfamiliar, that we gave it this name and it's literal. ‘Ungoverning’ is not evocative, it's a term designed to say that you can have elected representatives who are out to destroy the capacity to govern.
GR: I love that phrase, vandalizing the machinery, I’ll have to remember that. You know, I kind of thought, you surprised me there, because I kind of thought you were going to say Ronald Reagan, because some people have looked at that administration and said, you know, although Reagan wasn't as aggressive as he might have sounded as a candidate there, I know there are people in the civil service that still will talk about that time as one of the, sounds a little bit like ‘ungoverning’ the way you've defined it.
NR: Yes, we do talk about the prehistory of assaults on the depth and width of what government does. I mean, conservatism has always tried to constrain the business of government. And Reagan, you know, didn't develop that famous sentence that said, you know, somebody knocks on your door and says, I'm from the government, I’m here to help. And so he and other Republican presidents along the way have tried to go backwards, right? To undo certain kinds of regulations, to undo certain kinds of policies and ways of doing things. But they still remained essentially conservative, right? They were not Trumpist-like attempts to destroy the administrative state and to stay so vividly and to have a populist army behind them to do it. Don't forget, you know, Trump, is not a normal Democratic candidate, he is the representative of a radical social movement that he helped to create and that supports what he does. So in all of those ways, previous Republicans and conservatives, no matter how much they wanted to take apart this or that from Roosevelt's administration, didn't begin to make the kind of dent that we're seeing today.
GR: Well, President Trump has been compared to a lot of other leaders around the world, particularly some of them in Europe. So one of the questions I wanted to ask you is, is this a distinctly United States phenomenon or do you see ‘ungoverning’ elsewhere where you could identify it?
NR: Yes and no. And that's a hard question to do in just a few sentences. But I'll say this, there are in other places successful populist presidents or heads of state, right, that rode populist anger into a position of some sort of autocracy where they basically started to take away the elements of democracy, right, and some are still trying and some have succeeded very well. None of them have wanted to destroy the state. Because all of them had some sort of understanding that apparently Trump and his people do not, that you have to be able to govern if you want to be a successful autocrat. You have to be giving your people enough things, right, that there's stability in the society that you're not overthrown. And also because you want to rule, right? You can't rule by fiat in the modern state. So Trump is unusual in his declaration and his carrying out of the declaration to deconstruct the administrative state and to want to have personal rule without the apparatus of a government.
GR: Okay, I'm getting the distinction you're making there. And so, is the main, this may seem like a dumb question but I'm going to put it out there, is the main problem for this then the politics of chaos? How would you identify what the deepest problems are with someone who wants to do this?
NR: Well, I think one problem is that you have the politics of chaos. And let me say upfront why that's so difficult for people, which is that we all have in our lives run by security of expectations. And when all of our security of expectation about our economic well-being, about our health, about the security of our nation from other strong nations, about our work, about whether somebody is going to take away our citizenship, when all of these expectations are violated, or we fear that they're being violated, what happens is you lose your sense of political agency, and that's the end of democracy, when people lose their sense of agency. But I think the first part of what you said, you asked, is it chaos or is it, what was the second choice?
GR: I was throwing it up for you. I mean, you know, is there something else there?
NR: Yes, there is. And I think that what is responsible for this insecurity of expectation and what is clearly chaos is the desire for personal rule. Disrespect for the requirements of any office, whether it's Congress or the administrative state, the secretary of state or the presidency, is a desire for personal rule. That's really a very unusual thing and certainly unusual in the United States, where presidents, no matter how radical they might have been, or a conservative they might have been, understood that they occupied an office and that this office had a certain constitutional status, right? And that they had to (a) very great extent, operate within the limits of this thing called an office. And Trump has no interest in the office and no respect for it. As everybody said, what he wants is personal command, personal rule. And the interesting story here is how he managed to get it and why it's getting worse.
GR: Yeah, we'll come back to that. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Harvard University government and politics professor Nancy Rosenblum, and we're discussing her new book titled, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos”. You've kind of already answered this, so I guess I'll frame it maybe as a potential general pushback on what you're saying. I'm wondering, is this phenomenon really, ungoverning in a general sense, or would it be better thought of as, for lack of a better term, selective ungoverning, meaning the undermining of certain government functions that are previously supported and maybe bolstering some others like, you know, immigration enforcement? So it's a really, it's more about what government is doing or not doing, and not just government doing things generally.
NR: Well, by our definition and understanding and I think it's sort of generally accepted now, it's ungoverning. It's not that this president who wants to personally rule doesn't do things, he does things right? He raises tariffs, he goes to meetings with world powers, he drops bombs on people, he tries a major effort to militarize deportation and immigration, he does do things. We say that is not governing because it's not through any of the apparatus or within any of the rules or constraints that make a government. What we have is a ruler. What we have in discussion of, the ancients would say, what we have is a tyrant. And the evidence of what I'm saying is if we look at what he has done to the people and the institutions that do the business of governing and always have, that is the Department of Defense or the attorney general of the United States or the Social Security office or any area of policy is dedicated, is made by Congress in a general way, and then enacted by the agencies of our government. And all of that depends upon that apparatus of the Congress making a law and the independent, and the agencies deciding how you actually implement this law with open hearings and so on. All of this has been eliminated.
GR: Now, obviously, Donald Trump is going to be the big culprit in your story and has been in our conversation so far. Are there other culprits here who are culpable and how we've got to this spot?
NR: Well, you know, that's a difficult question to answer. You could say the people who voted for him. It's unclear, especially now in his second term, how many of his, except for very core MAGA followers, imagined that he would be doing what he's doing now, by taking away Medicaid or deporting their neighbors without finding, you know, without any rule of law and without determining that they're criminal, which had been his promise and so on. So we don't know whether, what kind of support he has for what and the polling is very variable. And so do you blame voters when their representatives act in ways that they did not expect them to act? So that's one question. But clearly, there has been leaving the electorate aside, an enormous amount of support for Trump from various quarters. The most important being a long and developed history of wanting to undo the Roosevelt administrative state on the part of conservatives. The Heritage Foundation and the person who now runs the Office of Management and Budget that put out this Project 2025 and so on. And these people wanted to deconstruct the administrative state. They wanted to do it, some of them from money, right? Because if you can raise the money by eliminating programs, you can give them tax breaks. Some of it because they wanted different kinds of technology and so on involved. Some of them because they wanted Christian nationalism. But you had various very powerful social and economic forces out there that thought they stood to gain from the Trump administration. And some of them are now nervous that they're not going to gain and some of them clearly feel that they are. But I say this to say that this this idea of deconstructing the administrative state, shrinking government, giving the president what's called the power of a unitary executive has been advanced for probably 20 some odd years by important factions of conservatism, but shouldn't be called conservatism, but what was called conservatism in this country.
GR: Yeah, I remember during George W. Bush's administration, we heard a lot about the unitary state. You didn't mention members of Congress, and that surprised me in sort of identifying who might be culpable in this. I mean, they're not standing up for the institution.
NR: I could name two other major sources and they were elected by Trumpist populists. They have at this very slim majority, they are completely obeisant. They go along even if they disagree and we know that because they'll say so. Because they're afraid, because they're afraid for their positions, that if they deviate from Trump, he will have the power with voters to get them dis-elected, unelected. So clearly, the Republican Party, as it stands now, which is no longer a conservative party, it is a party in thrall to Trump, is part of this. Now, what's interesting, if I can just say one more word about the Congress, is that he has really emasculated Congress. Many of the measures that he's taken have been refusing, impounding, refusing to spend money that Congress authorized, destroying whole departments like the Department of Education, the Congress made, right? Making appointments, all kinds of interim appointments so that he doesn't have to go through the business of congressional approval. Congressional approval for people no one in the world would have approved, like Hegseth as Secretary of Defense or Robert K. Junior as Secretary of Health and Welfare. I mean, so Congress is culpable, the republican Congress is culpable. And then the Supreme Court did something in 2020 that has been very important. They gave Trump and presumably other presidents immunity for prosecution from any act that they did, any official act that they did as president. And Trump now has this immunity. He can do anything he wants as President. And I can show you some instances of how he's done this, but maybe you want to move to something else.
GR: Well, we'll come back to some of those things in the second half of the program. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Nancy Rosenblum. She's a Harvard University government and politics professor and the coauthor of a new book titled, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos”. I wanted to come back to what we were talking about before the break there in terms of who you see as most to blame in this regard. And I guess the way I want to frame this question is, are Democrats blame free? Do they have any culpability in where we are today?
NR: Well, they certainly didn't win the election to that extent. That's the requirement for getting Trump in power. I don't think that there are any Democrats who approve of or want what's going on now. So can you say that that a party that was crippled by the fact that their president had to, you know, leave office under the gun very shortly before election, that probably made a terrible miscalculation in the candidate that they ended up with, that was actually delivered to them. But when we say blame, we usually mean something about intentional or moral blame. I don't think the Democrats intentionally lost or have any moral culpability for what we may think of as extremely destructive, anti-democratic, anti-liberal actions on the part of this regime. What the Democrats do now is going to be, you know, hard to watch, and I would doubt whether it will be very successful for quite a while.
GR: Well, yeah, I wanted to ask you about that, because it struck me as I was thinking about the arguments in your book, if they take on what you're talking about directly, they're almost going to have to put themselves forward as, or at least be vulnerable to the characterization I'm about to make, as the party of government, the party of the state. And I don't know whether that's a label they want to put on themselves at the moment, given the current political climate. I mean, how do they get out of that box? They tried being the party of democracy in 2024, and that didn't seem to resonate with enough people. So if they become the party of government and the party of the state, I don't know if that's going to do it much better.
NR: Well, I think that's right. So I think the problem for the Democrats will be how to identify those areas in which people want government and that they want government, not the way it's always been before Trump, they want government that's reformed and more responsive and doesn't try to do too much and does a lot of deregulation that, you know, they would have to do to identify what kind of governing, who wants, where. And that's why I think that this next, the elections coming up, this one in the next and so on are going to have to be mainly talking to people in the states. And that the presidential candidate, you know, has got to depend on their success to win. But I would not be surprised if the Democrats are brought back to office, because, you're right, they're identified with a government that people rejected for different reasons. Some because they were too liberal, some because they weren't really terribly conservative or Christian. I mean, there are all kinds of reasons. And even if Trump, they're abused of their infatuation with Trump, it's not clear that they will vote for the Democrats. So this is, I'm not an election person, but I think this is a hard row and I won't be surprised if the Democrats don't. Of course, it will also depend on what happens to Trump if indeed he has an election and there are many political scientists who think that he may very well obstruct another election. If he dies in the meantime, he's an elderly man, will the Republican, will Vance be able to compete with an attractive Democratic candidate? There's no way to answer your question, but it will be a rough road. And your initial skepticism is well put.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the Harvard professor, Nancy Rosenblum. So, you know, you track the origins of this in Trump's first term, we're seven months into a second term that has just seen a whole flurry of different kinds of activity and you've been describing different aspects of it. Is this just something that's been turned up two or three notches, or are we seeing something in recent months that's different and new? What's changed?
NR: Well, I think his capacity to really deconstruct the administrative state and evolve things has changed dramatically for political reasons and then for others. So some of these things I've mentioned, I think there have been three developments that make this a whole different landscape than it was four years ago and one has to do with the appointments he's made. And, you know, we always say that what he wants is loyalty, what he wants is loyalty, people who are submissive. Well, yes, he wants that, but he wants something much more. He has picked people for his administration who incarnate ungoverning, that is, who hate the institutions that they've been assigned to lead. RFK Jr., as I say, is the best example of that. You really want someone there who is an anti-vaccine person or anti-science to put federal money away from the sciences and health? Or an attorney general who's hostile to the Constitution? Or somebody in charge of national security and intelligence, who doesn't want intelligence, who looks at things ideologically? So Trump is announcing by his appointments and the Congress, by going along with his appointments, that he is out to destroy these things. He appointed someone to head the Department of Education, whose philosophy was get rid of the Department of Education, I mean, so that's one thing. The appointments that we've watched have told us an important story, that this is about wreckage, not about governing. I think there's a second and probably a third real change. And that there's been a real change in the law since he was first there. I mean, I mentioned before that the Supreme Court granted presidential immunity of a kind of blanket kind if a president is fulfilling his official duties as president. And many, many people from these associations like Heritage and so on, have spent the last four years looking at the law and figuring out how he could get around things. I'm going to give you one example, all right, the president is in charge of foreign policy. That’s where the imperial presidency has always lodged its authority. So Trump has translated a lot of things that are domestic into foreign policy things, right? That's clearest with his deportation business, he's no longer just saying that he's getting rid of criminals and immigrants and then going at the border. He's saying that this is a foreign invasion. When he goes after demonstrators in Los Angeles, he says this is an alien, the Alien and Sedition Act applies. So one of the clever things he's done and so far done successfully is to say, well, they say I can do anything I want as president and this is what presidents do. So I think the legal doctrines combined with the courts have allowed him to sweep things away. And he has said, he says and I have in article to power, that means I can do anything I want as president. He thinks that and he's proceeding on that path. They've also, by the way, developed legal strategies for bringing these cases to court, even where they think they don't have good advocacy, you know, position, constitutional or legislative positions, but they have figured out, and we know that Trump himself is an expert at this, figured out how to how to appeal and appeal and appeal and these cases go on forever. And by the time the case and the Department of Education gets resolved, finally, there will be no Department of Education. And when you’re deconstructing, you can't go backwards. But what's done is done. And I think that's the saddest thing of all.
GR: Well, one of the things that also struck me that might fit your characterization there regarding foreign policy is tariffs, too, and the way that they're done. We only have about a minute and a half left. I wanted to make sure I got this last question in because it relates to something you said right at the end there. After these things are unraveled, you know, it's harder to, it's hard to build Humpty Dumpty back together again. Setting aside the partisan politics, if we could, just how does the administrative state recover? I mean, what needs to happen? It would take I guess, a president and a Congress that are really engaged in building things if all you're saying is correct. So how do you see that happening? Is that is that a generational effort?
NR: Well, I think you're right, I think that you're right. You know, I've talked to a lot of people who have been either fired from administrative agencies of one kind or another or are still working there, but working under fear. And it's unclear how you would reconstitute the tens of thousands of people who have left and are going to leave government, people who know how things work, how to make things work, right? How to obey the law in making things work. And you're losing these people in a massive way. If he has his way, it's going to be hundreds of thousands of federal workers. And some of them are relatives or relatives of mine. And it's so, how do you get them back? Is a younger generation actually want to go in government? I mean, I think but even if they do, even if you can reconstitute a population, you know, a population of federal workers who are knowledgeable and who understand the processes it's going to be hard to repair.
GR: Well, we'll have to leave it on that depressing note. That was Nancy Rosenbloom. And again, her new book is titled, “Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos”. She wrote it with her coauthor and colleague, Russell Muirhead. Professor Rosenblum, thanks again for making time to talk with me. Very interesting topic, thank you.
NR: Thanks for asking such great questions.
GR: I appreciate that. You're listening to Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Alan Dershowitz on the Campbell Conversations
Aug 02, 2025
Alan Dershowitz(<a href="https://alan-dershowitz.com/">alan-dershowitz.com</a>)
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I’m Grant Reeher. My guest today is the lawyer, law professor and writer Alan Dershowitz. He’s with me to discuss his new book, decades in the making, titled, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harm while Preserving Essential Liberty”. Professor Dershowitz, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book. It's your 56th, I believe?
Alan Dershowitz: It is, thank you so much. I've already written my 57th, so I'm on the way to hopefully to 60, that's my goal.
GR: All right, you're within shouting distance. So this is what I would call a big book, even though it's concise. And I wanted to start our conversation by quoting something from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer's forward to the book, just to set the context so that our listeners will have a good understanding of what you're doing here. He says the book provides new ways of looking at an old problem, which is this: how without sacrificing too much or too many of the values that society seeks to protect, for example, individual liberty, can society prevent the occurrence of events, behaviors, activities that will harm components say members of the society? And indeed, this sounds to me like the problem that James Madison is wrestling with and his famous Federalist Paper Number Ten. So it's a question of giving government enough but not too much power and of giving it the right kinds of power in the right moments. So you begin your book with a discussion of prediction and prevention, and I wanted you to tell us about those concepts and how they structure your argument.
AD: Sure. Governments are always trying to anticipate the future. This goes back to the beginning of time. The Bible talks about how you anticipate violence by young children and prevent it. So we've always done that. The problem is we haven't had a jurisprudence or a framework for analyzing whether we're doing it correctly. It's the essence of human lawmaking that we will always make mistakes. In this case, we will make some mistakes by predicting things that will not happen or by failing to predict things that will happen, both are bad. Failing to predict what Nazi Germany did in the 1930’s cost 50 million lives. Over-predicting what Japanese-Americans might do in the 1940’s resulted in 110,000 Japanese-Americans being falsely confined in camps for things they would never have done. So we constantly make mistakes and the question is, do we error on the side of protecting liberty, do we are on the side of safety? These are hard questions and we have to address them.
GR: And it reminded me a bit of what I see often in the medical field about tests and screenings where you have false positives, false negatives and you're weighing those two things. Are you for all on that at all?
AD: Exactly right. Take, you know, for example, colon tests, you know, you can take your colon test and some doctors recommend them telling you there are a lot of false positives that you might be told you have colon cancer and then the second exam will show you don't. But if you fail to do it, then maybe you'll have colon cancer and you won't know about it. And so there are always the tradeoffs and the balances. I fight with my grandson all the time, my grandson is a cardiologist fellow at a major university, and he thinks I'm over medicalized and I think I'm under medicalized. So, you know, at age 86, I want to make sure it all goes right. But he is in favor of fewer tests and I'm in favor of more tests. He doesn't think, for example, old guys like me should have a PSI test of the kind that, PSA that President Biden didn't have and failed to pick up his cancer. I say, yeah, tell me false, I'm happy to live with that. And so, you know, these are reasonable disagreements. Now that involves cancer, but what about if it involves nuclear attacks? What if it involves terrorism? What if it involves keeping people in jail, denying them bail for something they didn't do? These are all very, very, very difficult questions.
GR: Yeah. And just those examples that you gave me, it reflects the variety of things that we might want to prevent that you take up in your book and is really quite striking. It runs the gamut from presidential assassinations to global environmental catastrophe. So what I wanted to do for a good chunk of our conversation here together was to take a few of these and have you tell us how your framework leads you to conclusions on them.
AD: Sure.
GR: And so I wanted to start actually with the presidential assassinations and you discuss attempts on the life of Andrew Jackson, you take that all the way through to Donald Trump. So how do we think about the balance there? What's the right place to strike?
AD: Well, here we have a situation where a presidential assassination is cataclysmic. It can change the world. Look, Lincoln's assassination changed the history of our country. We've had more attempted assassinations that almost any other Western democracy, starting with Andrew Jackson. And, you know, that was a failed attempt. Franklin Roosevelt, 100 years later was a failed attempt. Harry Truman was a failed attempt. They tried to kill Gerald Ford. But there have been too many successful attempts, you know, Garfield and obviously Kennedy and Kennedy's brother and the thankfully unsuccessful attempts on President Ford. How much power would you give the Secret Service? Certainly, they messed up a year ago when they failed to anticipate somebody going on the roof in firing range of Donald Trump. That was an easy one to the stop, but many others are far more difficult and would involve intrusions into the lives of people. We have are called red flag laws which take away guns from people, guns that are protected by the Second Amendment based on predictions that maybe they will misuse those guns. So these are decisions we make all the time and what we lack is the jurisprudential framework analyzing the cost of one kind of error versus the cost of another kind of error. And in my book, “The Preventive State”, I try very hard to suggest for the first time really in history, literally for the first time in history, a book that presents a jurisprudential framework for what we've been doing for thousands of years, making predictive decisions, locking people up, killing them, doing things that deprive people of freedom based on uncertain predictions.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and we're speaking with law professor and writer Alan Dershowitz, and we're discussing his new book. It's titled, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms while Preserving Essential Liberties”. So you talk about creating this jurisprudence framework and I wanted to push you a little bit on that and tease out what, so, I understand that this is you know, we're looking at estimating risks of bad things and then estimating the risks of bad things that might happen from trying to prevent those bad things, but how do we go about measuring this stuff? I mean, it seems to me that the devil is going to be in the details here. How do we measure the cost?
AD: Well, the question about crimes that have already been committed, we don't always get the right people. And so we have to ask ourselves, what if we make a mistake? What kind of mistakes do we prefer? And we've come up with this aphorism, better ten guilty go free than one innocent to be wrongly confined because we know life is probabilities. It's interesting, I had an interesting insight the other day. My wife and I were, believe it or not, in Monte Carlo. And so what do you do if you're in Monte Carlo, you gamble. And you know, I ended up losing $30 at the table. I found myself being a card counter. How was I card counter? When I saw them hand out a lot of, you know, a lot of face cards with pictures on them kings, jacks and the queens, I would say, oh my God, you know, there are fewer left in the deck let me bet this way. Life is card counting. We're constantly making decisions based on what we see happening around us. It's called, you know, Bayesian Analysis in mathematics. And so we're always making these probabilistic decisions. We're never completely certain about almost anything and we're always going to be making mistakes. And law is the science of how we assess our mistakes and where we balance mistakes of one kind versus mistakes of another kind. But we tend not to think of it in terms of probabilistic considerations and that's what I try to do. I used to teach a class at Harvard College and law school class on mathematics in the law probabilities in the law. And, you know, we introduced all kinds of mathematical formulas and conceptions into things like probable cause, proof beyond a reasonable doubt and other obviously probabilistic determinations.
GR: I wanted to ask you a question about a couple of the things that you write about where recent examples have been in the news. And one that struck me was that your discussion of harmful police interventions and you include police shootings in that. And it reminded me of the shooting of Breonna Taylor, the 26 year old African-American woman who was killed by police in Louisville. It was recently in the news due to the sentencing of one of the officers involved in the shooting. And so how do you go about weighing some kind of balance like that?
AD: Well, it's very hard. You know, it's the middle of the night, it's dark, people are shooting at you, you value your own life more than the life of somebody who might be a criminal. And you(‘re) going to err on the side of protecting yourself and your colleagues over protecting the lives of somebody who might be firing at you. And so the law has to make a decision as to how to treat it if it goes wrong. There's a leading Supreme Court decision on that, which was right in that decision. A young man robbed or burgled a house and he was running away and he was climbing a fence and he would have escaped had he climbed the fence, but he didn't have a gun and the police shot him in the back and killed him. And the Supreme Court said, no, that was in violation of the Fourth Amendment. It's better to allow some people to escape than to kill somebody who was not going to harm anybody else, even though he had committed a previous crime. So the court has struggled with that on an ad hoc basis without coming up with a complete jurisprudence for it. And, you know, we're at a stage in our development where maybe we're not ready for a complete, thorough final jurisprudence. But in my book, “The Preventive State”, I at least lay out what I think is the beginning of a jurisprudence and let's continue to have debates over time.
GR: Yeah, it reminds me, the way you just described that, it also reminds me of the breaking off of police chases and cars, yeah. When do you stop that and under what conditions…
AD: Yeah, and do you do more harm than good when you try to chase down a car and you're going 110 miles an hour and the risks to civilians and citizens. Look, the book, “The Preventive State” deals with the widest range of actions that governments take, ranging from, you know, inoculating people against communicable diseases to doing what the United States did in Iran a couple of weeks ago, a preventive bombing of nuclear sites. That's why this is the most important book I've written of my, you know, 58 books. But interestingly enough, the New York Times refuses to review it. They have never reviewed a single one of my book since I defended Donald Trump. They reviewed almost all of my books before that. But once I defended Donald Trump on constitutional grounds, I have been censored and canceled by the New York Times and by other institutions, which is why I'm so pleased to be able to be on your show and get directly to readers who can then buy the book directly from Amazon instead of having to go through the filter of the New York Times, which censors and decides which books it wants people to read. I'm on Chilmark in Massachusetts now on Martha's Vineyard and the Martha's Vineyard book Fair starts next week. They won't have my book because I defended Donald Trump before I defended Donald Trump, every one of my books, I was the most popular speaker at the book fair, but now they won't allow me to speak about my book. That's why I have to go directly to sources and directly to readers out there to urge them to read the book and not allow institutions that are against Donald Trump, by the way, I'm not a political supporter of Donald Trump, I'm a constitutional supporter, but I have to be able to get directly to the readers. So thank you for having me.
GR: Well, the book really is about other things than this. And so I'm kind of surprised to hear your stories about getting shut out of those. You’re listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with the lawyer, law professor and writer Alan Dershowitz. We've been discussing his new book, it's titled, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms while Preserving Essential Liberties”. So you mentioned before the break about getting shut out of certain venues here on this book. And that kind of leads directly into something I wanted to ask you about, which concerns the institution where you where you taught for so many years, Harvard. And so you also examine problems of offensive or dangerous speech. And again, that's been in the news recently as Harvard has argued its case against the Trump administration for cutting off its federal research funding. And it seems to me, I'm thinking about that through the lens of your book, you've got two different free speech claims that are running up against each other in that instance. I mean you’ve got, in a sense, you've got the concerns of Jewish students who are at Harvard, but then you've got Harvard's concern about telling the faculty what they're going to teach or are going to act or what they're going to do with their DEI program. So any insights there about how we go about balancing that and thinking about that one?
AD: Sure. The key is to have a single standard, not to have a different standard for Jewish students and for black students and gay students. If you can say things negatively about gays and blacks, then you can say it about Jews. But if you can't say negative things about certain groups, but you can say about others, that's a clear violation of the spirit of the first amendment. Look, Harvard has not done a particularly good job, particularly some of the schools, the divinity school, the public health school, the Carr program on human rights have all become very, very biased. The divinity school, worst of all, it not only tolerates hate speech against Jews, it actually teaches it. The dean of the divinity school at graduation compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and they gave the valedictorian speech to a man who was arrested and prosecuted for attacking Jewish students physically. So you know, there are limits to what universities should do. But for me, the greatest limit is the single standard. You have to have one standard for everybody, you can’t have double standards that invidiously discriminate against certain groups. But DEI and intersectionality, which are taught at places like Harvard say you should have a double standard. Intersectionality says there are two groups in the world, the oppressed and the oppressors and the oppressed have no rights, the oppressed have all the rights, the oppressed ones have no rights. So they justify a double standard, but universities can't do that. And we learned that lesson in the 50’s when the federal government did intrude against University of Mississippi, University of Alabama that were teaching white supremacy and segregation and academic freedom didn't prevent the university from saying no, that violates civil rights laws. And what's being done at some universities today violates civil rights laws. So an appropriate balance has to be struck.
GR: So I wanted to have you kind of zoom out from these specific examples and tell me whether there is, in your view, some kind of, I don't know, rules of thumb or some kind of hunches that we can follow when we're trying to actually weigh these things. Because, again, the devil is in the details in a lot of these. And so, do you have any sort of places where you start, you just gave me one what the single standard sort of that's a way to guide our thinking there. Are there are other ones that you’ve put forward?
AD: Yeah. The other is always err on the side of freedom against safety. You have to give weight to safety, but as Benjamin Franklin said, those who would give up essential freedoms for a little bit of safety deserve neither. And so we always err on the side of, we should always err on the side of freedom, we generally err on the side of safety. And then the other thing is we have to articulate everything, nothing should be done in secret. Transparency is the key to everything. Let me give you an example, in the book I talk about, would you ever use torture to prevent a mass terrorist attack, say, attack on New York City with a nuclear bomb that would kill 100,000 people? Would you ever use torture? And the answer, of course, is they would, but they would do it secretly. They would never expose it. And so in my book, I talk about maybe having to get a torture warrant, having to go to the chief justice and having to get approval of all three branches of Congress before you do it. I'm against torture, but it would be used if it could prevent mass casualty attacks. We already did use it following 9/11. 9/11 was a failure of prevention. And as a result of the failure of prevention, we overreacted and gave government too much power. The same thing was true, Pearl Harbor was a failure of prevention. And after that we overreacted and put 110,000 Americans of Japanese origin into camps. So one of the virtues of prevention is it stops us from overreacting if we fail to prevent.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the lawyer, Alan Dershowitz. So when I was looking at your writing and the chapter on global catastrophe or global warming, one of the things that struck me in thinking about how difficult that would be is that, and I think it, you know, affects all these categories is, oftentimes the very terms of the debate are subject to debate. We don't even agree on whether something is a problem and for whom it is a problem of what qualifies to think of it in certain ways. And so what do we do there when we can't even really, you know, you and I might weigh things differently, but we may not even be able to agree on what we're talking about in the first place. How do you get a shared language in your jurisprudence that way?
AD: Oh, you're absolutely right. There are people who don't believe in global warming, there are people who think that these are just natural phenomenon that have occurred over the last millennia. So it's hard to get a conversation like that. All I want to do, and in my chapter I say we have to, again, balance, you know, the extremists on both sides are wrong. We can't do everything in the world to prevent global warming if it causes massive unemployment in this country and if it raises prices to an extent that we can't afford. So we have to strike appropriate balances. And you’re right, it's very hard to do if we can't even agree if there is global warming, and so that's probably the most difficult chapter. There are other areas where we definitely can agree on the harms. The question is how much are we prepared to sacrifice in order to stop those harms? And there's a big difference between a single crime and a mass terrorist attack or between inoculation and preventing the spread of COVID. There, there was great disagreement also about the science. And all it was necessary to do is have a transparent debate and reasonable people could disagree. I'm not in favor of compelled vaccinations except in the most extreme cases. And in my book, I quote George Washington's letter to his troops in which he said, we might not lose the war to Great Britain, but we might lose it to smallpox if we don't get inoculated. But that's not a paradigm because presidents can't tell us what to do. They are commanders in chief of the army, they're not commanders in chief of the citizens.
GR: Well, I did want to ask you a question, you mentioned earlier about the fallout that you've had from some of your, you know, legal dealings regarding the president. I wanted to ask you about President Trump more generally. You know, many people see him as currently as a threat to democracy. They're quite worried about it, particularly this second administration, the one that we're in the middle of. What do you make of this concern? Are we in a constitutional crisis?
AD: We're not, we're in a constitutional conflict. President Trump has pushed the envelope further than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Now, I'm not old enough to remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration, but Republicans thought we were in a constitutional crisis then. He was expanding the power of the federal government dramatically, expanding the power of (the) executive branch of the government with administrative agencies and working with very brilliant lawyers to try to constrain Congress and constrain the courts. He wanted to pack the courts. People thought that was a constitutional crisis. We survived that, we'll survive this. We have the flexibility in our Constitution to resolve these issues. Now, this president, unlike two prior presidents, this president has never said that he would disregard the definitive ruling of the Supreme Court. Andrew Jackson did, and so did Abraham Lincoln and maybe Thomas Jefferson, there's a dispute about that. But we're not in a crisis, we're in a conflict. And so far, the framers of the Constitution get the best of it and gave us the mechanisms to be able to avoid turning the conflict into a crisis.
GR: You know, I want to squeeze in one last question. We've just got a couple of minutes left, but I wanted to say very briefly to that, I just got done teaching this summer course with high school students that are getting college credit. And I asked them that question, are we in a constitutional crisis? And the whole class said yes. The only no votes were myself and my graduate assistant teacher (laughter). So I don't know if there's a generational thing there about that, but I just, I think the guardrails are still holding up, but it is a source of concern.
AD: I think there is a generational dispute. People who are old enough to remember that we've been through this before. Segregation, Brown versus Board of Education, people thought of that as a constitutional crisis. Our Constitution is the longest enduring constitution in the history of humankind. And I think it will endure even longer and we’ll make sure that this conflict does not turn into a crisis, at least that's my great hope.
GR: So in about a minute left, I have to ask you this question, because you end on a very, with a very intriguing sort of post chapter where you write about the ancient rabbinic approach to prevention. And I wanted to hear what we can learn from that.
AD: Well, you know, the rabbis almost always ask the right questions and very frequently came up with the wrong answers because they had different values. But back during the rabbinic times and even in the Bible, we thought about prevention. The Bible talks about how you treat a recalcitrant child who may turn out to be a criminal. And the answer was terrible, stone him to death. No, no, don't stone him to death, teach him. So the Bible, the rabbis, the priests have always come up with brilliant questions, and we ought to take those questions very seriously. But with experience, we have learned that we have better answers. It's always a work in progress. And my book, “The Preventive State” is designed not to end conversation, but to start conversation and hopefully conversation through the generations. If there's one book for which I will be remembered, you know, over the next hundred years, I've written, you know, close to 60 of them, this is that book because it asks the most important questions.
GR: Well, I'm glad I had a chance to talk to you about it. That was Alan Dershowitz, and again, his new book is titled, “The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms while Preserving Essential Liberties”. It's an important book, a deep book, but it's also an interesting read. Professor Dershowitz, thanks again for making time to talk with me, I really enjoyed this.
AD: I enjoyed it, too. Thank you so much for having me on.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations and the public interest.
John Mannion on the Campbell Conversations
Jul 26, 2025
State Sen. John Mannion (D-Geddes) is planning to run for New York's 22nd Congressional District. (Ciara Feltham / Mannion for NY)
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I’m Grant Reeher. We're just over six months into John Mannion’s first term in Congress, so it's a good time to check in with him. A lot has happened in Washington since that time. He represents New York's 22nd congressional district, which contains all of Onondaga and Madison counties and portions of Oneida, Cortland and Cayuga counties, including the cities of Syracuse, Utica and Auburn. Congressman Mannion, welcome back to the program. How are you holding up?
John Mannion: I'm holding up, absolutely. You know, I signed up for this, I couldn't be prouder to represent the place that I love and the place that I've called home for a very long time. So it is, I would say, my classroom experience and my state legislative experience and having good people around me have all been essential to, you know, us getting off the ground. And, you know, my line is that being in the classroom for almost 30 years, I know how to work with juvenile behavior.
GR: (laughter)
JM: And participate in it apparently also.
GR: Yeah, I’ve got to ask you about that. But first, as someone who grew up in Washington, D.C. area, before the advent of universal air conditioning, I have to ask you, how are you adjusting to a D.C. summer?
JM: Well, listen, I loved winter because I would walk around with just my suit coat on and I would get a lot of attention. People would be like, oh, that's the guy from Syracuse, right there. So I've lost a little bit of that attention and now I'm just resigned to the fact that my blood's a little bit thicker than most of the folks that I serve with. And when I walk from one place to another in between buildings, I'm probably going to have some sweat on me by the end. So I remember to bring a handkerchief or some Kleenex and towel myself off, but it is, I will take an upstate New York level of heat and humidity any day of the week now, I can tell you that.
GR: (laughter) Well, we've had a bit here, too. So let me ask you, you just alluded to this when you first started speaking, you appear to have found your voice or I guess maybe your yell in recent weeks on the floor of the House of Representatives and also at an anti-Trump rally that was up here in the district. It does seem a departure from your style as a state senator. So I'm just curious, where is the change coming from?
JM: Well, we're in a different space in this country right now, you know, so, you know, as far as the audio being caught on C-SPAN, you know, I mean, that was not my intent at all. But what we're watching are a series of unprecedented acts and the following and checking off the boxes of Project 2025, which is all extremely concerning, I think, to the vast majority of people in the 22nd District. Now, Trump is going to have his true believers, and certainly many of those will believe that these are part of the targeted attacks against him. But when we talk about, you know, the release of January 6th insurrectionists, the blanket pardoning or the defiance of court orders, also the demonizing of the judges, many of whom were appointed and approved by a Republican president, Republican legislature. So all of these things are unprecedented. And I served in Albany in the majority, and I just didn't cede my power to the governor and allow for executive actions to rue the day. So I did a lot of back door and front facing negotiations because there were certain things that absolutely did not work for New York 22. Now, that's the state level, this is the federal level. People are terrified and they continue to be. And the feedback that I have received over and over again has been very positive in my pushback. Did you stand up for the Constitution and stand up for the institution of the House of Representatives, like, you know, when it comes to appropriated dollars? Initially, what the president did was throw out these executive orders that are beyond his powers to be able to do so, to stop appropriated dollars. Now, what I would give the legislature credit here, even though I disagreed and voted no, is they did put through a rescissions package where they did follow, you know, in a narrow way they can do that. That's what that's what should be done and that's what our democracy has done in limited instances. So I reference Albany because they didn't just stand there and go along I wasn't just a team player to be a team player. And I expect that of my Republican colleagues. I expect them to do the right thing, stand up for the institution and stand up for the co-equal branches of government.
GR: Have you had a chance to actually meet face to face with President Trump yet?
JM: I have not. I've been in the same room with him of a couple of times, but I have not met face to face with him.
GR: Okay, all right. This is still very early days, you know, as I said, we're just past six months, and you are in the minority party, but have you been able to push forward and get any traction on legislation so far? Any progress there?
JM: So, per our previous question, you know, I'm doing two things. I'm doing my, you know, standard operating procedure here of co-sponsorship of bills, submitting bills through committee. And then I'm also doing what I said I was doing, which is when things are unprecedented and unlawful, un-American, violate our norms, I'm calling those out. So we have, you know, I voted against the bill, the reconciliation bill for a number of reasons, increasing the debt, you know, passing tax cuts to the wealthiest, cutting SNAP and cutting Medicaid, which is going to have a massive impact and we can talk about that. But I've submitted multiple pieces of legislation or co-sponsored them. One of the most recent ones that I'll be submitting is a local journalism grant. We actually passed something similar in the state to make sure that our smaller local journalistic institutions can survive. It's just essential to make sure that there's reporting and truth on really, you know, issues that are that are local and beyond. I did it in the, I co-sponsored something that ended up in that bill was the reason I mentioned it, which was an enhanced tax credit for semiconductor chip manufacturers. I am not the lead sponsor on that, I was a co-sponsor on it. But it is going to help to make sure that we do onshore semiconductor chip manufacturing in this country and that we do it, you know, as we know here in Clay, New York. So, I’ve got another piece of legislation that is similar to John Katko legislation that didn't ever get over the line related to employment of our veterans, the name of it is Onward to Opportunity Act. It's along the lines of the Great Veterans Program at Syracuse University to enhance, you know, career development, post military service as our veterans, our heroes, enter civilian life, so I keep doing those things. As I mentioned, one piece of that legislation ended up in the larger bill. And that's a good thing for central New York. And that's what I'm committed to is to be a good representation of the district.
