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Returning guest Clive Davis joins us to discuss preparing for the future, challenges he faced, and ways to avoid some challenges altogether. First Episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1115735/episodes/9751971----Continue the conversation with Brian on LinkedInJoin our multifamily investing community with like-minded apartment investors at the Tribe of TitansThis episode originally aired on May 23, 2025----Watch the episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcsYmSLMxQCA9hgt_PciN3g?sub_confirmation=1 Listen to us on your favorite podcast app:Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/AppleDiaryPodcast Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SpotDiaryPodcast Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/GoogleDiaryPodcast Follow us on:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diary_of_an_apartment_investor Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DiaryAptInv/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Diary_Apt_Inv ----Your host, Brian Briscoe, has owned over twenty apartment complexes worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is dedicated to helping aspiring apartment investors learn how to do the same. He founded the Tribe of Titans as his platform to educate aspiring apartment investors and is continually creating new content for the subscribers and coaching clients.He is the founder of Streamline Capital based in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is probably working on closing another apartment complex in the greater SLC area. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps in 2021 after 20 years of service.Connect with him on LinkedIn----Clive DavisAfter graduating from Columbia Law School, Clive's corporate career took him from a Wall Street law firm where he began as a transactional lawyer, to a variety of in-house legal and compliance roles in the pharmaceutical industry, including nine years serving as a Chief Compliance Officer. Throughout the entirety of this twenty-year career, he remained actively invested in real estate with a small portfolio of holdings.In answering this self-posed question, Clive decided 2017 was the time and walked away from corporate life in pursuit of his interests and passion as a full-time real estate investment entrepreneur.Since founding Park Royal Capital in 2017 Clive Davis has personally invested in more than 2,500 multifamily rental units, as well as a portfolio of hotels based in Atlanta where he has resided since 2005. Most recently Park Royal Capital acquired two Atlanta multifamily properties totaling 444 units with a combined value of over $70M.Learn more about him at: https://parkroyalcapital.com/, or https://www.linkedin.com/in/clivedavisesq/
In 2018, the U.S. Air Force awarded a $3.9 billion contract to Boeing for two new Air Force One planes. For a variety of reasons, including delays tied to the need for workers with proper security clearances, Boeing may or may not be able to complete the order before the end of President Donald Trump's second term. Meanwhile, the Qatari Prime Minister offered to gift the president a luxury 747 jet valued at $400 million. And the Department of Defense has just accepted it. There are questions about whether the Qatari plane can even be brought up to Air Force One's safety and security standards before Trump leaves office. But the bigger question may be whether it was lawful for the president to accept it. Richard Briffault, Professor of Legislation at Columbia Law School, joins us on The Excerpt to share his insights.Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com.Episode Transcript available hereSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
May is supposed to be the calm before June's opinion storm in SCOTUS-land, but not in Trump's America. Melissa, Kate, and Leah kick off the show with the latest news, including Stephen Miller's habeas suspension fantasies and the president's blatant disregard of the emoluments clause when it comes to free jumbo jets. Then, the hosts are joined by professor Elora Mukherjee of Columbia Law School to break down last week's oral arguments in the Court's blockbuster birthright citizenship case. Hosts' favorite things:Kate: Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age, Amanda Hess; Harvard Paid $27 for a Copy of Magna Carta. Surprise! It's an Original, Stephen Castle (NYT)Leah: My Friends, Fredrik Backman; Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on All Rise News; Melissa: Weight Watchers Got One Thing Very Right, Jennifer Rubin (NYT); This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World -- And Me, Marisa Meltzer; Forever (Netflix) Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025! 5/31 – Washington DC6/12 – NYC10/4 – ChicagoLearn more: http://crooked.com/eventsOrder your copy of Leah's book, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky
In this episode, MAJ Emily Bobenrieth, Associate Professor in the National Security Law Department, talks with Professor Asaf Lubin, Associate Profes-sor at Indianan University Maurer School of Law and visiting Associate Pro-fessor at Columbia Law School. Professor Lubin shares his over ten years of research into the law and ethics that govern espionage. Professor Lubin dis-cusses how current international law regulates (or rather, falls short to ade-quately regulate) how States spy on one another. Professor Lubin discusses his argument for the development of a new body of law called the, “Interna-tional Law of Intelligence,” a self-contained legal regime specifically tailored to honor the importance of espionage to State security, while simultaneously balancing the protection of individual privacy. Professor Lubin's research cul-minates in his forthcoming book, The International Law of Intelligence: The World of Spycraft and the Law of Nations, scheduled to be released this spring by Oxford University Press, set to be released later this spring. Learn more about The Quill & Sword series of podcasts by visiting our pod-cast page at https://tjaglcs.army.mil/thequillandsword. The Quill & Sword show includes featured episodes from across the JAGC, plus all episodes from our four separate shows: “Criminal Law Department Presents” (Criminal Law Department), “NSL Unscripted” (National Security Law Department), “The FAR and Beyond” (Contract & Fiscal Law Department) and “Hold My Reg” (Administrative & Civil Law Department). Connect with The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School by visiting our website at https://tjaglcs.army.mil/ or on Facebook (tjaglcs), Instagram (tjaglcs), or LinkedIn (school/tjaglcs).
What does it mean to innovate with principle in a world of complexity, volatility, and accelerating change? This week, I spoke with Anu Bradford, Professor of Law, Director of European Legal Studies Center, Columbia Law School. As part of our Nordic Visionaries series, Anu brings a timely and thought-provoking perspective on the intersection of innovation, regulation, and sustainability. Known globally for her work on EU law and digital regulation, and as the author of The Brussels Effect and Digital Empires, Anu offers an insider's view on how the Nordics and Europe are navigating the fast-evolving tech landscape. Together, they explore the mounting pressure on companies to adapt to shifting political and economic forces while staying true to their foundational values. From EU regulation and AI governance to geopolitical realignment and sustainability commitments, the conversation tackles the opportunities and tradeoffs innovators must grapple with today. Anu also highlights the need for disruptive innovation that improves lives, not just profits, and calls attention to the power of Nordic leadership to set global examples through clear values, pragmatism, and social trust. Whether you are a tech founder, policymaker, or corporate leader, this episode challenges you to consider what you build and why you make it. So, how do we define meaningful innovation at this moment? And what kind of future are we shaping when we choose to balance progress with principle? Join the conversation and share your thoughts.
What's up Startup Mindsets Nation! We've been out on the book tour in the Philippines but are BACK and better than EVERIf you've bought a copy of Startup Mindsets already, you don't know how much that means to me, thank you
In this installment of the People Places Planet Explained Series, host Dara Albrecht is joined by Robin Rotman, Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri, and Camille Pannu, Associate Professor at Columbia Law School and Director of the Environmental and Climate Justice Clinic, to break down the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)—the cornerstone law protecting America's drinking water. The conversation covers SDWA's origins, its regulatory reach over public water systems, and the emerging challenges tied to small system compliance, contaminants like PFAS, and growing infrastructure needs. Rotman and Pannu explain key concepts such as maximum contaminant levels, variances, citizen suits, and the relationship between SDWA and the Clean Water Act. They also discuss notable cases like Des Moines Water Works and Flint, Michigan, and examine how funding limitations and legal battles shape drinking water protections today. Looking forward, they reflect on future developments in private well regulation, point-of-use treatment technologies, and technical assistance for vulnerable communities. This episode offers an essential primer for anyone interested in how public health, environmental law, and infrastructure converge at the tap. ★ Support this podcast ★
Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Ashley Christopher. She is a multifaceted individual: a dedicated mother to her son, Ryan, a CEO, an attorney licensed in Pennsylvania, and a stroke survivor. She founded the HBCU Week Foundation in 2017 with a mission to promote enrollment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), provide scholarships, and create pathways for students from undergrad to corporate America. HBCU Week, a central initiative of her foundation, aims to immerse high school students in the history and legacy of HBCUs, encouraging them to consider these institutions for higher education. The cornerstone of the program is a unique college fair where students can gain immediate acceptance and scholarships based on their eligibility. To date, the event has facilitated over 10,000 on-the-spot acceptances and awarded nearly $100 million in scholarships, partnering with organizations like the NFL and Capital One. Notably, Ashley spearheaded a substantial partnership with the American Chemistry Council, which will provide 1,000 $40,000 scholarships for students pursuing STEM majors at HBCUs. As a proud alumna of HBCUs, having attended Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia Law School, Ashley is deeply committed to guiding young people toward higher education opportunities. She views her role as crucial in demonstrating that success is attainable from HBCUs. Above all, her favorite role remains that of a mother, guided by her faith and the belief that she can inspire others while advancing her own career. Company Description *HBCU Week was founded in 2017 by Ashley Christopher, Esq. and is managed by the HBCU Week Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. HBCU Week consists of multi-day events held throughout the nation each year, designed to encourage high school-aged youth to enroll in HBCUs, provide scholarship dollars for matriculation and sustain a pipeline for employment from undergraduate school to corporate America. A highlight of our events is the College Fair, which offers on-the-spot college acceptance and scholarships to qualified high school seniors. For more information, visit www.HBCUWeek.org. Talking Points/Questions *Entrepreneurship & Nonprofit LeadershipEntrepreneurship and nonprofit leadership demand grit and hard work. Despite challenges, a heartfelt commitment makes the journey worthwhile. This content is aimed at companies and organizations eager to learn the essentials of building and managing a business with a small team. DE&I & Social ImpactDiversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) is a pivotal topic in today's discourse. It's crucial to educate individuals and companies on its real benefits. Diversity should be viewed as essential for upward mobility, not merely as an act of charity. The audience includes organizations dedicated to understanding and expanding diversity initiatives. Self-Care & Self-AwarenessAs a mother, entrepreneur, attorney, and stroke survivor, Ashley recognizes the significance of prioritizing health and listening to our bodies. It’s vital that everyone learns to care for themselves mentally, physically, and emotionally. This message targets individuals aged 16 and older who are passionate about adopting a healthy lifestyle and pursuing personal growth. #BEST #STRAW #SHMSSupport the show: https://www.steveharveyfm.