GR: You’re listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Congressman John Mannion. The freshman representative is in New York's 22nd congressional district. So you mentioned John Katko there just a second ago. So, is one of the approaches you're taking in the legislative efforts is to try to get Republican people on these bills as well as Democrats?
JM: Absolutely. It's going to be you know, existing in the minority conference here, that's absolutely going to be essential. And I just referenced that veterans bill, that's exactly what we're doing. We're going, moving, you know, building alliances with Republican colleagues, particularly those who served in the military, some of whom that we have connections to, either because they're members of the freshman class or they represent a similar district. So that's what you've got to do. And I know, living here my whole life is that's what the people of this district expect. I did not expect the level of unprecedented actions coming out of the executive office. So therefore, I've had to push back a little bit more. But I got in this to make sure that I was a good reflection of the district, like I said, but also to get us to a point where we are working together more frequently and we, and in a district like mine, I've got a history of doing so, and I believe a future of doing so with my Republican representatives that represent the vast majority of the municipalities. So, listen, I've got to build those alliances, and I do feel a duty to push back and call out the truth and speak the truth as we know that there's a lot out there that is untruthful and being perpetuated. And unfortunately, what I've seen here is we're actually building policy, not me, but others building policy based on some of those pieces of misinformation and disinformation.
GR: So I wanted to ask you a question about fundraising. Obviously, as a state senator, you had to do a lot of fundraising, but it's a whole different level here in Congress. Have the differences and the scale regarding that given you a bit of sticker shock or phone fatigue dialing for contributions so far?
JM: So it is certainly an unfortunate part of this, it's beyond unfortunate. Part of the dysfunction of this is that you have to raise money to get into office, stay in office. It's the one data point that, no offense, the media frequently focuses on at this point. And it's not the media's fault, it's the system's fault and we have to fix it. And I do believe that, you know, the Citizens United case has now put us in a better spot. I hope that when I do get back into the majority in the next term or future term that we can do something aggressive around campaign finance because it's absolutely essential. The dark money that comes in is, we just saw it in this presidential election, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars coming in. And then what happens after, the really the billionaire class comes in to a race like that aggressively is that we end up passing legislation or executive orders that benefit them at a time where, you know, people are really struggling in this country. I will say Albany versus DC, you know, some of my colleagues advised me not to do this just because of the calendar. You know, it's nice to be, to do your legislative work from January to June and then really be able to go around your district, meet people, hear their concerns, deliver on some promises. DC it's all year long, but I'm used to the travel and, you know, my wife and my team are fantastic in supporting me. There's not as much legislation that goes through, there's not as much as in Albany. And I do think in some ways that's preferred because you can focus on it. The other difference which may not fascinate people is the committee work, at least historically and hopefully in the future and to a degree still now, is really where a lot of positive things happen. It is true committee work and holding hearings and markups they call them down here to amend that legislation. So there is a thorough process of getting a bill to the floor. And that is one difference, lower volume, but more intensive in the actual work in the development of that legislation.
GR: That's interesting. That corresponds with what I have observed in the state legislature in Albany, that the committees are not as important as working units as they could be. So it's interesting to hear that, hear you corroborate that. Let me ask you this, too. This is a kind of a more personal question, but have you had any kind of positive chill-running-down-your-spine moments so far being in Congress? I mean, it's pretty heady stuff. Any time when it particularly hit you, like, wow, I'm really here?
JM: Yeah, I will reference one thing early on, which was, I had spoken to a lot of these folks on the phone, of course, and some I had met in person but between Election Day and swearing in day, I went into the Democratic Caucus meeting. It's a morning meeting and, you know, the newly elected, the Congress members elect her there. But 200 Democratic members of Congress are there. And you know who keeps coming out with a cup of coffee out the door into the main room? You know, here comes the Hakim Jefferies, here comes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, here comes Nancy Pelosi. And that was a moment where you're like, you know, I'm here, I'm here, and that was significant. And then, you know, there was some other moments that, again, were unexpected, the passing of President Carter and being able to attend his funeral and hearing particularly what some of his family members said about him, which was just a great experience. And then, you know, I'll finish off by saying we got to take a White House tour before we get sworn in and who's there but Flavor Flav.
GR: (laughter)
JM: So, you know, not on my bingo card.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Congressman John Mannion, he represents New York's 22nd district. So I wanted to ask you about this new development for the Democrats, the candidacy of Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York City. It seems to have really set the Democratic Party in a frenzy and also created some division within it. What's your take on his campaign? Are there things for the Democratic Party to learn from it?
JM: So a few things here. As I think many of us would agree, New York City is a world away, but certainly in our state. And I worked in Albany with people who would, you know, defined themselves by certain titles like a Democratic Socialist. So I worked with people with that title. I think what we saw from candidate Mamdani is that he delivered messages that resonated with people and he did the work. And the message that resonated was an economic message. People are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. They don't see their wages increasing at the same level that costs are going up. So he delivered a message and, you know, if he becomes mayor, some of those promises are going to be a challenge to deliver. But for me, you know, listen, I understand New York 22, I got elected in New York 22, I know some of my predecessors who did, and I know not just, I know the core values and beliefs and priorities of the people here, I believe that I do. If you drop me in Asoria, Queens, I don't think I'm going to probably be the perfect fit. So, you know, this is what democracy does. And this was a Democratic primary, we'll see what happens in the general election. But I think there's great consensus that the message that delivered was effective and also authentic and genuine. And that's the reason why the support was there. If if wasn't authentic and genuine, we wouldn't be talking about it. So you know, again, are there shared values there? Absolutely. Do I want to make sure people have accessibility to health care and they're not in food deserts and there's transportation available so that they can get to their work and their doctor's appointments and their kids’ schools? Absolutely. And I'm fighting for the people who have barriers in place where they can't access those things.
GR: Yeah. I think your observation that it was very economically focused is right on point. You mentioned this earlier, I wanted to come back to it. It does seem likely, at least to me as a political scientist, that Democrats will be able to retake the House of Representatives in the midterms. Both past history and what I'm seeing and some of the current reactions to many of the Trump administration's moves suggests this to me. I wanted to get your sense of the probability of that outcome. You spoke about it as if it would happen. And what do you think, though, more importantly, what would it mean for the final two years of Trump's term?
JM: Well, those are great questions. First of all, you know, I think what we've seen, even on an issue that this presidency was above water on immigration is, you know, the lack of due process, the detainment camps, people actually having a connection to individuals who have been treated unfairly, mass gang of federal agents, all these things are not popular. And that's just in one area that people, you know, found compelling from the Trump candidacy and have asked, for many, is stronger immigration policy. That's just immigration, but when we talk about the economic policy, our standing in the world, the tariff dynamics and the lack of predictability the treatment of President Zelenskyy in the White House, you know, listen, I said there are true believers that will probably never break from the president, but independent voters, younger voters, they are not buying this. People do not, you know, can't get behind some of these actions and policies and the defiance of court orders. What does that mean if we take back the House? I am expecting to and that will certainly, you know, if we take back the house, we'll see what happens in the Senate. That is a heavier lift. But I think what's necessary is a check on the executive office. And we are right now expecting, I certainly was expecting more of a check from my Republican colleagues where it was a bridge too far. We haven't seen that. You know, you don't see hearings frequently, House hearings where individuals are being called to testify. You know, one thing I've neglected to mention was the creation of a meme coin and a crypto coin, you know, cryptocurrency that is benefiting, stable coin that is benefiting the president's family. You know, there's no hearings, there's no pushback, there's no acknowledgment even that this is corrupt or illegal. So we've got to provide that check. And, you know, time flies and we're already almost through July here. Before you know it, it will be November of 2026 and then January of 2027. And people are asking for that oversight and that you know, that transparency and House Democrats are here to provide it. And we were hoping and believing we could work with our colleagues on the other side to stand up for the institution of the House but we're not seeing that happening to the level that it needs to. So we're going to provide that check when the time comes.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and my guest is Congressman John Mannion. So, I had two questions related to what you just got into there in the last couple of minutes. The first one kind of quick, the second one, I think we’ll take a little more time on, but one possibility, it seems to me that if the Democrats take the majority in the House is, obviously things in Congress regarding legislative production are going to stalemate. You know, you'll have a likely divided Congress plus the Republican president, he's not going to sign anything that House Democrats are going to put forward, likely. And so one possibility is the president will just keep turning to executive orders and really just push out even more on those because that's the option that would be available. So any quick thoughts on that?
JM: Well, the first thing I will say is, it is unfortunate. And beyond that, that that's where we all are, that the majority party can't work with the minority party and I have seen that here, you know? You have Secretary Vought talking about ending the appropriations process, which is a very bipartisan action. We just saw some of that statements as we went through this rescissions legislation process. So I do agree that when we get to that point, it is going to be a challenge. This is where it is essential, in a bipartisan way, that not just because there might be a Democrat president in the future that could go rattle off a bunch of executive orders that could go unchecked, but this is how our democracy is functioning effectively, is that there are those checks. And that, you know, what we've seen by and large with these executive orders, not entirely, not unanimously, but attorney generals in the ACLU and labor unions have filed lawsuits and effectively stopped or paused many of these executive orders because it's been found to be beyond the bounds of the president. That's going to continue. Is the legislature involved in that? They are to a degree. I've signed on to multiple amicus briefs that have gone before the courts. And, you know, we have a rapid response team here in the Democratic conference that works on those things in partnership with some of those groups. So we can't leave it entirely up to the courts, but we also have to be respectful of the courts. When this administration wins a court case, I may disagree with it, but that is what makes us unique from many of the other countries of the world, is that we follow the rule of law, we stand up for the rule of law. Even if we disagree, we follow the process of an appeals process, if that is an appropriate pathway. But other ways, as President Obama said, when I listen to him at Hamilton College, you know, we've all agreed that these three branches of government are going to be a check on each other and we're going to respect all of those. So if those executive orders happen, if they are unlawful or unconstitutional, I expect the courts to do their job and I expect Congress to do our job in holding hearings and passing legislation to make sure that we keep the executive in check, regardless of party.
GR: I want to just push that out a little bit. I asked you previously on one of our earlier conversations whether you'd vote for articles of impeachment if the Democrats took the House and you said you would if those came up. If the Democrats retake the House, do you think that they'll be putting forward articles of impeachment?
JM: I'm going to take a couple steps back here. First of all, impeachment is not a not a popular process. Even in the second impeachment post, the insurrection, the second impeachment trial of President Trump found to be very unpopular with people in New York 22 and around the country. So this is serious business, the impeachment of president. And one of my colleagues did submit articles of impeachment, put them on the floor, they were voted to be tabled. And I voted yes on tabling and as you can imagine, I got some talking to about that from some of my constituents. What I have seen are actions that are clearly impeachable, acts like the creation of the stable coin and the meme coin and the president providing elevated levels of access when those are purchased or used as currency. That's unprecedented. That alone is troubling. So I'm going to take another step back, which is to remind that this president has been investigated in his previous term and indicted and impeached and gone to trial in the Senate unsuccessfully, twice, which means what is going to have to happen if there is a Democratic House, there's going to have to be investigations, there's going to have to be hearings, there's going to have to be a building of evidence. And only then will there be the potential to proceed. And I will do my job and listen to that testimony and listen to that debate and read the investigations and go from there. But at face value, I just mentioned one instance of the creation of this cryptocurrency by the Trump family that happened to be launched on Inauguration Day, of all things. It's that kind of actions that are beyond concerning. I believe they're unlawful and impeachable.
GR: Okay, just about 30 seconds left. I want to just to quickly give you a final chance. Looking forward to the next year and a half, can you just give me the topics of the areas you're going to be pushing on, what you're going to be trying to do?
JM: Sure. You know you don't want to always be responding. But listen, I was a public educator. I'm afraid that what could be coming next is another rescissions package to strip dollars away from what is still the Department of Education. I'm afraid that these title one and title nine grants that are essential to some of our most impoverished schools are coming. I'm going to push back against that and always fight for public education. And of course, we got a lot of other things to worry about as well. But thank you for having me on, Grant. I appreciate it. And I will always focus on the great equalizer: education.
GR: Well, I appreciate that. We'll have to leave it there, that was Congressman John Mannion. And again, Congressman Mannion, thanks for taking the time to talk with me, I know you're very busy.
JM: Thank you, Grant. Have a great day.
GR: You, too. You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Mary Jumbelic on the Campbell Conversations
Jul 19, 2025
Mary Jumbelic(Marc Safran)
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. If you're a fan of true crime, you're in for a treat. My guest today is Dr. Mary Jumbelic. She's a forensic pathologist and the former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County. She's just published a new book, it's titled, “Speak Her Name: Stories from A Life from True Crime”. Dr. Jumbelic, welcome back to the program and congratulations on this new book.
Mary Jumbelic: Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
GR: Well, we're really glad you made the time. So let me just start, the structure of the book, it's a blend of, I guess what I would call sort of vignettes, sometimes extended vignettes of a personal memoir type. And then you have your, the theme of those is your experiences related to being a girl, a woman, a female doctor. And then you mix that in with different cases involving women victims that you've been involved in working on the cases for. So I was just wondering how you arrived at that structure, at that style, it's very interesting.
MJ: Well, my first book had a similar structure in that it blended personal and professional stories about my life and the life of my patients. And I guess I kept to that script, if you will, even though the lens of the second book is different than the first. The lens on the second book is related to being a woman and violence against women.
GR: Right, right. Now, you just did something very interesting there in your answer, you used the word patients. We need to make it clear that these patients are not alive. So in just one or two sentences, what is forensic pathology?
MJ: Well, forensic pathology is what medical examiners do. And so it's the study of death, what causes people to die, how they die, accidents, suicides, the investigation of sudden and suspicious death. And then relaying that information to doctors, the public, the law, whoever needs it, really.
GR: And I was surprised to learn in reading your book that there are only about 500 certified forensic pathologists.
MJ: Yes.
GR: That just seems really few to me thinking about all the people that are killed and die in various ways. Why is that the case, how come only 500?
MJ: Well, that's a really hard question to answer probably for, you know, brains larger than mine or analysis greater than I can give. But a pathologist in general is not a super popular specialty like primary care, surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics. People think it's not a social, you know, profession, but it really is. We are the doctors’ doctor, the pathologist. And then forensics is a special branch of that, so an even smaller group. And again, I think what we're dealing with is a sensitive issue, death and trauma and violence. And so not everyone wants to go into that. They want to be in the healing profession, so that's true as well. And death investigation in this country is not all medical examiners. It's coroners, and then they might hire a regular pathologist to do the autopsy and come to a determination. So forensic pathology is a special branch.
GR: Well, in your career, and this is obviously one of the themes of your book in different ways, but in your career you operated in a very male dominated environment, and that would be law enforcement and criminal justice that are related to being a medical examiner and the things that you worked with. Did you develop any, I don't know what to call them, tricks or hacks for dealing with that kind of environment?
MJ: Well, I think that I grew tougher, as anyone who might in a challenged situation where you're facing it again and again, you develop a thicker skin, you learn ways around the system. You learn to push ahead and not ask for permission beforehand and then say sorry afterwards. You learn who your supporters are and your mentors and you lean on them to gather that extra person who has your back. So all of those things.
GR: And one of the other things that I didn't realize when I was reading your book is that this explosion of all of these true crime, you know, the interest in true crime and true crime drama and a lot of the series that are dramatic series that are on TV, how many of those kind of got their start with the O.J. Simpson trial and how that was kind of the spark for all of that. I'm going back to the question I asked you just a little bit before but, do you know whether that has caused an uptick in the interest for people becoming forensic pathologists? You know that they see that and are like, hey, that's, I'd like to do that.
MJ: Well, it absolutely has had an uptick in interest in forensic sciences and so at the university level, even at the high school level and the university level, people going to get their criminal justice degrees, that sort of thing. Forensic pathology, not as much. You still have to become a doctor to get there and that's a bit of a barrier for some people. It's a long road to go to become a medical examiner. And so I do think it has glamorized my profession more, and I've enjoyed the popularity of it just from people appreciating what I do and what I did. So I'm grateful for that aspect.
GR: I remember you mentioned the barrier, I remember when I was in college myself and my classmates who were planning on going to med school, it was always, what was that class? Organic chemistry that kind of sorted them out. If they could make it through that, they could kind of go (laughter).
MJ: Right, right, everyone says that that's the breaking point for undergraduates is the organic chemistry. Which is ironic because I'm not really sure organic chemistry is necessary in most fields of medicine, but...
GR: That's the one. Well, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with the forensic pathologist and writer Dr. Mary Jumbelic, and we're discussing her new book. It's titled, “Speak Her Name: Stories from a Life and True Crime”. So before we get to the Robert Neulander case, which is, you know, a big case that you worked on, and we'll talk about that a little bit later, which of the cases other than that one that you relate in your book, stays the most in your head and why?
MJ: Well, all of the women in my book, in some form or fashion were ghosts in my mind. And I started the book focusing on Leslie Neulander, but so many other women were in line saying, but what about me and what about me? And so therefore, I gave them space to grow and to exist on the page. I think one of the ones that stays with me is Carol Ryan, and I think for many reasons that local people will understand. But the length of time it's taken and no one has been charged or found responsible for one of the most heinous acts of violence that I have seen in my long career, and so she stays with me.
GR: And remind us, as I recall, her body was discovered in Jamesville, is that right?
MJ: Yes, she was the subject of a podcast called ‘Firecracker’ that was done maybe a year and a half ago and so it was discussed at length. But I met Carol while she was alive at the hospital. She was unconscious. she did not speak to me, but I was called in to give my opinion on what was the source of her injury and trauma and, you know, with the head of Trauma there. And so then I again examined her later when she died. So it stays in my mind very, very deeply for that reason.
GR: Well, you know, you mentioned this earlier, your book, I thought this was a nice little technique that, you know, it starts with the Neulander case and then you kind of leave it and then you come back to it at the end, and that got me going. And so your book leads up to this Neulander case. The Neulander case is arguably the highest profile murder case that we've seen in the Syracuse area, probably in all of central New York for several decades at least. Neulander was a very prominent and popular OBGYN physician in the area, and the couple very highly respected, well-liked. Just remind us, if you could, of the basic facts as they were understood before you first looked at the case. What were the basic facts as they were understood?
MJ: Well, Leslie had purportedly fallen in the shower and died. And this was on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, one of the holiest days in the Jewish year. And that was what was known for several months to the community. It was sudden death, sudden collapse, and over time, and after I got involved, I uncovered that it was a homicide. And it wasn't just my opinion, other experts were brought in, like, can we review this and see, you know, what happened here? And they concurred, yes, it's a homicide. And because of the gap in time and the lag, I think it took time to accumulate everything, all the evidence, so it could be handled in a proper fashion. So he didn't go to trial until maybe a little over two years after the actual death of his wife. And he was found guilty, but then there was a complication with a juror misconduct. And so he went to prison, but then he was granted a new trial, as is appropriate in that circumstance. But then COVID happened, and then so a decade goes by after her death when finally the second trial occurs and again, he's found guilty and is in prison.
GR: Well, I don't want to delve too much into gossip, but I think it's important here that my understanding is that his career and his marriage both had taken difficult turns before this event and that that was known and that that was one of the things that got a lot of people suspicious. Am I right about that?
MJ: I think the community and those close to Leslie were concerned. There certainly were people that were close to her that weren't concerned, but there were others that were concerned and, you know, there were financial difficulties. There were, she was going to move out and get an apartment and all of this came out much later, you know, in bits and pieces and was verified. But at the time I reviewed the case, I didn't know any of that, it was not even on my radar, frankly. It only was in retrospect that there's all this behind the scene, you know, murmuring of what was going on.
GR: Well, we'll dove deeper into this in a minute. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with Dr. Mary Jumbelic. She's a forensic pathologist, the former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County and the author of a new book. It's titled, “Speak Her Name: Stories from My Life and True Crime”. So as you intimated before the break, you personally knew this couple. And then also you were retired as a medical examiner by the time this murder took place. So how did you come to get involved in it?
MJ: Well, in a quick synopsis, Grant, it was a rather lengthy process, but a friend of Leslie's was concerned that Leslie had been murdered by her husband and she wound up talking to me and asking me what I thought. And I said, well, you should go to the police, I'm not official, I'm not anything, I can't interpret what you're telling me, just go to the police and talk to them. And the long and short of it is she did and the end result was she called me back and said, they're bringing him in for questioning again and thank you for telling me to do that. And then he called that night, the house, and I knew he was leaving for Israel. And I got concerned that here was someone that was about to leave the country and I knew there was something going on in the background with an investigation or the police wouldn't be bringing him in for questioning. So I called, you know, Bill Fitzpatrick of the district attorney's office to talk with him.
GR: And you also mentioned, I think, in the book that Israel doesn't have extradition arrangements with the United States, that would have been a good place to go if you were worried about something like that. So, I mean, you must have had this, and you do write about this, this swirl of emotions in being involved in this, especially early on. I mean, the case sounds like it divided the synagogue that both of you went to. Can you describe your feelings when you first started considering the evidence, before we get into the evidence itself, just how are you feeling about all this?
MJ: I think it was complicated. I think that, you know, people ask me questions all the time. My uncle died and I think this, and my sister, this happened to her nephew, and, you know, people like to ask me and use my expertise to try to sort things out. And I like to try to answer questions and help if I can. But not usually on an official, you know, basis of any sort. And so when I was asked to look over the case, I thought, you know, maybe with my knowledge base and my expertise, I can sort out, like, whatever question exists about it, and I'll be able to just answer it easily and why are people worried about it? You know, I'll be able to just put everybody's mind at rest. That was my mindset as I went into it. And so I was a bit unprepared when I looked at the images on my computer of the scene and of her trauma and the autopsy to the level of violence that was there. And so that was probably the moment for me when I had to decide if I would go forward or not. That I would just say, no, I can't do this, or I would go forward. And I guess my nature is to see the trouble and see the challenge and then steal myself for it and move in a forward direction. So that's what I did. And I felt like my whole career had been speaking for my patients, speaking for women. And so I did it for my friend too.
GR: You mentioned the level of violence. And I have seen the district attorney's presentation of this case, he's got like a slideshow presentation. And that's one of the things that just the, in what you talk about in the book here in greater detail, but the, the apparent violence of the injury was quite arresting. I mean, it really suggests an extreme rage. And I guess my question to you is, you knew this guy a little bit. Did that fit the Robert Neulander that you knew?
MJ: I mean, I know that there are the people we meet on the surface and then there's whatever going on behind the surface of people. People are complicated and they're nuanced and they're not black and white and you know, I have seen enough people sitting in a chair being, you know, being accused of homicide and I'm in the witness stand and you look at the person, you know, they could not possibly have done this. You know, your mind tells you that. So I don't really hold to that. I think anyone is capable of, you know, extreme emotion in in a particular circumstance, you know? And I would say I was closer to Leslie than Bob. I didn't have any ill feelings toward him at all. You know, but he was more a shadow to me to Leslie's, you know, vivacity and energy. So I didn't know him the way other people in the community have come forward and described him.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Dr. Mary Jumbelic. So, thinking about what evidence that you were considering, what you were looking at, what were the questions and the inconsistencies that most leaped out to you?
MJ: To try to say it succinctly, the number of injuries, the location of injuries on the head, on all sides, on the neck on the arms, on the hands. So it was the patterning of the injury and also the head wounds and the devastating skull fractures and trauma there. Secondarily, the scene itself didn't make a lot of sense with the blood spatter and the location of the body and whether there was CPR and the shower being 60 feet away from the bedroom. So there were these secondary scene considerations that didn't fit the original story.
GR: And you witnessed the trial. In your view, was there one thing or a few things that more than anything else, did Neuander in both as a suspect and then as a defendant?
MJ: I felt like the playing of the 911 tape that the daughter called in was, I don't know if it was pivotal, but it was quite emotional and quite impactful. And it does seem to have not gone in the direction that I think the defense had hoped.
GR: Yeah. When I saw that presentation, that tape was played and it really, it kind of just puts a chill right down your spine, really. One of the things actually that I guess leads to this question is, it's puzzled me the way that the children stayed supportive of Dr. Neulander throughout the process. I remember a picture in the newspaper about them walking to the trial arm in arm, three of them. Do you know if they are still supportive of him? And I guess if they are, why do you think they have stuck by him in the face of what seems to me to be pretty damning evidence?
MJ: Well, you know, I can't really be inside their minds, but I would, I think they still support him. They certainly did after the second trial still, and that was only three years ago. But I think the gap of time from the death to the trial was quite long. And to my knowledge, they didn't have access to looking at the photos of their dead mother and the, you know, scene and all of that. So the information they had was probably filtered through the attorney and whatever their father was telling them. And so I think by the time the trial came up and they're actually hearing it in the courtroom and there's exhibits being put up and, you know, seen, I think there is a disconnect at that point. It's just a complete cognitive dissonance that happened. And I don't think there's any going back from that. You know, it's very, it’s sad.
GR: Yeah. Well, I mean, but social scientists would probably put this in the category of what they would call confirmation bias. You know, the way you take in information that conflicts with what you have kind of already sunk your mind into.
MJ: Right.
GR: This question here I'm about to ask you, it's very sensitive, but I just feel the need to ask because you say in your book that he is going to be eligible for release at a certain date. He seems like a pretty healthy guy. Do you worry, given your role, that if he is somehow released, maybe that because of old age, they'll release him, you or your family will be in danger? Will that be, you know, do you think about that?
MJ: No. I mean, I've had other cases where I've played some pivotal role or at least had maybe a lot of public acknowledgment of my role. And I'd be naive to say it's never a potential threat but I don't worry about that. I mean, I just did my job to speak for Leslie. I wasn't the jury, I wasn't the judge, I wasn't the prosecutor. I just spoke for what happened to Leslie and I just hold on to that.
GR: Now that makes sense, you know, that makes sense. Well, we've got about 3 minutes left or so, and I want to give you that time to kind of change the tone a bit. This has not been the most uplifting conversation that we've had. And so the final question I think would allow you to do that if you wanted to, is that, is there an overarching message here in this book, particularly for women? Is there an overarching message here that you want to convey?
MJ: Well, I think that my book is more than just a detailing of sort of heinous crimes that have occurred against women. I do want the reader to witness, to see what happens, but to take from that some lessons and learn and educate about the situations and to remember the women that have gone before. One of the ending stories in my book is one of the most hopeful ones, which is someone who actually changed her life based on Leslie's situation.
GR: Say a little bit about that.
MJ: And I think, you know, that is part of the goal here is to, let's not shy away from looking at the reality of what happens to women and let's do something about it.
GR: Yeah, I think, you know, as I was reading through the different stories and, you know, you tell a couple stories about yourself.
MJ: Yeah.
GR: Particularly one when you were a little kid that, you know, like that was like a very, very close call. I don't know if you want to relate that here, but, you know, they kind of all add up to look, all right, you know, pay attention, keep your eyes open.
MJ: Well, it's like, we are vulnerable as women, just on a sheer strength, you know, physical strength, access, okay? But we are smart and we can learn and we can be aware and we can help other women. And part of my goal in my career was to find justice for women. Sometimes I was successful, as in Leslie's case, other times not. But that doesn't deter us, we go forward.
GR: Well, that's a good place to leave it. That was Mary Jumbelic, and again, her new book is titled, “Speak Her Name: Stories from My Life and True Crime”. And I can attest from reading it that it's a real page turner, it's intense. But I say nonetheless, I think it's a great summer read. So, Dr. Jumbelic, Mary, again, thanks for making the time to talk with me, I really appreciate it.
MJ: Thank you. I'm honored, Grant.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Oneya Fennell Okuwobi on the Campbell Conversations
Jul 12, 2025
Oneya Fennell Okuwobi
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. The Trump administration has declared war on DEI programs, and it has had reverberating effects throughout higher education, government and industry. My guest today has written a new provocative book on the topic of diversity efforts, and it's titled, "Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What to Do about It". Oneya Fennell Okuwobi is a sociology professor at the University of Cincinnati. Professor Okuwobi, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book.
Oneya Fennell Okuwobi: Thank you. And thanks so much for having me.
GR: Well, we really appreciate that you made the time. So let me just start with a very basic question. I presume, unless you work at the speed of light, that you did the research and writing for this book before the Trump administration's current war on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, especially on higher education. So I guess what I want to know first, is how and why did you get the idea to write this book when you did?
OFO: Oh, that's a fantastic question. Yes, I've been working on this book for many years, as authors do. And honestly, this book came out of some of my experiences. I talk in the book about how even though I'm studying diversity in churches, in universities and in corporations, I have experiences in all of those realms. And so this book really began when I was talking to pastors of color, working at churches who were newly diverse. And those churches were attempting to bring in staffs that more accurately reflected the populations that they were hoping to attract as congregants. But these pastors were having curious issues in terms of feeling like they were being brought in to display a black or brown face, but not really being listened to. Some were experiencing health issues or issues with their family because of the hostile environments that they were encountering. And hearing their stories, I started to discover there's something really wrong with, not the idea that these churches want to be racially diverse, but the ways that they were going about it, especially in reference to their employees. And it made me wonder, is the same thing pervasive? Is it happening in other venues? Which is why I added the venues of corporations and universities to get a more holistic picture.
GR: Okay, very interesting. And specifically, how did you go about researching it? You just said, you know, where you were looking. Was this was this based on talking to a particular sets of people? How did you go about getting your information?
OFO: Yeah, so this was an interview study, I talked to 60 employees across 53 different workplaces. Again, examining basically the equivalent of entry level managers within the church as universities and corporations. So in the university setting, that would be the assistant professor level and churches that would be anybody who wasn't, had clergy. So getting an equivalent understanding of what it is like to be an entry level management employee of color in these venues.
GR: And so let's get right to the core of at least the first part of your book, which is diagnosing the problem. I mean, what are the main things that you think that the diversity efforts as you looked at them, have been getting wrong? What are they not doing right?
OFO: Yes, so the issue has been, most diversity efforts have focused on benefiting the workplaces. And in order for those benefits to accrue to the workplaces, employees of color have been paying a cost in order for workplaces to get the benefits of being able to say that they are diverse. And there are three main costs that I outline in that first section of the book. The first is heavy work burdens. So anybody listening has probably had that experience of seeing a diversity photo where you basically got one of everyone in the photo. But then imagine you are working at a hospital and you are the one black doctor at that hospital. That means every time there is a photo, a video, something else, you are being dragged in to be able to represent diversity. And that was one of the real stories of somebody that I talked to. So those heavy work burdens can be being brought into photos, being brought to meetings, being placed on committees, any additional work that is required for the workplace to be able to benefit from saying that it's diverse. So that's the first. The second cost of diversity that I talked about comes in two flavors. The idea is threatened legitimacy, and there's threatened organizational legitimacy, which basically means you're questioning the rightness of your employer's actions. We often talk about diversity as window dressing, but somebody has to dress those windows and the people dressing those windows can see the difference between what's being portrayed on the outside and what's happening on the inside and that creates feelings of guilt and conflict in them. The second flavor of this threatened legitimacy is threatened personal legitimacy, where employees of color who are being brought into workplaces proclaiming themselves as diverse, are being questioned about their own qualifications. Being called with that barbed insult, ‘diversity hire’. Because the real reasons why diversity is important are not being talked about. And then finally, there's something I call subjugated identity, where employers of color are being forced to put their identity into such a way that their workplace can market it as part of their diversity package. Think of this as being identifiably non-white enough so that the workplace can benefit from seeming diverse, but not so non-white that you make your white colleagues uncomfortable. And the employees I talked to dealt with these costs day in and day out for years and years.
GR: Well, I've got a couple of questions for you that come right out of that I have to say, just on what you've said. You know, I work in an academic environment like you do and one of the things I've noticed over the years, and my university at least up until a few months ago, I don't know what language it's using now, but we have used the language of diversity hires and diversity hiring initiatives. But when I see colleagues come in who are, particularly African-American, most specifically, but also just non-white more generally, they get a very heavy student advising load from the students. You know, and so, because our student body is much more diverse than our faculty. And so I can see the dynamic that you're talking about, that's very interesting. You're listening to the Campbell conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with the sociology professor Oneya Fennell Okuwobi and we're discussing her new book, it's titled, "Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What to Do about It". So I want to stick with, maybe I'll stick with higher education, but I'm curious if this is something you encountered in the other areas that you looked at as well. And I'm going to quote a former colleague here, not a white male, by the way, but this person used to refer to DEI as, and this is their words, the ‘DEI industrial complex’. And it does seem at least that in higher education, when we look at the level above the faculty in particular, we look at administration, it does seem like it did spawn almost like a new category of administration and infrastructure in the administration. I don't know if that's an element that you look at or how this is going to affect things in any way.
OFO: It's not a pervasive element that I look at. But one of the things that I did find is that the faculty members I talked to, in fact, the employees more generally that I talked to who had a diversity office or diversity officer above them, saw often that those offices didn't necessarily focus on what the employees needed, that that open line of communication wasn't there. And so even though these offices and these officers existed and were important, their impact wasn't necessarily felt by the employees and they felt like more open lines of communication could be important. At the same time, the employees recognize the constraints that those officers and offices were working under, that they were not necessarily empowered to make the changes that would have to be made in order for the employees to be having an equitable work experience.
GR: I see. So the bottom line then, it sounds like what you're saying is the people who end up paying, to use the title of your book, “Who Pays for Diversity?”, is the employees, the diverse employees.
OFO: That's exactly right.
GR: Okay. So one of the issues that also has struck me, at least from my experience in higher education and I wanted to get your thoughts about this, is that, and again, it depends on sort of what element of diversity the initiative or the new hire is supposed to speak to, but especially ones that I think have come from outside the United States more than others fit this, is that those folks can often be from quite elite backgrounds, if we're just looking at economics. You know, that they're not, that we associate these efforts I think oftentimes with, you know, speaking to historical disadvantage and current disadvantage and current discrimination. Is that any kind of common pattern that you saw in what you were looking at? That there could be, kind of if you looked at it through one lens, there's diversity in one way, but then if you look at it through a more pure economic lens, it becomes a lot murkier. I don’t know if that question is making sense.
OFO: It is, and let me know if I'm answering it. But even as I look at race and racism, which is the focus of this book, even folks from elite backgrounds can experience racial discrimination and can experience the shadow and the costs that get put on them because of diversity. So even having an elite economic background does not exempt you from that. And so it's important to understand that these costs continue and have been pervasive because of the ways diversity has been structured. It's also true that the majority of folks that I talk to in my book were born in the U.S., even though I do talk to some employees that were 1.5 generation. And we see that there's a lot of advantage and recognition of racism that happens by the second generation, even if somebody is from an international background.
GR: This may be more of a feature, I guess, perhaps in academia. Well, tell me more about the way that that works, though. I'm curious to hear more about, you know, someone who is elite in some ways, but then is being treated as less than in other ways. Is there is there a particular way that that dynamic feels or works?
OFO: Yes. And I don't want to go too far into this because it's not necessarily the main idea here. But basically, when somebody, what I argue in the book basically is that the ways that diversity is framed is creating a level of disadvantage. So let's say that you are from another country, but you were brought in to a workplace that focuses on diversity. You may still encounter these heavy work burdens of having more students to advise than your counterparts, of being brought into specific photos or specific dinners or specific meetings in order to paint that picture. You may still encounter people who say that you don't belong here, despite your qualifications, you may still feel like you cannot be your entire self at work. So those things can still happen to you regardless of socio-economic status in which you grew up.
GR: Yeah, and now that I think about it as I'm thinking about our conversation in the moment, I think we're sort of headed toward a heated agreement here because your whole point is that these hires are brought in to help somebody else.
OFO: Yes.
GR: And to help the institution. And so therefore, they can experience these differences even. Okay, all right, I'm with you now.
OFO: When you talk about paying for diversity, the costs are pretty steep. When I looked at the experiences, again of these employees I spoke to, fully nine out of ten of the pastors and the professors I talked to were experiencing emotional and physical signs of stress. And that can be anywhere from having symptoms that mimic strokes to having anxiety attacks, insomnia, headaches. And they attributed these things to what I call the costs of diversity. For corporate employees it was a little bit better, more like three out of four. But still, that's a steep cost for these employees to pay in order to make their workplaces appear diverse.
GR: Yeah, it sure is. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Oneya Fennell Okuwobi. She's a sociology professor at the University of Cincinnati and the author of a new book titled, "Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What to Do about It" and we've been discussing the book. So as you said before, at the beginning of our conversation, you looked at universities, churches, corporations. First of all, does one of those sectors do better than the other, and is one worse? Or are there patterns, shared patterns of the ones that do better than others?
OFO: Yes, absolutely. So when I looked at the employees that were reporting the fewest adverse effects, surprisingly in some ways it was the corporate employees. But it's not necessarily for a great reason. The reason being is that corporate employees don't often see their work as a calling in the same way maybe a professor or a pastor might. And so they didn't necessarily expect to be respected as people. And so they maybe had some defenses up against what they were experiencing. For pastors, this idea of calling really loomed large. In addition to the fact that when you are working in a ministry profession, your entire family is involved. So not only do you work at a church, but probably your family attends the church, probably your social networks are connected. And so if you are being commodified for your presence, that commodification extends throughout all the aspects of your life rather than 9 to 5. For professors, I think the reason why the costs of diversity were higher is similar because assistant professors are often across the country away from their family, and their social networks are having to build new social networks. And that can be difficult when you are being commodified for the purpose of displaying diversity.
GR: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So I don't know if this is pushing you too far, but you're talking about commodification and the institution kind of thinking of these folks almost as a selling point or a product. Am I going too far to say it kind of smacks in some strange way of slavery in a way? I mean, one can see a line of connection, at least in an abstract level here.
OFO: I don't think it's going too far. Of course, we don't want to minimize in any way the horrors of slavery, but the idea that there is a profit, a capital that exists in certain bodies that can be used by others, and in this case, predominantly white people and white institutions is a direct line from thinking about chattel slavery till today. I'd also love to extend that in a way to say that, you know, even though this is a special case of commodification, in some ways all workers are subject to commodification. And so I want this to be a spotlight on a particular sort of costs that workers pay for benefits to their workplaces that is not fairly compensated. But I hope it as a starting point to look at other ways in which that happens to all workers. So I would both narrow it and make it more historical and wide net and bring that idea into the future.
GR: That's an important point. So, okay, so how do we make this better? What recommendations do you have for institutions that are saying, look, we want to have some kind of DEI effort, maybe we'll call it something different now, but, you know, we'll get to that in a minute. But how can it be done better?
OFO: Yes. So what I talk about in the last chapter of my book is making these things more employee focused. Honestly, a lot of the diversity efforts have said if we focus on diversity, if we play the numbers game and get enough representation, eventually we'll get to racial equity. And I argue that the only real way to get to racial equity is to focus on racial equity. So instead of saying, let's get up the numbers of, you know, black professors at the university, let’s instead listen to the black professors at the university and see what is it that they need to have an equitable experience to their white counterparts. Part of that is support with students, which could in part be solved by numbers, but it could also be solved by perhaps giving additional credit for service work when it comes to tenure files, which is something perfectly in universities’ control. It might come down to looking at rates of receiving grants and understanding the racial disparities in receiving grants and making sure that faculty of color have what they need to be able to execute their work. It might look like if you're going to have to drag folks into pictures or videos, A, don't, but to the extent that you do, make sure that they get other time in order to continue to pursue their work so their time for research is not eaten up. So looking at those very real disparities and then doing things to correct them.
GR: Well, what you just said makes sense, but it leads directly into the next couple of questions. That I wanted to ask you. And the first one is, okay, so how do you do what you just said without incurring backlash along the lines of, well, this is just more affirmative action extended throughout the entire evaluation process. I mean, we've got a current presidential administration that's declared pretty much open warfare on this whole notion. It sounds almost like you're saying we need to really almost double down on it in some ways. How do you deal with that?
OFO: I am saying we need to double down on that in some ways. I also recognize that it's not legally possible in all places, but it is legally possible in some places. And I believe a key to limiting the level of backlash is to change the sort of messaging we've done around diversity. With diversity, the messaging has been, there's a benefit to all people by having people from diverse backgrounds, different viewpoints come together and talk about things. And if that's the real benefit, then it's no wonder that there's a backlash against that now, because you might decide, I don't want that benefit, I actually don't want any folks who disagree with my viewpoint around, I don't need that. But the real reason why these programs were put in place in the first place was to correct past and continuing discrimination and disparities. And so getting back to the messaging of let's educate all of the employees about the past and continuing disparities and our specific workplaces role in those disparities and how the things that we're doing corrects for those things. And by the way, I do believe that as we are assessing what employees of color need, we should be assessing what all employees need because there are lots of good ways to put in place corrections that don't just help employers of color, that help everyone, again, have a more equitable experience at work.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is a sociology professor, Oneya Fennell Okuwobi. So what do you, I'm going to put you on the spot here if you don't mind, but, so what do you make of the Trump administration's efforts to battle DEI and all of these really high profile conflicts that we've seen, particularly in higher education, but we've also seen very large corporations make significant changes in what they're doing in response to perceptions of concerns about the Trump administration, I mean, there's a lot going on here in this field, what do you make of it?
OFO: Well, quite frankly, nothing positive do I make of it. It is an effort, not just at eliminating DEI, but at rolling back civil rights altogether. But I do want to recognize the ways that this effort has been enabled by the ways that we have not continued to speak about continuing racism that exists in our society. The idea that, for example, hiring discrimination has not gotten any better since 1989. If the majority of people knew that, perhaps they wouldn't care. But we at least need to give them a chance to know what is going on and not cover it up. And so that people have a chance to look at these policies, look at this rhetoric and reject it wholesale.
GR: Well, we've got about two or three minutes left and I wanted to ask you a question that I'm sure I'll have a follow up or two on, but I want to make sure that we get a chance to talk about it. And it's more personal, I hope I can ask this, but you know, you are a faculty member of color and you've got this book out, and there it is in the flesh, in paper that somebody could hold up if they wanted to say, oh, here's another, you know. How, I mean, you've sort of put yourself out there right now and how are you experiencing that? Do you have any concerns, do you have any worries that, you know, the University of Cincinnati is going to be, oh, no, we've got this person that's got this book out right when it's under attack, you know, that kind of thing?
OFO: Yeah. You know, it is true. I have put myself out there. I will say my university has been nothing but supportive of me and my scholarship and I hope that will continue. But I think it is a message to all of us in academia, all folks who are involved in activism, if we don't stand up for what is right now, who will? And so that might involve and entail some personal risk. But if I take personal risk to make sure that employees of color can hear the message that you're not alone and we see the cost that you are paying and you are not responsible to pay them any longer, I have to, now that I know what I know take that risk because that message needs to get out.
GR: And lastly, and just about a minute left so I have to really ask you to give a very concise answer here, but there's been a lot of difficult conversations between faculty and students in the last few years. I imagine you've had some, too. What do you say to your students who are concerned about these kinds of things and looking at, I mean, this is really all they've known politically, I mean, they're that young, this is all they've known.
OFO: I have a lot of hope for our students. I have conversations in the classroom every year, honestly, that make me hopeful for what we will see. And I think that there are enough sources of information and understanding out there that students are gravitating towards that will allow them to make, hopefully, more informed decisions in the future that will lead us away from the path that we're on now.
GR: Okay, well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Oneya Fennell Okuwobi and again, her new book is titled, “Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity and What to Do about It". If you become frustrated or exhausted by the current debates over DEI and are looking for a new framework and a new way to see this, this would be an interesting read for you. And if you are looking for this book, on Amazon, I want to just say that professor Okuwobi’s last name is spelled o k u w o b i. Professor Okuwobi, again, thanks for making the time to talk with me. I really learned a lot from this conversation.
OFO: Glad to do it.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
David Lay Williams on the Campbell Conversations
Jul 11, 2025
David Lay Williams(Mark Lavonier)
David Lay Williams, professor of political science at DePaul University, talks about his book, "The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx."
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. Economic inequality has been a perennial issue in political campaigns and we are said to be living right now in another Gilded Age of extreme inequality. My guest today is David Lay Williams. He's a professor of political science at DePaul University and the author of a new book titled, “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shapes Political Thought from Plato to Marx.” Professor Williams, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book.
David Lay Williams: Thanks so much for inviting me. Grant, I'm looking forward to our conversation.
GR: Well, me too. So let me just start with something really basic. It's right there in the title “The Greatest of All Plagues.” It's kind of a provocative phrase there. Where does that come from? What's its significance?
DLW: So it's actually a phrase from the first figure I treat in my book, Plato, who would be familiar, I'm sure, to many. Plato was probably, you know, the first systematic thinker on politics in Western political tradition. But he's also the first one to seriously engage the question of inequality. And he introduces this phrase in his last dialogue, called The Laws. And he has a character speaking, a character he calls the Athenian stranger who says that whenever you have a wealth divided, extremely to the rich on one hand and the poor on the other, and not very much in the middle, it leads to serious problems, including strife, civil strife and even civil war, which he calls the greatest of all plagues. So technically, he says it's still as civil strife and civil war that's the greatest of all plagues. But what brings that about is economic inequality.
GR: And that sort of reminds me a little bit of what I remember from Aristotle, too, about the, you know, this idea of sort of a basic balance, and it can't get too far out of balance. Was there a way that the ancient thinkers as a whole tended to think about inequality? I mean, obviously, the societies they lived in were very heavily layered and different ways. But is there sort of an ancient way of thinking about this or were they all over the place?
DLW: A bit all over the place. Right. They're certainly very serious critics of inequality in the ancient world. Plato being one. Aristotle's certainly talks about inequality as being very problematic for managing a polis. But there are others who seem more comfortable with it that there's a figure known as old oligarch to ancient scholars who unsurprisingly likes being an oligarch and talks about how all political power needs to be concentrated in the hands of the rich few. So but but I will say that it's not unusual to find opposition to inequality, not just in ancient Greece, but you can certainly find it in Rome, and you can certainly find it, as I discuss in chapter two of my book in Rome and Palestine, or, you know, what some people now call Israel. Right. So there was I, we can sort of say there was widespread opposition to our concern about inequality in the ancient world.
GR: Hmm. And one of your central arguments is that the problem of inequality, the issue of inequality, drives much of the thought of political philosophy over the centuries. It's one of the main through lines. And I just wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on that idea, that notion.
DLW: Through lines, I'm sorry, in the ancient world or through lines?
GR: Throughout.
DLW: Yes. Yes, sure. Yeah.
GR: Throughout Western political thought.
DLW: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So there's several threads that I kind of pull through, I used to connect, like many of the thinkers in the book, right. One of those through lines is the role of what the Greeks call pleonexia. And that's, it's an ancient Greek word, which means greed, but kind of greed on steroids, as it were. It's a greed incapable of being satiated. Plato called…
GR: Gee, cause we never see that now.
DLW: No! So Plato, in his dialogue, The Gorgias, compares pleonectic souls with a leaky jug. He says, you know, you can they can spend all day pouring more water into a leaky jug, and will never be satisfied with the amount of water that you give it. In fact, the more water you give it, the more it wants. And he says many souls are like this. The souls that he characterized characterizes as as disease or pathological. And there are typically three things that pleonectic souls want, and this includes power, adulation, and especially money. And that's, of course, the connection to inequality. And it's why societies tend unless, you know, checked by policy, societies tend to revert to inequality because they're just going to be people out there who will never be satisfied with the amount of money that they have and will do practically anything to get it. So that starts in the ancient world. But interestingly, that really weaves its way through the tradition. Right. Certainly, we find lots of condemnations of greed. And specifically, you know, they the Greek New Testament uses the word pleonexia to condemn greed. But it's also found in the Old Testament. The book of Ecclesiastes is full of condemnations of pleonexia. Right. But this goes all the way through. It's in Thomas Hobbes. It's in John Stuart Mill. And even in Karl Marx. Yeah. So that's one thread that works its way through. Another thread, and maybe I'll stop it at two, for now, to leave time for questions, right. But another thread is kind of the damage that concentrated wealth inflicts upon the faculty, our human capacity for empathy. Right. And this really starts in the Bible. This is in the New Testament account, in the book of, in the Gospel of Luke and the story of Lazarus. Not the one risen from the dead. There's actually two Lazaruses in the Bible. It's the Lazarus, the beggar who asks a rich man for money, just asking for crumbs, actually, from his table. The rich man refuses. And then Jesus intervenes at that point to say, well, let me tell you how this ends up. Lazarus goes to heaven. The rich guy goes to hell because he had no capacity for empathy, for feeling for the poor and much less doing anything about it. And this inability to feel for the plight of the poor on the part of the rich is, again, a theme that we see throughout Western civilization, most notably, and maybe surprisingly for some, in the figure of Adam Smith, often cited as a godfather of capitalism. Adam Smith on page two of “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” his second most famous book, after “Wealth of Nations,” provides an evocative account of a begging man who was ignored, that nobody feels any sympathy for. So those are two examples of themes that connected to inequality that really worked their way from the ancient world to the modern.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with the political science professor David Lay Williams, and we're discussing his new book, “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought From Plato to Marx.” So, you know, you've got a you've got a big handful of but it's still just a handful of philosophers here that you treat in your book. You obviously have to make some difficult choices to narrow it down. I'm just curious how did you pick the people that you did, you don’t have to go through each one. I'm going to ask you a couple of specific questions about individuals, but just what were your methods like or how did you go about deciding this person versus another person?
DLW: Yeah. Well, you know, I should begin with some honesty, right? I mean, I certainly included some people because I just really love reading and thinking about them, right.
GR: That's OK.
DLW: I've written a couple of books on Rousseau. You know, I certainly wanted to make room for him. And I do really love reading Plato. But beyond that, right, the more, you know, maybe justifiable explanation is that I really wanted to draw on very well known canonical figures to kind of make a point to say, look, if if people care about the Western canon and we hear this from from a lot of people on the political right these days, for that matter. Right. You know, why aren't we reading more of the Western canon? You know, why are we reading all the DEI stuff? Right. Well, you know, I want to take these people seriously because I you know, although maybe not a person of the right, I share their passion for these texts. Right. And I want to say to them, well, you know, if we take these texts seriously, you know, they say some pretty interesting things about inequality. Right. And if we're going to, you know, and certainly we're all engaged in the question of inequality today. Right. It's coming up this week with the budget. And, you know, if we're going to look to figures like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and, you know, Plato and the Bible. Right. Among other sources. Right. I think, you know, these canonical texts have a lot to say about this issue and can be the source of some, you know, stimulating and perhaps important discussions.
GR: Mm hmm. And it was you've already mentioned this a bit earlier in our conversation, but I found it very intriguing, maybe a little surprising. I don't know. But when I first opened the book and I saw that the New Testament was one of your chapters right there, along with Plato and Marx and Rousseau.
DLW: Yeah.
GR: And it makes sense, you know, when you think about the Gospels and you've talked a little bit about the view of inequality that the New Testament offers, maybe this is a time to work in your third through line that you didn't that you left out before. But, you know, there's this theme of greed. There's this interesting theme of empathy being damaged or destroyed. Is there an overarching lesson about inequality that you think the New Testament is teaching us?
DLW: Sure. Right. And the New Testament is really unique, obviously, in this book. Right. You know, Jesus is not typically taught as a political thinker in political science departments at universities, whether that's Syracuse or DePaul or Harvard or wherever. Right. I and I didn't even intend to write one on the New Testament. That wasn't my intention. My problem was that I had a big gap between Plato and Thomas Hobbes and I and I started reading some Christian thinkers a little bit later than the Bible, of course. And the more I read them, the more I thought, well, I should really go back and look at the Bible. And I realized that that's what I had to write about, because the Bible has so much to say about this. And, you know, interesting things, you know, that come from the Bible. Right. I'll focus on two important laws. These are in the Hebrew Bible. Actually, they're in the books of Moses, the you know, the Pentateuch. Right. And it's that they're very important laws, according to Moses. Right. And they're laws that Jesus draws our attention to again, in the Gospels. And these two laws are the laws of sabbatical and jubilee and the law of sabbatical and again, an ancient Hebrew law that says all debts should be forgiven once every seven years. Right. Among other things. Right. A jubilee is the seventh of every sabbatical years. Right. So once every fortnight or 50 years. Right. It's kind of gotten rounded up to 50. And in a jubilee year, you do you forgive all the debts and these other things as well. But you also have to return all property that's that's changed hands over the last five decades back to the original equitable distribution. Right. And when Jesus is setting up his ministry, he's preaching, he announces very specifically, it is the year, it is the year of the Lord, which is a Jubilee year. Right. And when you think about the context in which Jesus is, you know, ministering to the poor. Right. This is a very powerful and appealing message. Right. You know, “Hey, you know, we would like our land back. We would like our debts forgiven.” And there was a significant debt crisis in Roman Palestine at that time. And this message was extremely appealing.
GR: Hmm. Also, cueing a student loan forgiveness.
DLW: Yes. And people have made that connection.
GR: You're listening to The Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with David Lay Williams. He's a political science professor at DePaul University and the author of a new book titled “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought From Plato to Marx.” And we've been discussing his book. So I, I've read in my past all the writers that you treat, including the Gospels, spent, you know, two months slogging through Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital.” I've done my duty there, too. But I find Rousseau the most intriguing of the political philosophers that you cover. So I'm going to take a personal indulgence here. Tell us a little bit about his views on inequality.
DLW: Sure. Rousseau is obviously a really important thinker when it comes to inequality. I famously he wrote a book called the “Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.” And he's certainly the first modern thinker to think about inequality in a very systematic way, gives an account of where it comes from and why it's problematic in that discourse. And then and in other writings beyond his discourse, inequality talks about what he thinks could be done about it, has some a variety of interesting proposals. But I think what's really distinctive among the many things that Rousseau says about inequality is it is in the context of his enlightenment culture, of emerging meritocracy. I think this is where Rousseau really speaks to us. Right? Again, meritocracy is a word in the contemporary discourse about politics right there. Politicians are saying you know, universities need to be more meritocratic. Corporations should hire on a meritocratic basis. Right. But Rizzo's kind of he's and he's Rousseau was well aware of this emerging culture of meritocracy, because that's what's happening in the Enlightenment. And there are lots of good things, of course, about encouraging, you know, people to cultivate and develop their talent and use that for the public good. But Rousseau also thought there were problems with that. Right. So and it's maybe useful to think about, you know, kind of a capitalist economy versus a feudal economy. Right. And nobody wants to go back to feudalism. But Rousseau says, imagine, Rousseau invites us to think, you know, about, you know, the moral psychology of people under feudalism. Right? If you're poor in a futile economy, you're you don't have to, like, spend time thinking about why you're poor. You know why you're poor. It's because your parents were poor. And it's no reflection on you, you know, or your talents or your efforts or any of that. And the same thing if you're rich, right? If you're rich, it's not like you deserved it. You know that. You just you know that you're rich because you inherited your money. Right. And you're you're estate. Right. You know, in the case of the nobles. Right. But you move to a market economy, and there's a very significant psychological shift. Right. Because now if you're poor, it's because you're not smart like the rich people, or you didn't try hard. Right. Like the rich people. Right. In, you know, more colloquial terms, it's because you're lazy and stupid. Right. And if you're rich, by contrast, it means, boy, are you smart. Boy, are you a hard worker, and you deserve all the money you can get. Right. And the richer you are, that just means that you're all the better a person. Right. And Rousseau thinks, honestly, that this is this is dangerous, maybe even perverse, because he wants people to focus on their moral character. Right. Not focusing about how great they are. Right. Or focusing, by contrast, on how terrible they are for the reason that they're poor, which has nothing to do with their character as far as Rousseau is concerned. In fact, probably is a point in their favor. So Rousseau points out just how pathological he thinks this is, and he really wants us to kind of get our get our values back in order in an unequal world, which he thinks could be best achieved by reducing that inequality. Right. Because, you know, that's how we can reduce, you know, kind of the demoralizing effect on the poor and this kind of entitled effect among the rich.
GR: Now, very very prescient psychologically. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher. And my guest is the political science professor David Lay Williams. So, thinking about Rousseau, but I want to ask a more general point. But thinking about Rousseau, there's obviously a lot of contradictions and hypocrisies between a lot of Rousseau’s writings and Rousseau’s actual life. I've read a couple of biographies of him, and I think that makes him more interesting, actually. But in writing this book, did you come to any general conclusions about the relationship between the life experiences of these thinkers and then what they have to say? Any sense of influence?
DLW: Yeah. You know, I it's interesting to reflect on that. I certainly one thing I do in the book is I try to put each thinker in a historical context. Right. To explain why they might have been interested in inequality. Right. But I think your question is even more specific than that. What about the specific life experiences and maybe the background of each thinker? Right. And you mentioned even the possibility of hypocrisies. Right. And on this account, we might look to the first figure in the book, again, Plato, who has all kinds of problems with rich people and says, you know, it's impossible to be both rich and virtuous at the same time. Plato, it turns out, was rich (overlapping laughter). He was very rich. And, you know, it's interesting to reflect on that. Right. Was Plato saying I'm a bad person? Was Plato saying I'm the exception? Right. He doesn't tell us. Right. I mean, I think what we you know, you people are free to, you know, draw from these facts however they want. I think maybe kind of the most you know, I think what I'm comfortable in drawing on from this is that Plato did spend a lot of time around a lot of other rich people. Right. And, you know, and many of them, of course, were relatives like his Uncle Critias was one of the tyrants of Athens imposed on Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War, a brutal murderer. Right. So it's not unreasonable to think that. Well, maybe Plato's experience growing up around a lot of rich people actually informed his understanding of rich people. And maybe he had a better angle on that than some others who maybe didn't grow up under those circumstances.
GR: Hmm. So you've obviously thought deeply about all of these thinkers that are in your book. Is there one that you think has it most right when it comes to inequality? Can you pick one that way?
DLW: Right. That's a real tough question to answer. Right. And might be taking the cheap way out, because I think every one of them has some handle on an important truth in the way they approach this. So I'm not going to pick a single one. But what I can point to is that there's you know, there's certainly a pattern among some of the thinkers who say you kind of draw distinction. And this is true, I think, in Plato very expressly and Rousseau more implicitly, that for them, this kind of a radical opposition, a radical a path of radical reform and a path of moderate reform. Right. Right. They both say, look, ideally we should be, you know, a very equal and not completely equal. Nobody argues for perfect equality, not even Marx, for that matter. Should make that clear. And Plato says, ideally, the rich people should have no more than four times the wealth of the poorest, for example. But he says, look, you know, that's that's if you're creating a new society from scratch, I guess. And he's saying that in the context of establishing a colony in a territory that's never been occupied before, he said do it this way. But he says, look, if you're writing laws for, you know, a political entity that already exists and already has that's distributed a lot of property is like, no, you can't do that. Without killing a lot of people. Right. And maybe some people are open to that solution. Right. But Plato doesn't love that and says, look, you know, you still have to get more equal than you are and you need to work on it consistently. But he also says that ideally, what you want to do is try to get buy-in if at least some people find some people who are rich and feel guilty about it. Right. And have them do some of the hard work of persuading their friends and colleagues and business partners to realize, you know, it's not the worst thing to have their taxes raised and to build schools and, you know, and other public entities for people who are less fortunate than them. Right. And to kind of work toward a greater equality. Right. And I, you know, I, I like, you know, contemplating the idea that there are moderate paths forward. Right. Because, you know, the other path, you know, at the polar opposite end of the book is Marx. Right. And Marx, you know, fundamentally just kind of concludes that, you know, rich people aren’t going to give up their money without a fight. Right. And you just need to come prepared to fight. And, you know and, you know, I can't you know, I don't, maybe Marx is right. I don't know. There are scholars who certainly think that Marx is. I'd like to hope there's another path available. I'd like to hope that people are persuadable. Yeah.
GR: So we only have about a minute left, and I wanted to squeeze this last question in, and I think you kind of are already answering it, but I'll give you another few seconds to add on to it. And that is obviously, you have thought a lot about inequality as a social issue and a social problem very deeply. What would you do if you were one of Plato's philosopher kings, or to use a phrase that's out there, maybe dictator for a day, to address inequality through policy change? What policy changes would you recommend? In about a minute. I'm sorry. I'm sure that's a more complicated question.
DLW: Yeah. So I'll try to do this quickly with a reference I think I haven't mentioned before, but John Stuart Mill has a wonderful range of policy proposals for addressing this. Things like having more co-ops, like worker co-ops, you know, businesses owned by workers, will lead to a more equal distribution. Honestly, you know, estate or inheritance taxes, you know, on fortunes over X amount of money. Right. These things should be politically doable. Right. In a democracy. Right. The will is, you know, I think there for things like that, and we just need to find politicians with enough courage, I think, to seriously pursue them.
GR: Hmm. We'll have to leave it there. That was David Lay Williams and again, his new book is titled “The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought From Plato to Marx.” If you've heard of some of those guys and you want to learn a bit more about what they have to say, or if you have concerns about economic inequality and want some deeper grounding, this book is a great choice for you. I want to emphasize that it is not an arcane work of political philosophy. It's extremely readable and it's an enjoyable read. David, thanks again for making the time to talk. Great book. Thanks a lot.
DLW: My pleasure.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
John Sanbonmatsu on the Campbell Conversations
Jun 28, 2025
John Sanbonmatsu
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I’m Grant Reeher. Last week I spoke with a writer who had a new book out on the foods of upstate New York. Today, we stay with food, but we move very far from that in many respects. My guest is John Sanbonmatsu. He's a philosophy professor of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and the author of a new book titled, “The Omnivore's Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals and Ourselves”. Professor Sanbonmatsu, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book.
John Sanbonmatsu: Thanks so much, I'm delighted to be here.
GR: Well, we're glad you could make the time. So, as our listeners are about to discover, this book is very provocative, I think it's fair to say and it has an intriguing title. So, “The Omnivore's Deception…”, break that down for me, what is the omnivore's deception?
JS: Sure. Well, my book is really about our exploitation of animals and the food economy. And the three modes of deception, really, that I talk about in the book are, well, first, the fact that the meat, eggs, dairy and fish industries hide from consumers, the incredible mass violence that undergirds this system to get food on our plate. The second mode of deception really is the, a kind of whole discourse that's been developed in the last 20 years for so-called humane meat. The enlightened omnivore, kind of dating back to Michael Pollan's book, “The Omnivore's Dilemma”, which we might talk about. And that is simply a myth, you can't have these animal products without causing enormous suffering to animals, no matter how small scale the agriculture is. And then the third mode of deception is simply self-deception. We engage in what the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called bad faith, which is to say we deceive ourselves and we want to believe we can have our meat and our conscience, too. And I make clear, I hope to my reader, that we can't.
GR: Well, you anticipated one of the questions I wanted to ask you when you talked about smaller scale, sort of, you know, local sourcing kind of things. Well, I'll ask you that right away, I mean, what is the problem with paying attention to the scale, if you’re an eater paying attention to the scale and the method of raising animals? You know, you focus on locally sourced, smaller, non-industrial scale animal growing operations, where's the problem there?
JS: Yeah. You know, it's thanks largely to animal advocates that the public is aware of what we call factory farming or intensive industrialized animal agriculture. And the animals in that system, which by the way, that's 99% of where our products come from, food animal products, 99%. And it's horrible, it's horrific the way animals are treated in that system. But what people don't realize is that the critique of our violence against the animals for use in food dates back 3000 years. They'd been ethical vegetarians during that whole period. You know, Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist wrote, he was an ethical vegetarian, he wrote an incredible critique about a slaughterhouse. So, really, my book is examining the underlying relations of domination and violence in all forms of animal agriculture, including smaller scale, which is, by the way, not scalable. You can't feed 10 billion human beings, you know, with pasture raised animals, we’d need several additional earths. But my focus, so I do talk about the environmental problems at lengths in my book, but really the focus is on the ethical question of what gives us the right to subject defenseless, sensitive beings to violence.
GR: Well, and you also talk about, I believe, some of the health implications for humans and the way that our diets are currently constructed. Just give us a quick overview, and others have written about this, obviously, what are the health problems with how we currently eat animals?
JS: Yeah, well, it's interesting. When I talk about these issues in class, because I teach ethics at the college level, you know, students, naturally, they think, well, we can't live without animal products, we can't live without the protein from animals and so forth. And what's ironic about that is that practically every scientific study, and I'm talking about studies in The Lancet and JAMA and you know, top medical journals, show that in a plant based diet is actually superior in like every category compared to an animal based one. I mean, in terms of lower rates of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, even longevity, vegans live longer than so-called omnivores. And so there's just these sort of scientific facts. But leaving that aside there, I mean, there's just a whole slew of problems for us health-wise and epidemiologically. For example, 75% of all emerging diseases are zoonotic in origin. That means that the diseases that are afflicting our species and that have in the past have come from other animals. Most of those diseases historically have come from exploited animals, smallpox, cholera, Spanish flu, even AIDS. These all developed out of human food exploitation, exploitation of animals for food. So it's, and now of course we have the H5N1 virus, avian flu and the WHO, well, 20 years ago, excuse me, warned that if that thing becomes transmissible between and among humans, it could kill 150 million of us. So that's just an example of why it's even in our own interests, and again that's not the basis of my book but I do talk about this, it's in our interest to stop this too.
GR: And what about the impact on the environment? That's another concern that drives a lot of people to vegetarianism. You'll meet a lot of vegetarians that say, I am this way because I'm concerned about the environment. I have a colleague, I think, who's primarily driven by that.
JS: Yeah. You know, the first sentence of my book in my introduction, I talk about that, that, you know, occasionally you'll hear people say, well, I've cut back on meat or I tried vegetarianism once for the environment. And I'll tell you, I don't like that (laughter), I don't like that at all. As I explain, because it's like the person who says that they, in my experience, they often say, well, I don't do it for the animals, you know. It's like, well, if you care about the animals, you must be some kind of nutcase, right? The fact that we're killing, conservatively, 80 billion land animals every year, mostly birds and mammals, and up to 2.7 trillion marine animals every single year, each animal of which, you know, is an individual with thoughts and experiences, emotions and so forth. The idea that we should want to spare them a violent death at our hands, that just drives people crazy, right? So the environmental issue is crucial because what people don't understand is that this confluence, as I discuss it in the book, between capitalist development on the one hand and human supremacism or speciesism on the other, the confluence of these systems in the food economy is the greatest ecologically destructive force on the earth, right? So people are familiar with global warming. Well, global warming is not the biggest environmental problem on the Earth today. That would be mass species extinction, right? So, we're experiencing the greatest mass species extinction event in 65 million years. Global warming is part of that problem, but it isn't the only thing driving it. So we're talking about the death of all the animals on the earth. Birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, even invertebrates, like insects, scientists refer to it as the insect apocalypse. You know, honeybees are being devastated. Crustaceans, horseshoe crabs, who are on the earth hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs are being wiped out. This is the 50th anniversary of the movie Jaws, which I saw when it came out as a boy.
GR: So did I.
JS: Yeah. And I'll tell you, when I asked my students how many humans are killed by sharks every year, they always get that right, which is about ten to 20 globally. And when I asked them how many sharks are being killed by humans, they say, well, I don't know, 2000, 500? It's actually 100 million every single year. And all of that violence is put out of sight and out of mind. But it's literally tearing up the web of life on our planet. So, yeah, I could go on and on about it, but it's, it's something that people have got to start paying attention to because we're dooming our own species because of this system.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with the philosophy professor, John Sanbonmatsu. And we're discussing his new book, it's called, “The Omnivores Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals and Ourselves” and it argues for the total abolition of the animal economy. So let's get to what I think is probably the heart of your argument and where your passion most lies and that is the moral concerns. And you've already spoken to them in several different ways, but the moral concerns about raising an animal to kill and eat it. How would you crystallize that that argument that you want to make?
JS: Well, you know, there's, any system of power or dominance has to be continually reinforced. It's not like it's one and done. You know, you don't just set up a system for, whether it's human slavery or, you know, racism, a kind of racial hierarchy or gender hierarchy. You don't just set that up and then it just goes on, on its own, it has to be continually reinforced. So all of us are raised from birth to, with the idea that there are these classes of animals who simply don't matter and it doesn't matter morally how many of them we kill. It just, they're irrelevant, you know what I mean? Which is why, as I said, we can kill billions and indeed trillions of animals every year without it even disturbing anybody. But here's the thing, most people listening to your show probably have lived with a cat or dog. I mean, that's statistically the case. And if you live with a cat or dog, you know that they are unique individuals. They have personalities and temperaments and emotions. They have different relationships with different people. You know, they have different quirks, they have a kind of biography and you can see them go through the stages of life that we do, the playful kitten and then the kind of, you know, the limping elder cat who you know, tolerates the juvenile you've just introduced into the house and so on. So we know that our cats and dogs are individuals whose lives matter and who deserve our respect and are worthy of our love. Well, let me tell you, everyone should be disturbed by the fact that chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, oxen all these animals that we think of as stupid, irrational, dirty, they are no different than our cats and dogs at all. I mean, scientifically, ecologically there's just a ton of research on this. Scientific American has published articles on chicken intelligence, there's empathy in pigs and so forth. So if you think that every time you sit down to a meal, you are eating the body of some, you know, richly endowed creature like a cat or dog with sentience, with subjectivity, then you might begin to understand why this is a moral issue of the first order.
GR: And at the risk of sorting out my animals, anthropomorphically, I can readily see the appeal of the argument that you're making for cattle, sheep, pigs and chicken. But what about something like fish? I have a friend who's very tuned in to the kind of concerns you're talking about. He describes himself as a pescatarian. So what's the problem with fish?
JS: Yeah, it's funny. You know, I remember like, many years ago, I'd go to someone's wedding or something, and the caterer would put chicken in front of me after having heard I'm an ethical vegetarian and think, well, if you eat chicken, though, right? So the idea that chickens are animals would not compute. And similarly, I've met a number of people over the years who call themselves vegetarians but they eat fish. It's very bizarre because the signs that we're finding with fish, it's just fascinating. Fish do better at some forms of cognitive reasoning than primates, including the great apes, including humans. They have memories, they have emotions. Now, the thing is, as mammals, we're just not equipped well to perceive the feelings or thoughts of fish, right? Because they don't have the facial muscles that we have. So we think of them as silent, gaping, animate objects, I guess, right? I mean, I went fishing as a kid and you bring the, oh, and now the fish is flapping on the dock. It doesn't occur to us, well, that fish is now suffocating to death and is experiencing the same trauma and stress hormones that we would as mammals if we were drowning. But that is the case. And this is just, now certainly there's still a lot we don't understand about fish cognition. And the fishing industry is always funding studies to prove that fish don't feel pain and so forth. But I mean, it's just a silly argument because evolutionarily, how can you have a sophisticated organism that's going to survive, like the Greenland shark lives up to 400 years, I mean, there are fish that live a really long time, who can't experience pain? So, yeah, so I think we've got to stop writing off entire classes of beings as worthless because they aren't worthless.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I’m talking with John Sanbonmatsu. He's a philosophy professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and the author of a new book titled, “The Omnivore's Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals and Ourselves” and we've been discussing his book. Well, you lay it out in the first half of the program, I think very well, your main arguments for why we need to eliminate the animal economy. Who are some of the main sort of voices out there that you are trying to correct or take issue with?
JS: Well, you know, I go after a number of different folks in a certain sense, but centrally I'm concerned to refute arguments developed by the very popular food writer Michael Pollan. In his book, for example, “The Omnivore's Dilemma”, that book had an enormous cultural influence over the way Americans view our relations with animals, particularly in food. It's still, just took a look the other day, it's like 20 years later, it's still in the top ten bestsellers on food policy, it's part of the state mandated curriculum in middle and high schools in different states around the country. I couldn’t possibly exaggerate the influence that book. And, you know, without taking too much time, Pollan's arguments ended up creating kind of intellectual scaffolding for this myth of the enlightened omnivore, you know, locavorism and so forth. All this idea that we can raise animals, quote, humanely, kill them with compassion and so forth. And so I show the problems with those arguments as well as similar arguments by Temple Grandin, another very popular apologist for the animal system, Barbara Kingsolver, the acclaimed writer. And if you examine their arguments, they're not only wrong, but they are intellectually dishonest and sadistic. There's this undertow of violence and sadism against animals in those works.
GR: So let me throw out some potential challenges or problems with this that I thought of and see what you have to say about them. And the first one is very Syracuse oriented, I don't expect you to be an expert on Syracuse, but we have in Syracuse a real overpopulation problem with deer. And it creates a whole lot of problems, creates problems on the roads, it creates problems in people's properties and the ticks and so on. If we stopped all hunting, for example, that would probably make those problems just worse. So how would we deal with an overpopulation of deer and Syracuse if John Sanbonmatsu was running the program?
JS: Yeah, well, first, I just want to note that the one species that is causing the greatest damage on this planet is actually us and no one talks about culling us. No one talks about culling real estate developers and capitalists and all the folks who are…
GR: Fair enough, fair enough.
JS: I mean, if you look at the ecosystem of Syracuse and you compare human impacts on the environment in terms of consumption of goods from China and blah, blah, blah, with what the deer are doing, it's, you know, no contest. So it's very interesting to me that communities, the first thing they do is reach for the gun. Like, okay, this, first of all, this is a problem for whom? It's for motorists? Well, don't forget the highways and the roadways were put through the living habitats, the living spaces and homes of all of thousands of different species and then they are supposed to get out of the way. So that's number one, there's structural violence against animals built in and the starting point is always, let's assume that all these animals lives are disposable, interchangeable, what do we do with this problem? That's number one. Now, in terms of the Syracuse issue, it's true. I don't know the specifics, but I've looked into this in other cases, there are alternatives, okay? First of all, one reason that deer and other populations are increasing is because humans have, through hunting, just killed all the predators, right? So there is no ecological balance to be restored. Secondly, there are nonviolent alternatives. There's birth control, there's relocation. And I'm not saying that those are easy alternatives either but in my having examined the planning process at the local level in some communities, there's a big hunting lobby and these folks want to kill the animals. And so they bring in experts from, you know, the NRA or hunting lobbies in order to promote their agenda. And the problem is that state wildlife officials are hunters. And, you know, it's run by these agencies are actually not ideologically neutral. They're run by the same constituency. So I think that if we start, in my book, I say, look, why don't we have a different mode of address with the other beings we share the planet with? Let's approach them nonviolently for a change. You know, we've tried this other approach which is to treat their lives as so much disposable garbage. Why don't we instead view them with respect and go from there? And so that's what I would say is like, what if we have a paradigm shift and we say, okay, those deer are as important to us as our own cats and dogs or even, you know, other humans and how can we live with them in harmony, you know, without violence? That's what I would say.
GR: Yeah. I just, not to sound snarky, but I'm thinking of when you mentioned predators, you know, if I were a deer, if that makes sense, I'm not sure I'd rather be killed by a pack of coyotes taking me down or a hunter killing me quickly, but I get your point. It's a different way to think about this. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the philosophy professor John Sanbonmatsu. So I want to get to some how do we get there type of questions, because I've had many guests on this program who make arguments that are, you know, hard to imagine becoming completely successful politically, policy-wise. And as a political scientist, you know, I am sympathetic to much of what you are saying, but I also really can't see what you are arguing here getting much traction in contemporary America or the world. Do you have a political strategy attached to this argument that you could briefly put forward? Or is that is that sort of outside of your lane?
JS: You know, it's a fair question and a really important one. The short answer is, I don't have a concrete you know, I don't have a blueprint for social change. In my first book, “The Postmodern Prince” I talked about some of the obstacles to thinking about strategy and long term change on the political left. And there are a lot of reasons why it's hard to imagine an alternative to this system that we're living in. But, you know, as a philosopher and thinker, I'm really trying to first of all, you know, before we can get to the question of strategy, in a sense, we have to understand what the problem is, A, B, we have to understand and agree that this is a problem like morally. And so if we want to survive on this planet, let me put it this way, if we want to survive on this planet and if we want to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and not see a kind of monster there, then we have to rethink our relations with the other natural beings, you know, of the Earth. Certainly I'm promoting veganism but I'm not, I don't, but, you know, I've been a vegan for over 30 years and things and animals are being killed in greater and greater numbers. Per capita, meat consumption is up. There's been a whole kind of political reaction against animal advocacy, just as there's been political reaction against women's rights and civil rights. So the thing is, and you know this, that historically slavery existed, persisted for thousands of years in human culture. It was accepted almost everywhere. No one thought that that system would ever be ended. And then, of course, there was racial slavery, you know, European racial slavery that began, you know, five centuries ago. No one thought that would ever end and it has ended. And maybe now not to get into, you know, there still existing slavery, but at least not legally. Women into the 1970’s, that was the first time it became illegal, thanks to feminist efforts, illegal for men to rape their wives in the home, conjugal right was simply part of standard English law for a thousand years or more. So change is possible and I think that there's a way in which by, when we say, oh well it's impossible for everyone to give up the animal economy, it becomes a self-confirming prophecy, clearly. And so I wrote this book to try to intervene against that self-serving fatalism, that, which again I call self-deception where we say, oh, well, there's no real, we can't do anything about it, it's too big a problem. But the problems we face are really kind of out of hand, right? I mean, global warming and species extinction, not to mention fascism rising everywhere around the world and the liberal capitalist democracy waning. You know what I'm saying? So these, that's a cop out, though, to say, well, these are very big problems and what can we do?