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Ashley Christopher. She is a multifaceted individual: a dedicated mother to her son, Ryan, a CEO, an attorney licensed in Pennsylvania, and a stroke survivor. She founded the HBCU Week Foundation in 2017 with a mission to promote enrollment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), provide scholarships, and create pathways for students from undergrad to corporate America. HBCU Week, a central initiative of her foundation, aims to immerse high school students in the history and legacy of HBCUs, encouraging them to consider these institutions for higher education. The cornerstone of the program is a unique college fair where students can gain immediate acceptance and scholarships based on their eligibility. To date, the event has facilitated over 10,000 on-the-spot acceptances and awarded nearly $100 million in scholarships, partnering with organizations like the NFL and Capital One. Notably, Ashley spearheaded a substantial partnership with the American Chemistry Council, which will provide 1,000 $40,000 scholarships for students pursuing STEM majors at HBCUs. As a proud alumna of HBCUs, having attended Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia Law School, Ashley is deeply committed to guiding young people toward higher education opportunities. She views her role as crucial in demonstrating that success is attainable from HBCUs. Above all, her favorite role remains that of a mother, guided by her faith and the belief that she can inspire others while advancing her own career. Company Description *HBCU Week was founded in 2017 by Ashley Christopher, Esq. and is managed by the HBCU Week Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. HBCU Week consists of multi-day events held throughout the nation each year, designed to encourage high school-aged youth to enroll in HBCUs, provide scholarship dollars for matriculation and sustain a pipeline for employment from undergraduate school to corporate America. A highlight of our events is the College Fair, which offers on-the-spot college acceptance and scholarships to qualified high school seniors. For more information, visit www.HBCUWeek.org. Talking Points/Questions *Entrepreneurship & Nonprofit LeadershipEntrepreneurship and nonprofit leadership demand grit and hard work. Despite challenges, a heartfelt commitment makes the journey worthwhile. This content is aimed at companies and organizations eager to learn the essentials of building and managing a business with a small team. DE&I & Social ImpactDiversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) is a pivotal topic in today's discourse. It's crucial to educate individuals and companies on its real benefits. Diversity should be viewed as essential for upward mobility, not merely as an act of charity. The audience includes organizations dedicated to understanding and expanding diversity initiatives. Self-Care & Self-AwarenessAs a mother, entrepreneur, attorney, and stroke survivor, Ashley recognizes the significance of prioritizing health and listening to our bodies. It’s vital that everyone learns to care for themselves mentally, physically, and emotionally. This message targets individuals aged 16 and older who are passionate about adopting a healthy lifestyle and pursuing personal growth. #BEST #STRAW #SHMSSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Two-time Emmy and Three-time NAACP Image Award-winning, television Executive Producer Rushion McDonald interviewed Ashley Christopher. She is a multifaceted individual: a dedicated mother to her son, Ryan, a CEO, an attorney licensed in Pennsylvania, and a stroke survivor. She founded the HBCU Week Foundation in 2017 with a mission to promote enrollment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), provide scholarships, and create pathways for students from undergrad to corporate America. HBCU Week, a central initiative of her foundation, aims to immerse high school students in the history and legacy of HBCUs, encouraging them to consider these institutions for higher education. The cornerstone of the program is a unique college fair where students can gain immediate acceptance and scholarships based on their eligibility. To date, the event has facilitated over 10,000 on-the-spot acceptances and awarded nearly $100 million in scholarships, partnering with organizations like the NFL and Capital One. Notably, Ashley spearheaded a substantial partnership with the American Chemistry Council, which will provide 1,000 $40,000 scholarships for students pursuing STEM majors at HBCUs. As a proud alumna of HBCUs, having attended Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia Law School, Ashley is deeply committed to guiding young people toward higher education opportunities. She views her role as crucial in demonstrating that success is attainable from HBCUs. Above all, her favorite role remains that of a mother, guided by her faith and the belief that she can inspire others while advancing her own career. Company Description *HBCU Week was founded in 2017 by Ashley Christopher, Esq. and is managed by the HBCU Week Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. HBCU Week consists of multi-day events held throughout the nation each year, designed to encourage high school-aged youth to enroll in HBCUs, provide scholarship dollars for matriculation and sustain a pipeline for employment from undergraduate school to corporate America. A highlight of our events is the College Fair, which offers on-the-spot college acceptance and scholarships to qualified high school seniors. For more information, visit www.HBCUWeek.org. Talking Points/Questions *Entrepreneurship & Nonprofit LeadershipEntrepreneurship and nonprofit leadership demand grit and hard work. Despite challenges, a heartfelt commitment makes the journey worthwhile. This content is aimed at companies and organizations eager to learn the essentials of building and managing a business with a small team. DE&I & Social ImpactDiversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) is a pivotal topic in today's discourse. It's crucial to educate individuals and companies on its real benefits. Diversity should be viewed as essential for upward mobility, not merely as an act of charity. The audience includes organizations dedicated to understanding and expanding diversity initiatives. Self-Care & Self-AwarenessAs a mother, entrepreneur, attorney, and stroke survivor, Ashley recognizes the significance of prioritizing health and listening to our bodies. It’s vital that everyone learns to care for themselves mentally, physically, and emotionally. This message targets individuals aged 16 and older who are passionate about adopting a healthy lifestyle and pursuing personal growth. #BEST #STRAW #SHMSSteve Harvey Morning Show Online: http://www.steveharveyfm.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In our final segment of our Legalweek series, Laura and Kevin hit the floor to chat with two folks from Verbit - Matan Barak, Head of Legal Products and JP Son, Chief Legal Officer, for an insightful dive into the evolution of AI in legal transcription and the broader implications for the industry. We first hear their origin story, being founded with the mission to make transcription more efficient, accessible, and intelligent. They share how the company emerged from the need for faster, more accurate transcription services, especially in high-stakes environments like the legal world. As the conversation turns toward AI, we learn how machine learning is transforming transcription, enhancing turnaround times, enabling real-time insights, and supporting legal professionals with features like inconsistency detection, intelligent search, and summarization through Verbit's Legal Visor. But with great power comes great responsibility. they address growing concerns around deepfakes and misinformation, explaining how Verbit ensures the authenticity and accuracy of its AI-assisted transcriptions with rigorous quality checks and compliance protocols. Matan sheds light on how Verbit's models are trained to understand regional dialects and legal-specific jargon, ensuring that nuance is never lost, even in complex, technical discussions. The pair also tackle the hot topic: Will AI replace human court reporters? This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of legal tech, AI, and the future of court reporting. Matan Barak is the Head of Legal Products at Verbit, with over a decade of experience leading AI-driven solutions to market. He played a key role in conceptualizing and developing Verbit Legal Visor, a real-time intelligence platform for litigators that enhances legal professionals' efficiency with AI-powered insights, including inconsistency detection, intelligent search, and summaries to help secure better case outcomes.JP Son has served as Verbit's Chief Legal Officer since December 2021, with responsibility for the company's global legal affairs, including in the areas of regulatory compliance, privacy, intellectual property, commercial, M&A, governance and employment. Previously, Son was Vice President, Legal at Vonage Holdings Corp. (VG), where he was responsible for global regulatory, privacy and intellectual property matters. He also served as lead counsel for Vonage's API Platform group. Prior to Vonage, Son was in private practice at a global law firm based in New York. Son received his undergraduate degree in computer science from Cornell University and his J.D. from Columbia Law School.Verbit is a verbal intelligence platform leveraged by 3,000+ businesses and institutions. Our suite of voice AI solutions are used to capture everyday exchanges, better understand the information shared and apply these insights in daily work. Verbit was founded in 2017 in Tel Aviv on the insight that attorneys were spending too much time and money on inaccurate transcripts. The team then uncovered how many more industries could benefit from access to accurate transcripts. By combining automatic speech recognition technology (ASR) with the expert human transcribers, Verbit has transformed a $30B transcription industry. The company has grown into one of the world's largest transcription and closed captioning providers with offices in the US, Canada, UK, and Israel.
Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures. Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava. Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women, Ivory Tower Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice Black Woman on Board We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States Leading from the Margins Presumed Incompetent Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures. Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava. Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women, Ivory Tower Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice Black Woman on Board We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States Leading from the Margins Presumed Incompetent Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures. Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava. Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women, Ivory Tower Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice Black Woman on Board We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States Leading from the Margins Presumed Incompetent Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures. Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava. Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women, Ivory Tower Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice Black Woman on Board We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States Leading from the Margins Presumed Incompetent Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!
Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures. Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava. Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women, Ivory Tower Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice Black Woman on Board We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States Leading from the Margins Presumed Incompetent Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life
Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions (Princeton UP, 2025), Susan Sturm explores how to navigate the contradictions built into our racialized history, relationships, and institutions. She offers strategies and stories for confronting racism within predominantly white institutions, describing how change agents can move beyond talk to build the architecture of full participation. Professor Sturm argues that although we cannot avoid the contradictions built into efforts to confront racism, we can make them into engines of cross-racial reflection, bridge building, and institutional reimagination, rather than falling into a Groundhog Day–like trap of repeated failures. Drawing on her decades of experience researching and working with institutions to help them become more equitable and inclusive, she identifies three persistent paradoxes inherent in anti-racism work. These are the paradox of racialized power, whereby anti-racism requires white people to lean into and yet step back from exercising power; the paradox of racial salience, which means that effective efforts must explicitly name and address race while also framing their goals in universal terms other than race; and the paradox of racialized institutions, which must drive anti-racism work while simultaneously being the target of it. Sturm shows how people and institutions can cultivate the capacity to straddle these contradictions, enabling those in different racial positions to discover their linked fate and become the catalysts for long-term change. The book includes thoughtful and critical responses from Goodwin Liu, Freeman Hrabowski, and Anurima Bhargava. Our guest is: Professor Susan Sturm, who is the George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility and the Founding Director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School. She is the coauthor with Lani Guinier, of Who's Qualified? A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women, Ivory Tower Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice Black Woman on Board We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States Leading from the Margins Presumed Incompetent Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy
Send Jay comments via textWhat happens when a burnt-out attorney with $200,000 in student loan debt decides to completely transform her life as an empty nester? Join us as Jessica Medina candidly shares her experiences burdened with a staggering average student loan debt of $145,000. She discusses the emotional weight of student loans and why they require special consideration, alongside practical strategies for parents approaching college funding conversations with their children.The conversation takes a personal turn as Jessica prepares for her own empty nest. After raising twins as a single mom while juggling her legal career, she found love and began plotting her “second chapter” with her husband, which included developing the financial skills necessary to leave law behind and pursue their dream of vineyard ownership in Asheville, North Carolina.Highlights:The emotional burdens associated with student debt and its impact on effective financial planning.Strategies for open conversations about college funding expectations with children.Key Takeaways:Addressing student loan debt requires unique strategies and emotional awareness.Early discussions about college funding can alleviate future stress and miscommunication.Join us for this insightful episode as we explore Jessica's journey and her wisdom on navigating the challenges of student debt, redefining personal identity in mid-life, and building a vibrant community as an empty nester. Jessica Medina's BioJessica Medina is a lawyer turned Accredited Financial Counselor on a mission to help attorneys create the financial freedom they need to do big things. She graduated from Columbia Law School in 2004 as a single mom of twins with over $200,000 in student loans and went straight to work at a Biglaw firm. After eight years she switched roles and became Senior Counsel at the Division of Enforcement at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. She left the government to work in an area of the financial industry outside of the securities world and now teaches other lawyers how to use their money to finance their dream lives.You can find Jessica online: LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, WebsiteSupport the showFREE WORKBOOK3 Steps to Loving Your Empty Nest Life ENJOY THE SHOW?Don't miss an episode, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or follow on Spotify and many more. LOVE THE SHOW?Get your THIS EMPTY NEST LIFE swagReview us on Love the Podcast, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify -- reviews and ratings help others find us and we'd appreciate your support greatly.CONNECT WITH JAYEmail, LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok
What if the institutions we rely on—our workplaces, schools, and legal systems—aren't built for full participation? And what if real change starts not from the top, but in small, intentional spaces we create ourselves? In this episode Heidi Brooks and legal scholar and change-maker Susan Sturm explore the paradoxes of institutional transformation, and how facing uncertainty–rather than seeking to eliminate it–can create new possibilities for participation, collaboration and justice. Drawing from her new book, What Might Be: How Universities and Other Institutions Can Change, Susan shares how we can confront the tensions within our systems—between power and powerlessness, justice and exclusion, certainty and humility—without rushing to resolve them. Through personal stories and deep insights, she introduces the concept of micro spaces of justice—small but intentional environments where people model the institutional change they wish to see. These spaces, she argues, offer a path forward amid today's polarization and institutional inertia. This episode invites listeners to rethink their role in shaping institutions, reimagining power, and embracing paradox as a source of transformation. Listen now and join the conversation on what might be possible. Learning Through Experience is produced through the Yale School of Management. What resonates with you about this conversation? We'd love to hear from you—reach out to LTEpodcast@yale.edu. And subscribe to the monthly LinkedIn newsletter for additional insights and reflections about episode topics and questions to ponder. Watch this episode on YouTube. Resources
A recent legal judgment could force Greenpeace to pay $667 million in defamation and vandalism-related damages, from the 2016 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline leading environmentalists to worry that the ruling could have a chilling effect on climate activism. Michael Gerrard, professor of law at Columbia Law School and the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, shares his legal analysis of the case, and what it could mean for the environment.
This episode of the podcast features my conversation with none other than John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, in front of a live Atlanta audience. Our organization recently hosted a series of MirYam Institute campus presentations featuring John as the keynote speaker. That campus tour included lectures at Columbia Law School, The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts. John's initial comments were followed by audience questions from the pro., the anti and the undecided elements of the graduate student community. That lecture series culminated with a presentation to the Atlanta Jewish community and it's that conversation that I'm pleased to share with you here. So with that, enjoy!Don't forget that you can catch nearly all of this audio content in video format on The MirYam Institute's YouTube channel, so if you'd like to ensure that you never miss any of our programming, go ahead and subscribe to that channel as well via the link below. https://www.youtube.com/@TheMirYamInstituteSupport the showThe MirYam Institute. Israel's Future in Israel's Hands.Subscribe to our podcast: https://podfollow.com/1493910771Follow The MirYam Institute X: https://bit.ly/3jkeUyxFollow Benjamin Anthony X: https://bit.ly/3hZeOe9Like Benjamin Anthony Facebook: https://bit.ly/333Ct93Like The MirYam Institute Facebook: https://bit.ly/2SarHI3Follow Benjamin Anthony Instagram: https://bit.ly/30m6uPGFollow The MirYam Institute Instagram: https://bit.ly/3l5fvED
Ralph welcomes New York Times journalist, David Enrich, author of “Murder the Truth” an in-depth exposé of the attack on freedom of the press as protected by the landmark Supreme Court decision “Sullivan v. The New York Times.” Also, Professor Michael Graetz a leading authority on tax politics and policy joins to discuss his book “The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America.” Plus, our resident constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, updates us on his latest efforts to push for the impeachment of Donald Trump.David Enrich is the business investigations editor for The New York Times. He writes about the intersection of law and business, including the power wielded by giant corporate law firms and the changing contours of the First Amendment and libel law. His latest book is titled Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful, an in-depth exposé of the broad campaign—orchestrated by elite Americans—to overturn sixty years of Supreme Court precedent, weaponize our speech laws, and silence dissent.When all the institutions are crushed by a dictator in the White House, it's only the people that can save the people.Ralph NaderThe interesting thing was that Fox, and these other right-wing outlets for years had been kind of banging the drum against New York Times v. Sullivan and against the protections that many journalists have come to count on. And then they get sued and their immediate fallback is to very happily cite New York Times v. Sullivan.David EnrichThese threats and these lawsuits have become an extremely popular weapon among everyone from the President down to mayors, city council members, local real estate development companies, on and on and on…And the direct result of that will be that powerful people, companies, organizations, institutions are going to be able to do bad things without anyone knowing about it.David EnrichPeople keep asking me what they can do, what they should do. And I think the answer is really to try and understand these issues. They're complicated, but they're also getting deliberately misframed and misrepresented often, especially on the right, but sometimes not on the right. And I think it's really important for people to understand the importance of New York Times v. Sullivan, and to understand the grave threats facing journalists, especially at the local level right now, and the consequences that could have for our democracy.David EnrichMichael Graetz is professor emeritus at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School and a leading authority on tax politics and policy. He served in the U.S. Treasury's Office of Tax Policy and is the author and coauthor of many books, including Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth and The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right. His latest book is The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America.I spent a lot of time asking people to name the most important political and social movements of the last half century. And no surprise, they named the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the LGBTQ movement, the Christian Evangelical movement, the MAGA movement lately, but no one ever mentioned the anti-tax movement. And unlike the other movements I've named, the anti-tax movement is really the only one that has not suffered a serious setback in the past half century.Michael GraetzThe anti-tax movement has always relied on a false dichotomy between “us” (those who pay taxes) and “them” (those who receive government benefits).Michael GraetzThe Democrats now don't want to tax 98% of the people and the Republicans don't want to tax 100% of the people and the question is: how do you get anywhere with those kinds of firm “no new taxes” pledges? And that's a problem. And I think it's a problem that the Democrats have fallen into basically based on the success of the Republicans antitax coalition.Michael GraetzYou're going to see individuals' budgets pinched because the federal government refuses to treat its budget with any degree of seriousness.Michael GraetzThe label they use to justify tax cuts for the rich and the corporate they call them the “job creators.” Well, that has not been proven at all.Ralph NaderBruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.Certainly, the current Congress is not going to act without citizen involvement, pressure, clamoring that they do something to save the processes which are the heart and soul of our civilization as opposed to the law of the jungle.Bruce FeinNews 3/19/251. The AP reports that on Tuesday Israel broke the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, launching airstrikes that have killed over 400 Palestinians. These strikes, which have killed mostly women and children, are described as “open-ended and expected to expand.” This new offensive began the same day Prime Minister Netanyahu was scheduled to appear in court to provide testimony in his corruption trial; according to Israeli broadcaster KAN News, Netanyahu used the surprise attack to annul this court date.2. This new offensive endangers the lives of some two dozen Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. These hostages would have been released as part of the prisoner exchanges brokered through the ceasefire agreement. In order to dissuade further escalation, journalist Dimi Reider reports “Israeli hostage families are trying to make a human chain around Gaza to physically block a ground incursion.” This human chain includes prominent Israeli activist Einav Zangauker, whose