GR: Well, we've got about 2 minutes left or so and I want to try to squeeze two questions in. So this will be kind of your lightning round, if you will, a couple of quick answers to these and they're both tough questions, so I apologize for that. But you already mentioned something about the political moment we're in that there's a lot of backlash against different things right now. And I'm wondering about whether given the layers of backlash that we're seeing, that what you are saying right now is going to be heard by a lot of people as kind of an instance of political correctness on steroids, is there a way that you've thought about diffusing that in terms of how people are going to hear this? Quickly, if you could.
JS: Yeah, I mean, people think that the question of animals and meat is at best a trivial one, right? Or at worst, it's political correctness on steroids. But this is, it's always been the case historically that any challenge to an established system of power and authority, you know, the people who are questioning it, whether it's slavery or women's subordination to men, are viewed as zealots and crazy people and so forth. And what I argue in my book is that this is the most important issue of our time, if you look at it. And I think that if people give my book a chance, they will, by the end of it, they'll agree with me. So, yeah, just ask people to keep an open mind and read the book.
GR: Okay, and my last question, just a few seconds left, I want to be very honest with you, I want to tell you something you probably already knew about me. I'm not going to do what you're telling me to do (laughter). I'm not going to become a vegan. I recognize the arguments for it, but it's probably not going to happen. But if I were to do just one thing short of that, what would it be? Would it be to avoid highly tortured processed animals of a certain kind of meat? What would be the one thing you'd want me to do?
JS: One thing I'd ask you to do is to recognize that what you're doing is wrong. The argument in the book is that you can't get humane meat or better sourced or, that's the whole point of the book. And if you can live with yourself knowing that what you're doing is causing horrific suffering and violence to helpless beings who deserve better, that, you know, that's a personal choice that you or I or whoever make. Not you, but, you know I'm saying, if we choose that.
GR: I get you.
JS: But that is the situation, it is all or nothing.
GR: Okay, well, I will tell you this, you have got me thinking about something I wasn't thinking about before. So that was John Sanbonmatsu and again, his new book is titled, “The Omnivore's Deception: What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals and Ourselves”. And it may not change your habits, but it will challenge them and it will certainly maybe change some of your assumptions. John, a very provocative book, to say the least and I can agree that (this is a) very important argument that you're making.
JS: Thanks for having me.
GR: You bet. You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
June Hersh on the Campbell Conversations
Jun 21, 2025
June Hersh
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is June Hersh. She's a writer and a speaker who has in the past written about the Holocaust and food history. And she has a new book out now on the food of Upstate New York. It's titled, “The Flavor of Upstate New York: Iconic Dishes, Delicious History and Reinvented Recipes”. June, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book.
June Hersh: Thank you so much, Grant. And thank you for having me.
GR: Well, it's a pleasure having you. So I want to start with a very basic question, because I'm sure, just as I said that, our listeners are starting to think about specific foods. And so what would you say, if you were just giving a list, what would you say are the four or five greatest hits of the dishes and flavors of upstate New York, just rattling them off?
JH: Well, you know what, what I love about the food of upstate New York is it's very representative of the different immigrants and the groups that inhabit that region. I love that because food history is really what drives me. I love to know the why to what we're eating. And I think that the food of upstate New York is really very illustrative of that aspect of food. So I love a dish like chicken riggies because it represents the best of Italian culture and the resourcefulness of how they brought, you know, their flavors to New York and made it pretty simple and was good for a budget. I think salt potatoes is genius. It's basically creating a mashed potato in a fabulous salty covering. And again, it came out of the ingenuity of Irish immigrants who needed to stretch a dollar and we're digging up salt anyway and kind of make it work. The college influences in upstate New York are everywhere. And I don't think it's seen any more clearly than in the garbage plate, the best antidote to a frat party hangover. And so I think that is definitely one of those dishes that define the region. And then I would say one of my favorites represents the German influences, and that would be beef on weck. I love a French dip, but when you add that pungent, fruity caraway seed to the roll, you've added such extra deliciousness to it. So those are among my four favorite upstate hits that I think represent the culture of upstate New York.
GR: That's great. I want to come back to at least one of those later. So, but let me ask you this, maybe a tougher question. If you were forced to pick the most emblematic, the most iconic dish of upstate, what would it be and why?
JH: I would probably say if I was to pick one, it would probably be the garbage plate.
GR: Wow.
JH: And that would be because it represents, even though it is by no means the most popular and for some, it's completely off putting, but because it has so many different elements in it, I think it really represents the confluence of, you know, ingredients that represent the region. So you have hot dogs in it and you have beans and you have macaroni salad and you have French fries and you have all of these different elements coming together. Isn't that really what Upstate New York is all about? It's really bringing together all these very different cultures and backgrounds and heritage and somehow making something interesting, inventive, a tad quirky, you know I call it a culinary curiosity. But that, to me is what I discovered about upstate New York. It's not what you always expect. And so I think the garbage plate is it is very unexpected dish of food.
GR: And so you mentioned that that one has perhaps a more limited appeal beyond the area, let's flip it around. What is the upstate dish that you think has been taken up and become the most popular elsewhere, across the country, maybe even around the world? Is there an upstate dish that, you know, you can find almost anywhere?
JH: Sure. Well, without question, and you know, a lot of food history is really food law. And you don't know where that boundary is between fact and slight exaggeration. So, of course, we have the hamburger, which many take claim that it took place at the county fair and that's where they ran out of a certain meat and they made ground beef and they made a hamburger and certainly that is a ubiquitous food. But I would have to ere on the side of two dishes because I'm torn. One, my sweet tooth would tell me the sundae, the ice cream sundae, which really did very likely originate in upstate New York when a pastor went to a local drugstore and they wanted to make something special for him on Sunday after church and they added some cherries and some whipped cream and a little bit of syrup, and they created the ice cream sundae. They changed the spelling because they did not want to offend church goers on Sunday to come up with such a frivolous name of a dessert and somehow watered down the message of the importance of that day of rest. The other one is I love the foods that have come out of Saratoga and the club sandwich, which again, is reported to have come from that region and definitely the potato chip. Who doesn't like a good crispy potato chip? So I think the club sandwich with a side order of potato chips is pretty much a mainstay. Anywhere you go, you can order a club sandwich with a side order of chips. And that's going to represent food of upstate New York.
GR: So you're really blowing my mind here because you've selected all these things that are extremely well known. When I was thinking of that question myself, I was not thinking big enough because I thought you were going to tell me Buffalo wings, because you can find those anywhere. But these are much more you know, standard dishes. So, it's fascinating.
JH: Yes. And I what I like about them is people don't realize their provenance, they don't realize where these foods originally came from. That's what I love discovering and finding out. Oh, what was the origin of that dish? Really? The potato chip in Saratoga really was an invention of an African-American chef who worked at a hotel there at a hotel restaurant. And supposedly Vanderbilt did not like the potatoes he was served with and out of frustration, they very thinly shaved the potatoes and just threw it in a vat of hot oil and served these to him and they became a hit. And so, you know, you look at something like that and you say, look how that just came about, that's just, it's fascinating. And it's again, like you said, it's something that everyone eats everywhere. It was immediately embraced and it definitely came out of Saratoga.
GR: And then you also have, you know, pleasing this uber-wealthy person and then creating something that is totally, you know, plebian in its attraction.
JH: Correct, yeah.
GR: I like that piece too. Well, you may have already sort of hinted at this, but, and I don't know whether this question really has an answer, but is it possible to say what drives the nature of upstate cuisine? It sounds like ethnicity is a big piece of it. I was just wondering, is there anything about the place itself? You know, like the, I don't know, the snow the cold or anything that you think would have an influence on the nature of the food that's been produced here?
JH: Sure, without question. Because the food originated, if you go back to the first New Yorkers, you had the three sisters. You had the beans that were so very important because they thrived on the land where the Native Americans, where the Iroquois tribe, you know, planted its roots. And so those foods were indigenous to the indigenous people. And that's really, I think a hallmark of the food of upstate. A lot of places take New York City, I wrote a book called, “Iconic New York Jewish Food”, it's got fabulous food in it. It has all of the wonderful things that we love about New York food but they are not necessarily in New York because of anything New York City contributes to them other than the people. So a knish, it's not grown in New York.
GR: (laughter)
JH: Smoked salmon, it doesn't swim necessarily in our waters. And so it was derived by the people, whereas the food of upstate New York was derived from the resourcefulness of the people using the land, using what they had to work with. So you start with the Iroquois and they had the three sisters and the beautiful beans and then you go to the Finger Lakes and we have these fabulous wines. You go to Albany that had an abundance of sturgeon and you look at the land and you look at the trout fishing that takes place, and you look at grape pie, which came from the Concord grapes, and you say, what drove those dishes? Well, it was the resourcefulness of the people who were there who had the wherewithal to take what the land was giving them and turn them into delectable, iconic foods. Very different than most other regions. Chicago Pizza has nothing really to do with the ingredients that come from Chicago, but the foods of upstate New York are driven by the ingredients that are grown in that region.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with June Hersh, and we're discussing her new book titled, “The Flavor of Upstate New York: Iconic Dishes, Delicious History and Reinvented Recipes”. So the question I just asked about what drives the upstate cuisine is related in a way to a different topic of your other writing and speaking about food that I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about. And as I mentioned at the outset of the program, you've written and you've spoken very widely about the Holocaust and food history. And one thing struck me right away is that that combination seems very paradoxical in some ways, in that food is often considered a lighter and a happier topic. I mean, you're obviously very happy talking to me about food right here in this program. But the Holocaust is about as serious and as heavy as it gets. So I just wonder if you could reflect on how those two fit together. Do they, you know, is it an awkward fit? How do you how do you manage that?
JH: No, it's actually a seamless fit. And it fit in so many different ways in the context of the food with connection to the Holocaust, but more specifically with Holocaust survivors, really helped shape their ability to survive because food became a link, whether they were partisans fighting in the woods, whether they were unfortunately interned in a concentration or in a death camp, or whether they were refugees in another region. The food was their link to their best and happiest times. I heard from every Holocaust survivor I spoke to, most specifically the men even more than the women, that food was the connection to the mother that they lost in the Holocaust. And so their ability to preserve that food memory and to continue that thread that wove through their childhoods and carried them through this awfully traumatic time, but brought them forward into survival, becomes so very strong. It's not a fragile, tenuous thread, It is an incredibly strong thread. And so food in the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors is a link and it takes them from tragedy to triumph. And so talking about food is just, it's a way to bring them to happy times, it's a way to get them through the difficult ones and it's a way to ensure that their legacy and their family's history and culture and that the Jewish people, what we've been imbued with for centuries continues. And so food is a perfect vehicle for that.
GR: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. So you must, you obviously have collected some very powerful stories on this topic. And I was just wondering, when it comes to the food connection, that you have one favorite one that you could tell us briefly, I mean, I'm sure you could take the rest of the program talking about it, but is there one you can pick?
JH: You know, I wrote the book originally in 2011. At the time it was called, “Recipes Remembered: A Celebration of Survival”. It's been reinvented and rebranded as, “Food, Hope and Resilience”. And what remains is that every recipe in that book represents somebody’s the best version of a dish and not the dishes that you expect, not the typical Ashkenazi dishes, the matzo ball soup, although they're in there, and brisket and kugel and all of those, of course they're in there. But what's represented, which is what I love, is the cooking traditions of the diaspora and how a Dominican, a Jew who found themselves in the Dominican Republic made arroz con pollo, and that was her iconic Jewish dish. Or one who found herself in Milan because she wanted to gain passage to Palestine, Israel, as it was called at the time, that she gave me a recipe for semolina gnocchi. And you just say, how is that a Jewish dish? Well, it was a Jewish dish because it was prepared by a Jewish Holocaust survivor as she was waiting to make aliyah to Israel. So when I think of what is my favorite dish from that, every one of the dishes is connected to one of my survivors, and it would be like choosing my favorite child. But I will say that there are dishes that I make again and again. And whether they're my favorites or not, they seem to represent, for me, the stories in the book. There is a lentil soup recipe from a Sephardic survivor, part of my culture is Sephardic. My grandfather's family was expelled from Spain and they ended in Greece and so that represents that part of my heritage. And I think it's one of my favorite recipes for that reason. And it is so easy and so delicious and so practical. And I think it has every factor in it that represents the Sephardic community and the Greek community during the Holocaust, because it's inexpensive, it's fast, it's nutritious, it's hearty, it's sturdy and it's a very practical dish and they are very practical people, so I'll go with that.
GR: You're listening to the casual conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with June Hersh. She's a food writer and speaker and the author of a new book titled, “The Flavor of Upstate New York: Iconic Dishes, Delicious History and Reinvented Recipes” and we've been discussing her book. Well, I want to leave the topic of food and Holocaust and come back now to upstate. And I intimated this before when I was talking about the potato chip, but it seems to me that the iconic dishes of upstate New York seem on the whole to be very accessible, unpretentious, one could even say working class. And I was just wondering, does upstate boast any signature dishes that would be considered high cuisine that you might find in a top restaurant in New York City, for example?
JH: Well, I would say that if you look at the dishes that were made like Chicken French, which is really, you know, chicken française, it was a riff on veal française, but it was, became a very iconic dish in upstate New York. So much so that the chef that I guess innovated it, he didn't invent it, he actually wrote an entire book about ‘Frenching’ food and how to turn it into that. And that's definitely something that you would find in an upscale restaurant, probably one that actually has a tablecloth on the table as opposed to most upstate dishes, which I think are best eaten on a slightly worn wooden table that maybe has a nice little wobble to it. I also think when you go back to some of the restaurants in New York like Delmonico's and the Waldorf and some of the really high end New York restaurants, they co-opted some of the upstate inventions, one of them being Thousand Island dressing. And you know, when you think about it, you say, oh, well, Thousand Island dressing, that's not a big deal. But believe it or not, it became a real taste sensation at the high end New York hotels. And they, it was the dressing and the condiment of the day. And so you look at something is as simple as that. And actually, it elevates a lot of foods and you found it in the very best restaurants. It was considered haute cuisine.
GR: Okay, so the other thing that seems to me when I sort of add them all up is a lot of the dishes also seem pretty heavy. You know, like chicken riggies, salt potatoes.
JH: Yep.
GR: Are there any signature dishes of upstate that we might say, this is on the lighter side, this is a light dish?
JH: Well, if you can consider Utica greens as being kind of good for you and a little lighter, I'll go with maybe. (laughter) But for the most part, these are, as you said and I agree and not that they are still today, but their origins were for working class people, they were very practical foods. These were resourceful people who took their backgrounds and interpreted it in dishes that were accessible and easy and also encouraged beer drinking because they were very salty foods. And the tavern and the barkeeps they were very shrewd. They knew that if you were going to serve food at your bar, you want to make sure that they are not thirst quenching but they really make you want to buy a beer or two. And so I'm going to say, no, they are not for the most part. A lot of them are light on the wallet, but they are definitely not light on your waistline. I would not look to upstate New York food as health food, although you can certainly prepare some of them in more healthy ways. You know, you take spiedies for example, that's really just a wonderful skewer of grilled chicken, nothing too heavy about that. And, you know, put that with a salad or some of the fabulous cheese and apples and you pair that together. I mean, that's just lovely and light and delicious, wash it down with a Riesling, I think you have a pretty perfect Sunday lunch. But yeah, I'm going to say they’re stick-to-your-ribs food for the most part.
GR: So you mentioned Utica greens, that's probably my favorite upstate dish. I mean, maybe if calories and fat weren't an issue, I might say Buffalo wings. But anyway, I have a confession here, this is an upstate confession.
JH: Okay.
GR: You mentioned small potatoes at the beginning. I have to say, I am not getting those. I mean, just explain briefly if you could, what I'm missing there because I like a good mashed potato, I like, you know, a golden potato, baked. But I've never quite understood the hype over those.
JH: Really? See, and the first time I made them, I said to myself, well, how is that so different? I usually toss a little salt in the water when I boil a potato. But the product of salt potatoes, it really is completely different. And I think what happens is, is that when you put this copious amount of salt, I mean, it's like half a cup of salt to a pound and a half of potatoes. I mean, that's a lot of salt when you put that in it chemically, you know, from a scientific standpoint, changes the way the water boils and so what it really does is it cooks the potato from the inside out rather than the outside in. So instead of the outside getting soft in the inside staying firm, the inside gets creamy and the outside, and I think the trick to salt potatoes is when you take them out of the water, you have to let them sit because you have to let the salt complete its destiny and you have to let it dry out the skin, leave it's salty crust outside. So that when you, and I almost eat them not piping hot because I really like them to sit and I have a recipe in the book for salt potatoes. And again, I'm looking at the recipe and it looks like, well, that's pretty easy, it's salt and water, potatoes. But then you put butter on it and you pour this melted butter on it. I think it's everything that I love about a good potato. It's got the crust like a baked potato, it's got the interior like a mashed potato. I don't know, I think it's luscious, try it again.
GR: Yeah, I'm doing it wrong. You've given me the key here, okay, and I understand the concept now, so I will try it again.
JH: And listen, you're in Syracuse. It was the Salt City! I mean, for goodness sakes, you’ve got to make a salt potato.
GR: So we have about 3 minutes left, and I want to squeeze in two questions, if I could. So, the second one is longer, so we'll be really quick on the first one, just a few seconds on this. Just out of curiosity, you're obviously an expert cook. When you were trying to make an upstate dish, what's your biggest flop you've ever had?
JH: So my flop was baking grape pie because the first time I did it, I didn't, you've got to pinch them and slip the grapes out of their skins and I mistakenly threw the skins away. I didn't follow my own directions. And I read about it again and again and again, the skins is what gives it the fabulous texture. So I now made these and I boiled down the grapes, but I didn't have enough skins in there. I wasn't going to pull them out of my garbage, so I had to make it again and this time I was very careful. I added the skins and it gave the jam the perfect texture, so it all held together, happens to be delicious. If you have never made it, try it. It's like eating Manischewitz jam. That's what it is.
GR: And my last question is, if I'm lucky enough to be coming over to your house for dinner and you were making me a complete upstate meal of your own personal favorites, what would that menu look like?
JH: All right. So I'm going to offer you quickly two options. I love doing breakfast for dinner. I think breakfast for dinner is one of my most fun things to eat.
GR: Okay, I'm going to interrupt real quick and connect you back to your Holocaust discussion. You just connected me to my mother because she would occasionally make us breakfast for dinner when she ran out of ideas.
JH: Oh, exactly. It is definitely a mom hack, there’s no question, breakfast for dinner.
GR: So what would it be?
JH: So, my breakfast for dinner would come from the Borscht Belt because I grew up going to the Catskills on a very regular basis. Proceeds from the sale of the book benefit the Catskills Borscht Belt Museum, so it has a very special place in my heart. And I would make you a plate of cheese blintzes with sour cream on the side. You would have lox in the cream sauce and pickled herring in the cream sauce. You would absolutely have thinly, perfectly sliced smoked salmon. And I would probably then bring in maybe like a lovely champagne similar to what used to be grown because we were the, New York was the champagne capital of the world. And I would make us a fabulous mimosa with champagne from there. I would absolutely have to have cheese from the Hudson Valley because that's perfect. I'd get foie gras from the Hudson Valley and I would make like almost like a chop liver paté with it. And we would spread that on some crackers and we would have ourselves a little feast.
GR: Yeah. And it sounds like that is a breakfast that leads directly to a nap (laughter). Well that sounds wonderful, we'll have to leave it there. That was June Hersh. And again, her new book is titled, “The Flavor of Upstate New York: Iconic Dishes, Delicious History and Reinvented Recipes”. June, this is a fascinating book, it's got so many different components to it. The history, the stories, the actual recipes, really nice work. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me about it.
JH: Thank you, have a delicious day. It's my absolute pleasure.
GR: You’ve been listening to the Campbell conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Pat Hogan on the Campbell Conversations
Jun 14, 2025
Pat Hogan(syr.gov)
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. The Democratic Party primary for Syracuse City Mayor is Tuesday, June 24th, with early voting starting on June 14th. Concluding our interviews with all three of the candidates in that primary, my guest today is Syracuse Common Councilor Pat Hogan, he's also its President Pro Tempore. Councilor Hogan represents the Second District and was first elected to the council back in 2005. He is also chairman of the Greater Syracuse Land Bank and he's board chairman of the Onondaga Industrial Development Agency. Previous interviews with Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens and common councilor Chol Majok can be found on WRVO ‘swebsite on the Campbell Conversations page under the local programing tab. But today, it's Councilor Hogan’s turn, and Councilor Hogan, welcome to the program.
Pat Hogan: Thank you, Grant.
GR: Well, it's great to have you here. We really appreciate you making the time. So, let me just start with a couple of questions I think you could answer super quickly just to give our listeners a full sense of the other positions that you hold outside the council. What's the, or the first one inside the council, what's the significance of being the president pro tempore of the council, what does that mean?
PH: Well, right now, the significance is, as I’m the acting president the council, but I'm an elected member that has a vote. President Hudson, unfortunately, has been ill and I've taken over running the council.
GR: Okay, all right. So essentially that reflects that you are the leader of the council, is that fair to say?
PH: Yes.
GR: Okay, all right. And then equally quick, what does the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency do? What's your role there?
PH: Well, spur economic development, and I think we've been very successful for it. I’m the board chairman, you know, along with some other members of the board, we review proposals from different developments asking for economic benefits that the IDA can give them.
GR: Okay. And obviously, I think it's fair to say that the county executive, the mayor, you folks on the agency, you know the state hit a home run with Micron. We'll come back to that, but yeah, okay, great. So let's get into the questions about the mayor's race. So first of all, could you just briefly give us your overall vision of the city that you have for the next four and possibly eight years?
PH: Well, I think it's a city full of great opportunities and we just have to seize upon them, you know, and recognize what our virtues are and what we're facing as far as issues. I think we have a great city, as far as it's still an affordable city. It's a walkable, accessible city. It has a lot of great neighborhoods in it and I think we should play upon those virtues. On the other hand, we have issues. We have an aging infrastructure, we have a lack of housing, it's a real issue and we have poverty. I think we have to act aggressively to mitigate all those issues, to be a city like we were once, the foremost tier two city, probably in the country.
GR: Yeah. I want to come back to a couple of those things you just mentioned a little bit later, but let me stick with these other questions for now. So how do you think your policy emphasis as a mayor and the initiatives that you would take would be significantly different from what we've seen with the Walsh administration? What would be the shift that people could anticipate?
PH: I have a way more active and aggressive stance on almost every issue. I think this, the last seven years have been sort of in limbo a lot. A lot of times that council and some of the, I'm sure some of our citizens are not sure where the policies were. I'll have definitive policies that will take the city forward. One, for instance, we're going to address the bureaucracy that exists in zoning and codes that prevents people from starting businesses, especially folks who are new to this country, our immigrant folks. It's a maze, it's worthy of Czarist Russia. It's very, very difficult in order to generate tax revenue that, as a city, we have to generate tax revenue and businesses do that.
GR: Well, on that point, you know, I have heard that in many different mayors’ races over the time that I've been in Syracuse, I've been here a little over 30 years, so I've heard different candidates say that. So I gather from that that it is a long standing, perennial problem. But how would you go about streamlining the coding in the zoning?
PH: Well, you know what? We did rezone, it came through my committee, first time since 1967. But, zoning is one thing, but the implementation of zoning and codes, that's the issue. I have a definitive idea how I would handle that, I've been involved in it for many years. I've been on the other side advocating for business folks all the way through the city and citizens too. I would make it, I'd be a hands-on mayor and I would directly run the codes and zoning the first three or four months until we get things straightened out.
GR: Interesting, okay. And then you mentioned that you would be more aggressive, you think, than Mayor Walsh. But more generally, how would you characterize this in terms of both policy and leadership style? What are the most important differences between you and the other two Democratic candidates in the race? What are the most important differences between you and Chol Majok and Sharon Owens?
PH: Well, Chol has been on one side, you know, he's been a legislator. I benefit from my experience, you know, I was a deputy commissioner of a city department for 34 years there. I also worked in the school district, working with kids who had behavioral and academic issues. I have direct experience on many of the issues that are facing the city. For instance, when we talk about education, you know, education is one of the tripods of, you could say, legs of a chair that we have to address as far as poverty goes. You have education, you have jobs, and you have to have housing. As far as the education goes, I have a community school strategy. I would like to extend the hours of the city schools, probably one in each council district. They have a community school program where we not only would provide safe spaces for the children to play in, but also be plugged into the school district. And we did this before, find out what their weaknesses are and bring volunteers, tutors and mitigate those great weaknesses.
GR: On the schools, you know, there's been conversation over the years about the mayor's office kind of taking over the school district, and you obviously have some experience in the schools. Do you have any thoughts about that going forward?
PH: I think we have to look at everything. That was a discussion that took place a lot under Mayor Miner. I wouldn't advocate that. And so obviously I would want this to be like sort of a public thing that we would have, make sure that everybody be involved in it. Our neighborhood organizations and of course, the teachers union and present school board and the superintendent. But I think we have great schools, we have terrific schools. Our issue with the schools is we’ve only got 50% of the kids going, we have an absenteeism rate of 50%. We have to find a way to energize kids to get to school. And I think there's all sorts of social issues that obviously you have older kids taking care of younger kids, we have people working two jobs, especially in challenged neighborhoods. But I would put together a task force and look at that. I'm up to Fowler quite a bit, I'm up to, I've been in Corcoran. We have great programs. We have we still have an issue with discipline, I'll be frank with that. But I think we have to realize that a lot of kids don't go to schools to avail themselves of these programs.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with city of Syracuse Democratic mayoral candidate Pat Hogan. Well, a couple of questions now, maybe a little more sensitive, a little less pleasant. But I want to ask you to respond to some of the criticisms that I have read about you and your campaign in recent months. And first one, you probably know where I'm going with this one, concerns the city's budget, and it got quite controversial. I want to ask you a question or two about that. And I want to go through a quick background if our listeners have heard the previous two programs they’ve heard this before, but just to bring everybody up to speed on this. So, Mayor Ben Walsh proposed a $348 million budget. It involved a 2.2% spending increase and a rise of about 2% in the property tax rate. It also drew on the city's general fund, which was essentially the city's savings account to cover the remaining deficit. The council rejected that proposed raise in taxes, lowered the budgeted spending by about 2.4% or $16 million, and the mayor vetoed some of those changes. The council overrode those vetoes in unanimous votes. All right, you were leading the charge from the council, I think, on the budget, fair to say you were the leading negotiator there. Looking at it from a distance, it's hard to believe that the mayor's race didn't factor somehow into this back and forth between you and the mayor on the budget. Why, first of all, why was the council so concerned about the increases this year? Previous years, they seemed to be okay with similar increases, what was the difference?
PH: Well, we live in a fluid part of American history right now. We have a person in Washington who isn’t a fan of cities. One of the things that remains for us is we always have a structural deficit where, for your listeners, we just don't have enough revenue in order to pay our bills, basically. We do have a cash fund balance and this budget would have withdrawn $27 million, which we all thought was way too much money to draw, especially as we look into the future. As far as being part of the mayor's race, is the vote was 9 – 0, there’s not 9 people running for mayor. This budget was dead almost on arrival. The mayor had a conversation with me about the budget, a two minute conversation the day before he dropped it on us. It was one of the most fiscally irresponsible budgets I've seen in 14 years. I don't think you could raise, it comes from the culture of raising taxes rather than managing departments. I was part of the department, so the councilors put together a plan and implemented the plan that basically cut the departments across the board by 7% except for the police and fire, and that was 5%. Some of the departments actually are going to get more money next year, are going to get more money next year than they'll spend this year. It's part of that where, every budget is a projection. We looked at everything solidly and we were disciplined about it and we passed a budget that benefits the city of Syracuse and their citizens, and they won’t have a tax hike.
GR: I wanted to ask you a question, too, about the process. You mentioned the mayor not really fully consulting prior to proposing, formally delivering the budget to the council. There was some criticism that I have read about the council and your lack of openness and time frame with your changes in terms of the mayor's office not reaching out, trying to find compromise. Tell me a little bit more about the process from your end.
PH: Procedurally, it remained the same. We get the budget on April 8th, we have to make a decision by May 8th. We interview every bureau, every department. We had 27, I think it was 28 department head meetings. These are all open meetings to the public, people could view them. We asked our questions, we went over the budget. We decided to bring in Bonadio, which is an accounting firm that actually does the audit at the end of the year every year in the city budget. We brought them in in the beginning to give us a little more clarity. I thought that worked out great. They pointed out some things that we had already considered and then we, procedurally, it was the same thing we've gone through before. We're in a very compressed amount of time and all of us agreed on what we needed to do in order to save a tax hike and also to put us in a good fiscal standing for the future.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Pat Hogan. The Syracuse City Common counselor is running for mayor and he'll appear on the ballot in the Democratic primary on June 24th. All right, well, just to continue with the theme of the questions before the break, some of the criticisms that I read, get your responses to those. Also, I think the Post-Standard dinged you a little bit in your capacity as chair of the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency on Micron's Draft Environmental Impact Statement and it connects to my question about the budget in that it has to do with process. And the criticism was sort of the timing, apparent lack of openness. The report had not been released to the public, despite being submitted last December. My understanding is that report is now set to be released on June 25th, which, looking at the calendar is the day after the primary. So I can see, you know people looking at this might be like why aren't we seeing this a bit earlier? It's such an important issue. It is part of Micron's calendar of trying to get the operation going. Why the timing on this?
PH: Well, we wanted to make sure it was done. And I sit in, those meetings, the environmental assessment, and it wasn't done. And in a situation like that where you're dealing with state regulations and federal regulations, a big project like that, you certainly have to cross every T and dot every I. Because if there was a mistake, that could really delay things down the road. That was impressed upon us and everybody who was in those rooms. It was released prematurely. My understanding there's some things that will be different in the final releasing of the report. And it was, you know, sort of an unfortunate thing, it was sort of leaked to the press. But I think we're going to be all set to go and this is a big project and we wanted to make sure we’d done everything right.
GR: Okay, all right. So I want to come back to some of the things that you mentioned at the outset of our conversation. And you talked about one of the things that you want to focus on is, of course, the problem of poverty and concentrated poverty in the city of Syracuse. And it's concentrated in a lot different ways geographically, racially. What are some of the ways that you plan to really get at that, that's such a big problem? You mentioned the three legs on the stool, the education, the housing and the job opportunities. But can you speak a little bit more about how you could really try to chip away at that?
PH: You know, it’s almost a person to person basis, family by family basis. I mean, we talk about childhood poverty, but it’s essentially family poverty. I found that out when I worked in the city schools. You know, housing is a big issue and housing we have to, you know, I think we have to really go to the state and like ask them to release, sort of soften the rules as far as the extension of LIHTC tax credits to municipalities. Right now, you only get about two per locale. This helps financing affordable housing. I have a big project that’s going up just a five minute walk from my house is a former Syracuse developmental center area. We're going to 550 units of affordable housing up there. The costs are enormous to build housing now, not only labor and material, and we need help from the state government. If we can get help from the federal government, that's great. But we have to advocate and I'm a politician, we have to get a coalition together to advocate for more housing. As far as the educational part, we have to transition to more what jobs are available. I think the city school district is starting to do that very well. We have a career academy at Fowler, we have a welding program at Corcoran, showing kids that there are other ways, obviously, to support their families down the road. But we have to get the kids in school. To be an electrician, right now, I know a lot of people in IBEW 43, they’re figuring that they’re going to need a thousand electricians to build Micron. And you're probably going to need 300, 400 when it gets up and running. But you have to, in order for our kids to qualify for these jobs, to be an electrician, you have a fundamental understanding of algebra and you have to be to school at least 9th grade, 10th grade. You’ve got to know what you're doing. And I think we have to have a total emphasis on that, to train these kids. I know Micron is going to help us out on that. They're definitely looking to, they don't need kids with the college degree, they need kids who are trained in the proper things. And then, you know, the jobs will be available. I know people, we'll get calls from all over the country, people looking to move here. And as part of that, I believe there's five to six neighborhoods in the city of Syracuse that will be looking at the demographics of Micron that will be especially attracted to some of the people coming in. And I think we have to like, promote them. We have to promote, we want to build the population of the city.
GR: And one of the things that you do here, you did not mention, but I wanted to get your thoughts on it, was on the issue of poverty and opportunity is transportation and the importance of being able to get to these places, to get to the educational opportunities, to get to the jobs. What are your thoughts about that?
PH: You know, Grant, that's great you mentioned that because that’s part of the environmental assessments, is how are we going to get people there? You know, we were successful with the Amazon project. My understanding is the busiest bus route in Central New York is from downtown Syracuse to Amazon. They’re all entry level jobs, but they're also, you know, you got insurance, you know, you make like $35, $40,000 and they're good about promoting people I know it's a tough work environment sometimes, but you're absolutely right. There will be part of getting people to the jobs, through public transportation, Centro is already on board about that. But that is a great question because, you know, where I grew up on the near West Side and South Side, I mean, my grandfather worked at the car plant in south Fowler, I can't think of the name of it now, but, you know, people walked to work in those days, now we have to get them to work.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, I’m Grant Reeher.
PH: Grant, that was the Franklin Motor Company.
GR: Oh, Franklin Motor Company, okay.
PH: That's right. I know I’d come up with it.
GR: It was okay, it was a little bit delayed, that’s all (laughter). I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Syracuse mayoral candidate Pat Hogan. So a couple of questions here at the end, and they get at, again, some of the things we've already been talking about but I want to put them in a very specific context. That the taking down of I-81 and the redevelopment of the East Adams Street area, prior to the Micron announcement that was going to be the biggest development opportunity for the city. What at this point are your biggest priorities for that effort and also your biggest concerns? I'm wondering maybe whether that would be not following through at the federal government level with some of the assistance, but anyway, go ahead.
PH: I think it'll put more than a little pressure probably our Syracuse police department, doesn't really have a traffic division. I think we got to manage that properly inside the city when everything's down. A lot of the folks, unlike me, a lot of the folks who advocated for the 81 to come down, never drove through Syracuse without 81 being up. My father always showed me how to get around the city without using 81. I think the big thing for the city is to maintain control of the 14 acres of property that 81 stands on right now. The state has been not really good at peddling public property. We have been good, making good use of it. Those 14 acres, I look to knit the university finally together with downtown, you know, we properly develop them. I look for affordable housing basically there and maybe some retail shops and things like that that are allowed under our zoning. But that is going to be a transformative thing. But once again we're going to have to manage it right and I plan to manage it so it benefits all the neighborhoods in the city.
GR: Well, briefly if you could on this next question, follow up on that. One of the things that I always have been worried about, and I've said this to multiple people from different backgrounds who come on the program talking about the city, is the actual transition process in terms of transportation. We're already seeing some of the fallout from this. But my concern is that you'll have several years where there will be, for lack of a better word, a lot of sort of transportation pain involved in this. Do you have any plans for mitigating that?
PH: We're going to need help from the county sheriff's department. You know, the city police department, right now, has 36 vacancies. We're going to need manpower. I'm sure that there's a traffic plan, but manning that traffic plan and implementing that traffic plan, we might even have to reach out to the state. I have the same concerns. I worry about traffic sort of jumping on all those north-south arterials west, you know, to try to get around the city. And it'll be a learning curve and we're going to need every facet as far as every media organization, digital media, everything to let people know how they can get around the city. It's going to be a huge undertaking.
GR: And here at the end, a question about Micron. You've already talked about the opportunities that this is going to create for the area. That seems clear and it also seems pretty clear it's going to be completely transformative in a lot of different ways. You're an industrial development guy, you think a lot about this kind of stuff. What are your biggest worries? What are your biggest concerns about Micron coming in here?
PH: That we're going to be able to fill the jobs and all those benefits spread evenly across all our neighborhoods, all our neighbors, especially the challenged neighborhoods. This, you know, when the factories moved after World War (II), in the 60’s, that devastated a lot of those neighborhoods, some of the neighborhoods I represent. This time we can get have a resurgence in those neighborhoods if we are cognizant of what we need to do in order to give our people the best chance to work at Micron.
GR: Do you have any concerns somehow that it will change the fundamental nature and character of Syracuse as a unique location? I mean, one thought I have is that it will do a lot of great things, but in a lot of ways we might end up feeling like a more generic place. I don't know if that question makes sense.
PH: You mean we won't be a college town anymore?
GR: Or we won't feel distinctly upstate, we won't feel distinctly Syracuse, you know? You will lose your accent, you know? (laughter)
PH: You know what, Grant, I was thinking this the other day, as I go to neighborhood meetings across the city, we are blessed we have like, all these unique neighborhoods that all sort of like exist their way. And they all, like, unite and, but I mean I don't think this will change the character, this might even enhance the character of Syracuse. I can't imagine this will change the character of Syracuse, except for, you know, our noted cynicism that we're really good at sometimes. But, you know, you say something about Buffalo up in Buffalo and you're going to get a punch in the snoot. But you say sometimes in Syracuse and sometimes people agree with you. You know, I mean, we're just like that. But I think we have some great neighborhoods in the city. And I think people who come from other cities, this happens all the time, I hear this all the time, people who’ve moved here, love it. I mean, they love Syracuse and I think they're going to be citizens for life. But sometimes we let our own, our cynicism get a little bit.
GR: You know, I've got some neighbors that just moved in across the street from New York City and it's an epiphany for them about the ease with which they can do different things. Well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Pat Hogan and again, the Democratic primary for mayor in Syracuse is June 24th. Early voting starts on June 14th. Councilor Hogan, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me, I really enjoyed our conversation.
PH: Thanks, Grant.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Chol Majok on the Campbell Conversations
Jun 07, 2025
Chol Majok
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. The Democratic Party primary for Syracuse City mayor is Tuesday, June 24th and early voting starts on June 14th. Continuing our interviews with all three candidates, my guest today is Syracuse Common Councilor, Chol Majok. Councilor Majok is a Councilor-at-Large representing the entire city, but he was first elected as a councilor from the Third District. He previously worked in Mayor Stephanie Miner's administration and in 2022, he ran for the Democratic nomination for Congress in the 22nd Congressional District. My interview with Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens can be found on WRVO’s web site, wrvo dot org on the Campbell Conversations page under the local programing tab. Next week I plan to have Common Councilor Pat Hogan on the program. But for today, it's Councilor Majok. Councilor Majok, welcome to the program, it’s good to see you.
Chol Majok: It is great to be here. Thank you for having me.
GR: Oh, well, thanks for making the time. Let me just start with a very basic question. And if you could be brief on this one. I know you could speak for quite a long time on it, but briefly, what's your vision for the city of Syracuse over the next four and possibly eight years?
CM: Well, my vision is with the hope that, you know, when I get elected is to leave this city better than I found it. That is the overall overarching vision. Now that can, I have, I do say this in my vision that I will lead Syracuse into a future where families thrive, neighborhoods flourish, and opportunities are accessible. That is in a nutshell, of what I intend to see this city when I take over and when I leave it, that our families are doing better, that our neighborhoods are safer and opportunities in all neighborhoods, people can have accessibility to those opportunities regardless of economic background.
GR: Okay. And thinking about the last eight years of the Ben Walsh administration, how do you think your emphasis on policy and what initiatives you would take might differ from his and in what ways?
CM: Well, Grant, I'm a true believer in that, you know, in order to move a community forward and to move a city forward, we have to look at our assets. And our assets in this sense are the people. What has happened with Syracuse is that poverty has beaten down this community, that the value of people is under the struggles and the problems. And when a community is dealing with something like this, it becomes a leadership problem. And leaders need to figure out how do you equip people to do for themselves? You know, as somebody with a large experience in workforce development, equipping people to do for themselves, I am the right person for this for this job to be the mayor. Precisely because Syracuse is in this space where Micron is coming, Amazon is already here. And when you talk about Micron and Amazon and many other better paying jobs, they are outside of the city, right? And we need to be able to first do two things, equip people with the right skills, number two, be able to have reliable transportation where people can access those. People talk about changing poverty and challenging poverty to be able to challenge poverty, yes, government policies are great, but if we want to uproot poverty, we have to equip people. We have to equip people to do for themselves that include fathers, mothers, guardian, people and residents in the community. I'm raising a young family and raising a young family to be able to successfully raise that young family, you cannot subtract economic from that equation. And being able to get the right economic tools in my belt to raise that family, I need skills. I need to be able to get to those jobs, and that's where my skills and talent come in. I have a business development experience and talent development experience, which is what this city really need when you look at the future of it, that's what really this city needs. Yes, we can talk about housing, housing is great, we need housing, but we also need to talk about sustainability. Without the right skills to really manage oneself economically, you can't sustain housing. And that's where my skill and talent become essential in equipping people to do for themselves so they can sustain those housing and be able to sustain tax base in our city.
GR: You mentioned your background in workforce development as part of the toolkit that you would have and being able to do that. I was also thinking of your own personal story. I mean, you came here to the United States with nothing and here you are running for mayor. Do you think that that gives you a particular perspective on this issue?
CM: Absolutely, absolutely. I just had a fundraiser this weekend, Professor Reeher, had a fundraiser this weekend and was put together by New American Leaders. And I'm saying that to say I didn't realize how much of an impact I have made, especially to disadvantaged communities, especially those that came in the same background as I am, refugees and immigrant and struggling people, until I saw a number of leaders that said, Brother Chol, what you have done here is something that would outlast us as a generation and will lead into the next generation, right? And that in itself, when you are grinding, when you are working every day and you when you are trying to do your best, you don't look at how far you have come. But people who have lived like you are looking at you. And this race is not just about me, Professor Reeher, it's not just about me. It is about everyone that have lived like me, people with struggle, people who have came to America to seek second chances in life. And America has embraced them and offer them those opportunities to transform their lives. They are looking at me and they are saying, Chol, if we can come to America, pay taxes, revitalize neighborhood, why can we not leave city hall? So this is a fight for every single person, every marginalized community and every struggling person, irrespective of race and gender.
GR: Do you think that that is the most important thing that differentiates you from the other two Democratic candidates? This background, this is what separates you from Pat Hogan and Sharon Owens?
CM: Well, I have a couple of them that separate me from that. Yes, I have the ability to relate to a lot of the city residents here, as when I came, I was not born here, but I grew up here. I went to city school district, a graduate right there. I grew up in the most impoverished neighborhood in the city, Brighton neighborhood. And we have not had a mayor with my background or a candidate with my background that have ran at this level. So yes, there is that differentiation that people, I can relate to people more than the other candidate, that's one. The other piece is, is that as a candidate, I'm coming in with executive training. I'm not just talking about one of those trial and error kind of training that I have seen with other candidate where they make mistakes. I have theoretical knowledge, I've been trained, I’ve applied it as well. So I'm coming equipped more than most mayors in the executive office. I have legislative experience at the state level and then at the city level. That differentiate me between Pat Hogan and Sharon Owens, right? And I am at this point between all the candidate, I am the only one who have been elected at-large, citywide. We have ran a successful citywide election. So when it come to later to Republican, I'm the only one who know how to run election and wins election. So that's the other part of the party. Accountability, you know I'm going to be different because I'm going to take accountability. My record has shown that anything I do, I take accountability for it. Something that I’ve seen, Deputy Mayor Owens and the current administration rarely take accountability for. For example, the advanced I.T. situation that we are dealing with, that is a looming fraud in our city. Second, the Blueprint 15 that Deputy Mayor Owens share and never to accountability for. I'm going to take accountability and people are looking for accountability, Professor Reeher. So that's what really differentiate me a lot with my opponent and we don't have time but I would have went in with a lot as well.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with city of Syracuse Democratic Mayor candidate Chol Majok. Just for our listeners, you mentioned experience at the state level and what you're referring to there is your previous work for state Senator Dave Valesky, right?
CM: And Marty Golden as well.
GR: That's right. Marty Golden, that's right, got it.
CM: Two state senators.
GR: I forgot about the first one, yeah. So I want to ask you a question about the most recent city budget, because that became quite controversial and you were at the center of that along with your two opponents. So, Mayor Ben Walsh proposed a $348 million budget. It involved a 2.2% spending increase and a raise of about 2% in the property tax rate. It also drew on the city's general fund, which is, you know, essentially the city's savings account to cover a remaining deficit in the budget. The council rejected that proposed raise in taxes and lowered the budgeted spending by about 2.5% percent or $16 million. The mayor then vetoed some of those changes that the council made, and then the council overrode those vetoes in unanimous votes. I think I've got that all right. So my first question for you is, watching the way this unfolded, it's hard to believe from a distance that this mayor's race didn't factor into that back and forth in some way. Just explain briefly if you could, why was the council concerned about the increases in the budget this year when you folks were fine with similar increases in previous years?
CM: Well, the short answer to that, Professor Reeher, is that since 2020 we have $123 million that we could play with and we could push around and be able to balance our budget with.
GR: And that was from that was from the COVID money, right? Is that what you’re talking about?
CM: COVID money, absolutely. We have COVID money, next year budget we will no longer have that COVID money. And, and people who are intimate with our city budget knows that we don't generate enough from tax base to be able to cover our expenses. Number two, a basic economic formula is that you don't spend what you don't have. And as a city, and I have said it repeatedly, and I had some people, I rubbed some people the wrong way, I have said it, if the council have to be the adult in the room to really balance the city budget, then so be it. And at this point, Professor Reeher, what is really pushing the council, and you can see people have said that is political, it’s not political, it's unanimous. Nine of us, only two councilors are running for council so far for mayor, only two councilors, right? And all nine councilors voted unanimously to reduce the spending the city is experiencing. So the short answer to that, Professor Reeher, we just don't have it. And it is irresponsible and fiscally unsustainable to continue to spend the way Mayor Walsh has spent city resources. Mayor Walsh has raised our budget by over $100 million since he has been in the office. The city just does not generate enough to be able to sustain that much recklessness, we just don't. And if as councilors, we have to look out for the best interests of our city and constituent, then that's what we were elected to do. We will do our job. And I applaud all my fellow councilors for doing their job.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Chol Majok. The Syracuse City Common Councilor is running for mayor and will appear on the ballot in the Democratic primary on June 24th. So I have a second question, as I mentioned about the budget, and it's about the criticisms that have come, and they've not just come from the Walsh administration, they've also come from outside observers about the lack of openness by the council regarding these decisions about the changes. That there wasn't an apparent attempt in advance to reach out to the administration, say, hey, you know, this looks like too much, we have a problem. Why did the council operate in what appears anyway to be more out of the public's eye in this regard?
CM: So we as council have been accused of politicizing and being secretive, in which it is very surprising, very surprising to councilors. Because what the council has done is what they have always done, right? And there is never a time after a month-long budget hearing, there has never been a time where councilors go back to department head that are managed by the mayor to ask them of their opinion as to what, how we are going to adjust our budget. Now, Professor Reeher, let's make this correction. There's a difference between executive level of government and legislative branch of government. There are two different, and there is nowhere that I have seen the legislators have to go back to the executive to consult them as to what to do. Otherwise there wouldn't be no difference in branches of government. We have done our job just like we have always done in previous years. Nothing was different. Now, in the past five years, like I said earlier, we had ARPA money so we were flexible with the mayor and his spending. This year we cannot allow that. And as councilors, we have a responsibility to make sure that when we deliver that budget that it is to the best of our ability. Three hundred and almost fifty million dollars, it's a large budget. And as councilors we needed to do right by our constituents. That's why we hired the same auditor, the same auditor that was hired by the mayor to look at the city budget. Why was it a problem for us to use them to be able to really vet the process? Now, let's not make no mistake, there is a $27 million deficit, $27 million deficit. The council was able to only take out $16 million of it. There's still a deficit to be addressed. Rather than the Mayor Walsh and Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens worrying about that, they are worried about why the council took time to really vet this process. They are worried about our process and they are not worried about the $14 million deficit that they have to address. That is to me, that's where the constituents should be spending their energy, not the process the council took to balance the budget.
GR: Okay, now I want to come back to something that you spoke about in the first part of our conversation. You spoke very powerfully about your background and what that brings to the campaign and what you are representing for the city and how this is a bigger campaign than just about you, and I want to follow up on that and link what you said to more national issues. And so, you're an immigrant to this country, you have this powerful story about your history as a refugee from South Sudan, often called the Lost Boys. You were one of the Lost Boys and made this amazing journey. And our country right now is in a pivotal moment when it comes to how we deal with and think about immigrants and immigration. This is a conversation that's happening across the country. Do you think that your campaign is somehow importantly linked or has a meaning to that in certain ways?
CM: Well, Professor Reeher, you know, Syracuse and upstate, especially upstate New York here, has a long history of being trailblazers, being inclusive, being a welcoming community. And that is undeniably our history. And at these times, the time that we are in with the federal government, it is shameful. And there are people that I have talked to that have said, Chol, they come to me and apologize and said, Chol, this is not who we are as a country. We are a country that embrace immigration, a country that embraced otherness, a country that embrace the world. This is not who we are. And when I hear that, Professor Reeher, it just give me more energy to want to run. Because immigrant in this country at this point are being beaten down by our government. And they need some space where they can be uplifted and folks like me running is a testament to that uplifting. You know, a good statement that Syracuse, New York, can give to immigrant and to our values is electing people like myself. It is a statement that we see you immigrants, we see you refugees. We see you, those that are coming from broken worlds and see Syracuse as a space where they can get second chances. When I run, Professor Reeher, I am running to be able to uplift those voices, those voices that our federal government is pursuing to beat down. And New York, Syracuse, New York is going to stand, as it always have done, to be able to make sure that we stand by those that come from broken worlds and are here seeking second chances in life. And our message to them, yes, you are embraced, yes, you are welcome, yes, you are listened to and yes, you will be here and this is your home.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Syracuse mayoral candidate Chol Majok. You mentioned Micron earlier, I wanted to ask you a question about that. Obviously, there are amazing opportunities for the city of Syracuse and the broader community, even the whole state of New York here from this Micron mega microchip facility in Clay. Do you have any, and would you bring into the office, any major concerns or worries about that development?
CM: I have a couple of them. I am excited, just like anybody else in this community, to have Micron in our community. Very excited, because the opportunities that Micron is going to bring are going to be great. If it is managed well, we will see a level of economic innovation that we have not seen for a long time. So that to me is exciting because as a young father, as a man that is raising a young family, I can see my daughters and my sons and myself and my wife being able to look at Micron as a gateway to uplift ourselves out of poverty. So many other families, so many other individual and household in the community, it’s exciting. Now, a couple of things that are concerned for me. One, I know that Micron is going to come with their own people and the few that are going to be left, few position that are going to be left to be filled. This is a city, if we go in the same pace and the same direction that we are going in, those jobs are not going to reach city residents, they are going to go to suburban people. If the rate we are going is the way we are going to go without the change of leadership, those jobs are going to be grabbed by suburban people, for a couple of reasons. First, skills level. Our skills level at this moment, Professor Reeher, is atrocious. We need to upskill people, something we have not done. And this is where somebody like me, who has a workforce development experience, would be able to see through that and be able to give people to there. Few opportunities that they would be able to reach our city, this is the second part. Few opportunities that are going to reach this city, right? Maybe I’m going to be challenged by transportation factors. As you know, Micron is going to be far away from the city and transport portion at this moment is one of the most challenging, challenging barrier for our city resident to uplift themselves out of poverty. We have an address that BRT is coming in 2026. But BRT is, unless if they change the route with the right leadership, BRT is not going to go outside of the city limit. So skilled issue is going to hinder people from Micron, and I have a plan and the skill and the ability to get people there, right? Transportation is going to be a factor. And some of the things that we as a current leadership is doing nothing with. So I'm going to change those. And if Micron is going to be for our people here, those need to be addressed head on.
GR: So we've only got a couple of minutes left, so you'll have to be brief on these, I apologize. But I have heard you in the past and you've done it on this program, speak very eloquently about America. And what it means to you and your experiences. What are you telling your children right now about America?
CM: Well, one of the best thing that I tell my children is that, you know, you are in America. America is the only place that I have been to. America is the only place where a child of a janitor can sit on the same table as a child of a president. America is the only place you can do that. And I always tell my children, regardless of the circumstances, you don't have to be your condition, you don't have to live your conditions. And I always tell refugees, I said, just because you came as a refugee does not mean you have to live like a refugee. America is the only place I know that can allow a refugee to come in as a refugee with no English. Get a doctrine and run for a mayor of a major city. America is the only place you can do that. And I said, regardless of the struggles, regardless of the struggle, you cannot take away the fact that America can create dream far beyond your imagination. I always tell my children, Professor Reeher, take opportunities, regardless of the obstacles. Always remember, you always have a chance to take that chance, just like your father has.
GR: Now, last question. You've only got a couple of seconds for this one, I'm sorry. In 2022 you ran for Congress, in 2023 you ran for Common Council-at-Large, successfully. In 2025, now you're running for mayor. Do you just love being a political candidate?
CM: Well, Professor Reeher, you know, this work is all passion, it’s all passion. And as you can see, you know, in 2022, I ran for Congress because I saw that I was going to be redistricted out of my seat. And I have passion for this work. So I tried it and then it didn't work, and I knew 2023 came up. I had to keep my seat. I had to stay in politics, that's why I kept running. And I got elected. And at this moment I see that I am the most qualified candidate, I got to take it. And there is a room for my experience and for the candidate of my caliber. So I'll do it and I'm excited to do it, people are excited to see me do it and let's go from here.
GR: Okay, I’ll have to leave it there. That was Chol Majok. Again, the Democratic Party mayoral primary in Syracuse is June 24th, early voting starts June 14th. Counselor Majok, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. And I just want to say on a personal note, regardless of the outcome, you are inspirational in your story, and so I do wish you well.
CM: Thank you, thank you for having me. Like I always said, my vision for the city of Syracuse is to lead Syracuse into a future where families thrive, neighborhoods flourish, and opportunities are accessible.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Aran Shetterly on the Campbell Conversations
May 31, 2025
Aran Shetterly
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Aran Shetterly. He's a writer and editor and the author of a relatively new book on the Greensboro massacre in North Carolina titled, "Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul". Aran, welcome to the program and congratulations on the new book.
Aran Shetterly: Thank you. Great to be with you.
GR: Well, it's good to have you. So a really interesting book and an interesting timing on it, too. Let's just start with some basics for our listeners. Remind all of us what the Greensboro Massacre was.
AS: Well, we all need to be reminded because it's sort of left our public consciousness in a lot of ways. So in 1979, a multiracial group of activists was organizing in the mills in Greensboro, North Carolina. They were trying to bring black and white workers together. And these were still some of the largest textile mills in the whole world. I mean, Levi's dungaree jean material was made there for over a hundred years. And they were having trouble bringing people, white and black people together in those mills and felt that the Klan was perhaps, the Ku Klux Klan was perhaps interfering with their work. And so they decided to have a march to talk about why it's important to bring workers together, that they would have more power to advocate for better hours, better health care, better services, better pay. And they called it ‘Death to the Klan’ and they put up these posters. And they were organizing on November 3rd, 1979 setting up, putting up the sound truck, putting up posters, singing some freedom songs. And all of a sudden, a caravan of Klansmen and neo-Nazis drove up to the start of the march, picked a fight, started shooting, killed five of these activists and injured another ten, drove off, and no one was ever held criminally responsible for what happened. And when I found out about this, I thought, wait a minute, how do I not know about this and what is this story? I need to go deeper.
GR: Interesting. So one of the things that struck me, looking at your book and then what you just said to me right there, the name of the event in the march was ‘Death of the Klan’ and from what I've read, the marchers were chanting ‘death to the Klan’. What did they mean by that? And I know that, we'll get to this a little bit later, but some of the folks that that were charged pointed to that as kind of the notion that the antagonism was going in both directions.
AS: Yeah. I mean, that's a great question and some ways, the antagonism was going in both directions. But what they really meant was death to racism, death to an ideology that separates people in the way that the Klan has done. And that's, you know, later and after all the trials and after everything that took place, the leader of this march, Nelson Johnson, would say, I really regret that we didn't say death to racism, because that's really what we meant. And instead, the title made it seem personal in a way that they didn't really intend it to be.
GR: Right. And so you mentioned that no one was ever ultimately held criminally accountable for this. But there were people arrested, there were people caught, correct?
AS: Correct. And there were, I mean, almost by chance, though, because one of the curious things about this event was that the local police had decided to take a low profile approach. So they were out of sight, they weren't actually near where the marchers were. And yet they had an informant that was telling them that the Klan was actually going to show up that day and that they had guns. So it was a bizarre and very faulty, if not deliberately faulty decision that came from the top of that department. So at the last minute, some police swooped in and arrested 12 of these Klansmen, most of the shooters. And they were then tried in a state murder trial, then a federal criminal civil rights trial. And then finally there was a third trial, which was a federal civil trial.
GR: Okay. And were there any guilty verdicts or liabilities that were ultimately meted out here, even have a civil kind or no one was ever held accountable in any way?
AS: The third trial was really the most interesting trial, because the plaintiffs, you know, the activists were able to hire their own lawyers. And so instead of having the district attorney, prosecutors doing the state murder trial or the Justice Department lawyers doing the federal criminal civil rights trial, they had their own lawyers who could present the evidence and the arguments in the way that they wanted to. And not only that, there was this incredible judge. No judge in North Carolina would hear the federal civil trial. And so a judge from Richmond named Robert Merhige came down and camped out in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for six months and heard this trial. And Merhige was this incredibly fair judge who had also been responsible for integrating schools in Virginia in the early 1970’s, among other things, and admitting women to the University of Virginia. And he refused to let the jury in that civil trial be all white. The previous two juries had been all white. And there was one black man on that jury in the civil trial. And at the end of the day, there was a judgment in which Klansmen, neo-Nazis, the informant for the police department and Greensboro Police Department officers were found jointly liable for death. And as far as I know, that's the only judgment like that in American history that's held Nazis, Klansmen and police together jointly liable.
GR: Was there any money that ultimately got awarded to any families?
AS: A fraction of, you know, what they'd asked for. And they actually awarded the money only to one of the families who had suffered the death of one of their family members. And it was the only member who had not been a member of the Communist Worker's Party, which is what a lot of these activists were part of. And so it was a curious and somewhat political decision on the part of the jury to award $350,000 about to that one family. But what is interesting is what the activists did is they took most of that money back and put it into a fund that they have used then for decades to fund civil rights work at the grassroots level around the South.
GR: Interesting. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Aran Shetterly, and we're discussing his new book, it's titled, "Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul". So you mentioned there, right before the break the Communist Worker's Party being principal organizer of the labor action and the protest. So that has to change the dynamics of all of this. And this may be an overly simplistic question, but is this something about communism and anti-communism? Or is this something about race and racism or about labor more generally? I mean, how do you disentangle those things as a historian and a writer when you're trying to unpack what's going on back then?
AS: That's a great question, actually. And the thing is, at some point, you really can't. There's sort of like this Möbius strip, right? You're not sure which side you're on when you're trying to describe this at times. It’s particularly the animosity toward, right, that's being directed from the Klan and the Nazis. So what happened was, and this was one of the reasons they were acquitted in the first two trials, the state murder trial and the federal criminal trial, was that their defense lawyers very cleverly wrapped them in the flag. They said these are patriots, they weren't acting out of racial animus, they were going after communists, and you send them halfway around the world to fight communists in Vietnam and here they are trying to protect the United States from communism and you're going to hold them accountable? And, you know, there's something to that argument, right? It's like, well, it's okay to go fight it around the world, but here they're protected? It's a little confusing. And so, I mean, I don't believe that's right, but I'm just saying I can understand why it causes conflict in the minds of the shooters and the jury. So, yeah, that was a big part of what happened. What's interesting is that Judge Merhige even said, you know, you can't really disentangle these two things, race and communism in this trial. And what he meant by that is that a lot of times civil rights activists were being called communists when they weren't, you know? And anyone who was advocating for equal justice, for true equality, for full participation in our democracy would often get called a communist. And there have been all these witch hunts through our history. So in a way, whether they call themselves communists or not, the Klansmen, the Nazis, because of what they were advocating for, the labor justice across racial lines, we're probably going to consider them communists anyway.
GR: So you are pretty sure, and the way that you're talking to me today also suggests this, that the juries got this wrong, that that the folks that were on trial were the ones that did the shooting, were the ones that did the killing. And how do we know this? I mean, this may seem like a dumb question, but why are you so sure?
AS: Well…
GR: The cops grabbed them right away, like almost in the act? I mean, what would be the reason why, hey, we didn't get the wrong person? It seems like a silly question, but I just want to make sure.
AS: Yeah. What's very interesting is these trials were quite complex, to be honest with you. And what was clear was, the people prosecuting the trials were a little uncomfortable prosecuting in a sense, on behalf of people who called themselves communists. And so they made some decisions that compromised their ability to really prosecute the trial well. And the thing is, is that the marchers had a parade permit, they had a legal right. They'd gone to the police department, they'd gone to the city. They had a legal right to march that day. So when the FBI came in to investigate, they opened their investigation and it turned out this was the third largest FBI investigation in our nation's history at the time, they opened their investigation as a civil rights investigation because the marchers had gone through the proper channels and had their freedom of speech protected to march and to say whatever it was they wanted to say that day. The Klansmen and Nazis who drove up had no such permit. They were just confronting this march out of the blue. And so that really becomes down to, this was not sanctioned on both sides. It was it was sanctioned on one side and then ambushed by another side.
GR: Okay. And so the trials happen, in almost all instances these folks are not held accountable, except for this one instance that happened, you know, several years later, the civil trial.
AS: Right.
GR: How would you characterize what's going on in Greensboro between the end of these trials? And 2004, which is when is the sort of the positive part of your book, the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established. What is life in Greensboro like on this issue during that time?
AS: Well, this is why I call it really a, you know, a struggle for an American city soul in some ways. I mean, this was an incredibly divisive event that fractured Greensboro in a lot of ways, as these tragic events tend to do in our communities. And, you know, the very first thing and, you know, as a sort of investigative journalist-historian, what I get drawn to when I hear that the mayor at the time, the minute the shooting happened, says this has nothing to do with Greensboro, essentially. Don't even look here, you know, it's just some extremists who happened to pass through our city, I think, wait a minute, let's see what this has to do with Greensboro. But you have a big section of Greensboro’s residents who followed that mayor and believed this didn't have anything to do with us, you know? And we shouldn't even be talking about this, you know, we need to just sweep this under the rug and move on. And, you know, a lot of people in the city were traumatized by this event, but they weren't given the ability to process it, to talk about it. The justice system couldn't process it and come out with a verdict that anyone really trusted and so it festered. And the people, you know, who were the activists got blamed essentially for what had happened. Oh, you called it ‘Death to the Klan’, you baited the Klan in here, and they became pariahs in the city. And so there was a lot of pain and trauma and healing that needed to happen and still does, to be honest with you. It's a long process to recover from events like this.
GR: Yeah, I want to pursue that a little bit more when we come back from the break. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Aran Shetterly. He's a writer and editor and the author of a new book titled, "Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul" and we've been discussing the book and the issues that it raises. So right before the break, we were talking about the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission. How did this commission get established?
AS: So it's interesting, in a way it starts with art. A woman named Emily Mann wrote a wonderful play called, “Greensboro, a Requiem about the Massacre” and it was performed in Greensboro. And all of a sudden, people were able to start conversations about what had happened that they hadn't been having for at that point, almost 20 years. And coming out of that, Nelson Johnson, who's at the center of my book, who had become by then not a communist anymore, but a pastor and a remarkable activist, he continued, you know, being an activist his whole life, he just died this past February and truly a tremendous loss. But he saw this and he thought, wow, conversations can be had and when they're had, there's a healing aspect to that. And so he they started talking about this, and it was, happened to coincide with an American foundation that was interested in seeing if the South African model of a truth and reconciliation process could actually work in the United States. And so they came and said, we'll fund this. Let's see if we can you know, make something happen. Now, the city of Greensboro wanted nothing to do with it. And so what ends up happening is actually a pretty remarkable achievement to my mind, of Greensboro civil society. NGOs, churches, business leaders come together to put on a full scale truth and reconciliation process. Bishop Desmond Tutu visits Greensboro twice, members of the commission in South Africa participated fully in helping organize and structure this commission. And they held two years of basically studying what had happened and having open forums in which people who were participated or connected to it came to talk, including Klansmen and police officers and these activists and lawyers and judges. Quite a remarkable process that ran from 2004 to 2006 and produced this incredible report that basically laid out the history as they saw it, of what had taken place that day on November 3rd, 1979 and issued a whole set of recommendations for the city of Greensboro to try to prevent something like this from ever happening again.
GR: Wow. Let me interrupt there because I just heard you say that Klansmen or former Klansmen were part of this too. How did they generate that kind of trust across the board? I can see how you'd get one side or the other side, but my goodness, how did they thread that needle?
AS: Well, I think they tried to tell people that they were not controlling in the least what they said, they were going to invite them in to tell their stories. And what's interesting about that is two Klansmen came. One was reflective in a very interesting way. He said, you know what? I grew up in the South, I grew up with stories of the Confederacy. We had a frying pan that we said, you know, saved my grandfather's life because a union bullet hit it. And, you know, I eat my fried eggs out of that frying pan my whole, growing up. And he said, so, you know, I believe those ideas, if I had grown up in New York City, he said, maybe I would have been a communist.
GR: Wow.
AS: The other Klansman said to a shocked audience that was shocked into silence, God guided the bullets that day. So you saw that one was open and possibly changing to some degree in his mind, and the other one wasn't, but hugely informative to people listening about where things stood.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the writer Aran Shetterly. So you mentioned that the commission made recommendations and those were directed in part towards avoiding something like this in the future, making things better. What were the, can you summarize the recommendations?
AS: Well, there were a bunch. There were a bunch about sort of economic equality, to be honest, and fair housing, about equal pay, about, you know, issues that, you know, sort of fester in communities and lead to tensions that eventually can explode. There were also recommendations around the police force in establishing an independent oversight commission, right, to look at police actions. That's been something that's been much more difficult to truly achieve in Greensboro. But I have to say that Greensboro, you know, has made some progress on a bunch of these recommendations. It's not perfect, but they are sort of moving in that direction. In fact, you know, I was impressed when my book came out that the first conversation I had in Greensboro was led by the director of the Human Rights Office for the City. And we had over 200 people who came and she asked great questions about this history. So, you know, the history, it's opening up.
GR: I have to confess, I know a bit about North Carolina and where its politics have been in in recent years and how it is changing dramatically in terms of, you know, who it votes for, for president and that kind of thing, or at least the some of the internal politics of different congressional districts, but I don't know these individual towns all that well. So tell me tell me where Greensboro sits in North Carolina today.
AS: Greensboro is in what's called the Piedmont, it's the foothills. And so it's not far from Durham and the triangle area, which we think of as Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh. And it was a city that had big aspirations. You know, it thought it could be the Charlotte, essentially, of North Carolina at one point. But the banks decided to relocate to Charlotte, and that's what made Charlotte, you know, this massive city is the banking industry. So Greensboro had a troubled transitioning from the textile mills and run essentially as a company town of the mills into this modern era. But it has five colleges and universities there, including the state's flagship black university, North Carolina A&T, which has had a played a huge role in terms of the city's activism and the way the city has had to deal with the issues that it's been confronted with.
GR: So it sounds like it's within a transitional state. It's kind of a transitional town, and…
AS: It's a transitional town.
GR: Being both sort of a piece of rural, but near what we would think of as the liberal epicenter of North Carolina.
AS: Exactly. I think that's actually very well put, that it sort of struggles between being sort of a more liberal town and a more reactionary town and where the center is in that, just like the rest of us are trying to figure that out.
GR: Well, I have to apologize, I'm only giving you about 3 minutes to wrestle with this last big topic. But I wanted to ask you the obvious question here at the end of, are there lessons for us where we are now as a country politically, or otherwise that you think come from this event and its aftermath and the commission? I mean, what should we be thinking about in terms of where we are nationally and what you've taken a deep dive into historically and bringing it up to the present?
AS: So, two days ago I got a text from a Greensboro police officer who I talked to while I was doing this research, and he said, Aran, can you talk? I said, sure. And he called me up and he said, I'm in tears. I just finished your book, and he said, and I feel so ashamed that I bought the line, the story that Nelson Johnson was to blame for that massacre and I'm so sorry that I never got the chance to meet him. And so one of the things that I feel like I've learned over and over, and that was a powerful example of it, is that if we try to sweep these complex histories under the rug, they don't go away. You know, they fester, they continue to caused division in our society and we really need to face them and process them. And it took that guy courage not just to read the book, but then to call me up and actually tell me how he felt. And I really appreciated that courage. But one of the things that we talked about, and this is interesting, is he had been, after he left the police force, he was a private investigator for Oliver Stone on the JFK assassination movie, his JFK movie. And so this cop said, you know, I see a line from JFK to Greensboro, he said, when we don't openly discuss these traumas and tragedies, when things feel like they're hidden, we lose faith in our government. And I think, honestly, that he's on to something that without the accountability, right, of who was to blame for what happened in Greensboro, really accountable and held accountable for it, who is to blame for these different things, we end up where we are today with cynicism and a leader for whom there's no accountability or barely any accountability. We're struggling to find it and clawing that back is difficult. So I think that's something that we can take away from this.
GR: And maybe thinking of the future, perhaps some sort of variation of the way that Greensboro dealt with this is something that will be I thinking, about ten, twenty years from now, who knows.
AS: Absolutely. In 2020 in the depths of COVID, the Greensboro City Council held a Zoom meeting in which they apologized for the city's complicity in the murders that day, that the police department should have been there and they weren't. And it was a very powerful moment. And that's the kind of reckoning we need with all sorts of aspects of our history, I think.
GR: Well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Aran Shetterly and again, his new book is titled, "Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City's Soul". And, when you search for that book, I want you to note that Aran is spelled A R A N. Aaron is really interesting book, and thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me about it.
AS: Thank you, Grant, really enjoyed it.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Sharon Owens on the Campbell Conversations
May 24, 2025
Sharon Owens(Ellen Abbott / WRVO)
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. The Democratic Party primary for Syracuse City Mayor is Tuesday, June 24th, with early voting starting on June 14th. My guest today is one of the three candidates contesting that primary, Syracuse City Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens. In addition to serving as deputy mayor in the Ben Walsh administration, Ms. Owens is also the board president of Blueprint 15, which is helping to lead the effort to redevelop the East Adams Street area following the tearing down of interstate I-81 in the city. Note that I also hope to have the other two primary candidates, Chol Majok and Pat Hogan on the program prior to the primary. But for now, Deputy Mayor Owens, welcome back to the program, it's good to see you.
Sharon Owens: Good to be here, thank you for having me.
GR: Well, thanks for making the time, I really appreciate it. So I'm going to start with just a very general question. Do you have a vision for the city of Syracuse over the next four and perhaps next eight years that you could articulate?
SO: Yes, absolutely. We, our city is entering into a moment, and my campaign is called, “Maximizing the Moment”, where we're going to see some transformational things happening for our city and in the region. But specific to the city, the I-81 project really is humming around the city, you can't move anywhere without seeing that. It’s going to be transformational for how our community looks and feels. The next job and the next mayor is going to be absolutely keeping this city moving and open for business. And so I'm prepared for that moment for our city with 81, particularly with Micron in particular, and the economic opportunity for our city. You know it's no secret in the nineties when New Process Gear, Carrier, G.E., Miller Brewery all started closing down, we had a really strong and thriving middle class, particularly for people of color, who were able to send their kids to college. And those kids came back to Syracuse, and many of them with a college degree, still worked in those factories because they were great paying jobs. And we really missed the ball when we transitioned and those jobs started leaving that there was no plan moving forward. And here comes Micron with another economic opportunity for us, a new industry for us. And I'm really proud of the work I'm doing to really prepare not only for the 81 work, but for Micron work. Our individuals and our community to be prepared to have that opportunity for that work. So the vision for our city is to absolutely keep growing. We're on a trajectory, I think we've done a great job in this administration to really work on our infrastructure. You have to have a growing city that's based on solid infrastructure. We've been doing that, whether it's roads, sidewalks, lighting, working on our water pipes and the like. What my vision is, is really to improve the human condition as we move forward with the growth of the city, because we can grow and grow and grow, but if our human condition is not keeping pace, then we're missing the mark again. And I'm just committed not to missing the mark of a moment of growth with a city that leaves people behind.
GR: I want to pick up on a couple of the things you mentioned there a little bit later in our conversation. But let me focus in on, you mentioned some accomplishments of the Walsh administration there that you are part of and I wanted to ask you some specific questions about how you would be different or similar to that, and the first one is leadership style. How would you characterize your leadership style, and in particular, do you think it would be different from Mayor Ben Walsh? Everybody is a different person, how would you characterize your leadership style?
SO: Well, I think my leadership style is based on my experience. I mean, people ask the question of what makes you different from Ben Walsh? Well, we're clearly two very different people. He's a fortysomething white man, and I'm a 61 year old black woman with the experiences that come with being a 61 year old black woman. And so my perspective on life is a little different than his and just experience. But we have the same principles, which I think is important for leadership. Leadership for me is steeped in a 40 year career of executive leadership in managing people, places and finances. And so I'm coming in with that on the ground experience of how do you, identify problems, how do you find solutions, how do you work with people, how do you collaborate? And that is my style. If I am the person in the room who thinks I have all the answers, then that room is not effective, that room is not full and I need to make sure I have other voices in that room. We have very similar styles. I have a little bit more fire in me, I think. I've learned a lot from Ben Walsh in when to release that fire and when to knock. And so I've learned a lot from him in that. His campaign was, “Rise Above”, and sometimes I'm like, Mayor, you're being a little bit too nice on this one. And so, but I have been the collaborator. We have come through a time in our community where we weren't working together and we were suffering from that. And I think through my experience with the Walsh administration, I understand that collaboration is the best way to move forward. I will continue that collaboration. I'm doing it now on a day to day basis. When I complete this conversation with you, I go back to work, and that work is about collaboration, initiative, developing, working for the city, the residents of the city of Syracuse.
GR: You know, you mentioned being a black female. And I wanted to ask you, perhaps a sensitive question about that. I was going to do it later, but I'll do it now because you brought it up. When Stephanie Miner became mayor, she was the first woman mayor of any of the big five cities in the state. And those would be New York City, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo. When it comes to black mayors, only Albany and Syracuse have not yet had black mayors, and that's despite their large non-white populations. I have to say, I was surprised by this. And I would have thought that this is something that would have been a priority for the Democratic Party in Syracuse a little while ago. And maybe it's just that the stars haven't lined up, I don't know. But do you think that race is important in this election, sort of given the times right now, and should it be?
SO: When I talk to individuals in the community, they are excited about the prospect of Syracuse moving into a space of electing someone of color, particularly an individual, black individual, black female. Many of those folks are still smarting over the federal, the national election with Kamala Harris. I run, and I mentioned my black female, who I am, because that's who I am. And I'm proud of being black, being a female, being a mom, being a mother of a son with a disability, being just the individual who fell in love with the city and stayed here. My qualifications are my qualifications, but I stand in full pride and understanding of the significance of my being a woman and being a black woman running in this race.
GR: Okay, all right. Back to leadership styles and thinking about the Walsh administration. A couple of questions related to that. First of all, I would never expect you to throw your boss under the bus, but is there anything that stands out to you during the past eight years with Ben Walsh that you wish, with hindsight, the administration could have had a do over on?
SO: There are a couple of things. One was, I kind of, I think we're getting some momentum now on the housing authority issue, where we're looking really to be able to close on some significant progress over the summer. We have been kind of, I and others in the administration had kind of seen some concerns we had about capacity and ability for the existing staff of the housing authority to take on such a matter. Now, this is across all the housing, the reformation plan of the housing, it's a billion dollar project. None of us have done anything like this. So to bring, it would be critical to bring in all the capacity necessary to do it. And we were just not seeing that willingness to bring on the help needed to do it and thought that it was really putting the progress in jeopardy in, I think the urgency that we have seen lately from the mayor, I would have pulled that trigger a little sooner. About two years ago we saw it coming. And so there was urgency. He was very clear, been very clear from, you know, late last year into early this year. That should’ve happened probably two years ago.