son is still held in Gaza and who has made herself an implacable opponent of Netanyahu.3. On the home front, a new round of state-backed repression is underway, targeted at pro-Palestine activists on college and university campuses. The Mahmoud Khalil case has received perhaps the most attention and with good reason. Khalil is a legal permanent resident of the United States and is married to a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. He has long been active in pro-Palestine organizing at the college, which White House officials have claimed make him a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.” The Trump administration has refused to honor Khalil's Constitutional rights – including refusing to let him meet with his lawyer – and has admitted that they are persecuting him on the basis of political speech, a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment. A White House official explicitly told the Free Press, “The allegation…is not that he was breaking the law.” In addition to Khalil however, Columbia has taken the opportunity to expel, suspend and revoke the degrees of 22 students involved in the Hind's Hall occupation last year, per the Middle East Eye. This raft of penalizations includes the expulsion of Grant Miner, President of UAW Local 2710, which represents thousands of Columbia student workers. Per the UAW, “the firing comes one day before contract negotiations were set to open with the University.” The timing of this expulsion is suspicious to say the least.4. Yet, even in the face of such repression, pro-Palestine campus activism perseveres. Democracy Now! reports that on March 14th, Harvard Law School students “overwhelmingly passed a referendum calling on Harvard to divest its more than $50 billion endowment from ‘weapons, surveillance technology, and other companies aiding violations of international humanitarian law, including Israel's genocide in Gaza and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine.'” The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee adds that the referendum passed with approximately 73% of the vote, an unquestionably decisive margin. Even still, the university is unlikely to even consider adopting the resolution.5. The resilience of student activists in the face of state-backed repression highlights the fecklessness of elected Democrats. The political leadership of New York for example has not mobilized to defend Mahmoud Khalil from authoritarian overreach by the federal government. Even locally, none of the current mayoral hopefuls – a rather underwhelming lot including the comically corrupt incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and former Governor Andrew Cuomo, infamous for killing thousands of seniors via his Covid policies and for the pervasive culture of sexual harassment in his office – have forcefully spoken up for Khalil. That is except for Zohran Mamdani, the DSA-endorsed mayoral candidate steadily climbing in the polls thanks to his popular message and well-crafted political ads. His advocacy on behalf of Khalil seems to have won him the support of perhaps the most principled progressive in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, who likewise is leading the meager Congressional effort to pressure the administration to rescind the disappearance of Khalil.6. In light of their anemic response to Trump and Trumpism, Democratic discontent is reaching a boiling point. A flashpoint emerged last week when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer opted not to fight the Republican budget proposal and vote for cloture instead of shutting down the government. Democratic voters were so incensed by this decision that Schumer was forced to postpone his book tour and the Democratic Party registered its lowest ever approval ratings, with just seven percent of voters saying they have a “very positive” view of the party. As this debacle unfolded, House Democrats were at a retreat in Leesburg, Virginia where AOC “slammed…[Schumer's]…decision to ‘completely roll over and give up on protecting the Constitution.'” One member told CNN Democrats in Leesburg were “so mad” that even centrists were “ready to write checks for AOC for Senate.” And Pass the Torch, the grassroots progressive group that called for President Biden withdraw from the 2024 campaign is now calling for Schumer to resign as minority leader, the Hill reports. In their statement, the group writes “[Schumer's] sole job is to fight MAGA's fascist takeover of our democracy — instead, he's directly enabling it. Americans desperately need a real opposition party to stand up to Trump.”7. In the early evening on Tuesday March 18th, Trump unlawfully dismissed the two remaining Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission, POLITICO reports. One Commissioner, Alvaro Bedoya, tweeted “The President just illegally fired me.” Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter was also ousted from her post. In her statement, she wrote that her dismissal violated “the plain language of a statute and clear Supreme Court precedent. Why? Because…[Trump] is afraid of what I'll tell the American people.” Trump similarly violated the law when he dismissed National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox who filed a lawsuit which prevailed in federal district court. POLITICO reports she returned to work last week. Biden's superstar FTC Chair Lina Khan, already ousted by Trump, commented “The @FTC must enforce the law without fear or favor. The administration's illegal attempt to fire Commissioners Slaughter & Bedoya is a disturbing sign that this FTC won't. It's a gift to corporate lawbreakers that squeeze American consumers, workers, and honest businesses.” On March 19th, Bedoya added “Don't worry…We are still commissioners. We're suing to make that clear for everyone.”8. Trump's radical deregulatory agenda could not come at a worse time. Amid a streak of horrific aviation accidents and incidents, it now appears that Elon Musk is seeking to permanently worm his way into the Federal Aviation Administration. Forbes reports that the Campaign Legal Center has filed a legal complaint with the Office of the Inspector General of the Transportation Department alleging that Musk may have violated conflict of interest laws through his “involvement with a deal between the Federal Aviation Administration and his own company Starlink.” Per the Washington Post, the FAA is “close to canceling” its existing $2.4 billion contract with Verizon in favor of working with Starlink, and according to the legal complaint, Musk “appears to have personally and substantially participated” in these negotiations. This matter will have to play out in court, but the risks are very real. As Representative Greg Casar put it, “Musk is trying to make our air traffic control system ‘dependent' on him by integrating his equipment, which has not gone through security and risk-management review. It's corruption. And it's dangerous.”9. In more Musk news, President Trump has announced that he will institute a new rule classifying any attack on Tesla dealers as domestic terrorism, Reuters reports. This comes in response to the peaceful, so-called “Tesla Takedown” protests, which urge participants to “Sell your Teslas, dump your stock, join the picket lines.” Any connection between the protests and isolated cases of vandalism against Teslas or Tesla dealerships is tenuous at most. Instead, this theatrical display of support for the auto manufacturer seems to be a response Tesla's declining stock value. Reuters reports “Tesla's market capitalization has more than halved since hitting an all-time high of $1.5 trillion on December 17, erasing most of the gains the stock made after Musk-backed Trump won the U.S. election in November.” It seems unlikely that invoking the iron fist of the state against peaceful protestors will do much to buoy Tesla's market position.10. Finally, in a humiliating bit of tragic irony, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long maintained a personal brand as a crusader against junk food, is being deployed by the Trump administration to boost the fast food chain Steak ‘n Shake. Ostensibly, the endorsement is predicated on the chain using beef tallow rather than seed oils to prepare their French fries – the company called it “RFK'ing the fries” – yet even that claim appears shaky. According to NBC, “the chain's move inspired some in the [Make America Healthy Again] world to look deeper… finding that [Steak ‘n Shake's] fries were precooked in seed oils.” Nevertheless, RFK's endorsement has been echoed by many others in Trump-world, including Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kari Lake, Charlie Kirk, and others. NBC adds that in February, Tesla announced it had signed a deal to build charging stations at Steak 'n Shake locations. Funny how Musk's fingers seem to appear in every pie, or in this case grasping at every tallow French fry.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe
We pulled one of our favorite interviews from the BLS interview archives where Derek Champagne interviews Michael Levin. This was a powerful interview and Michael overdelivered as our guest! As one of the most established writers in the nation, New York Times best-selling author Michael Levin has written or co-written more than 100 books, of which eleven are national best sellers.He appeared on ABC's Shark Tank on January 20th, 2012. In the past, Michael has published with Simon & Schuster, Random House, St. Martin's Press, Putnam/Berkley, and many other houses. His works have been optioned for film and TV by Steven Soderbergh/Paramount, HBO, Disney, ABC, and others. One of his own novels became Model Behavior, an ABC Sunday night Disney movie of the week. He has also made contributions to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com, Politico, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Jerusalem Post, Writers Digest, CBS News. Michael has had the experience to teach writing classes at the University of California – Los Angeles and New York University. As an Amherst College and Columbia Law School graduate, Michael served for many years as a member of the prestigious Authors Guild Council and as Treasurer of the Authors Guild Foundation.Michael currently resides with his wife and four children in Boston, Massachusetts. Learn more about Michael at www.businessghost.com
Lina Khan, the youngest F.T.C. chair in history, reset U.S. antitrust policy by thwarting mega-mergers and other monopolistic behavior. This earned her enemies in some places, and big fans in others — including the Trump administration. Stephen Dubner speaks with Khan about her tactics, her track record, and her future. SOURCES:Lina Khan, former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission and professor of law at Columbia Law School. RESOURCES:"Merger Guidelines" (U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, 2023)."The Rise of Market Power and the Macroeconomic Implications," by Jan De Loecker, Jan Eeckhout, and Gabriel Unger (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019)."US Antitrust Law and Policy in Historical Perspective," by Laura Phillips Sawyer (Harvard Business School, 2019).The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, by Tim Wu (2018)."Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," by Lina Khan (Yale Law Journal, 2017)."A Tempest In a Coffee Shop," by Tanya Mohn (New York Times, 2004). EXTRAS:"The Economics of Eyeglasses," by Freakonomics Radio (2024)."Should You Trust Private Equity to Take Care of Your Dog?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023)."Are Private Equity Firms Plundering the U.S. Economy?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023)."Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China — and How About Russia? (Update)" by Freakonomics Radio (2022).
Mijal and Noam sit down with barrister and legal expert Natasha Hausdorff to explore the weaponization of international law, the ICC and UN's stance on Israel. They discuss the challenges of lawfare in the modern world. In their conversation, Natasha breaks down complex legal frameworks, debunks myths about genocide allegations and proportionality in war, and clarifies misconceptions surrounding the West Bank and occupation debate. Get in touch at our new email address: WonderingJews@unpacked.media and call us, 1-833-WON-Jews. Follow @jewishunpacked on Instagram and check out Unpacked on youtube. Natasha Hausdorff's bio: Natasha Hausdorff is a barrister and expert commentator on international law, including the law of armed conflict, foreign affairs and national security policy. She is a sought-after keynote speaker on lawfare and the weaponization of international law against Israel. She regularly briefs politicians and international organisations and has spoken at Parliaments across Europe and at the United Nations. Natasha is a frequent contributor on legal matters for international media, including the BBC, Sky News, CNN, GB News, Talk TV and Fox and has written for publications including the Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Mail and Law Society Gazette. She holds law degrees from Oxford and Tel Aviv Universities and was a Fellow in the National Security Law Programme at Columbia Law School in New York. Natasha previously worked for American law firm Skadden Arps, in London and Brussels, and clerked for the President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Chief Justice Miriam Naor, in Jerusalem. She serves as legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust. ------------ This podcast was brought to you by Unpacked, a division of OpenDor Media. For other podcasts from Unpacked, check out: Jewish History Nerds Unpacking Israeli History Soulful Jewish Living Stars of David with Elon Gold
Paul Robeson, an enduring and multitalented figure, broke color barriers in sports, music, film and theater. He was an internationally famous singer and actor yet in the U.S. he was persecuted and blacklisted for his political beliefs. He died impoverished and in obscurity. His singular life is a model of courage and steadfastness in the face of racial and political prejudice. He said, “The artist must fight for freedom or for slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.” This program includes Paul Robeson singing in his magnificent bass-baritone voice "Joe Hill" and "Ol' Man River." Recorded at Columbia Law School.
Our host Eva is joined by Michael Burger, Executive Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, and a Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer-at-Law at Columbia Law School. He is a co-author of Urban Climate Law (Columbia U Press, 2023), and an editor or co-editor of Global Climate Change and U.S. Law (ABA Publishing, 2023); Combating Climate Change with Section 115 of the Clean Air Act: Law and Policy Rationales (Edward Elgar, 2020) and Climate Change, Public Health and the Law (Cambridge U Press, 2018). He is a regent and fellow at the American College of Environmental Lawyers, and a member of the Advisory Council at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Advisory Board of Urban Ocean Lab. He is also of counsel at the boutique environmental law firm Sher Edling LLP. Sabin Center for Climate Change Law website: https://climate.law.columbia.edu/New York City Climate Law Tracker: https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/nyc-climate-law-trackerCLCPA Scoping Plan Tracker: https://climate.law.columbia.edu/Scoping-Plan-TrackerClimate Backtracker: https://climate.law.columbia.edu/content/climate-backtrackerClimate Attribution database: https://climateattribution.org/
* Voters Overwhelmingly Oppose Trump-GOP Plan to Slash $880 Billion from Medicaid Healthcare; Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works; Producer: Scott Harris. * Civil Resistance Strategies and Tactics to Effectively Resist the Trump-Musk Coup; Maria J. Stephan, Co-Lead and Chief Organizer with the Horizons Project; Producer: Scott Harris. * As NYC's Congestion Pricing Program Generates Funds for Mass Transit, Trump Wants it Shut Down; Michael Gerrard, Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change law at Columbia Law School; Producer: Melinda Tuhus.
In this podcast, Dan Kovalik shares what's really happening in Syria after a recent trip to the country and their new “de facto” government brought to power in large part by U.S. The fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad ended a 53-year dynasty that began with his father. In Syria, the U.S. has now reaped what it has sown as the new leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, takes charge, a former member of ISIS. Dan Kovalik visited the country in the latter part of January to see for himself what Syria is like under the new regime. He had something to compare this to as he had visited Syria twice back in 2021 when it was still under the leadership of Bashar al-Assad. Dan Kovalik is a human and labor rights lawyer and peace activist. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1993 and then began a 26-year career as the in-house counsel of the United Steelworkers AFL-CIO. Kovalik has also frequently commented on and contributed to various media outlets, sharing his perspectives on international affairs, human rights issues, and U.S. foreign policy. He has authored eight books over the last seven years. His most recent book is “The Case for Palestine.” Greg's MLToday Article: https://mltoday.com/a-return-to-basics-rasmus-the-neoliberal-turn-and-exploitation/ Pat's Substack: https://patcummings.substack.com/ DanKovalik#CaseForPalestine#GazaStrip#Isreal#WestBank#Genocide#Syria#alJulani#TripSyria#USSanctions#EthnicCleansing#Holocost#Kakba#Hamas#Zionists#Chomsky#StephenGowans#JefferySachs#AlJazeera#ISIS#CivilRights#MiddleEast#WarCrimes#PatCummings#GregGodels#ZZBlog#ComingFromLeftField#ComingFromLeftFieldPodcast#zzblog#mltoday
The Goldman Case (Le Procès Goldman) (2023), is a French courtroom drama based on the real-life 1976 trial of Pierre Goldman, a far-left Jewish militant who was accused of multiple armed robberies and four murders during a holdup of a pharmacy in Paris. The film, which was directed by Cedric Kahn from screenplay by Kahn and Nathalie Hertzberg, stars Arieh Worthalter as Goldman and Arthur Harari as his lead lawyer, Georges Kiejiman. The film is not only a gripping account of this celebrated trial, but also explores larger themes around individual and collective responsibility, the way courtrooms can become the battleground for contested narratives about the past, and the swirling forces of race, class, and religion in 1970s France. Joining me to talk about The Goldman Case is Fred Davis, an internationally acclaimed trial attorney, expert on French criminal law and procedure, and Lecturer at Columbia Law School, where he teaches about how to examine comparative criminal procedure through film. Timestamps:0:00 Introduction2:34 Background for the Pierre Goldman case5:15 Goldman's lawyers, Georges Kiejiman and Francis Chouraqui7:48 Breaking down a French courtroom9:21 The lawyer for the victims10:20 Procedural differences between French and American trials14:47 A window into 1970s France17:33 The backdrop of the treatment of Jews in Vichy France 23:05 How the Left rallied to Goldman's side27:10 Tensions around race and policing in France29:58 The role of the investigating magistrate in France 32:22 The verdict and aftermath 38:55 French courtroom dramas40:42 Evolving discussion about France's history during World War II43:40 Studying comparative criminal justice through filmFurther reading:Goldman, Pierre, Dim Memories of a Polish Jew Born in France (1977) Oltermann, Philip, “Tried for double murder and adored by the French left: the violent life and crimes of Pierre Goldman,” The Guardian (Sept. 16, 2024)Paxton, Robert O., Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944 (1972)Marrus, Michael, R. & Paxton, Robert O., Vichy France and the Jews (1981)Reid, Donald, “From Souvenirs obscurs to Lieu de mémorie,” French Politics,Culture & Society, vol. 26, no. 2 (Summer 2008)Vincendeau, Ginette, “The Goldman Case: arresting courtroom drama holds its own outside a French context,” Sight and Sound (Sept. 20, 2024) Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. For more information about Jonathan, here's a link to his bio: https://law.shu.edu/profiles/hafetzjo.htmlYou can contact him at jonathanhafetz@gmail.comYou can follow him on X (Twitter) @jonathanhafetz You can follow the podcast on X (Twitter) @LawOnFilmYou can follow the podcast on Instagram @lawonfilmpodcast
From June 11, 2021: Daniel Richman and Sarah Seo are professors at Columbia Law School, and they are co-authors of a recent article on Lawfare entitled, "Toward a New Era for Federal and State Oversight of Local Police." Benjamin Wittes sat down with them to discuss the article, the history of the federal-state relationship in law enforcement, how the feds came to play an oversight role with respect to police departments, the limits of that role inherent in the cooperative relationship that law enforcement agencies engage in for other reasons, the role that the feds might play under new legislation and the role that state governments may play as well.We value your feedback! Help us improve by sharing your thoughts at lawfaremedia.org/survey. Your input ensures that we deliver what matters most to you. Thank you for your support—and, as always, for listening!To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why is reforming capitalism so essential? In the latest issue of Liberties Quarterly, Tim Wu argues that unregulated capitalism not only leads to economic monopolies, but also drives populist anger and authoritarian politics. In “The Real Road to Serfdom”, Wu advocates for "decentralized capitalism" with distributed economic power, citing examples from Scandinavia and East Asia. Drawing from his experience in the Biden administration's antitrust efforts, he emphasizes the importance of preventing industry concentration. Wu expresses concern about big tech's growing political influence and argues that challenging monopolies is critical for fostering innovation and maintaining economic progress in the United States.Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from our interview with Tim Wu:* Historical Parallels: Wu sees concerning parallels between our current era and the 1930s, characterized by concentrated economic power, fragile economic conditions, and the rise of populist leaders. He suggests we're in a period where leaders are moving beyond winning elections to attempting to alter constitutional frameworks.* The Monopoly-Autocracy Connection: Wu argues there's a dangerous cycle where monopolies create economic inequality, which generates populist anger, which then enables authoritarian leaders to rise to power. He cites Hugo Chavez as a pioneer of this modern autocratic model that leaders like Trump have followed.* Decentralized Capitalism: Wu advocates for an economic system with multiple centers of distributed economic power, rather than just a few giant companies accumulating wealth. He points to Denmark, Taiwan, and post-WWII East Asia as successful examples of more balanced economic structures.* Antitrust Legacy: Wu believes the Biden administration's antitrust enforcement efforts have created lasting changes in legal standards and public consciousness that won't be easily reversed. He emphasizes that challenging monopolies is crucial for maintaining innovation and preventing industry stagnation.* Big Tech and Power: Wu expresses concern about big tech companies' growing political influence, comparing it to historical examples like AT&T and IBM. He's particularly worried about AI potentially reinforcing existing power structures rather than democratizing opportunities.Complete Transcript: Tim Wu on The Real Road to SerfdomAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We live in very strange times. That's no exaggeration. Yesterday, we had Nick Bryant on the show, the author of The Forever War. He was the BBC's man in Washington, DC for a long time. In our conversation, Nick suggested that we're living in really historic times, equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, perhaps even the beginnings of the Second World War.My guest today, like Nick, is a deep thinker. Tim Wu will be very well known to you for many things, including his book, The Attention Merchants. He was involved in the Biden White House, teaches law at Columbia University, and much more. He has a new book coming out later in the year on November 4th, The Age of Extraction. He has a very interesting essay in this issue of Liberties, the quarterly magazine of ideas, called "The Real Road to Serfdom."Tim had a couple of interesting tweets in the last couple of days, one comparing the behavior of President Trump to Germany's 1933 enabling act. And when it comes to Ukraine, Tim wrote, "How does the GOP feel about their president's evident plan to forfeit the Cold War?" Tim Wu is joining us from his home in the village of Manhattan. Tim, welcome. Before we get to your excellent essay in Liberties, how would you historicize what we're living through at the moment?Tim Wu: I think the 1930s are not the wrong way to look at it. Prior to that period, you had this extraordinary concentration of economic power in a very fragile environment. A lot of countries had experienced an enormous crash and you had the rise of populist leaders, with Mussolini being the pioneer of the model. This has been going on for at least 5 or 6 years now. We're in that middle period where it's moving away from people just winning elections to trying to really alter the constitution of their country. So I think the mid-30s is probably about right.Andrew Keen: You were involved in the Biden administration. You were one of the major thinkers when it came to antitrust. Have you been surprised with what's happened since Biden left office? The speed, the radicalness of this Trump administration?Tim Wu: Yes, because I expected something more like the first Trump administration, which was more of a show with a lot of flash but poor execution. This time around, the execution is also poor but more effective. I didn't fully expect that Elon Musk would actually be a government official at this point and that he'd have this sort of vandalism project going on. The fact they won all of the houses of Congress was part of the problem and has made the effort go faster.Andrew Keen: You talk about Musk. We've done many shows on Musk's role in all this and the seeming arrival of Silicon Valley or a certain version of Silicon Valley in Washington, DC. You're familiar with both worlds, the world of big tech and Silicon Valley and Washington. Is that your historical reading that these two worlds are coming together in this second Trump administration?Tim Wu: It's very natural for economic power to start to seek political power. It follows from the basic view of monopoly as a creature that wants to defend itself, and the second observation that the most effective means of self-defense is control of government. If you follow that very simple logic, it stands to reason that the most powerful economic entities would try to gain control of government.I want to talk about the next five years. The tech industry is following the lead of Palantir and Peter Thiel, who were pioneers in thinking that instead of trying to avoid government, they should try to control it. I think that is the obvious move over the next four years.Andrew Keen: I've been reading your excellent essay in Liberties, "The Real Road to Serfdom." When did you write it? It seems particularly pertinent this week, although of course you didn't write it knowing exactly what was going to be happening with Musk and Washington DC and Trump and Ukraine.Tim Wu: I wrote it about two years ago when I got out of the White House. The themes are trying to get at eternal issues about the dangers