GR: Okay. And then I'm thinking about your two opponents in the primary, Pat Hogan and Chol Majok. In terms both of not only leadership style, but also policy priorities. What are the most important differences between you and the two of them?
SO: I think that for me, I have been engaged throughout this city and not just, you know, focused on particular neighborhoods or particular populations, but my engagement has been in, basically because of the work that I must do right now, it's been engaged across the city. It is ironic to me that one of my opponents in particular always talks about my lack or our lack of transparency. And I think we've been the most transparent administration with dashboards and information, particularly when it came to ARPA funds. We have dashboards, how we're spending money, how we plan to spend money. This recent budget situation we've been through is clearly not transparent. So to speak about my lack of leadership and transparency I led the Reimagining Policing Initiative under the former governor. There was the executive order for reimagining policing after the murder of George Floyd. Mayor Walsh turned to me and said, Sharon, you’re going to lead that process. Now remember, all municipalities that have governance over law enforcement, DA, county, city, municipalities all around us had to engage in a plan of how they were going to move in looking at how policing happened in their communities. Mayor Walsh turned to me and said, you lead that charge. The county looked to me, the DA's office looked to me and we initiated what had to be a dozen community meetings for transparency to make sure that the community's voice was heard through that process and created a dashboard to ensure that people knew exactly what our plan was going to be. While all municipalities had to participate, quite frankly, many municipalities phoned it in. But we did not, our community would not allow us to. And when we talk about my style, it is very much focused to going into the community and hearing their voices, because that's where I come from. Boy, of the 40 years I've been working in Syracuse, 30 of them have been on the ground in neighborhoods. And that is the aspect that I bring to City Hall, I have been bringing to City Hall and will continue to do so as Mayor.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Sharon Owens. The Syracuse City Deputy Mayor is running for Mayor in her own right, and will appear on the ballot in the Democratic primary on June 24th. So, Deputy Mayor, you mentioned this recent round with the budget process before the break and I did want to ask you a question about that. The issue of the city's budget, it's become quite controversial in recent days and weeks. It's a moving target that's being determined as we speak and you and I are talking on Wednesday May 21st. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about that and I'll try to be as brief as I can but I want to provide some background for our listeners. So just as background, and correct me if I don't have something right here, but my understanding is the Mayor proposed a roughly $348 million budget. It involved a 2.2% spending increase and a raise of 2% in the property tax rate. It also drew some money from the city's general fund. And the city's general fund is essentially its savings account to cover the remaining deficit of that budget. The general fund is estimated to be at around $120 million at the end of the fiscal year. That's compared with $50 million when Mayor Walsh first took office. I believe a lot of that money came from the support for COVID that was provided to cities from the Federal Government. But anyway, the council rejected that proposed raise in taxes and lowered the proposed budget spending by 2.4% or about $16 million. I know it's a lot more complicated than that, but is that basically correct so far?
SO: All the marks.
GR: Okay, great. So my first question for you is, how unusual is it for the city of Syracuse to dip into its general fund, sometimes it's called a rainy day fund, to cover a budget? You know, it's something that hardly ever, ever happens, is it something that periodically happens? I mean, how weird is this?
SO: No, it is unfortunately a reoccurring need of the city because of the cost to run the city versus the revenue we're able to generate. Again, Grant, the major sources of revenue for the city of Syracuse are sales tax, which we saw some increase in. But it's trending to level off and property tax. And again, you know, when you look at the whole pie of property in the city of Syracuse, 48% of those property owners actually pay taxes because as in most cities, you know, hospitals, educational institutions, which are all important economic drivers are tax exempt. And so there's always been a gap in that revenue versus the expenses to run the city. And so that is why that rainy day fund is important to be able to fill that gap. And as you mentioned, when we had come into office, there was $50 million there and through wise use of those ARPA funds and other revenue generating opportunities, it's at $120 million. And so no, that is not an unusual occurrence to dip into that fund.
GR: Okay. And do you think that the budget as proposed by the mayor, gets it about right? Do you have any big issues with it?
SO: I mean those increases that you mentioned, when we look at the increase, it was about an $8 million increase from the previous budget. I'd like your listeners to understand that many of those costs are not controlled by the taxpayers or city government. It is pension costs that are rising, it is insurance costs that are rising. So those costs that, those are costs that we do not control. There are other costs that included positions that we wanted to bring on, initiatives we wanted to bring on. For example, we've heard from our business community that our permitting process just takes too long. So we responded with outsourcing, that permitting to professional firms who can do, who have state licenses to do building reviews. And so we have about six of those, we put that money into the budget so that we can continue to outsource and get that turnaround much faster than what we can do with a couple of staff people. So we didn't arbitrarily add positions in order to just, you know, bring on positions, but it was to increase the efficiency. You know that we have started this red light with the school busses, the red light enforcement, so people are not passing school busses or school zones. But from a legal perspective, when you are identified by those cams there has to be a adjudication process to ensure that it was you, it was your car and give you an opportunity to dispute that. That takes people to do. And so while it appeared that the council was in favor of these red light initiatives to protect our students and our children, they're cutting the very mechanism by which we would be able to enforce it. And so that's kind of where we stand, you know, and in their cuts of 16 million, I heard from many people who have been in city government for a long time and a cut of that magnitude is unprecedented. I think, Grant, the thing that was most egregious to me was, yes, we had hearings, but Joe Cecile or Mike Monds, did not hear in a hearing that they were going to cut 3.5 or $2.5 million. But before you had your vote, you could have very easily picked up the phone and said we are going to cut $3.5 million. Chief Cecile, what is going to be the impact of that and how can you help us get us to that number? None of that happened, and I think that is the most egregious because our department heads in our departments are readily available for any ask, particularly of councilors, but not to get a phone call before that vote was the most troubling part of it.
GR: So, this is a tangled question but I want to try to simplify it as much as I can here. And just to see, I have some other things I want to ask you about some other issues, so maybe if you can just be really brief here.
SO: Sure.
GR: I would assume that it is not an unreasonable assumption to think that the city's budget situation is likely to get better as Micron unfolds. Would you agree with that?
SO: It is our hope that it, particularly because of sales tax, if we can generate more housing that could be taxable, yes.
GR: Okay, all right. So one last question on this, and we've got about 7 minutes left, I want to save some time for other things. But it does seem to me that there are obviously some political questions suggested by the context of this budget issue. You're the mayor's deputy, you're running for mayor, the other two Democratic candidates are both on the city council, one of them is acting as the council president. I'm trying to see a possible political angle here and the one that I can discern is that they can try to say that, hey, look, the administration wanted to raise your taxes, but we stopped that, or I stopped that. Frankly, I could see that working in a general election, I'm a little more perplexed about how it works in the Democratic primary. But do you think that what is going on is election oriented at all? And if it is, can you state in a sentence what you think the intended message is?
SO: I would hope that it's not, but I don't know how it's not politically motivated when the first public response from Pat Hogan in particular was not from him to the press as a councilor, but it was to him to the press from his political campaign. It was a press release from his political campaign. You have not seen that from me. My job is Deputy Mayor.
GR: Okay. I want to come back to the beginning of our conversation and the fact that, you know, the very tagline for your campaign is to keep, you know, what is it, keep moving forward?
SO: “Maximize the Moment.”
GR: …and maximize the moment. I've been thinking a lot about that, actually, and I wanted to ask you a question about it. It seems to me that, both the redevelopment of the East Adams area and Micron, they're both great opportunities and huge opportunities. But I've also worried about just the degree of disruption that both of them are going to bring. And it would seem to me that whoever the new mayor is, they're going to have to manage that disruption very deftly. And if you could just say a few more words about that, I would be very keen to hear them.
SO: Absolutely. I started our conversation by saying that the next mayor's, you know, one of the priorities is going to be keeping the city moving, keeping the city functioning. Because the, what's going to be happening with 81, you can see it along Erie Boulevard. Not only just what's happening with 81, but we're doing our own infrastructure work and multiple sides of the city. This is the most I think anyone in Syracuse in a long time has had to deal with, traffic detours, and it is construction. So my priority is conversations around businesses on those corridors, how people are going to get out to work, what are going to be the routes for children on busses and traveling and walking during that time. It is going to be critical for this next mayor, and I have the existing, I meet with the DOT on a regular basis. I was just on the panel with that team regarding the environmental impacts and how we can protect people as they move towards the next project, which will be Almond Street. So I'm very much in the weeds when it comes to the day to day implications of communicating to our community. Syracuse, this is all going to be worth it. Our city is going to look and feel completely different, especially for the I-81 project. And for Micron, we cannot talk about poverty seriously until we're able to get people work that increases the household incomes of the people there. Not only individuals, but all individuals in a household. That's how we address poverty.
GR: Yeah, and that was actually right leading into what will probably be my last question for you, is the Micron opportunity is huge. You mentioned these other companies, Carrier, Crucible, I don't know if you mentioned that one or not, but, you've mentioned several others. And this is bigger than all of them. And so, what would be your biggest worries about that? I know what your biggest hopes are, but what are your biggest worries? Is it that this happens and poverty keeps getting more and more isolated and concentrated in a way? I mean, what do you worry about?
SO: What I worry about is what I work the hardest against. And it is to ensure that we're preparing people in the city of Syracuse for these jobs. I have always said to individuals in the rooms that we have to demystify what the jobs actually are. You know, these big fabs are big clean rooms with, you know, and OCC is looking to train individuals right now. So it's not complicated, many of those jobs are not complicated. So how can we prepare people? My biggest fear and worry is that we cannot miss the mark on this and leave folks behind in this amazing opportunity. And it's not just Micron, it's all the residual opportunity that's going to happen too. And we have to get the transportation right to make sure we can get people to Micron and other industries that are going to be opening up in our community. And so that is critical as well. I can not not hope, I'm just a hopeful person. That's what's driven me and my whole life. But I'm also very sober about what are the challenges we have and how we have to address them. And instead of pointing my finger and complaining about the challenges, I get down and I roll my sleeves up and try to address them.
GR: Well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens. Once again, the Democratic Party mayoral primary in Syracuse is June 24th, and early voting starts on June 14th. Deputy Mayor Owens, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. I really appreciate it.
SO: Thank you so much for having me. Always a pleasure.
GR: Thank you. You've been listening to the Campbell conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Eric Heinze on the Campbell Conversations
May 17, 2025
Eric Heinze
Program Transcription:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is Eric Heinze. He's a professor of law and humanities at Queen Mary College in the University of London. And he's the author of a new book titled, “Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left.” Professor Heinze, welcome to the program and congratulations on this new book.
Eric Heinze: Thank you very much, Grant, it's an absolute pleasure to be with you.
GR: Well, we're really glad you made the time. So, but before we get into some of the arguments that you make in the book, I just want to take a few minutes at the beginning to make sure that you and I and our listeners have a shared understanding of a couple of terms and I'm going to take them right from the title of your book. First of all, just briefly, what's critical theory?
EH: Yeah, you might say that critical theory is the academic or more intellectually driven branch of what would broadly count as progressive or leftist politics. Having said that, right, there's never been any such thing as a unified left, right? Or as a unified kind of theory of progressive politics. And there is never been anything like a unified critical theory. Particularly today, what we refer to today as critical theory is a loose umbrella term to encompass many different kinds of writing and thinking and discussion that have been going on now for the better part of a century.
GR: Okay. Then how would you define the left? Because I know it can mean something different in Europe, for example, than it does in the United States. So although in some ways we're looking more and more like Europe, but what how are you using the term ‘left’?
EH: Yeah. And there again, my aim with these terms, left progressive, critical theory, my aim is not to define any of them, right? And, you know, to say these thinkers count and these don't, I take a completely different approach. What interests me is, rather than generalizing about everybody, is above all, to try to identify some of the dominant strands of thought that I think have very much driven leftist politics, leftist activism and what goes on in the universities as well, right? So it's more about just kind of identifying a couple of influential themes, topics, tendencies, and really trying to unpack them and see what works with them and what doesn't.
GR: Okay, and let me throw something back at you and see if you would agree with this, then. When I hear those terms, what I normally think of, first of all, is concerns about inequality and in particular concerns about economic inequality and an effort to understand what generates it, what are the limits on political efforts to change it? And then as a kind of an addendum to that, I would say earlier leftisms were more concerned about class inequality, whereas more contemporary leftism seemed to be more concerned about ethnic or different kinds of identity inequality. Is that all fair, in your view?
EH: I think it's, yeah, it's a very important characterization, right, because again, we know that we're only talking about trends and tendencies, right? Obviously, you know, you can still find people who stick to the, you know, to the very Marxist idea that really is just about, you know, economics and class. But then, as you say, on the other extreme, we have all sorts of identity politics, which, you know, often doesn't necessarily highlight economics and then everything in between.
GR: And so, all right, so what's the central problem then that you're trying to address in this book? What do the critical theorists have to come clean on?
EH: Yeah, yeah, exactly right. If you look at what you and I have just discussed so far over the past few minutes, I think a lot of your listeners will know that, you know, simply looking for, you know, things that the left hasn't done very well or should have done differently or things that it's omitted, there's nothing new about that. And that's not really the crux of my book, right? And in particular, the crux of my book is not to start picking through this particular type of identity politics, right? And to say, well, you shouldn't talk so much about X, you should talk more about Y, it's not that at all, because I think a lot of people do this and some of the very interesting ways. That's not my project. I would define it in a somewhat different way, right? If we look at the kind of culture wars that we've witnessed in recent years, right, you have these people, critical theorists, people on the left, right? Who, in various ways insist that we need to take a very critical view of centuries of Western history. Then you have people on the far right who simply negate that by, they simply want to dismantle and destroy it, right? They want to get rid of DEI, they want to get rid of queer theory, they want to get rid of postcolonial theory, right? And so you have these two extremes, you know, which simply define each other, right, at the far ends. And what I want to do is just break out of that, you know, almost verging on a cliché of a culture war. And I tried to do it like this, one of my arguments is that probably the single most important achievement of the left over more than a century does not lie with any particular politician or set of policies, but rather lies with, first of all, fundamentally shifting what it means to think about justice and injustice, what it means to argue about them, right? In other words, the left does not always win on these questions, as we know, right? The conservative and far right forces are as strong as ever, right, and have always, you know, had their, you know, they have always been more or less strong over the past century. So it's not that the left always wins, but it's very much the left which has defined the terms of the debate, the way, the things that are considered to be important if you're talking about justice and injustice. Now, this entails a second thing, which I think is probably the most important of the left's achievements, again, as opposed to any politician or policy. Which is that leftist thought over the past hundred years or so has fundamentally redefined what history is, right? I think if you look throughout the world, go back as far as you like. Sure, you can find many of societies where from time to time it was considered important to, you know, look over past mistakes and consider how things can be done better, there's nothing new about that. What the Western Left has done over the past century or so has fundamentally redefined the very meaning of history, not as the high deeds of great men, you know, from Alexander the Great, right up through, you know, Winston Churchill or whoever your favorite is, right? But rather, history suddenly now becomes an exercise in collective self-scrutiny. History becomes a kind of duty, right, a kind of a moral duty that all of us should collectively, right, understand ways in which the West over centuries has perpetrated mass injustice, right, along the lines of capitalism, colonialism, racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, right? And that this should be the fundamental way in which we understand our culture. This, I think, is unprecedented throughout humanity, right? And it's something I admire. Again, the far right response would be that this is where we've all gone wrong, right? That this is the downfall. And I say quite the contrary if you care about democracy, right? Democracy is best and works best precisely when we're deliberating in a serious and critically minded way about deep and structural problems and injustices, right? And so on these two points, the meaning of justice, the meaning of history, I think my book lavishes praise on the left. The problem then, is that this injunction, that understanding injustice, that understanding history has to be an exercise in collective self-scrutiny, is something that the left for decades now has constantly taught the rest of us to do, but has not been doing itself. And many people on the left are amazed or outraged or disgusted or simply laugh when they hear me say this because they genuinely think that they do this, right? They say, oh, yes, you know, of course, you know, we think about mistakes we've made and, you know, we don't support Stalin anymore and we don't support Mao anymore, right? And so they really do believe that they have been engaged in collective self-scrutiny. And so what I do in the book is I say that this notion of collective self-scrutiny or what I call memory politics, unfolds in two steps, right? The first is, you know, kind of hashing out some sort of agreement on a historical record and even that can be very controversial, right? But what characterizes leftism and what characterizes critical theory is the second step, which is that these histories cannot simply remain locked in textbooks and lecture halls. They need to be disseminated to the broadest possible public through film, through documentaries, through television, through radio, through cultural events, through museum exhibitions, through training programs. Again, I don’t, unlike the far right, I don't attack any of that, I support it, I say keep doing it. But it is that step two, that we have never seen from the left when it scrutinizes its own history, right? So all of the rest of us have to go from step one to step two, but when the left is looking at its own history and all stops at step one. It says, yes of course, you know, Stalin, terrible, Mao, terrible, Pol Pot, terrible, but where are the training programs? Where are the films, the documentaries made by the left, right? In order to show us what collective self-scrutiny is, instead of just telling the rest of us to do it with whatever our political commitments may be. This, in my opinion, has been the number one problem of leftist politics. It's not you know, that Kamala Harris forgot to say A or B, right? It's not that at all, right, it's far deeper. It's far more fundamental and it goes back much further in time.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Eric Heinze. He's a law professor at Queen Mary College at the University of London and the author of a new book titled, “Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left”. And we've been discussing the work and the issues that it raises. Eric, I want to dive a little more deeply into some of the things that you were saying. One of the things was this issue, and it reminded me, as you were talking and also when I was looking at your book, I was reminded of this. This issue surrounding the former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn regarding anti-Semitism in the Labor Party and the way that the Labor Party reacted to those charges, or those concerns. And there were some things that were brought to light and made public about conversations that folks were having that concerned some people. And one of the things that struck me is anti-Semitism used to be associated with the right. Lately, it seems to be, have become more of a problem for the left. Certainly, in the United States, it was a problem for the Democrats in 2024. So I'm just curious to get your thoughts about is that kind of, does that illustrate what you're talking about there, in some ways?
EH: Yeah, in a number of ways. One of the things I try to show in the book when I examine this problem of leftist anti-Semitism in Britain, is to show that even people on the left who claimed, and I think their intentions were good, I think their heart was in the right place, right, people who claimed to care about this problem of anti-Semitism and wanted to kind of dig into it, come clean about it, right? In the book, I note one journalist in particular just because I thought this was so symptomatic of the problem, namely that this particular journalist, a young but very prominent Guardian journalist by the name of Owen Jones. Now, a very strong supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, a very stern critic of Israel, therefore, you know, nobody could accuse me of, you know, of sources that were maybe too sympathetic to Israel. I don't think anybody criticizes Israel more than Owen Jones, you know, pretty much on a minute-to-minute basis if you look at his Twitter feed. And so I said, okay, then I'll look at his account, you know, because he's certainly not going to make up stories of anti-Semitism. And indeed, I checked all the stories that he reported. And so on the one hand, a harsh critic of Israel, but on the other hand, someone who did want to, as I say, come clean about anti-Semitism. And here's the problem, right, so in many ways, I praise him because at least he went much further than many. Many just wanted to hush it, to deny it, say it's all a plot by Mossad and so forth. So Owen Jones, on the one hand, a harsh critic of Israel, nevertheless, at least, you know, was upfront, right, that there have been many incidents in a short period of time that we need to reckon with this. But then the question is, well, how does he reckon with it, right? Again, better than most and yet there are still real problems, right? So if you look at Owen Jones’ other writing on things like racism, poverty, LGBTQ people, women and so forth, he very commonly characterizes these problems as, and often literally uses the words: systemic, structural. And even if he's not using those words, it's clear that this is how he's analyzing these problems, whether, again, he's been doing this for years and I cite several examples and you can find many more, he writes a lot, right? And so these problems are always systemic, structural, built into the very fabric of how Western society or certainly British society has been operating for a long time. Then all of a sudden he said, okay, now we're going to take leftist anti-Semitism seriously. But he never analyzes that as systemic or structural on the left. All of a sudden, it's just a bunch of mistakes and what's incredible is that he himself recites case after case after case, again, in a very short period of time, right? And yet each time he then explains it as, oh, it was a mistake and, you know, Corbyn really should have reacted a bit sooner or should have used different words or, you know, should have told such and such an adviser, right? It all just becomes, you know, a bit of, you know, sort of juggling the chairs on the, you know, on the deck of the Titanic, right? In no way does he either use the word or more importantly, use the concept of structural or systemic injustice.
GR: Or something that's baked in in a particular way because of the history and because of the struggle.
EH: Yeah, it's all the big oops, it's all just a big banana peel. And the reason I go into this is because, again, this we get this too much from the left and forgetting about the anti-Semitism, right? You know, oh, you know, the USSR, oh, well, that wasn't real socialism, as if it wasn't just a big mistake, right? You know, Mao, well, that wasn't the real socialism, right? And you know, no, right, if they are right, that structural injustices are, as you say, embedded, built into the very fabric of what Western society has been for centuries, then how is it that many of the leftist own commitments so easily come free of that past? Either we're all embedded in our past, or we can all just wipe our hands and walk away from it. But the idea that the left is constantly wiping its hands and walking away from it, right, while the rest of us have to keep rehearsing, almost ritually rehearsing it, it just doesn't make any sense.
GR: Well, let me… Yeah. Go ahead. Finish your point, I want to ask you a question.
EH: Just to give a very quick example of that, right, in case some people, you know, think again that I'm being unfair. You know, just look at a university campuses, right? We’ll have things like, you know, Women's History Month and Gay History Month, LGBTQ History Month and backwards, and that's good. Again, I don't want to dismantle that, keep it, right? Give me one example of, I don't know, Socialist History Month. And again, I don't mean done by the far right. I mean done by leftists and done in the same way. Yes, this is also an example of how liberationist and egalitarian and indeed socialist discourses were massively abused not to create that kind of society, but in fact to create just the opposite, which is precisely the critique of Western liberal democracy. I don't think you could name maybe one campus, and that's a problem.
GR: Yeah. Well, if you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the law professor Eric Heinze. You know, you're saying all these things, and I'm constantly thinking of George Orwell, you know, as someone who was willing to do that. I mean, if you read “Homage to Catalonia,” he's willing to do it, you suggest, and certainly “1984” goes in that direction too. I don't want to take up the whole rest of the time with this, but I have a quick story I want to relate to you to get your reaction to it. So I'm going to put you maybe in the role of psychotherapist here for a minute, you can send me your bill when we're done. But I was in a, several years, few years ago, a DEI training at my school, and it was being led by a gentleman whose name I won't use, but we got into it. And the idea of this conversation, it was on Zoom, was that it was about, I don't know, 50-60 people, and it had professors at all different ranks. And, you know how the system works. So I was a full professor, there were full professors there. There were associate professors who are ultimately wanting to be full professors and there are assistant professors who are scared that they won't be tenured, right? And so, all right. So we're going to have a conversation about identity and race and inclusion and all of this and at the beginning of this, I brought up what I perceived to be a problem is how, because it was billed as an honest conversation, no judgment, honest conversation, I said, how can we have an honest conversation given the gross inequalities of power that exist here on this Zoom call? You've got assistant professors, you know, supposedly discussing these things with the people that are going to decide whether they're going to stay or get fired. How’s that going to be an honest, open conversation? Well, immediately I got turned into by the leaders of this as sort of the bad white guy in all of this. Like somehow this point that I was bringing up as a challenge to what we were doing had something to do with my race and my gender, maybe my age too, I don't know. But it was, it just seemed strange, was like, hey, I'm the one talking about let's think critically about the power relations that are in this room. And the reaction was sort of, oh, no, this can't possibly be the case here. And it reminds me very much of what you're talking about.
EH: Yeah and it's tragic. In fact, getting back to your reference to someone like Orwell, I mean, one of the points I tried to make in the book is that, again, the problem is not so much with what I call step one of memory politics. You can find many important thinkers throughout the history of the left who were willing to call out abuses, that's not the problem. And again, many people reject what I say because they think that I don't know this, right and they think that I just want to rehash all the terrible things that Stalin did, right? But the problem again is, where is step two? And I think the story that you just told also illustrates that. It's this kind of, oh, but we don't need to do this.
GR: Right.
EH: Because if they thought they didn't need to do it, they would do it, right? Again, if it's not so hard to put on, as I said, you know, Women's History Month, LGBTQ History Month, Black History (month), whatever, right, why is it so hard to do the self-criticism that they insist that all the rest of us have to do? As I say in my book, don't tell us, show us.
GR: Yeah.
EH: If collective self-scrutiny is the way to do history for those who care about justice.
GR: So what is then, we’ve got about 4 minutes left and I've got sort of two questions I think will completely occupy us here. But you've given me a sense of what the prescription is, you know, how does the left get out of this trap? And it's don't tell us, show us, engage in this kind of thing. Is there anything that you might add to that as your recommendation for how we go forward?
EH: Yeah. I mean, again, I don't think it's hard to do. I think that critical theorists and leftist thinkers, they've always had the tools, yeah? And so let's just take a quick example before we wrap up, right? You know, again, a lot of critical theory has been about looking at some of the foundational norms of Western liberal democracy, individual freedom, civic equality, economic opportunity and showing how law and politics in society were actually structured to use these as just defying ideologies to entrench the opposite, to entrench unfreedom for the people at the bottom, inequality, lack of opportunity. Again, that's good, this is the genius of critical theory, keep doing it. But what about doing that same analysis with, again, the leftist discourses of liberation and egalitarianism and indeed socialism that again, much of the left was at the very least lending legitimacy to and often zealously supporting for more than a hundred years, right? If it's not hard to do it with liberal democracy, then it's not hard to do it with many of the regimes that the left has also, again, at least lent legitimacy to over the past hundred years. So the tools are there, it's only a question of will. Are we willing to subject ourselves to the same scrutiny that we insist that everybody else needs to undertake?
GR: So, final question on that point. You mentioned the word regimes, so, you know, the Academy is one of these regimes, obviously. And so what I wanted to ask you about, I wanted to take this back to the United States and make it very current, and that is do you think then the problems that you're describing here, do they give President Trump and American Republicans, more generally, enough of a kernel of truth when they go after higher education on the grounds of viewpoint diversity, ideological intolerance and so on? I mean, you know, they're going way over the top, one might argue, and how they're reacting to this and we would be, you know, right to point that out. But at the same time, does the academy and does the left by extension, not do itself a great disservice by not at least acknowledging that the kernel of truth there, before they make that critique? And only in a minute I'm giving you for this, I'm sorry.
EH: Yeah. And that kernel of truth will only seriously be acknowledged when its roots, its causes are acknowledged. And I don't think the left has really understood them, right? And this is why, again, you know, people think that I just want to rehash again the history of Stalin and Battle and all the rest. No, it's not about that at all. My book, it's not about history, it's about memory. They're not the same thing, right? I'm not reproaching the left for denying facts of history, I'm reproaching them for the ways in which they do memory politics, the very one-sided and self-contradictory ways in which they do it.
GR: Well, we'll have to leave it there. It's a fascinating book, and this has been a fascinating discussion. Again, you can send me your bill for the therapy, but that was Erik Heinze. And again, his new book is titled, “Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left.” Very, very provocative, very interesting book. Professor Heinze, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really, really enjoyed this.
EH: Thank you, Grant. It was an absolute pleasure for me.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Dennis Patterson on the Campbell Conversations
May 10, 2025
Dennis Patterson
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations. I'm Grant Reeher. As expertise and the exhortation to ‘follow the science’ become politically weaponized, my guest today is Dennis Patterson. He's a Law Professor at Rutgers University and he's also a Law and Legal Philosophy Professor at Surrey Law School in Britain. Together with Rutgers Law School Professor Jacob Hale Russell, he's written a new book. It's titled, "The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism." Professor Patterson, welcome to the program and congratulations on the new book.
Dennis Patterson: Well, thank you so much for having me, I appreciate your time.
GR: Well, we appreciate you making the time. So let me just start with a little introduction for you and our listeners about why this book caught my eye, a couple of reasons. First of all, it taps into a set of concerns I've had about elites in the academy in recent years and also, as it happens, I've just finished teaching a course on democratic theory, that's democratic with a small ‘d’. And one of the issues that we discussed was the role of expertise, just how far it can and should take a society in making political decisions and what kinds of decisions we ought to be willing to cede to these subject area experts versus weighing the value trade-offs for ourselves. So I'm very, very keen on what you have to say here. We'll get into the details of your book as we work our way through the issue but I want to briefly, just to start out, just ask you a very basic question. What prompted you and your colleague to write this book when you did?
DP: Well, Jacob and I have had written and had written four articles during the pandemic. We started off shortly after the first wave of COVID with an article in an online publication called Stat News. And the thesis of that article was stop blaming the ordinary American for failing to follow the rules, because, and take the virus seriously, because, in fact, they are and they are doing what they're told. And so if there are problems, the problems lie elsewhere. We then went on to write a couple of more articles. The one that got the most attention was a piece called, “The Mask Debacle”, and that was about three years ago. And our basic thesis there was that the pandemic had, the management of the pandemic had evolved into basically political theater. And the whole idea that anyone was, quote, “following the science” or any science struck us as implausible. Because if you looked at blue states and red states, the regulations that they had were largely political, not driven by any kind of scientific metric. You see, our fundamental focus is not on who got things right or wrong in the pandemic, everybody makes mistakes, it's the way we talk about this. And our thesis has always been that the elites, the technocratic elites who manage the economy and culture, are basically engendering the populism that they claim to decry. And I would go so far as to point to the reelection of Donald Trump as an example of that. Neither one of us is a Trump supporter by any means, but, you know, it's just, you cannot denigrate people day in and day out, tell them their opinion is worthless, that their values and aspirations don't count for anything, and then expect them to just fall into line. That's not going to happen, it didn't happen. And unless things change, it'll just keep occurring. Anyway, that's how we got into it.
GR: Yeah, certainly not a good way to appeal to voters. So we'll work our way through some of these and I particularly want to investigate, probably in the later half of our conversation, about how what actually fuels the populism. But let me break it down first in terms of what's going on with this notion of expertise and experts. You write about an age of what, very provocative phrase, an age of mindless expertise, just say a little bit about that.
DP: Oh, well, we have a passage in the book where we recount the number of times the word expertise appears in the pages of the New York Times. And until about five years ago, it was just like every other word, and then it just explodes. And now we have experts for, you know, everything from drugs to picking a spouse to buying a car, what books to read to your children. I mean, it's just, we really do valorize expertise and we're in some ways that are obvious and important, like science and health and ways that are, you know, absurd, like the best birthday cake for a two year old and things like that.
GR: (laughter) I missed that one. So do you think that when it comes to that phenomenon, proliferation of notion of expertise, that we're living in an age that's different from the past? When I was thinking of the time about 120 years ago or so where there was a real revolution in this notion of professionalism, everything became more professionalized and self-styled professionalism. Do you think something's going on that's unique to our age right now?
DP: I do, I do. And I think it's basically this, but it's also very cultural and it's not across the board. I think that people like us who are, you know, credentialed, educated, tend to believe that the only thing that really matters in any discussion of policy for example, our facts. And if we just get the facts right, everything else will just sort of take care of itself. And one of the messages of our book is, is that, this just ain't so. You can you can have lots of facts but the question remains what to do with them. But we have, I mean if you look at just, you know, popular culture, like, I don't know, Malcolm Gladwell and then somebody more sophisticated like Dan Kahneman, there's all this emphasis on the cognitive and understanding the world and it's basically empirical. And we love to, and Americans love a clean, neat scientific solution to everything, it's cultural. And of course, science is absolutely fantastic at providing solutions. But one of the things that the pandemic did was it really raised the question just how far can we go in making decisions about how to live with just facts? And the answer was, not too far. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say the general public's trust in the public health complex is at an all-time low. Now, if that's true, and I see this all the time, that's the claim, the question is why? What happened during the pandemic to make things that bad?
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Law and Legal Philosophy Professor Dennis Patterson, and we're discussing his new book. It's titled, "The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism". I want to pick up on exactly that last point that you made there, because, and I suppose that you and I, as you just said, you know, we're credentialed, we might qualify as elites in our society this way. There's this sense I think that the elites, by and large in our society tend to think, and maybe I'm going too much by what I'm hearing from my colleagues, but tend to think that we are living in an age where expertise and factual knowledge are just being discounted and dismissed out of hand.
DP: Yeah.
GR: And it also seems to be the case that for these elites, that that discounting is also linked to democratic backsliding in their minds. That there's almost a causal relationship there. So it sounds like you would agree with that premise that the expertise and factual knowledge are being discounted and dismissed, is that correct?
DP: No, I don't think it's correct at all.
GR: Oh, okay, explain that then.
DP: So one of the themes of the constellation of issues that you mention is that we allegedly live in a post-truth environment where, you know, everybody has alternate facts. You believe, you have your truths and I have mine and so the idea of an objective reality around which we can coalesce is an illusion. Now, there's plenty of social, this topic is a bit controversial, but there's a lot of social science data to support the proposition that we don't live in a post-truth environment. And in fact, for example, the internet is constantly blamed as, internet and social media are blamed as the means by which people acquire beliefs that are false. And then they lead to, you know, the undermining of democracy et cetera, et cetera. In fact, a lot of empirical evidence points to the proposition that social media does nothing worse than reinforce what people already believe. And so if they are getting misinformation, it's coming from another place. And I also want to point out, as Marty Makary made this point during his confirmation hearing, the government was the primary source of misinformation during the pandemic. The need to close schools, social distancing, closing down the economy, masks. All of the non-pharmacological intervention that the government pushed were ineffective. This is a fact. And yet everybody was told you had to wear a mask, your kids had to stay home, it was it was just all wrong. So, so much for expertise, facts and the truth. Now, are there vaccine deniers? Of course, of course. There are flat earth people, and there are all kinds of people who believe things that are just obviously false. But it's not the vast majority of people out in the public domain. Most people believe things that are, by and large, true. They try to follow the rules as best they can, but they also question, sometimes rightly, the dictates and the mandates of government. And I think that's going to happen more and more. Now, the way the pandemic was managed, the way it was talked about, the derision that was delivered to people who deigned to question what the government was doing, this has all backfired now. And so you want to know why we have more populism? This is in part the answer, because, you know, one of the ways I characterize our book is and I'll speak just for myself here, we're basically diagnosing a pathology, a one that you and I are very familiar with from the faculty lounge. And that is, you know, condescension, right? If you don't have the credentials that we have, you're not worth talking to, right? Second, technocratic paternalism. The idea that facts determine everything. And if you would just shut up and follow what we tell you to do, you'd be fine. And finally, intellectual tyranny, that any dissent is going to be suppressed. I mean, look at the attack on the Great Barrington people, Fauci and Collins trying to tank them, you know, with articles and such. The Biden administration’s suppression of people on Twitter and Facebook. I mean, this stuff just can't go on. And again, it turns out these people were by and large, correct. They certainly weren't wrong, right? I mean, the Great Barrington people, they were on to something, focused protection was just as plausible. And of course, my favorite example, right, where did the virus come from, a wet market or a lab, right? Remember when Trump suggested it came from a lab? Everybody said he was a racist. I never understood why it was racist, like, why a wet market is less racist in a lab, but okay. But that aside, right? And now it is at least plausible, if not more, that the virus came from a lab. In fact, it might have been a lab, you know, that received funding from the United States government. So maybe, you know, we don't know the facts about that yet. But the point is, is that we can't even talk about a thesis like that without it being completely politically polarized.
GR: You’re listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with Dennis Patterson. He's a Law Professor at Rutgers University, also a Law and Legal Philosophy Professor at Surrey Law School in Britain. And he's the author of a new book titled, "The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism” and we've been discussing the book. I want to come back to something that you mentioned, this idea that, you know, the facts drive everything. And not only that, but if you question them in any kind of way, among these, within these elite cultures, the academy being one, that you are immediately kind of dismissed, and also that the conversation becomes very polarized. This is something that I have experienced and I've talked to other guests about and I wanted to get your thoughts about it. It seems to me that there is this blending of partisanship, political polarization, and this sense of science and ways that you've been discussing it in this strange way that very immediately in any kind of conversation that's about policy, things do get put in these polarized camps. And not only if you have a, what would normally be a legitimate question to ask, if you even ask that question, one of the moves that gets made is, if you're in the academy, you're put into a Republican camp and immediately suspect, you know, even questions something to even ask probing follow up. Is that something that you're getting at here in this?
DP: Well, we're not only getting at it, but we're getting it. We had we had colleagues who read some or all of our book.
GR: Yeah. I wanted to ask you about your reaction you're getting from your colleagues, so go ahead. I’m glad you bring it up.
DP: I mean, some people said you guys sound like you're Trump supporters. Which, my reaction was like, the book is written in English, what do you mean? Like, you know, how can you possibly say that after… And the answer is because you deigned to question the mantle of authority. So, for example, to give you a very, very concrete example of life during the pandemic. So Rutgers had a policy where everybody in a classroom had to wear a mask. And this went on for, I think, it went on for two years. In the last semester the edict was, and this was after like Penn and lots of other local schools had abandoned masks, Rutgers kept it. And there was one guy who would send out the emails say(ing), you have to, wearing a mask as mandatory. And I said to him, I wrote him an email and I said, let me get this straight. The students sleep together, eat together, recreate together, they only have to wear a mask when they come to the classroom, what science supports that? Never got an answer. And it turned out that there were some people in the AAUP, the union, my age, your age, right, who wanted all the students to wear masks because they were worried about getting a virus. Now, of course, all the teacher had to do was wearing N-95 properly, and they would have been fine. But this is the kind of problem that I experienced because I could never get an answer to this question. And then I would ask my colleagues, why do you think this book has a Trumpian tilt to it? Well, because you're criticizing the government's handling of COVID. And I said yeah, but I mean, you know, first of all, everybody in Sweden was supposed to be dead by the end of the week and it turns out their death rate was no worse than any other Scandinavian country, please explain. I mean, they just, it's a kind of a mindset that if you just, look, I've been an academic for 35 years. When I started out, you could question anything, you could demand an explanation of anything. Now, if you raise a question about the plausibility of a fair number of policies, you are ostracized.
GR: Right.
DP: That is a real phenomenon. It's not just you know, what fire and other people are reporting. I mean, I can tell you from the front lines, people don't want to raise questions. Now, when you're my age and my seniority, you don't care.
GR: (laughter)
DP: I mean, I couldn't care less what you think. I mean, what's the Dean going to do, fire me for asking a question? No, you know, none of that's going to happen. But it's not as interesting because, you know, there's only sort of one point of view. And for the younger people, they don't want to say a word because they're afraid of saying the wrong thing.
GR: Well, that's a whole ‘nother can of worms. I will say that I had a day in my class this semester, and the students brought it up, where there was a very honest conversation about the concerns that they had about, in a sense, falling out of line with some of the other classes that they were taking.
DP: Well, you know what's interesting about that topic...
GR: Well, I'll just say some of the stories were for me, they were hair raising. They were worse than I thought.
DP: But tell me why. You know, because in my, I just finished teaching populism again. The students report that they're worried about other students commenting on them. Is that your experience?
GR: No, these students were worried about their grades and the faculty. And my experience at Syracuse, every place is different, is that the students aren't that bad with each other. Now, is a there is a subset, right, who's very vocal and very doctrinaire. But for the most part, the students are pretty open and pretty eclectic and tolerant. It's, their report is concerns about the faculty. And this is particularly since this most recent election. You know, I'm a political scientist, I think about this a little differently. And I don't want to take too much of the time that people want to hear from you. But in the dynamic that you're talking about, one of the things that seems to me that's going on is, let me make a specific example with Fauci, for example. I think the mindset is, Trump is criticizing Fauci, therefore, I cannot criticize Fauci.
DP: Right.
GR: That's the driver. And that's where I think, like, I would put the partisan piece up front. Let me ask you this question. And if, by the way, I should say to my listeners, if you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the Law and Legal Philosophy Professor Dennis Patterson and we're discussing his new book, “The Weaponization of Expertise…”. I've got a few writers on the program that have written in a similar vein to you. They're not making your specific argument, but they're concerned about different aspects about academic and intellectual culture, thinking and political assumptions. Musa al-Gharbi is one of them I've spoken with, wrote the book, “We've Never Been Woke”. I get the sense that there is now a growing recognition of this as a problem that includes your arguments among a group of elites that cut across different political ideologies. Like you say, you're not a Trump supporter, and it's growing. Is your sense that even though there is this backlash, there's starting to be some wind in the sails of folks that are questioning this?
DP: Couple of puffs, a couple of gusts of wind, but I'm not I'm not sure that things are going to change that much that quickly. One thing that I think has gotten better is the, it has gotten better on the left, and that is the cancel culture atmosphere. But now Trump is filling that void trying to do the whole thing from the right. And so net / net, things are pretty much where they’ve been. But I don't think any conservative on an American campus is suppressing the speech of their more left wing colleagues. But certainly the opposite has been true for decades. You couldn't criticize anything without being ostracized. And so I do think that there is, that in a sense, and I just sense this in the faculty lounge, that people are now of a view that we just, there is nothing about which everyone agrees. And so we have to hear the dissenting voices. Now, I think it'll be a cold day in hell, at least at Rutgers, before there's a space made for somebody who questions some of the more fundamental aspects of our institutional ideology, but hope springs eternal.
GR: Do you think that a more productive conversation about the problems that you are identifying here can happen once Trump departs the White House after that particular polarizing figure goes away? That maybe the conversation in the faculty lounge and elsewhere can begin to go forward?
DP: I would say no, but, and I'm not a pessimist by disposition. I mean, I may have Irish heritage, but I'm not melancholic at all. But I'm a realist and, look, I mean, people just, I'm at a law school that takes social justice as its number one institutional commitment, that's not going to go away quickly. I'm more interested in producing students who can pass the bar and be successful lawyers. That's my number one priority. So can we talk about it? Sure, we do talk about it now. I think people are polite, but, you know, I don't think much is going to change.
GR: Well, let me jump in if I can, just because we only have about half a minute left or so. I can't leave the conversation on this. Do you see a way out then? I mean, your final chapter is giving political judgment a chance. What do you mean there? In 30 seconds, get us out of this morass.
DP: Well, it starts with it starts with the recognition that your interlocutor is not someone who proceeds in bad faith, that in fact, people have different views of the world. It's like the old, you know, the old liberal political ideal that my conception of the good is something that I get to decide, not you, not the state. And so people have different competing conceptions of the good. If you cannot proceed in a respectful conversation where you take the other person seriously, you let to make their argument, you don't make ad hominem arguments about them, that's the sort of thing that I think we need to do. And I think in some ways that aspect is getting a bit is getting a bit better. Because Trump is such a polarizing figure, that no one really wants to be associated with that temperament. And it's all about temperament. If you evince disdain for people, no conversation as possible. So just at that very basic level, respect for your interlocutor is a great place to start.
GR: Well, we'll have to leave it there. That was Dennis Patterson and again, his new book, written with Jacob Hale Russell is titled, "The Weaponization of Expertise: How Elites Fuel Populism." Professor Patterson, thanks so much again for taking the time to talk with me and really appreciate you writing this book.
DP: Thanks.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
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Amie Parnes on the Campbell Conversations
Apr 26, 2025
Amie Parnes
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. We’re at about the first 100 days mark for the second Trump presidency, that milestone is being marked across the media. Today, we're going to take a look backward at how we got here. My guest is Amie Parnes. She's a senior political correspondent at The Hill. And with Jonathan Allen, another political journalist, she's written an account of the 2024 presidential election. It's titled, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”. She was previously on this program to discuss her book about the 2016 election entitled, “Shattered” and he also wrote a book about 2020 titled, “Lucky”. She wrote those books with Jonathan Allen as well. Amie, welcome back to the program and congratulations on penning another bestseller.
Amie Parnes: Thanks, Grant. Thank you so much.
GR: It's good to see you again and thanks for making the time. So let me just start with a very basic question, where does this book, do you think, fit in with the assessments of the 2024 election that are going to come later? I mean, journalism in the moment is sometimes called the first draft of history. Is this book the second draft of history?
AP: I think John and I like to think so. I mean, we wrote this book very much, I mean, people saw what happened in the election. We all saw it play out. We saw the twists and turns. But I think these books are good because they essentially take you inside the room, these backroom conversations. You are privy to learning what is happening about, you know, what Nancy Pelosi is telling Barack Obama, what Nancy Pelosi is thinking as she's watching the debate, who she's talking to. So, you know, it's, we look back, but we write these books also to look ahead and we can get into that later. But, you know, it's a good playbook for Democrats and Republicans about what went right and what went wrong.
GR: It's interesting, you mentioned Nancy Pelosi and that's your opening scene there watching that debate. It grabs you, it pulls you right from the first paragraph.
AP: Yeah, intentionally so. I mean, she had her fingerprints all over this so we wanted to put you right in there with her watching the debate and that's exactly what we do.
GR: That's good, it was well done. So I don't want you to give away necessarily the best nuggets in the book. You know, you want people to buy the book and find those. But basically, maybe you already touched on this, but what are readers going to find in this book that they haven't already lived through? It's the inside backroom story and are there other things about the election that they'll find in here?
AP: Yeah, I mean, I think you learn about both sides. I mean, our book has gotten a lot of attention about the Democratic train wreck. But I think you also learn about what was going on Trump's end, too, and what he was thinking and what his aides were thinking. And it was a tumultuous time over there, too, especially during the candidate switch. You know, when Kamala Harris comes in, it's something that, you know, Trump was very surprised about. And so you learn exactly what was going on there. It was really quiet at that time during the switch. But we take you inside what he is thinking and how he wants to change things up. So I think he really, I think I'm not just saying this because I co-wrote this book, but I think you learn something new on every page.
GR: Yeah. Well, you mentioned that, you know, not just the Democratic side, but also thinking about what the Trump campaign was doing. And I was wondering, and this is a morbid question, I'm just going to say at the beginning, but was there a moment where the Trump campaign really thought, okay, you know, this is ours to lose? And in my mind, it was when he got shot and survived, I thought, I remember turning to someone and saying, there's this he's probably got this now.
AP: Yeah. And what's fascinating is Joe Biden's campaign, it was still the Biden campaign at the time, was thinking the same thing in those moments. And we take you inside one really funny moment with a senior adviser who was at his mother's house. And his mother essentially tells him, well, that's over, the race is over, essentially.
GR: (laughter)
AP: But yeah, I think John and I both saw that moment. And I think the, you know, on both sides, they kind of thought that they had it wrapped up in that moment. And it was amazing that Trump actually knew what he needed to do in the moment, which was to project strength. And he does that, he accomplishes that in that very morbid moment. And, you know, you look at what was happening on the other side of the election and the campaign and Joe Biden was projecting weakness in that moment. So you had that dichotomy of these two, strength versus weak and I think it really played to Trump's favor.
GR: I want to come back to some aspects of the question I want to ask you next a little bit later. But while we're on the subject of sort of turning points, you used the word train wreck a minute ago to talk about the Democratic campaign. I understand why that would be an adjective, because, you know, you had the implosion at the debate. You know, there was really no positive spin that could be put on that. And then the scrambling with finding another candidate, controversy about whether that should be an open or closed process. Kamala Harris gets named, kind of anointed and I want to come back to that later. But after all that, it's still a close election.
AP: Yeah.
GR: So I guess I'm wondering, why are the Democrats looking at this like a train wreck? I mean, there is a way to see the glass half full, even though obviously they hate having Trump as president. But still, I mean, you know, it was a pretty close election all that considered.
AP: It was a really close election. But they also lost the House and Senate. And that was Nancy Pelosi's biggest reason for jumping in I think, because she was hearing from members of the House that they were in jeopardy and she wanted to prevent losing the House as much as the White House. And so I think it was just across the board something that Democrats really wanted to prevent, another Trump presidency, they knew what that was like. A lot of them are thinking this one is so much worse than the first time and we could have prevented this. And the thing is, the election, as much as the Harris folks say it was a close race, but that they couldn't have won, you know, that Trump was going to win from the beginning. It was a very winnable race. The Democrats could have won this race. And I think that's why it was such a devastating loss.
GR: Right. Yeah, that's a good point. Were there any foreshadowing or tells in what you were seeing during the campaign of how Trump has approached his second term? I mean, he's doing things he said he was going to do, but nonetheless, this term looks completely different from the first term in terms of discipline and energy level and organizational, you know, I mean the organization of the messaging, I suppose, if not the people he's picked to be in the offices.
AP: Yeah, yeah. I think he, felt like he, you know, he walked in with a mandate and he's doing what he said he was going to do. I mean, anyone that's surprised about tariffs or anything else that he's doing, it was pretty much laid out during the campaign. And he brought with him Susie Wiles, someone that we profile quite a bit in this book, who is sort of the epitome of discipline. And that's what you saw in the Trump campaign. When you look at the book and you look at how the inner workings, you know, the moves and machinations that they were doing, it was all Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. A very disciplined campaign, a very tightly wound campaign, a much tighter campaign than previously with the 2020 and 2016 elections and I think it was all because of them. And he has, you know what's interesting is in the moment when Kamala, and I talked about this a moment earlier, but there's a moment where he can choose chaos again he can bring in Corey Lewandowski and the people from his past who bring a lot of drama with them and he chooses not to go that way. He chooses to keep Wiles and LaCivita on board when Kamala Harris comes in, and there's a moment where they feel like she's winning. And he kind of wants to shake up the race by doing something drastic, but he chooses the status quo and he chooses exactly where he is, which is a very un-Trumpian kind of thing to do, but he does it. And I think that moment speaks to where he was and his mindset during this campaign.
GR: Perhaps there's an analogy now in the way that he is backing off of tariffs. Seems again like he is open to a learning curve on some things at least. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with the journalist Amie Parnes. She is the coauthor of a new book on the 2024 election titled, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”. So this next question is the one I have been looking most forward to asking you, because I would like an answer and I'm actually kind of frustrated with the Democratic Party in this regard. There's one thing from the Democratic side of the campaign that I can make assumptions about, but I actually don't really know. And I think, as I just said, both former President Biden and the Democratic Party, I think they owe the nation a factual account of this, and they haven't provided it so far, I'm hoping you can tell me. And this is, everyone saw the debate or at least the parts of it that made it on the news the next morning with Joe Biden, but what exactly happened with Biden's decision to step down as a candidate? How and why was that decision actually made? Biden's speech to the nation did not really provide that answer.
AP: No. And I think in the end, he was really dug in and we get into this quite a bit in the book, Grant. But he, you know, he goes from a position of, no, I'm not doing it to he comes down with COVID and it's a really bad case of COVID and he has to get off the campaign trail. It's much worse than they let on. He was having really bad respiratory issues. And so he goes back to Wilmington with COVID, a bad case of COVID, and he is essentially locked in his house with a closed set of advisors. And they're essentially there to present him with the facts. You know, you are losing, poll numbers show that you're not going to be able to win, fundraising is completely cut off, no one is donating anything anymore. And they are essentially able to convince him after weeks of, no, I'm going to do this, I can win again, in his weakest moment he has to make the biggest political decision of his life. And he's sort of backed into a corner, and he does it. And what's interesting is he does it kind of unwillingly and wants to essentially take a victory lap and doesn't want to really endorse Kamala Harris in that moment. You know, essentially wants to take a few days and say, look how great I am, you know, I'm doing this for the good of the country. And she is the one who essentially tells him, no, I need your endorsement right now, which we reveal for the first time in the book. But there was that sort of gap where he puts out a statement and then puts out another statement endorsing her. And we kind of explained what was happening in those moments around that.
GR: Well, okay, so, well that then directly leads to the next thing I want to know is, how and why Kamala Harris was chosen as the new nominee? You said, okay, she pressures Biden to make the early endorsement. But that's just the, I mean, those are two people, you know, there's Nancy Pelosi, there are big other leaders in this party. And so how was it decided that that it wasn't going to be an open process, that there wasn't even going to be the appearance of an open process? How did that go down?
AP: What's interesting about that is that we detail in the book that Nancy Pelosi was really for an open process, as was Barack Obama and they were privately kind of lobbying, you know, and trying to get people trying to sound people out and hear people because they think, why not? You know, Nancy Pelosi doesn't think Kamala can win, she makes that known from the start. She tells a confidant, if he goes, she goes, meaning if Joe Biden goes, then Kamala Harris should go, too. And so she was very much for that. And Barack Obama up until the final hours, you know, he was calling around, talking to people like Jim Clyburn. And Clyburn feels like he needs to quickly back Kamala Harris because he knows Barack Obama is about to call him and kind of listen to him and kind of convince him about what an open primary might be like. So he quickly gets behind Harris to tell Obama, look, I'm behind Harris when Obama calls him. And that conversation lasts like 30 seconds because he's already done what he needed to do. And Kamala Harris, meanwhile, is, sort of, even before Biden gets out, what's interesting is in the hours leading up to the candidate switch, she has a set of close advisers in her pool house meeting to discuss what would happen if and when Joe Biden does drop out. So while she is trying to project loyalty and all of that, she is, you know, quietly assembling her aides to plan the next moves. So when it does happen that she is ready, and she can kind of galvanize her base and do what she needs to do. And so in that moment, she's pretty much ready to go. You know, she has the support, she knows that the fundraising is going to come to him. She pushes him because she needs the delegates, he's basically locked up all the delegates and she needs those. But she, you know, in a moment like that, in her moment of truth, she pushes him to endorse her and kind of knocks the nail in the coffin as far as, you know, the support from Democrats and she knows that. And that's what happens.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Amie Parnes. The political journalist as co-written a new book on the 2024 election has just come out. It's titled, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”. So let me just ask you this bottom line question. Were you surprised at the outcome of the election at all? Anything that surprised you about the election itself?
AP: I mean, what I think is most surprising, and I don't want to give anything away, was that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz go into it thinking that they are going to win, that they had it locked up. And I think the big bombshell in the book is that you, once again, I don't want to give away too much, but you walk into election night and we put you in the rooms with them and they're shocked that they have lost. Tim Walz can't even find the words to express how he feels, so much that his wife needs to say something because he just can't express how he's feeling. And we use the word gaslighting quite a bit in this book. But I think the biggest moment, I think, is when we reveal that Kamala Harris was essentially gaslit by her own campaign.
GR: Okay, wow, wow. And you mentioned Walz, and so, this, you may have just help me understand something. I have to say, sort of thinking about it as a political analyst, a political strategist, I am surprised that he seems to be trying to position himself in some ways for a run in ‘28. I just think that's not going to happen, man.
AP: No, I mean, it went from, you know, I think her pick of him was interesting because it initially was energizing. I think people thought that he would be able to really speak to white men in particular, you know, a demographic they desperately needed. But in the end, he kind of became a punch line. But they reined him in and they wouldn't allow him to do what he needed to do, which I think he's kind of alluded to in recent interviews. But I think, you know, he was a big disappointment, I think, to a lot of people.
GR: Yeah, this is a comment in the weeds, but one of the things that that I thought at the time was the Democrats kept emphasizing the campaign, kept emphasizing, oh, he's a coach, he's a coach, you know, and so everyone's going to trust him, everyone's going to like him. And I thought, these people had never played organized sports. Because, I mean, half of my experiences with my coaches were really horrible.
AP: Yeah.
GR: (laughter) I wouldn't want them near my political system.
AP: No, I know. But we do tell in the book that he was almost, he couldn't eat or sleep, he was almost fixated on the debate, the vice presidential debate. And that kind of got very much in his head the entire time. So aides had to remind him to eat and you know, to try to get sleep because he was losing sleep. And I think we saw all that play out, but really interesting.
GR: Wow, yeah. So let me ask you a question about the other side then. I want to ask you a question about Donald Trump. You obviously have been looking very closely at this guy for a very long time.
AP: Yeah.
GR: And you wrote a book on the 2016 election as well and the 2020 election. Do you think that Trump, putting you in the armchair psychologist moment here, do you think that Trump has any internal sense of limits of what his power ought to be?
AP: You know, it's a really interesting question. I think in key moments he does. And, you know, we detail one really fascinating thing in the book where, during the debate we kind of give you what’s playing on, the inner dialog in his mind. And he knows in that moment that he can't pummel Joe Biden because Joe Biden is essentially pummeling himself. And so he reins it in, you know, like he doesn't go after, doesn't go for the jugular, thinks in real, and we put you there, but he's thinking in real time if I do go for the jugular, how is that going to make me look? Here's a guy who's very involved in image, obviously, and branding and marketing and he knows that that's not a good look for him. So he has these moments of self-awareness, even though I think a lot of his haters would disagree with that. But he kind of, he knows what things look like. And I think that's why you're seeing sort of the push and pull on tariffs, for example, because he's aware of the headlines and the conversation around it. And so he is able to rein it in when he needs to, if that makes sense.
GR: It does make sense. And it's this really interesting paradox because one of his main appeals to a lot of people is that he's a guy who doesn't give a damn about how he looks, and he's a guy that doesn't give a damn about what he says. So it's, I guess, what is it, crazy like a fox or something. So I'm also wondering too, what your sense of JD Vance is. There was a lot of debate in both parties about how his political views had changed he was first anti-Trump and more moderate than he, you know, becomes more conservative and also more pro-Trump. I'm particularly interested because he's the likely inheritor at this point of Trump's legacy at this point. And I think he'll be a top tier candidate for president in ‘28 unless something really disastrous happens between now and then. So what's your quick sense, quick take on Vance?
AP: I think that's exactly right. But you know what we did see, especially during Signal Gate, he portrays himself, I think, going into the vice presidential pick as a loyalist. He positions himself with Trump in that way. He says, look, I know that in my past I was this, but now I'm this and I'm very much for the MAGA movement. And that's something that's very appealing to Trump. But then we saw in recent weeks, you know, with Signal Gate that he's willing to kind of part ways with Trump behind the scenes. And I'm curious to see how that relationship plays out. We saw what happened with Trump and Pence, for example, Mike Pence. I'm curious to see if those two, if this relationship ends up being as frayed as that one. And some people that I'm talking to think that it might be.
GR: Yeah, I was with political analysts the other day and they said the difference between the two of them, among others, is that Trump has no shame, but Vance had shame.
AP: Yeah.
GR: I don't know whether he's identifying that as a strength or a weakness. If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is the political journalist Amie Parnes. So we’ve got about 5 minutes left, I want to try to squeeze two or three questions in before we have to stop. I want you to look ahead now and it is just, you know, prognosticating, but how long do you think it will be, if ever, that our presidential elections feel, for lack of a better word, normal again? You know, back to the way maybe they were when Obama was running. Or have we passed some kind of a threshold point that we're never going to get back to again?
AP: I mean, I think that's TBD, Grant. I think a lot of people are curious to see if Trump tries to run again for a third term, which would really throw everything into, it would be a big disaster, I think.
GR: Yeah, I think it'd be a disaster for the Republican Party as well as Trump.
AP: Yeah. But I think that is something that comes into question and various other aspects. But I think I don't think we'll ever quite be on a normal track, quote unquote, again. I think it's all going to be, you know, we write these books and we keep saying, oh, this is the craziest election cycle ever, this is the craziest election cycle and they end up being crazier each time. (laughter)
GR: Yeah. I've given up thinking I'll see a difference in my lifetime, but I am telling my students, they'll see a difference in their lifetime, but that's a long time horizon. I want to come back to something that you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, which was the train wreck for the Democratic Party and sort of, you know, where they are now. Do you have any sense of what the Democrats are generally doing to try to reboot? You know, one, I get the sense there are different potential leaders and different kinds of themes that are being tried out. You have Sanders and AOC on the road, all the while that's happening, the Trump administration's being extremely active and pushing out a lot of different dimensions. David Hogg just came out and said he's got a hit list of Democrats in safe seats he wants to primary, he’s one of the vice chair of the Democratic Party. Do you have any sense of what they're doing to reboot?
AP: You know, it's interesting, I did an interview this week with the governor Gavin Newsom of California and he was essentially making the point to me that they have not done an autopsy yet to find out what exactly went wrong. And I think that's the start. I think there needs to be some accountability, actually, of what has happened. I think Biden or someone needs to come out and essentially own what has happened or claim some responsibility. I think that's the first step and they've been unwilling to do that. But you need to sort of reckon with what happened and how you ended up getting here, what led to a second Trump presidency. And for whatever reason, they're unwilling to kind of face themselves in the mirror. You know, I think they have to do that first in order to rebuild or it's going to be, the house is going to be rebuilt on shaky foundation and they have to regain the trust of voters. I think, you know, while it was a close election, I think a lot of these voters who were traditionally supposed to be Democratic voters voted for Trump. You have to speak to those people and win those people over. So I think what Governor Newsom was saying is essentially right. They need a really thorough autopsy of what's happened. And they haven't done that yet.
GR: Yeah. And it's interesting, I've noticed that he has kind of come out and said some things and participated in some things that would suggest that he's kind of doing a reboot of himself a little bit.
AP: Yeah.
GR: Although I have to say, before I ask you my last question, I have to say that I think my own sense is that in ‘28, the Democrats need to find someone that's not on the East Coast or the West Coast, they need to go to the interior of the country. Well, here's a fun question to end things with. So you write a book on 2016. It's called, “Shattered”, perfect title for the Hillary Clinton Campaign. Then your 2020 book was called, “Lucky”, and your 2024 book is, “Fight”. What's going to be the title of the 2028 book?
AP: “Nap” (laughter), no I’m kidding.
GR: (laughter) Oh, geez, if we could only hope.
AP: No, I don't know. What's funny, Grant, is that John and I weren't even going to do a book on this election.
GR: Really?
AP: Yeah, we were pushed into it by our publisher who said you guys need to get in there. And we had no idea what was going to happen, but I'm sure glad that we jumped in.
GR: Yeah, well I am too. We'll have to leave it there. I could talk to you for hours about this, but that was Amie Parnes, and her new book is titled, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House”. And if you are listening to this and you are any kind of political junkie or have any kind of significant interest in politics, this book is like a giant bowl of your favorite ice cream, you will love it. So, Amy, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me and thanks for writing the book.
AP: I love it, thank you so much.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
Marc Garneau on the Campbell Conversations
Apr 19, 2025
Marc Garneau
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today has several notable profiles that should be of interest to listeners in Central New York. Marc Garneau is Canada's first astronaut to go into space and then twenty four years following his first flight, he was the first former astronaut elected to Canada's parliament. The Liberal Party member served in two cabinet posts as Minister of Transport and as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Garneau, welcome back to the program, it’s good to see you.
Marc Garneau: Good to be with you, Grant.
GR: Thanks for making the time for this, we really appreciate it. So let me just start with this, and I know this is a longer and more complicated story, but if you could briefly just refresh our listeners on the current political situation in Canada, you are in the midst of an election.
MG: Indeed. Our previous prime minister, Justin Trudeau, resigned under pressure in January, and that triggered a federal election. First of all, the Liberal Party, which was the party in power, had to find a new leader, his name is Mark Carney. He became the prime minister and within about a week triggered an actual election which will take place on the 28th of April. So we're right in the middle of it.
GR: So very similar to the British model in that sense, that short, short election periods and the parliamentary system, okay, great. And you mentioned that Justin Trudeau resigned under pressure. I remember that was the story in the States. Just remind us briefly what the source of the pressure was.
MG: Well, a number of things. He had been the prime minister of the country for over nine years. And as often happens with systems like ours, Canadians kind of get tired of the incumbent and decide it's time for a change. And I think it was really a collection of past mistakes and the feeling that the prime minister was not addressing the issues very similar to those in the United States related to affordability, related to housing. And so I think within the caucus, that is the Liberal members of parliament, there was growing pressure for him to step down.
GR: And I know there's a lot of differences between Canadian politics and American politics and also the views that tend to, Canadians and Americans tend to have. I mean, you folks have a, you know, a guaranteed health care system. It's a complicated one at a provincial level, but certainly something different, profoundly different from what the United States has. But would it be fair to say that the Liberal Party would be sort of the equivalent of the Democratic Party in the United States?
MG: I think that's the parallel that is often made. We're certainly closer to being Democrats than Republicans.
GR: Okay, all right. So do you think that this tariff issue that's going on with the Trump administration and obviously its effects on countries around the world, do you think it's affecting the dynamics of this Canadian general election right now?
MG: Oh, it most certainly is. In fact, I think the ballot question in this election is which of the four party leaders, there are actually four parties or five, if you include the Greens, is going to best be able to handle the tariff question and negotiate with Mr. Trump. That is the central question because it is going to have such a profound effect on Canada and unfortunately also on your country.
GR: Yes, I mean, you're a huge trading partner for us. Do you expect that the Liberal Party will maintain its majority in Parliament and that Canada will have a Liberal Prime Minister going forward? I know you're in the Liberal Party and you may not want to speculate about that, but I want to ask anyway.
MG: Well, if you read the tea leaves or look into the crystal ball at the moment now with barely ten days left to go, it looks like the favorite appears to be Mark Carney, who was a former governor of the Central Bank, the equivalent of your Federal Reserve, not only for Canada, but also for Great Britain, a man of great economic experience. And it looks like he's in the favored position at the moment to win. So if that happens, yes, it will be a liberal government. And at the moment, if you believe the poll numbers, it looks like a majority. I don't want to jinx anything here, but it does look like he, at the moment, unless he makes a big mistake, seems to be the favorite.
GR: Okay, all right. And I wanted to ask you a question about Justin Trudeau and his political legacy, because he was known in the United States. But I think kind of more personally, I mean, he became something of a sex symbol here in the States as sort of the world's most handsomest national leader. But what do you think his political legacy is going to be in Canada?
MG: I personally, from having been in his cabinet for a number of years and known him, we were elected at the same time, I think that his legacy will be twofold. One, something that perhaps Americans don't hear a lot about, but that is what we call reconciliation, which is a massive effort which will take probably two generations to accomplish, to reconcile with our indigenous peoples for all the wrongs we did to them. And that's a massive undertaking. It has begun, but I think the Justin Trudeau is the first prime minister to take it to the level that it has reached and I think it has critical mass. The second thing is, as you know, Justin Trudeau is a progressive and believes very strongly in the social safety net and one of his signature initiatives is what's called the Canadian Child Benefit, which is money that goes to people below a certain income and it has proven to reduce poverty with children by a significant amount. And so that, I think, will also be considered part of his legacy.
GR: In the United States, we do have income supports of that nature. They are pretty much run by the states rather than the national government and that was a product of a law that Bill Clinton signed decades ago. But one of the distinguishing features of the United States system is there are a lot of hoops that people have to go through to get that and depending on the state, quite a bit of restrictions on them in terms of work requirements or needing to show that you are engaged in an activity that will lead to work. Is the Canadian system a little more, for lack of a better word, forgiving or generous in that sense? Do you have a sense of that?
MG: Yes and no. We are composed of ten provinces and three territories and constitutionally, provinces have certain rights and certain responsibilities and the two most notable are health care and secondly, education. The federal government provides funding for those activities, but there is a certain autonomy providing that the provinces act within, for example, the Canada Health Act, which has a number of principles that must be respected. So there is autonomy for the provinces to direct a number of things. The other part of it is the fact that some provinces have barriers to trade internally within the country. And this is one of the things that Mr. Trump's threat of tariffs has really brought to the fore. And that is the fact that we within our own country, sometimes our own worst enemy, because we have interprovincial barriers to trade. And there has been a strong resolve in recent weeks for the framers of the provinces to do everything they can to reduce, if not eliminate those interprovincial barriers Economists believe that this will significantly increase our GDP and I think it's a good thing. And hopefully, perhaps Mr. Trump has done us a favor here. He will have provoked this discussion on interprovincial barriers.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with Marc Garneau, a former member of the Canadian Parliament who served both as Minister of Transport and as Minister of Foreign Affairs. So you mentioned the tariffs, I did want to ask you a few questions about that. In addition to the fact that the tariffs have been on again, off again, or, you know, increased at one level and then taken down to a 10% level. President Trump has made a lot of comments about Canada in recent months that have often obviously ruffled feathers on both sides of the border. I had a, the first question want to ask you about that is my understanding is that Canada generally derives some of its sense of national identity from being on the one hand, great friends with the United States, but also and maybe more importantly, not being the United States that, you know, you're distinct. Have Canadian views on the U.S. been significantly damaged by all of what the president saying, or is there a stronger sense now of Canadian identity because of this, do you think?
MG: Both. Yes, there has been significant damage caused, particularly when Mr. Trump started to talk about annexing Canada and making it the 51st state. Now, if you do that once, it may be considered a joke in perhaps poor taste, but he repeatedly said it. You don't treat other countries, particularly your closest and best friend, that way. And so, yes, that has ruffled feathers in a very, very serious manner, but it has also galvanized Canadians to begin to take measures that will reduce our dependence on the United States. Not an easy task, because we do more than 75% of our trade with you. We are closest neighbors and I know particularly in the northern states like New York and others across the country, that there's a great deal of exchange, whether it's Canadians coming to shop, Canadians coming to spend their tourist dollars and that has taken a significant hit. And that, I think, speaks to the seriousness with which we view Mr. Trump's aggressive approach towards Canada. It's fine to want to renegotiate tariffs. We have the USMCA Treaty between Canada, the United States and Mexico, and it was scheduled to come up for review next year. That's fine, we can make some adjustments if Mr. Trump wants to change certain things because he feels it's unfair to the United States in a particular area, fair game. And we can do the same, and so can Mexico. But him jumping in right away and taking this extremely aggressive approach towards tariffs is definitely going to have a very painful effect on Canada with respect to jobs and with respect to affordability of certain things. But make no mistake about it, it's also going to have an effect on the United States. I was reading this morning about how you depend on Canadian aluminum. And the reason that you depend on Canadian aluminum is because you haven't got enough in your own country. It's an energy intensive area, you need a lot of electricity to produce aluminum. Another one is potash. Farmers in the United States depend twice a year on receiving their allotment or buying their allotment of potash for fertilizing the soil. Most of that comes from Canada. So there are going to be some serious effects on both sides. And it's unfortunate because it didn't have to happen this way.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Mark Garneau. He's a former cabinet minister in the Canadian Parliament and was the first Canadian astronaut to go into space. So I want to come back to what we were talking about before the break and the effect of what Donald Trump has been saying about Canada, this idea of, you know, annexing it or making it the 51st state. And you were talking about the effects that this is having on Canadians, but also, you know, it's going to have some policy effects, perhaps. This is my personal view of this, and you made a good point about the fact that, you know, if he says it once, we might dismiss it, but if he repeats that over and over again, you have to take it seriously. But personally, I've regarded these statements as just posturing and bluster because it just seems so unrealistic, let's put it that way. I can't imagine Canadians would want this, I can't even imagine that Americans would want it really if it was being considered. So I just wonder, is there any way in which Canadians might be willing to take this a little less seriously? Maybe I'm being to dismissive or optimistic about this whole issue.
MG: Well, I agree with you. And right away when he started to say that, I recognized it as posturing because he is a transactionalist. He's somebody who wants to get something out of this and he takes a very aggressive posture. And no, there is absolutely no chance to quote Justin Trudeau, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that it's ever going to happen. Canadians don't want it. At least 85% of Canadians are totally against the idea. And as you say, perhaps Americans don't want it as well, because it brings a lot of complications, too, as well. But yeah, you know, it's a negotiating tactic. We never thought it was really going to, or I didn't personally think that it was going to happen. But the point is, you don't say things like that. It's really going, in my opinion, beyond proper negotiations if you're trying to make a point.
GR: Yeah, fair enough. So I wanted to ask you this different question about Canadian politics and society, bigger picture question. But in recent years, the United States has really been rent by a variety of social issues that have that have really been part of our political polarization and the divisiveness that you see here. And they cover different topics, race abortion, gender identity, issues about education that relate to some of those things and other things. Now, we've got similar things going on with higher education, the Trump administration waging war in many respects, on what is happening in higher education in the United States. So I'm just curious, has Canada had any analogous experiences in recent years to those kinds of cultural political conversations of divisions?
MG: Yes, it has. I mean, you know, the issues of DEI and the issues of abortion and political correctness and wokeness and all that have also touched Canada, but to a much, much lesser degree that in the United States. I always like to fall back on a very old analogy, but I think it encapsulates very well the difference between Canadians and Americans. You are the famous melting pot. People who come to the United States to make their life subscribe give wholeheartedly to American values and that's the way your model works and it has been extremely successful. We in Canada are closer to the old concept that we've managed to hold on to, which is that our country is a cultural mosaic. In other words, we're more disposed to be tolerant of differences of opinion, differences in culture. Now, having said that, there has been a growing intolerance in certain quarters, a growing one in the last decade or two. But I think it's at a much, much lower level than in the United States. Now, don't get me wrong, we have anti-Semitism in our country, we have Islamophobia in our country. We have people who are against, for example, transgender people but it's at a much, much lower level. And I think that explains the basic difference between Canada and the United States. We have more of a live and let live rather than, okay, you're here now, you have to subscribe wholeheartedly to our values.
GR: On that point, and this is now a pet theory of mine, and it could be absolutely wrong. I'm going to be dealing in stereotypes, but I have to say you fit my stereotype. (laughter) Which is that, is part of this, I mean, Canadians just seem to me on average, much more reasonable people than Americans. I mean, they just seem much more even keeled and much more, for lack of a better word, sort of dealing just in rationality. Is that, am I on to something there?
MG: Well, thank you for saying that, I view that as a compliment. I think that there are strengths and weaknesses to that approach. I admire the passion with which Americans embrace certain things, and it gives them an energy and a capability that is to be envied. But there's always flip sides to every coin. We come from a system that, we were a colony, a British colony. And if you look at immigration in the 20th century, people came from all sorts of different places around the world where they also, much like the example of New York City when people came in boats and ships at the beginning of the 20th century, we have many Canadians who came from countries where they were persecuted. And I think there was a resolve in Canada to say, look, you are now coming to a country where you don't have to be afraid, where you are going to be respected and you're going to be able to live your lives in the way that you would like to be able to live your lives. And so I think that sort of is inculcated in the minds of Canadians. That being said, there has, and I'll repeat it again, there has been a growing perhaps intolerance that we have to be concerned about.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is Marc Garneau, a former Canadian astronaut and is the author of a new book which I'm about to ask him about titled, “A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream”. Well, as I just mentioned, you've just published a new book and it's a memoir, and congratulations on that book. I'd like to talk about it a little bit with you.
MG: Well, thank you very much. I enjoyed the experience of writing it.
GR: Well, does the book have a central, I mean, it's about your life and your experiences, but does it have a broader central message that you want readers to take away?
MG: Yes, I think it does. I wrote it for my children because, you know, first of all, I realized many years ago that I didn't know my parents before, in the first 30 years of their life because I wasn't around. And I realized that there are a lot of things in my children don't know about me and that I'm far from perfect. They have only grown up seeing sort of the public persona because I’ve, you know, I flew in in space 40 years ago, and I've been a sort of a public person. But they do not realize that I had my own challenges in the first, in my teenage years and that I made lots of mistakes and that that's okay if you use that opportunity to learn from those mistakes. So this may sound very boring, but I tried to be intensely honest in writing this book about not only areas where I was successful, but also about my failures and my missteps and my lucky breaks in many, many cases. Because I think that's more reflective of real life and something that perhaps is glossed over by some people when they write their books. And so I'm very proud of the fact that did this book covers my life, warts and all.
GR: Well, I want to just say that's a, you mentioned you wrote it for your children and why, I just want to compliment you on that because I am fortunate, neither of my parents wrote anything in that regard, but I have tapes that they made. And that, you know, it's an important thing and often overlooked. And, you know, you grow up and you hear the stories but you don't necessarily hear everything. And so it's nice to have someone sit down and say, okay, I'm going to you know, here's the entire trajectory. I want to come back to something you mentioned about the writing of the book in just a second. But if you could briefly, I wanted to ask this question first and then we'll finish with a couple of other questions about the book. People who have been to space often say that seeing the Earth from space is, of all the experiences they have, up there, the most powerful one. Was that true for you?