of economic power and concentrated economic power and its unaccountability. If it made predictions that are starting to come true, I don't know if that's good or bad.Andrew Keen: "The Real Road to Serfdom" is, of course, a reference to the Hayek book "The Road to Serfdom." Did you consciously use that title with reference to Hayek, or was that a Liberties decision?Tim Wu: That was my decision. At that point, and I may still write this, I was thinking of writing a book just called "The Real Road to Serfdom." I am both fascinated and a fan of Hayek in certain ways. I think he nailed certain things exactly right but makes big errors at the same time.To his credit, Hayek was very critical of monopoly and very critical of the role of the state in reinforcing monopoly. But he had an almost naivete about what powerful, unaccountable private economic entities would do with their power. That's essentially my criticism.Andrew Keen: In 2018, you wrote a book, "The Curse of Bigness." And in a way, this is an essay against bigness, but it's written—please correct me if I'm wrong—I read it as a critique of the left, suggesting that there were times in the essay, if you're reading it blind, you could have been reading Hayek in its critique of Marx and centralization and Lenin and Stalin and the Ukrainian famines. Is the message in the book, Tim—is your audience a progressive audience? Are you saying that it's a mistake to rely on bigness, so to speak, the state as a redistributive platform?Tim Wu: Not entirely. I'm very critical of communist planned economies, and that's part of it. But it's mainly a critique of libertarian faith in private economic power or sort of the blindness to the dangers of it.My basic thesis in "The Real Road to Serfdom" is that free market economies will tend to monopolize. Once monopoly power is achieved, it tends to set off a strong desire to extract as much wealth from the rest of the economy as it can, creating something closer to a feudal-type economy with an underclass. That tends to create a huge amount of resentment and populist anger, and democracies have to respond to that anger.The libertarian answer of saying that's fine, this problem will go away, is a terrible answer. History suggests that what happens instead is if democracy doesn't do anything, the state takes over, usually on the back of a populist strongman. It could be a communist, could be fascist, could be just a random authoritarian like in South America.I guess I'd say it's a critique of both the right and the left—the right for being blind to the dangers of concentrated economic power, and the left, especially the communist left, for idolizing the takeover of vital functions by a giant state, which has a track record as bad, if not worse, than purely private power.Andrew Keen: You bring up Hugo Chavez in the essay, the now departed Venezuelan strongman. You're obviously no great fan of his, but you do seem to suggest that Chavez, like so many other authoritarians, built his popularity on the truth of people's suffering. Is that fair?Tim Wu: That is very fair. In the 90s, when Chavez first came to power through popular election, everyone was mystified and thought he was some throwback to the dictators of the 60s and 70s. But he turned out to be a pioneer of our future, of the new form of autocrat, who appealed to the unfairness of the economy post-globalization.Leaders like Hungary's Viktor Orbán, and certainly Donald Trump, are direct descendants of Hugo Chavez in their approach. They follow the same playbook, appealing to the same kind of pain and suffering, promising to act for the people as opposed to the elites, the foreigners, and the immigrants. Chavez is also a cautionary lesson. He started in a way which the population liked—he lowered gas prices, gave away money, nationalized industry. He was very popular. But then like most autocrats, he eventually turned the money to himself and destroyed his own country.Andrew Keen: Why are autocrats like Chavez and perhaps Trump so much better at capturing that anger than Democrats like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?Tim Wu: People who are outside the system like Chavez are able to tap into resentment and anger in a way which is less diluted by their direct information environment and their colleagues. Anyone who hangs around Washington, DC for a long time becomes more muted and careful. They lose credibility.That said, the fact that populist strongmen take over countries in distress suggests we need to avoid that level of economic distress in the first place and protect the middle class. Happy, contented middle-class countries don't tend to see the rise of authoritarian dictators. There isn't some Danish version of Hugo Chavez in the running right now.Andrew Keen: You bring up Denmark. Denmark always comes up in these kinds of conversations. What's admirable about your essay is you mostly don't fall into the Denmark trap of simply saying, "Why don't we all become like Denmark?" But at the same time, you acknowledge that the Danish model is attractive, suggesting we've misunderstood it or treated it superficially. What can and can't we learn from the Danish model?Tim Wu: American liberals often misunderstand the lesson of Scandinavia and other countries that have strong, prosperous middle classes like Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. In Scandinavia's case, the go-to explanation is that it's just the liberals' favorite set of policies—high taxation, strong social support systems. But I think the structure of those economies is much more important.They have what Jacob Hacker calls very strong "pre-distribution." They've avoided just having a small set of monopolists who make all the money and then hopefully hand it out to other people. It goes back to their land reform in the early 19th century, where they set up a very different kind of economy with a broad distribution of productive assets.If I'm trying to promote a philosophy in this book, it's for people who are fed up with the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism and think it leads to autocracy, but who are also no fans of communism or socialism. Just saying "let people pile up money and we'll tax it later" is not going to work. What you need is an economy structured with multiple centers of distributed economic power.Andrew Keen: The term that seems to summarize that in the essay is "architecture of parity." It's a bit clunky, but is that the best way to sum up your thinking?Tim Wu: I'm working on the terminology. Architecture of equality, parity, decentralized capitalism, distribution—these are all terms trying to capture it. It's more of a 19th century form of Christian or Catholic economics. People are grasping for the right word for an economic system that doesn't rely on just a few giant companies taking money from everybody and hopefully redistributing it. That model is broken and has a dangerous tendency to lead to toxicity. We need a better capitalism. An alternative title for this piece could have been "Saving Capitalism from Itself."Andrew Keen: Your name is most associated with tech and your critique of big tech. Does this get beyond big tech? Are there other sectors of the economy you're interested in fixing and reforming?Tim Wu: Absolutely. Silicon Valley is the most obvious and easiest entry point to talk about concentrated economic power. You can see the dependence on a small number of platforms that have earnings and profits far beyond what anyone imagined possible. But we're talking about an economy-wide, almost global set of problems.Some industries are worse. The meat processing industry in the United States is horrendously concentrated—it takes all the money from farmers, charges us too much for meat, and keeps it for itself. There are many industries where people are looking for something to understand or believe in that's different than socialism but different than this libertarian capitalism that ends up bankrupting people. Tech is the easiest way to talk about it, but not the be-all and end-all of my interest.Andrew Keen: Are there other examples where we're beginning to see decentralized capitalism? The essay was very strong on the critique, but I found fewer examples of decentralized capitalism in practice outside maybe Denmark in the 2020s.Tim Wu: East Asia post-World War II is a strong example of success. While no economy is purely small businesses, although Taiwan comes close, if you look at the East Asian story after World War II, one of the big features was an effort to reform land, give land to peasants, and create a landowning class to replace the feudal system. They had huge entrepreneurism, especially in Korea and Taiwan, less in Japan. This built a strong and prosperous middle and upper middle class.Japan has gone through hard times—they let their companies get too big and they stagnated. But Korea and Taiwan have gone from being third world economies to Taiwan now being wealthier per capita than Japan. The United States is another strong example, vacillating between being very big and very small. Even at its biggest, it still has a strong entrepreneurial culture and sectors with many small entities. Germany is another good example. There's no perfect version, but what I'm saying is that the model of monopolized economies and just having a few winners and hoping that anybody else can get tax payments is really a losing proposition.Andrew Keen: You were on Chris Hayes recently talking about antitrust. You're one of America's leading thinkers on antitrust and were brought into the Biden administration on the antitrust front. Is antitrust then the heart of the matter? Is this really the key to decentralizing capitalism?Tim Wu: I think it's a big tool, one of the tools of managing the economy. It works by preventing industries from merging their way into monopoly and keeps a careful eye on structure. In the same way that no one would say interest rates are the be-all and end-all of monetary policy, when we're talking about structural policy, having antitrust law actively preventing overconcentration is important.In the White House itself, we spent a lot of time trying to get other agencies to prevent their sectors, whether healthcare or transportation, from becoming overly monopolized and extractive. You can have many parts of the government involved—the antitrust agencies are key, but they're not the only solution.Andrew Keen: You wrote an interesting piece for The Atlantic about Biden's antitrust initiatives. You said the outgoing president's legacy of revived antitrust enforcement won't be easy to undo. Trump is very good at breaking things. Why is it going to be hard to undo? Lina Khan's gone—the woman who seems to unite all of Silicon Valley in their dislike of her. What did Biden do to protect antitrust legislation?Tim Wu: The legal patterns have changed and the cases are ongoing. But I think more important is a change of consciousness and ideology and change in popular support. I don't think there is great support for letting big tech do whatever they want without oversight. There are people who believe in that and some of them have influence in this administration, but there's been a real change in consciousness.I note that the Federal Trade Commission has already announced that it's going to stick with the Biden administration's merger rules, and my strong sense is the Department of Justice will do the same. There are certain things that Trump did that we stuck with in the Biden administration because they were popular—the most obvious being the turn toward China. Going back to the Bush era approach of never bothering any monopolies, I just don't think there's an appetite for it.Andrew Keen: Why is Lina Khan so unpopular in Silicon Valley?Tim Wu: It's interesting. I'm not usually one to attribute things to sexism, but the Justice Department brought more cases against big tech than she did. Jonathan Kanter, who ran antitrust at Justice, won the case against Google. His firm was trying to break up Google. They may still do it, but somehow Lina Khan became the face of it. I think because she's young and a woman—I don't know why Jonathan Kanter didn't become the symbol in the same way.Andrew Keen: You bring up the AT&T and IBM cases in the US tech narrative in the essay, suggesting that we can learn a great deal from them. What can we learn from those cases?Tim Wu: The United States from the 70s through the 2010s was an extraordinarily innovative place and did amazing things in the tech industry. An important part of that was challenging the big IBM and AT&T monopolies. AT&T was broken into eight pieces. IBM was forced to begin selling its software separately and opened up the software markets to what became a new software industry.AT&T earlier had been forced to license the transistor, which opened up the semiconductor industry and to some degree the computing industry, and had to stay out of computing. The government intervened pretty forcefully—a form of industrial policy to weaken its tech monopolies. The lesson is that we need to do the same thing right now.Some people will ask about China, but I think the United States has always done best when it constantly challenges established power and creates room for entrepreneurs to take their shot. I want very much for the new AI companies to challenge the main tech platforms and see what comes of that, as opposed to becoming a stagnant industry. Everyone says nothing can become stagnant, but the aerospace industry was pretty quick-moving in the 60s, and now you have Boeing and Airbus sitting there. It's very easy for a tech industry to stagnate, and attacking monopolists is the best way to prevent that.