MG: Oh, by far, no question about it. It's been written about and in fact, in a fairly famous book called, “The Overview Effect”. What happens when you go into space and see Earth from above looking down, it is not only a physically different perspective, it's also an intellectually different perspective. Because instead of thinking about perhaps the local problems that we all deal with when we're down on Earth and as we look around us and we can see about five miles around us at any one time, when you're up there and you're going around the planet once every 90 minutes it shifts your perspective and you do a lot of thinking. First of all, you're in an extraordinary place that very few humans have ever been to, but you begin to think about the bigger issues, the bigger questions. For example, are we damaging our planet? You can see that wafer thin atmosphere that allows life to be sustained. You can see the oceans, but you can also see forest fires, and you can see incontrovertible evidence of pollution and other things. And because you're surrounded by the blackness of space, you begin to ask yourself, are we taking care of this planet so that it has a future for future generations? You're also, although you can't see it, and most of the time you can't see it, aware of the fact that there are many conflicts going on down on this planet, this beautiful looking planet, despite what we're doing to it. And you wonder, is there a way that we can find, can we find a way to get along with each other? Because at any one time, there are dozens of conflicts on the planet, many of which we don't even hear about, we just hear about the big ones. And so, again, there are 8 billion of us, it's the cradle of humanity. There is no option B, and so we have to find a way to get along with each other and to make the planet survivable for future generations. That sort of gets a hold of you when you're up there and you’re gazing out the window as you're orbiting over the top of the world and seeing the different countries. And I think it's something that stays with you for the rest of your life.
GR: Yes, I can see how it would. Now, we only have about a minute left. I want to squeeze one more question in, and I'm sorry it's a difficult one, and it's a difficult one to end on, perhaps. But you mentioned already in writing the book that you wanted to deal with warts and all, and you really do deal with some pretty difficult subjects there in that book. I was just wondering if you could share what was the hardest thing for you to write about? And in a few seconds or less.
MG: Yeah, it was the suicide of my first wife. I lost my first wife to, she was diagnosed as bipolar. We had twins at the time, they were 11 years old. And suddenly, after a two year illness, she took her life and I was now a single parent. And the tragedy of losing the woman that I loved and also the sobering reality that I now had to be the parent for two children is something that I've been aware of all my life. But I was encouraged by the editor to be open about it because you know, when this happened a long time ago, you sort of swept mental health under the carpet. And I thought, if I'm going to, you know, live up to my own words about trying to bring it out of the closet, I should be very honest about it.
GR: Well, again, I think that just makes the book better, and it has a lot of hope in it as well. We'll have to leave it there, unfortunately. That was Marc Garneau and again, his new book is titled, “A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream. Marc, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. And I want to give you best wishes and also your country best wishes.
MG: Thank you very much, Grant. And similarly to you, best wishes to the United States.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
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Dionne Koller on the Campbell Conversations
Apr 12, 2025
Dionne Koller
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. Youth sports has become a cultural and political lightning rod in recent years. My guest today is an expert in that area, particularly the ways in which law and government policies have impacted it. Dionne Koller is a professor of law and the director of the Center for Sport and the Law at the University of Baltimore. She's the author of a new book titled, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport." Professor Koller, welcome to the program and congratulations on the new book.
Dionne Koller: Thanks so much for having me here.
GR: We really appreciate you making the time. So let me just start with something definitional. What do you mean when you use the phrase ‘youth sport’, are we talking about anything under pro, anything before college? What are the definitions there?
DK: Well, Grant, I'm really glad you're asking that because that was an immediate stumbling block when I started to research youth sport and I wanted to figure out what's going on in the United States. We don't have a uniform definition of youth sports, actually, that makes data collection difficult. It can be anything from a running club with kids, cup stacking, to the type of travel ball that we see all over the place. So there is no uniform definition. The definition I adopted for the book is the one that I believe is the model that I believe is most predominant in the US, which is adult led, organized youth sports activities.
GR: Okay, great. And so looking at it, and that's obviously a very broad category, what have been some of the major trends in recent years in that area?
DK: Well, the trends have been really going in a problematic direction, which is the trend is toward increased professionalization, and professionalization includes a few things. First of all, it's the emphasis on early sports specialization, getting kids to pick a sport and get really good at that and play it year round. It's the emphasis on competition and winning. So again, getting young kids traveling and going to tournaments and competing as much as possible with the ideal of win, win, win. And so all of that early sports specialization, emphasis on competition and winning really leads to, as the medical community has talked about, things like overuse injuries, really an epidemic of those types of things. So it's all those things together that we call professionalization of youth sports.
GR: Yeah, I wanted to come back to that notion of professionalization and some of the problematic things it entails. But let me ask this question first back to, you know, particularly the title of your book. So how have laws and public policies affected that trend that you just sketched out?
DK: Well, another thing that surprised me as I started looking at this is law and public policy hasn't affected it in the sense that there is very little law or regulation of youth sport at the federal or state level. I think a lot of parents think, like other products or experiences that impact kids, isn't somebody out there making sure this is safe? The answer is, by and large, no. So what I conclude in the book is that the way law and policy has shaped ultimately youth sports in the United States is through the lack of regulation by choosing not to regulate. It's sort of been described as a Wild West situation. You can have some really great programs and experiences and some that really aren't so great. And so the lack of any regulation, lack of minimum safety standards, those types of things, that's a choice too, Grant. And so I talk about that in the book, which is, our policy is let it be whatever it's going to be.
GR: Well, yeah, on that point then, that's really interesting because a couple of things strike me. One, on the one hand, you know, with the professionalization, it seems like sports are getting more and more sort of rule oriented, you know. But on the other hand, from a governmental perspective, like you say, it's the Wild West. What do you think some of the reasons are that we have been loathed to involve government regulation and other kinds of things related in that field. Is it because we don't want to bother the parents, it's sort of leave it to the parents? What's the thinking behind that?
DK: Well, there's a couple of different things. And certainly in the United States, we have a very heavy emphasis on parental authority. That is a big theme in the law of families. And in fact, I talk about in the book there's something called the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. One of the rights that the international community recognizes for children is the right to play and the right to developmentally appropriate play. We're the only country in the world that hasn't signed on to that, Grant, because we emphasize parental authority. But one of the other things that I talk about, and this has been something that I've done a lot of research on, is that we see courts, Congress, state legislatures say over and over again, we can't regulate sports, including youth sports. We need to take a hands off attitude, because if we do, it will destroy sports, right? This notion of, I call it the ‘sportspocalypse’ argument. That if you do anything to make changes or requirements in sports, it'll destroy sports. And Grant, if you go back to even the 1970’s with Title IX opening up sports to women and girls, that argument was made over and over. Stay out of sports, don't touch sports, you're going to destroy, for instance, men's college football, you're going to destroy men's sports. And I think both of us know that did not happen.
GR: So it sounds like that it's not really a liberal or a conservative point of view. It sounds like this is something, one of the rare things that is, I guess, bipartisan these days.
DK: Well, youth sport is very bipartisan. There's a youth sport caucus in Congress, yet everybody says, isn't it just great? We can all agree that youth sport is great and let's just leave it alone. But what I talk about in the book is that there's a wide open space between kind of micro-managing T-ball leagues and doing absolutely nothing. And we are very much on the doing nearly nothing side of that.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with Dionne Koller. She's a law professor at the University of Baltimore and the author of a new book titled, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport." So walking into this topic as someone that doesn't know a tremendous amount about it beforehand, but based on what I do know about law and, you know, this realm of activity, I would have thought that liability law, you know, either through legislation or case law would have had a huge impact on this area. Is that something that has shaped it in any particular way?
DK: Well, I think it does and it doesn't, Grant. And that's a really, really good point. And I think it's the instinct that you have is the thought that many people have that, oh my goodness, aren't there lawsuits aplenty and all kinds of liability going on? There certainly are lawsuits in youth sports, high school sports and private organized youth sports. There certainly are, because there are lots of injuries, there's lots of harm to go around, sports can be a dangerous activity. But what I found is that there aren't actually, when it all comes down to it, there isn't an excessive amount of liability, for instance, assigned to use sport providers. There's lots of immunities and protections built into the system. Parents can sign liability waivers for their kids, and that's very often a condition of participating. Volunteer coaches get immunity in most states from most types of tort lawsuits. The standard for recovery in a tort lawsuit involving sports is a little bit more of a difficult standard to meet than, say, in a typical tort case. So once I really drill down, I think, Grant, there's a fear of liability. And that's talked about a lot, saying if you allow these lawsuits to happen, it's going to ruin all of youth sports. So there's a big talk and fear of it. Is it sort of manifesting in reality? Not to my eyes.
GR: Interesting. Interesting, because I just put myself in the situation of if I were approached and said, you know, we'd like you to be a parent coach on something, my first reaction would just be like, I do not want to expose myself to all of the possible lawsuits coming from that. So it's interesting to know that that the standard for liability is much higher. I was also curious to know whether some sports have seen greater changes than other sports. So, I mean, I know colleagues are always complaining about having to drive their kids to this soccer match, this soccer match, this soccer match. I don't hear that so much about baseball, for example.
DK: Well, actually, I didn't find in my research that there was kind of one sport that was less kind of professionalized than another. I think we see these changes are being driven across really all youth sports. We have been able to monetize and professionalize and drive growth and revenue generation in anything from volleyball to taekwondo, you name it. So I didn't really find that there was a sport-specific difference. But what I found is that the changes have continued to accelerate as state and local governments have emphasized, what I discovered is something called youth sport tourism, attracting tournaments to their localities.
GR: Say more about that. So the states then are, they're tuned into this and they're trying to profit off of it, so to speak.
DK: That's exactly right. So I discovered this when I went looking at state law and I was looking for state statutes saying, surely there must be some minimum safety standards here, for instance. And the statutes that were popping up that I found, Grant, were a lot of statutes that were about stimulating economic development within states saying, okay, we're going to pass a bond measure to build a youth sport megaplex because we want to attract tournaments here. And to give you a personal example, my son played ice hockey and we live in the D.C. metro area, plenty of rinks around here, but I was constantly on the road going to Pittsburgh and Detroit saying, why are we always in a tournament here? The answer is youth sport tourism. This is a deliberate sort of policy choice to attract parents who have disposable income, to fill hotel rooms, to fill restaurants, get these tournaments going. And it becomes a big boost to local economies.
GR: That's interesting, big business. So one huge question that has been in the media a lot and was part of the most recent election rhetoric regarding youth sports has been the question of gender identity and participation and competition. It's been especially, I think, high profile and collegiate, in Olympic level sports. But I just wonder, you know, I'm sure you've looked at that. I'm sure you've thought about that. What do you make of this? And is there for lack of a better question, some way out of what seems to be a political morass here?
DK: Yeah, I mean, I think there's many, many levels to that. And so let's just start with kind of a factual level. How many, for instance, and the issue, Grant, it comes up around trans-girls and women. That's really the issue. So if you look at really numbers, we just don't have the numbers to support the level of sort of fear and panic that's been going on. And in fact, when I look closely, you look closely at some lawsuits that have been brought over this, and courts have dismissed those lawsuits saying we can't find any evidence of harm. That because a trans-girl, for instance, participated on a high school cross-country team. It didn't displace or hurt anybody else. So I think factually it's been way overblown from that perspective. I think the other thing to look at is that a lot of times, and just looking at this objectively, who's making these arguments and how are they being made and why? And when you look at it, the ostensible reason is we need to preserve sport opportunities for women and girls. And as a researcher, I can say the best way to do that is let's enforce Title IX, let's enforce the laws that are on the books that we have never been very good at enforcing. And so to the extent we're worried about collegiate, say, sport opportunities for women and girls, the best thing we can do is not over fund and overemphasized say, a college football team to the detriment of participation opportunities for girls. In terms of just sort of what should we do about it? Well, I'm very clear about this, I don't address it, the book's really not about that, it's really just about youth sports. But in my other writings and work, sport is a very nuanced space, Grant, there are many different levels of competition. Olympic and Paralympic is very different than, say, a youth sport T-ball league, of course. And so because sports are literally made up games, they are made up by us and for us, there are certainly ways that we can make up these experiences so that everybody can participate regardless of their gender identity, regardless of, are you a trans-girl or not? We can make up these games in lots of different ways, and I think we should.
GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with Dionne Koller, a Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Sport and the Law at the University of Baltimore. She's written a new book, it's titled, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport" and we've been discussing the topics that the book entails. So I want to follow up on, even though it's not part of your book, specifically, but I want to follow up with another question about the transgendered issue in sports. And maybe I have been captured by this, you know, overhype in the media relative to the number of cases we're talking about. And I remember in particular on this, seeing the Olympic boxing matches that, you know, got played over and over again with, I believe those athletes were from Russia or some country in Eastern Europe. I just wanted to throw this out to you and it's about the partisan politics that have surrounded this. Democrats have been associated, I think, more with, let's let those transgendered athletes play on women's teams. And Republicans seem to be more associated with, this as some kind of violation of the, you know, women's sports and it's not fair for the other girls on these teams. The strange thing in this, it seems to me, is that there is a biological component to it as well as a cultural gendered component. And it seems odd that in this particular instance, the Democrats don't seem to be following one of the other things that they have put forward in recent years, which is to follow the science, you know, we have to follow the science on it. It seems like in this in this case, they're not following the science. I don't know if there's any law about that or anything that you have to say about that. But it struck me as a as an irony to the political discussion in this instance.
DK: Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons why it played as a political issue that it did, it looked almost disingenuous. How are you denying biology, right? I think from a sports long policy perspective where I come out, Grant, is it's really important to remember there are different levels of sport with different purposes. So the Olympic and Paralympic level is a different setting, it's a different context, we have different goals. Then, for instance, open youth sport, which we say is just every kid should have an opportunity to participate and get exercise and learn some life lessons, right? So at the youth sport level, there really isn't evidence that there is a problem, for instance, of transgender girls sort of invading sports spaces and taking slots away. As you kind of climb the hierarchy, certainly in different sports, there's no denying biology and that biology can make a difference. And then we have to start looking more closely at what the policies are for participation. I will say that the political sort of moment that we experienced was unfortunate from my perspective, not because, biology is real, Grant, and we need to look at that, but there have been, for instance, at the college level or at the Olympic and Paralympic level, common sense policies in place to make sure that people were sort of, relatively, people who were competing in different categories sort of belonged in those categories and we weren't displacing folks. I think what we ended up doing, especially at the Olympic and Paralympic level, is grouping different things into the trans-women and girls participation issue. For instance, there are some individuals, it's naturally occurring, they are intersex. The Caster Semenya situation, which she was a runner, took the world by storm, people said this is unfair. That's a naturally occurring phenomenon and that just happens. And just like I'm not Simone Biles, I'm not four foot eight and not going to be an Olympic gymnast, I'm not Michael Phelps, I'm not built to swim. Other people are born intersex, and that's just the way they were made. So I think we also conflate some of these issues. The biology is that there is not sort of clear cut demarcations, man and woman. But by the time you're talking about that nuance in a political discussion, people have long since tuned out.
GR: Yeah, I was going to say good luck. So I want to come back to something that was at the core of your book and what you talked about at the outset of our conversation here, which is that professionalization of youth sport. And it does really seem like that's been one of the big changes I've seen. It's, you know, it does feel like these are more pro teams. They’re traveling, there are all these different sort of tournaments, it's expensive, some of it involves overnight travel. So why has that happened? Is that because some families just have more money than they know what to do with? I mean, what are the forces pushing that?
DK: Well, you're exactly right, that's the heart of the book. And I said, how did this happen? How are we here today? And what happens is, Grant, at least in my opinion, my analysis is, without any minimum kind of regulation or policy standards, except for, kids should play sports, right? We leave it to the free market to kind of set up what the youth sport experience is going to be and in that case, more is more because you have people out there who are willing to pay and they'll put their kids in it and there's more money to be made. So there's on the one hand, that sort of free market drive for, hey, there's a market here, let's do it. On the other hand, you have the drive from parents. Parents want to be good parents. I put my kids into youth sports, I believe in sports, I love sports, I was an athlete myself. So I say this is a good thing, I'm a good parent by doing this. The problem is, is that, and there's literature on this from the psychological community, once you're a parent and you get a taste of seeing your kid perform on the weekends, boy, it sure is fun and you like it. And it's almost a feedback loop where, look, Johnny's doing great in the hockey tournament, that must mean I'm a good parent, he's thriving, this is all good. You get kind of benchmarks, they won the tournament. You're willing to spend more, you're willing to do more, you push more. And so the confluence of parents working together in the free market and parents believing hey, this is good for my kids, right? And of course, then you add in all the other variables, maybe this will get them a scholarship, this will teach them life lessons. You sort of sprinkle all that in and what you get is a recipe for a professionalization of youth sport.
GR: I want to come back to one possible wrinkle about that a little bit later if we've got some time but let me ask you this question, which is kind of the opposite of the emphasis on winning. One of the other things that I have noticed in some youth sports is like a de-emphasis on what I would call a meritocracy. It's the idea of everybody gets a trophy for participating rather than you get a trophy if you achieve something. How does that fit into this?
DK: Well, I think there are there are a couple responses to that. First of all, when I went looking for a sort of youth sport policy and in terms of developmental stages, et cetera, we don't have any kind of government agency that's responsible for sports at all in this country, that's fairly unique in the world. And so we don't set any type of goals for different ages and levels based on development. So again, left to the free market. Well, if you're charging parents a whole lot of money to participate in soccer and it makes the kid happy to get a trophy and then you get more sign-ups, you're certainly incentivized to keep giving out trophies and medals and making everybody feel good because it keeps the kids kind of in in your program. So I think without any kind of thought to what should youth sport be in this country, is it about developing elite athletes? Is it for exercise? Is it about friendship and collaboration? What are we doing? Without any direction, we just get these market based impulses to, they paid a fee, you get a trophy. (laughter)
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and my guest is University of Baltimore law professor Dionne Koller. Okay, so this is beyond the bounds of your book and what you have focused on, but I have to ask this as well. Intercollegiate athletics, they've seen a real earthquake recently through the name, image, likeness, compensation and this transfer portal, and it looks much more like a professional enterprise than did before. Where do you see this system continuing to evolve? Do you have a sense of where we're going with this?
DK: I do, Grant. And actually, that's a fair question. I don't address it in the book, but I was among the first people to testify way back in 2020. Congress held hearings on this and NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) and where were things going and I testified before Congress and I said don't panic. What has happened in intercollegiate sports and I think most people don't realize this, but the Supreme Court ruled 9 – 0 in 2021 that the NCAA was violating antitrust law with different aspects of their model which I will not go into, but basically they were violating antitrust law. This Supreme Court is not unanimous on much of anything, Grant, but that they all agreed on. Similarly, the Department of Justice under the first Trump administration, the Biden administration was opining lots of antitrust violations going on with the NCAA model. The NCAA has been on notice for years and years and years that their model restraining payments to athletes, restraining the ability to transfer, things that every other kid on campus can do, that that is an antitrust violation, meaning it's not at all been a free market and all the benefits have been flowing to coaches and administrators and of course, not students. And so what we're seeing now is as these antitrust violations have been addressed by the courts, including the Supreme Court, we're getting a free market in college sports, and that's a little messy, Grant, that's going to take some time to sort of work out because it's been suppressed, literally for decades. And so what I am here to say is, don't panic. College sports is still going to be great because even though it looks more professional, it's been professionalized for quite some time in terms of the demands on athletes working 50 to 60 hours a week. It will shake out and it will still remain what we treasure about intercollegiate sports, which is watching our favorite players play for our alma maters, including Syracuse.
GR: Yeah, well, that's good news, thanks for telling me that. So we only got a couple of minutes left. I want to try to squeeze in two questions if I can. I want to go back, and these are big issues so I apologize for the time constraint. I want to go back to the professionalization. Not all parents, though, are going to be able to afford all that. And I know that some really feel squeezed, they don't want to disappoint their children. But this is the, you know, they got to buy this kind of equipment and go to this place. I imagine that's creating some real economic problems for some families.
DK: Absolutely. And this is one of the real sort of tragedies of youth sport in the United States today. It's by and large, a pay to play system, very, very different than it was, say, 40, 50 years ago. State and local governments have pulled back. We don't have a lot of public funding for youth sport. That means that a lot of kids and families, people who want to get their kids out there, they can't afford it. And so this has been talked about for a very, very long time. When I co-chaired a congressional commission on the state of the Olympic and Paralympic movement, we looked at the youth sport pipeline. We made a recommendation to Congress. We said, get back to publicly funding widespread youth sport participation. The American public really supports that.
GR: And so this builds off of what you just said. But again, extremely briefly, just a few seconds left, what kind of changes would you make then to make it better? It sounds like more funding is one and what else?
DK: Minimum safety regulations, not micromanaging T-ball leagues, not a government takeover, but really states and the federal government can do more to guarantee a minimum safety experience for kids.
GR: All right, we'll have to leave it there. That was Dionne Koller and again, her new book is titled, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport." If you're getting frustrated with that drive that you just had to take for your kid to play in a tournament, this is the book to understand why you got where you are. Professor Koller, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. Really appreciate it.
DK: Thanks so much for having me.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
George Hawley on the Campbell Conversations
Apr 05, 2025
George Hawley
Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. With our historic levels of political polarization and the hard political feelings that have been generated during the Trump era, each side tends to see the other in the worst possible and the most extreme light. My guest today has written a new book arguing that Democratic and media misperceptions of Republican voters have been especially pronounced. George Hawley is a professor of political science at the University of Alabama and the author of, “The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization”. Professor Hawley, welcome to the program and congratulations on the new book.
George Hawley: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
GR: We appreciate you making the time. So let me just start with a real basic question, what prompted you to write this book?
GH: Well, a couple of things. One was just feeling like there was a, sort of an incongruence between how people were talking about the Republican Party, at least in terms of ordinary Republican voters as this increasingly radicalized element of society and my own experiences and actually interacting with them. So broadly speaking, that would be part of it. Another issue, not to put it on a more social science-y level, I think there's been a ton of really excellent research over the last ten years on what's going on inside the Republican electorate. But my frustration with so much of it was that it was, so much of it was reliant on single snapshots in time, what we would call cross-sectional studies. Either looking at just a single example of the American National Election Study or, you know, some really good and clever experimental studies done. But there wasn't that much just looking at, okay, well, what is going on with the Republican Party over time? And, you know, things that don't require a lot of methodological sophistication but looking at, you know, what are some survey questions that have been asked again and again over the last couple of decades, and can we see has there been this great sea change among Republican voters? And if so, where do we find them? And, you know, as I took a, you know, a deep dove into as many different types of questions and as many different types of surveys as I could find, that we're doing this kind of, you know, over time, taking the temperature over and over again, I was finding more often than not a greater amount of continuity rather than difference over time. I saw that this, you know, this is worth talking about and saying, look, to have a question about polarization and radicalization, but we should also note where we see less change and that's largely what I emphasize in this project.
GR: And you mentioned methods there as you were talking about surveys, talking about social science experiments, the methods that you used in this book, we don't need to go into terribly great detail about this, but you went beyond public opinion surveys. You, I think you did some interviewing and like you said before, you have your own observations. So what did you draw on in writing the book?
GH: Well, quantitatively, I relied predominantly on, you know, the standard big surveys, you know, the General Social Survey, American National Election Survey, Cooperative Election Study, Baylor Religion Study, those that have been done consistently over time that are publicly available so that anybody can check my work and see that it's solid. But I also think that survey data can sometimes be a little bit misleading or at least incomplete. So to supplement that, I also went out of my way to have as many interviews as I could with really just ordinary Republican voters. And I did a fair amount of traveling for this, so I go out and I have a, essentially a focus group in an evangelical church in the Midwest, or I travel up to Nashville to meet with people there. I mean, I did a fair amount of interviews here in Alabama just because it's where I am. But I also went out to the West Coast and elsewhere just to try and get at least some broader geographic representation. So this was, you know, and the people I interviewed, you know, they varied a lot in terms of their levels of political interest and activities. So some of it was people who really don't think about politics very much more than, you know, going out and voting every four years and people who are, you know, rather dedicated activists. I went out of my way to avoid, you know, professional conservatives, so to speak, that I've done, you know, or, and I wasn't going out of my way to try and find people who would have identified with the radical right, which I've done in previous research, looked into that element of society. But that wasn't my main focus here, though, if I did encounter somebody who had far right sentiments, I didn't disregard them either. So those were sort of a mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative. So the quantitative stuff, as I said, is not examples of, you know, tremendous methodological sophistication. There's not a ton of, you know, regression tables in this book.
GR: Right, right. And so briefly, what's the reality that you found among the Republicans that you spoke to and looking at, as you say, the continuity in the survey data? How is the actual typical Republican different from the current stereotype of the typical Republican?
GH: Well, one thing that is true when we talk about polarization is that there is a lot of anger in the Republican electorate. But it tends to be more ideological and partisan than, say, racist or anti-Semitic, which is where a lot of the other focus has been. That is, if we look at attitudes using things like, say, feeling thermometers or attitudes such as racial resentment, which is a term political scientists use a lot. I don't find much compelling evidence that Republicans have gotten say, more racist or more nativist. And the evidence of greater anti-Semitism is almost impossible to find in large data sets. But the degree to which the anger is there, what we've seen, especially since 2000, is this dramatic increase in really just kind of loathing for Democrats and for liberals, but not necessarily for racial or ethnic or sexual minorities, where in fact, over the last couple of decades, feelings have gotten somewhat warmer rather than cooler.
GR: And certainly that loathing goes both ways as far as my experience goes. You're listening to The Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm speaking with George Hawley. He's a professor at the University of Alabama and the author of, “The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization”. Okay, do you think there are certain, let's think about the misperceptions, do you think there are certain kinds of issues on which the misperceptions are most pronounced? You mentioned nativism, anti-Semitism, racism. Are there other things where the misperceptions are most pronounced, or is that where they are?
GH: I think that's where the biggest gap we find is. And I want to be very clear, I am not in any way downplaying the problems of racism, really aggressive nativism, or anti-Semitism. Those are real phenomenon. And if you spend all your time online, particularly on social media, you'll think that this is a widespread massive problem among your ordinary voters. But my takeaway lesson from this is that the type of people who are sitting on X, formally Twitter, all day posting really just nasty, racist, anti-Semitic or otherwise exclusionary stuff are not well representative of the Republican Party overall. And I think that that's an important thing to remember. And I think this is can be a problem in multiple senses because I think that the degree to which people have misperceptions of the Republican Party, it can also perhaps be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because my fear is that a lot of pro-Republican or, you know, conservative nonprofits and other groups, they are perhaps just as mistaken as others and think that, oh, well, where the party is going, where the voters are going is in this really far right direction and so in order to stay relevant, we have to keep up with that. We need to maintain at least as far right of a sentiment as the average person out there. And I'm here to say that I think that would probably be a mistake. I mean, both a moral mistake, but also perhaps a long term tactical or strategic mistake on the part of these parties and these elements of the right broadly conceived. And so I hope that reading this might cause some people to rethink a few things and perhaps, you know, dial back some of the extremism that we do see in other elements of the right.
GR: Yeah, that was I thought, in some ways ,that was the most intriguing part of your book. And you do have a lot of thought provoking arguments that that misperception that you're just talking about, it actually helps the minority on the far right. And you said, you know, you use the word self-fulfilling prophecy, but it actually strengthens their position because they appear to be more of the mainstream than perhaps they are.
GH: Yes, that's my position. And, you know, as I've been working through this project, you know, one thing that has been coming up to my mind is actually a comment that Peter Viereck made back in the 1950’s. He was a sort of moderate to conservative thinker at the time, and he was noting at the height of McCarthyism that a lot of people were making the mistake of thinking that all forms of prejudice and bigotry tend to move together. But he was saying in the context of McCarthyism that that was really not what was happening. Because what he found actually that was that sort of the McCarthy sentiments were strongest among those conservatives who tended to be most anti-segregation and similarly, the place where McCarthyism was weakest tended to be in the white supremacist south where people were actually coming out, including conservatives, pretty strongly against McCarthy was the argument he made. And he said, look, ideological polarization or ideological bigotry and hostility does not necessarily move in tandem with other types of hostility and bigotry. And so the fact that we see a lot of Republicans become intensely hostile towards Democrats and liberals and the left more broadly does not necessarily indicate that other types of hostility are also on the rise. So I think it's important that we be able to disaggregate different types of negative attitudes within different portions of the electorate rather than just assume that if we see one negative trend, that it means that other trends are going to be necessarily correlated with that.
GR: So what do you think is most responsible for the misperception and the stereotype?
GH: Well, I mean, to be honest, a lot of it is to be blamed on the Republican leadership. Look, the fact of the matter is, is that the, and particularly I think President Trump has certainly fed into this. Look, the reality is, is that Trump did run, especially in 2016 and then again in 2024, very aggressively nativist campaign. There are a lot of people, sort of, at least on the periphery of Trump world who say some, have a history of saying some really negative and hostile things. And the fact that Republican voters came out and enthusiastically supported him anyway, you know, on its face seems to provide evidence that at the very least they're not uncomfortable with that style of politics. But does that necessarily mean that they endorse it and want to see the party move in a far right direction? I'm not so sure that that's true. So I'm not making the case that, you know, the people who have these misperceptions, you know, don't have any good reason for developing them. But I think that it is worth following up and saying, hey, you know, what is the actual data? Show us. And that's what I tried to do here.
GR: I want to pursue that line of inquiry when we get back after the break. You're listening to The Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and I'm talking with George Hawley. The University of Alabama political science professor has recently written a book titled, “The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization” and we've been discussing the issues that he raises in his book. Well, you were talking about some of the sources of the misperceptions and in particular, you were talking about Republican leadership, President Trump. I wanted to ask you flip that to the other side. Certainly, it would seem that the Democratic Party has decided that it tactically benefits from painting Republicans as an extreme way as possible. Do you have any thoughts about that?
GH: Well, sure. And you know, that's just the nature of partisan politics, right? You need to build up as much fear as possible to get your voters motivated. And so I'm actually not, you know, necessarily too critical of Democrats for doing this because Republicans do the same thing, right? This notion that Democrats are all a bunch of socialists who wish to, you know, destroy the West has been, you know, a common theme in conservative media and from Republican politicians, at least the more irresponsible ones for some time. So, yes, I think that just the nature of partisan politics does incentivize leaders to promote what I would consider to be misleading narratives about voters on both sides of things. And that's unfortunate. I wish it wasn't the case, but it's probably not going to go away. And again, this is not a problem that is localized on either one, more on one side than the other, in my view.
GR: Right. I wanted to also ask you about for lack of a better word, legacy media, mainstream media. It's my sense that they've bought into this a little bit, this sense of misperception particularly on the Republican side. Do you have the same sense?
GH: Yes. And I think part of that is just sort of the nature of what makes for an interesting story like the far right, the radical right is a, you know, makes for a compelling magazine article or newspaper piece or, you know, or makes for good television, you know, the people who are out in outlandish costumes and, you know, carrying swastikas and saying just the most awful things is, you know, is good media. You know, it's popular and it gets people interested much more so than, oh, here's what, you know, that an average guy who doesn't think about politics very much is really like. And, you know, luckily, you know, as an academic, I have a different set of incentives. You know, it's not that important that I sell a ton of books, even if my subject is less interesting to a lot of readers than the, say, the far right would be. And then the other issue of course is that the far right, you know, loves media attention as much as they say they dislike journalists, you know, they want to get that attention. And so it ends up being a system in which both sides, you know, in a way kind of benefits. And so I think this is a way in which the radical right can project power in a way that is outsized compared to their actual representation in the overall electorate.
GR: Yeah, that's a really good point. And then finally, on sort of who's to blame on this, I wonder about academia, too. And so you and I are teaching in completely different areas of the country. I can say that in my area, it's pretty obvious, you'd have to almost be blind and deaf not to think that that academia as a whole has bought into this view of the Republicans as a general stereotype. Do you have a different sense of academia in the South?
GH: No, I would say that we are, even down here in the Deep South academia, professors tend to live in something of a bit of a bubble. I would say that you know, the social worlds of academics, you know, it isn't necessarily going to overlap with, you know, your typical red state experience, even when you're living in a place like Alabama. So I do think that there is a sense in which a lot of academics, even those who study these things very carefully, are socially disconnected from the subjects that they're studying, which I think can create some problems of its own. You know, a lot of the qualitative work, even very good qualitative work that I see among academics who go out and try and study, you know, Republican parties, there's kind of almost like a Gorillas in the Mist style aspect to it. But look at these really strange, exotic people that I've managed to find and I’m studying. And so I think that can be a little bit off putting and can sometimes lead to misperceptions as well.
GR: Yeah, yeah, I'm going on safari in North Dakota or something like that. I understand that since the book's writing, you've begun to have some second thoughts about some of the arguments that are in the book more recently. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
GH: Sure. Well, just by the nature of academic publishing this project, the final draft was completed in 2023, so before the 2024 election it really begun in earnest. And at this point I'm just not sure if maybe we have finally reached an inflection point where perhaps the radical right, the views and preferences and talking points have started to permeate the broader population. I think that if that's the case, I think a probably an important moment was when Elon Musk took over Twitter and made it X and not only made it a place for basically untrammeled free speech, but also seems to be putting his thumb on the scale in favor of voices that I would consider to be fairly far right and radical. And I think it would be naive to say that that couldn't have any possible consequences. So I wouldn't be surprised if some of the things I've been hearing from some of the more irresponsible voices on the right start to become more pervasive. Another thing I noticed in the 2024 election that was quite striking in comparison to 2020 was how the Trump campaign dealt with the immigration question. Because what I found very fascinating about the 2020 election for all of the bad things that occurred there, particularly of course in the refusal to acknowledge Biden's win, but despite all that, what I found perhaps most interesting was the degree to which immigration was really just not an issue at all that year. And I was starting to draw the conclusion that, you know, to the degree to which everyone said that nativism was absolutely essential to the Make America Great Again movement to Trump, they'd be saying, hey, maybe a less aggressively nativist Trumpism could do just as well. Because after all, Trump's diehard supporters, they didn't stop supporting him because he stopped showing very much interest in immigration. So I thought that perhaps kind of the nativist element of Trumpism might start to be downplayed. But then, of course, this most recent election happens after the book is completed. And they very much went back to sort of the 2015-2016 talking points and perhaps even went farther with that when we saw the, you know, the rather ridiculous claims about, you know, Haitians eating pets and that sort of thing. And the degree to which that is becoming a sort of pervasive sentiment within conservative media and elsewhere, I wonder if we might be starting to see in the future a sharper turn to the right. So I can't, unfortunately at this point I'm still waiting for all the best data sets from the 2024 election to come out. So until they do, it's purely speculative on my part. I'm not able to say, one way or the other whether or not my intuitions and the things that I found writing this book still hold today.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher and my guest is University of Alabama Professor George Hawley. What are some the, you mentioned when we were talking off microphone about some of the issues, policy areas that are most important to understand some of the nuance, I think in the Republican position. Do you have a few things you want to add about that?
GH: Sure. One thing that people were talking about a lot, especially in 2015, 2016 and beyond, was that Trump isn't kind of represents a repudiation of Reaganism, right? And sort of the default Republican position that, you know, markets are good, trade is good we want a less regulated economy. And with the rise of this populist movement, perhaps those sentiments were going away. And what I did find was that sort of doctrinaire economic conservatism was not popular among Trump voters. However, if you look at similar questions asked again and again and again, the reality is, is that economic conservatism in particular has really never been that popular, at least even among Republican voters, like the notion that you should raise taxes on high earners. It actually, it polls pretty well among ordinary Republican voters, and it always has. So the degree to which the previous iterations of the Republican Party were sort of pro-free market, anti-regulation in favor of, you know, supply side tax cuts and that sort of thing, that was always at odds with what Republican voters said they wanted in polls. So the degree to which we see an economic populism becoming any type of force within the Republican Party, that is more the party actually being aligned with its own voters as opposed to, you know, representing some major sea change from the bottom up.
GR: And maybe even in an indirect way explains some of what was surprising at the time, anyway, Bernie Sanders popularity when he ran because it sort of speaks to those themes of taxing the rich and taking a little more skeptical view of some of the free market doctrines. I wanted to ask you a question about the effects of polarization. And this is more speculative probably for you, but the effects of polarization on what and how people think and how that might be driving part of the change that you might be perceiving since you've written the book. I mean, and maybe you got a sense of this in your in your focus groups, but let me just take like, you know, a more moderate Republican, for example. They know that other people view them as you know, populist, a particularly right wing Trump supporter. And so perhaps maybe they begin to take on some of those views almost out of a reaction or a frustration. I mean, maybe it's a little bit of, you know, like up yours kind of sentiment. You know, if you're going to paint me in a certain way, all right, I'll just go there. Do you think there's any kind of that dynamic driving the two sides?
GH: Yeah, that strikes me as plausible. I mean, people like to, partisanship has become an increasingly important part of people's social identity, even as you know, we don't necessarily see an uptick in interest in policy or ideology. People take their partisan identities, you know, I'm a Republican or I'm a Democrat, they take that very seriously. And people like to feel like they're team players. So the degree to which people you know, want to demonstrate, know the degree to which I'm on team Republican, I think probably could drive people to just kind of adopt the norms that they perceive within that party. I think that's entirely plausible.
GR: And we've got about a minute and a half left or so and I wanted to leave you some time to speculate on this or provide at least your sense from talking to folks what your experience tells you. But how (are) we ever going to climb out of this hole of mutual misperception and political hyperbole regarding the other side? Do you have any clues that you could impart to us for where the glimmers of light are here?
GH: Oh, that's very difficult. I don't think I even, you know, speculated one sentence about that in the book itself. But I do think that one of our problems is a high degree of, at least ideological and political homogeneity within our social networks. I think that there is too little dialog across the partisan divide. I think that the degree to which people would be willing to do that, I think would help to alleviate a lot of the misperceptions out there. And, you know, you can see small studies showing that this can, in fact, be effective. The real challenge is you know, how do you scale it up? How do you force or at least encourage greater amounts of bipartisan dialog? And to my knowledge, no one has yet, even people who are working very hard at this has yet to figure out how you can do this at scale in a way that would move the needle for society. I encourage more of that sort of work, but as of now, I have no panacea, unfortunately, to offer.
GR: Well, we'll have to end on that ambivalent note. That was George Hawley and again, his new book, and it's nuanced and it's well worth reading, especially if you are suspicious about the title is called, “The Moderate Majority: Real GOP Voters and the Myth of Mass Republican Radicalization”. George, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me, I really learned a lot in this conversation and it was very interesting.
GH: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
GR: You've been listening to Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations and the public interest.