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Google earlier. You had an interesting op-ed in The New York Times last year about what we should do about Google. My wife is head of litigation at Google, so I'm not entirely disinterested. I also have a career as a critic of Google. If Kent Walker was here, he would acknowledge some of the things he was saying. But he would say Google still innovates—Google hasn't become Boeing. It's innovating in AI, in self-driving cars, it's shifting search. Would he be entirely wrong?Tim Wu: No, he wouldn't be entirely wrong. In the same way that IBM kept going, AT&T kept going. What you want in tech industries is a fair fight. The problem with Google isn't that they're investing in AI or trying to build self-driving cars—that's great. The problem is that they were paying over $20 billion a year to Apple for a promise not to compete in search. Through control of the browsers and many other things, they were trying to make sure they could never be dislodged.My view of the economics is monopolists need to always be a little insecure. They need to be in a position where they can be challenged. That happens—there are companies who, like AT&T in the 70s or 60s, felt they were immune. It took the government to make space. I think it's very important for there to be opportunities to challenge the big guys and try to seize the pie.Andrew Keen: I'm curious where you are on Section 230. Google won their Supreme Court case when it came to Section 230. In this sense, I'm guessing you view Google as being on the side of the good guys.Tim Wu: Section 230 is interesting. In the early days of the Internet, it was an important infant industry protection. It was an insulation that was vital to get those little companies at the time to give them an opportunity to grow and build business models, because if you're being sued by billions of people, you can't really do too much.Section 230 was originally designed to protect people like AOL, who ran user forums and had millions of people discussing—kind of like Reddit. I think as Google and companies like Facebook became active in promoting materials and became more like media companies, the case for an absolutist Section 230 became a lot weaker. The law didn't really change but the companies did.Andrew Keen: You wrote the essay "The Real Road to Serfdom" a couple of years ago. You also talked earlier about AI. There's not a lot of AI in this, but 50% of all the investment in technology over the last year was in AI, and most of that has gone into these huge platforms—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini. Is AI now the central theater, both in the Road to Serfdom and in liberating ourselves from big tech?Tim Wu: Two years ago when I was writing this, I was determined not to say anything that would look stupid about AI later. There's a lot more on what I think about AI in my new book coming in November.I see AI as a classic potential successor technology. It obviously is the most significant successor to the web and the mass Internet of 20 years ago in terms of having potential to displace things like search and change the way people do various forms of productivity. How technology plays out depends a lot on the economic structure. If you think about a technology like the cotton gin, it didn't automatically lead to broad flourishing, but reinforced plantation slavery.What I hope happens with AI is that it sets off more competition and destabilization for some of the tech platforms as opposed to reinforcing their advantage and locking them in forever. I don't know if we know what's going to happen right now. I think it's extremely important that OpenAI stays separate from the existing tech companies, because if this just becomes the same players absorbing technology, that sounds a lot like the darker chapters in US tech history.Andrew Keen: And what about the power of AI to liberate ourselves from our brain power as the next industrial revolution? When I was reading the essay, I thought it would be a very good model, both as a warning and in terms of offering potential for us to create this new architecture of parity. Because the technology in itself, in theory at least, is one of parity—one of democratizing brainpower.Tim Wu: Yes, I agree it has extraordinary potential. Things can go in two directions. The Industrial Revolution is one example where you had more of a top-down centralization of the means of production that was very bad for many people initially, though there were longer-term gains.I would hope AI would be something more like the PC revolution in the 80s and 90s, which did augment individual humanity as opposed to collective enterprise. It allowed people to do things like start their own travel agency or accounting firm with just a computer. I am interested and bullish on the potential of AI to empower smaller units, but I'm concerned it will be used to reinforce existing economic structures. The jury's out—the future will tell us. Just hoping it's going to make humanity better is not going to be the best answer.Andrew Keen: When you were writing this essay, Web3 was still in vogue then—the idea of blockchain and crypto decentralizing the economy. But I didn't see any references to Web3 and the role of technology in democratizing capitalism in terms of the architecture of corporations. Are you skeptical of the Web3 ideology?Tim Wu: The essay had its limits since I was also talking about 18th century Denmark. I have a lot more on blockchain and Web3 in the book. The challenge with crypto and Bitcoin is that it both over-promises and delivers something. I've been very interested in crypto and blockchain for a long time. The challenge it's had is constantly promising to decentralize great systems and failing, then people stealing billions of dollars and ending up in prison.It has a dubious track record, but it does have this core potential for a certain class of people to earn money. I'm always in favor of anything that is an alternative means of earning money. There are people who made money on it. I just think it's failed to execute on its promises. Blockchain in particular has failed to be a real challenge to web technologies.Andrew Keen: As you say, Hayek inspired the book and in some sense this is intellectual. The father of decentralization in ideological terms was E.F. Schumacher. I don't think you reference him, but do you think there has been much thinking since Schumacher on the value of smallness and decentralized architectures? What do people like yourself add to what Schumacher missed in his critique of bigness?Tim Wu: Schumacher is a good example. Rawls is actually under-recognized as being interested in these things. I see myself as writing in the tradition of those figures and trying to pursue a political economy that values a more balanced economy and small production.Hopefully what I add is a level of institutional experience and practicality that was missing. Rawls is slightly unfair because he's a philosopher, but his model doesn't include firms—it's just individuals. So it's all about balancing between poor people and rich people when obviously economic power is also held by corporations.I'm trying to create more flesh on the bones of the "small is beautiful" philosophy and political economy that is less starry-eyed and more realistic. I'm putting forward the point that you're not sacrificing growth and you're taking less political risk with a more balanced economy. There's an adulation of bigness in our time—exciting big companies are glamorous. But long-term prosperity does better when you have more centers, a more balanced system. I'm not an ultra-centralist suggesting we should live in mud huts, but I do think the worship of monopoly is very similar to the worship of autocracy and is dangerous.Andrew Keen: Much to discuss. Tim Wu, thank you so much. The author of "The Real Road to Serfdom," fascinating essay in this month's issue of Liberties. I know "The Age of Extraction" will be coming out on November 10th.Tim Wu: In England and US at the same time.Andrew Keen: We'll get you back on the show. Fascinating conversation, Tim. Thank you so much.Hailed as the “architect” of the Biden administration's competition and antitrust policies, Tim Wu writes and teaches about private power and related topics. First known for coining the term “net neutrality” in 2002, in recent years Wu has been a leader in the revitalization of American antitrust and has taken a particular focus on the growing power of the big tech platforms. In 2021, he was appointed to serve in the White House as special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy. A professor at Columbia Law School since 2006, Wu has also held posts in public service. He was enforcement counsel in the New York Attorney General's Office, worked on competition policy for the National Economic Council during the Barack Obama administration, and worked in antitrust enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission. In 2014, Wu was a Democratic primary candidate for lieutenant governor of New York. In his most recent book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (2018), he argues that corporate and industrial concentration can lead to the rise of populism, nationalism, and extremist politicians. His previous books include The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (2016), The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (2010), and Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World (2006), which he co-authored with Jack Goldsmith. Wu was a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and also has written for Slate, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. He once explained the concept of net neutrality to late-night host Stephen Colbert while he rode a rollercoaster. He has been named one of America's 100 most influential lawyers by the National Law Journal; has made Politico's list of 50 most influential figures in American politics (more than once); and has been included in the Scientific American 50 of policy leadership. Wu is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as a law clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Max and Donatienne discuss how the EU can respond to Trump's tariffs and whether EU doomerism is overstated. They then turn to a conversation with Anu Bradford, Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School, to discuss how Washington and Brussels might clash over tech regulation in the second Trump administration. Learn more: Russian Roulette | CSIS Podcasts
In recent years, multiple proposals have been made to change how the U.S. Supreme Court operates in its current form. Would these reforms help – or hurt? What is the future of the highest court in the land? In partnership with Johns Hopkins University as part of our inaugural “Hopkins Forum”, our featured guests will discuss term limits, expanding the Supreme Court, and whether external ethics codes should be applied. Our Guests: Ambassador Jeff Flake, Former Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia Law School; Supreme Court Commentator Cristina Rodríguez, Former Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States; Professor at Yale Law School The Honorable Jeff Sessions, Former U.S. Attorney General and Senator Emmy award-winning journalist John Donvan moderates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart interviews Professor Katherine Franke, former faculty at Columbia University's law school, about student activism and escalating repression at Columbia since October 7th, 2023. Katherine Franke just retired from Columbia, saying “I have come to the view that the Columbia University administration has created such a toxic and hostile environment for legitimate debate around the war in Israel and Palestine that I can no longer teach or conduct research.” Peter and Katherine discuss the specific circumstances that led to Katherine's retirement, including extensive harassment; the conflation of Palestinian rights advocacy with antisemitism; and how the Israel/Palestine dynamics on campus point to broader threats to teaching, research, and activism on a range of issues. Resources: Katherine Franke's statement about her retirement, (Center for Constitutional Rights, 1/10/25); A Columbia professor criticized Israeli students. It put her job at risk. (Washington Post 1/22/25) Columbia Professor Says She Was Pushed to Retire Because of Her Activism, (NYT 1/10/25) “Campus Has Become Unrecognizable”: Columbia Prof. Franke Faces Firing After DN Interview on Gaza (Democracy Now! September 2024) Letter from Columbia Law School faculty requesting an inquiry into Katherine's termination from the faculty; Katherine Franke was, until January 2025, a professor at Columbia University's law school, where she served as director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, on the executive committees of Columbia's Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and the Center for Palestine Studies. She is among the nation's leading scholars writing on law, sexuality, race, and religion drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory. Peter Beinart is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, a Contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, an Editor-at-Large at Jewish Currents, and an MSNBC Political Commentator. Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.
In TikTok v. Garland, the Supreme Court will determine whether TikTok—the social media platform used by an estimated 170 million Americans—can continue to operate in the United States under the ownership of a Chinese holding company. Jameel Jaffer of Columbia Law School and Zephyr Teachout of Fordham Law School join Jeffrey Rosen to debate whether the law that forces TikTok to be sold or banned violates the First Amendment. Resources: Jameel Jaffer, “Brief of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Free Press, and PEN American Center as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners," TikTok v. Garland Jameel Jaffer, “The Supreme Court Must Intervene in the TikTok Case,” The New York Times (Dec. 10, 2024) Zephyr Teachout, “Brief of AMICI CURIAE Zephyr Teachout and Joel Thayer in Support of Respondent,” TikTok v. Garland United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Opinion of the Court, TikTok v. Garland Arcara v. Cloud Books, Inc. (1986) Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015) Moody v. NetChoice (2024) Stay Connected and Learn More Questions or comments about the show? Email us at podcast@constitutioncenter.org Continue the conversation by following us on social media @ConstitutionCtr. Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate. Subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen. Join us for an upcoming live program or watch recordings on YouTube. Support our important work. Donate
In this episode of Smart Humans, Slava Rubin and Vincent's Adam Katz recap the year in alts, and talk about what to what to expect in 2025 in real estate, pre-IPO venture, art, collectibles, and crypto.Adam Katz is a co-founder and Head of Research and Content at Vincent. He is a seasoned real estate investor and syndicator and a longtime investor in alternative assets. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School and has an undergraduate finance degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
Rashmi Airan is a captivating and motivational speaker, consultant, and catalyst for transformation with a mission to foster organizational cultures centered around authenticity. Her powerful story transcends the pitfalls of making a life-altering decision; it's a tale of leadership, core values, and decision-making, capable of creating a safe haven for courageous and often challenging conversations. As a first-generation immigrant of Indian descent raised with lofty expectations, Rashmi excelled as a lawyer, graduating with honors from Columbia Law School. After gaining experience at major corporations, she embarked on an independent law practice in Miami. During the housing boom, she developed an ethical blind spot collaborating with a real estate developer engaged in questionable practices. Driven by her desire for success to provide for her children, Rashmi refrained from questioning her client's actions despite her inner voice urging caution. This led to a federal prison sentence for bank fraud. During her six months in federal prison, Rashmi found inner peace and self-forgiveness. This humbling yet invaluable experience made her realize that while living with remorse is one thing, allowing it to define one's identity is another. Now a "recovering lawyer and investment banker," female leader, and community entrepreneur, Rashmi is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and TEDx presenter. With over thirty years of real-world experience in finance, business and law, Rashmi Airan intimately understands the complexities modern leaders face. Her expertise is bolstered by years of research in behavioral psychology and collaborations with renowned global brands like Coca-Cola, Cardinal Health, Merck, Comcast, Sotheby's, and Hershey's. Deloitte has recognized the transformative power and relatability of Rashmi's journey, which spans from an Ivy League education to federal prison.
Emi Takeda is General Counsel for Japan at Accenture. It was a pleasant surprise to hear about Emi's passion for sake and wine as well as the law, and how she managed to overcome the culture shock of acclimatising to big city life upon arriving at Tokyo University, having come from being a student from Fuji City. If you are wondering what it's like to lead a team of over 100 lawyers, like Emi does, then enjoy listening as she shares insights into the challenges and rewards of managing large legal teams, embracing leadership roles, and the work-life “juggle” while raising a family. If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, we'd love to hear about it and know your biggest takeaway. Head over to Apple Podcasts to leave a review and we'd love it if you would leave us a message here! In this episode you'll hear: Emi's culture shock at arriving at Tokyo University from Fuji City and again at Columbia Law School Emi's advice for leading large teams and for making sure you always have time for yourself How submitting for law awards as a team can create a great reflection opportunity Her favourite book and other fun facts About Emi Emi is a senior international lawyer with over 20-years experience at top global law firms and as General Counsel for Accenture Japan. In her current role and Board Member at Accenture Japan, she manages a team of more than 130 lawyers and contract professionals. Emi received her LL.B. from the University of Tokyo and graduated from the Legal Training and Research Institute of Japan. She went on to receive her LL.M. from Columbia Law School. Emi is a Japanese bengoshi admitted to practice in Japan and she is also admitted in New York. Emi is a working parent of three children, 9, 13 and 16 years old. She also enjoys classical guitar, Japanese sake and wine. Awards and recognitions: GC Power list – Japan 2023, 2024 ALB Japan Law Awards: In-House Lawyer of the Year (2022, 2021); Woman Lawyer of the Year (In-House)(2022); In-House Team of the Year (2021); Innovative In-House Team of the Year (2021) Connect with Emi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emi-takeda-6935a4142/ Links Sushi Kuon Kamagai: https://sushikuon-kumagai.food-tenpo.com/ Connect with Catherine Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/oconnellcatherine/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawyeronair YouTube: https://youtube.com/@lawyeronair
Donald Trump will enter office at a time when presidential power has significantly expanded, because of a string of Supreme Court decisions in recent years. These decisions can be understood to have two functions: They give presidents a “sword” to act more decisively and unilaterally, and a “shield” that protects them from prosecution against actions taken in their official capacity. What will these capacities mean for Trump's second term — especially as he has promised to radically transform the federal government?Gillian Metzger is a professor at Columbia Law School who has studied the presidency, the administrative state and the Supreme Court's relationship to both. In this conversation, guest-hosted by Kate Shaw, a New York Times Opinion contributing writer and law professor, Metzger discusses two key Supreme Court cases — the Trump immunity case, which gave presidents broad protections from prosecution, and the Loper Bright Enterprises case, which overturned the Chevron doctrine, expanding judicial power. Shaw and Metzger also cover how much leeway Trump actually has to take some of the bolder executive actions he's floated, including ending birthright citizenship; what still remains uncertain about the federal government's regulatory powers in the post-Chevron regime; and more.“The Demise of Deference — And the Rise of Delegation to Interpret?” by Thomas W. Merrill“The DOGE Plan to Reform Government” by Elon Musk and Vivek RamaswamyBook recommendationsCreating the Administrative Constitution by Jerry L. MashawThe Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy by Daniel Carpenter“Curation, Narration, Erasure” by Karen M. TaniThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
A panel of leading voices in A.I., including experts on capabilities, safety and investing, and policy and governance, tease out some of the big debates over the future of A.I and try to find some common ground. The discussion is moderated by Kevin Roose, a technology columnist at The Times.Participants:Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy at AnthropicAjeya Cotra, senior program officer for potential risks from advanced A.I. at Open PhilanthropySarah Guo, founder and managing partner at ConvictionDan Hendrycks, director of the Center for A.I. SafetyRana el Kaliouby, co-founder and general partner at Blue Tulip VenturesEugenia Kuyda, founder and chief executive of ReplikaPeter Lee, president of Microsoft Research at MicrosoftMarc Raibert, executive director of the A.I. Institute and founder of Boston DynamicsJosh Woodward, vice president of Google LabsTim Wu, the Julius Silver Professor of Law, Science and Technology at Columbia Law School and former special assistant to the president for technology and competition policyThe conversation was recorded at the annual DealBook Summit and recorded live in front of an audience at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Read more about highlights from the day at https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/04/business/dealbook-summit-news Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Host Jason Blitman is joined by Susan Rieger (Like Mother, Like Mother) to record together at the Penguin Random House offices. They explore the idea of "Elephant Memories," a podcast within the book, as they share personal stories of early memories and family. Like Mother, Like Mother is an Aardvark Book Club selection (use code GAYSREADING at checkout to get first book for only $4 + free shipping!) as well as Barnes and Nobles' November and December 2024 Book Club. Susan Rieger is a graduate of Columbia Law School. She has worked as a residential college dean at Yale and as an associate provost at Columbia. She has taught law to undergraduates at both schools and written frequently about the law for newspapers and magazines. She is the author of The Heirs and The Divorce Papers. She lives in New York City with her husband.BOOK CLUB!Use code GAYSREADING at checkout to get first book for only $4 + free shipping! Restrictions apply.http://aardvarkbookclub.comWATCH!https://youtube.com/@gaysreadingBOOKS!Check out the list of books discussed on each episode on our Bookshop page: https://bookshop.org/shop/gaysreading MERCH!Purchase your Gays Reading podcast merchandise HERE! https://gaysreading.myspreadshop.com/ FOLLOW!@gaysreading | @jasonblitman CONTACT!hello@gaysreading.com
Since Donald Trump's victory two weeks ago, some people are worried about one of his main campaign promises — to launch the largest deportation operation in American history. What does that really mean, and how feasible is it that it will happen at the scale the president-elect is promising? This week, NY1's Errol Louis spoke to three experts — Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project; Elora Mukerjee, director of Columbia Law School's Immigrants' Rights Clinic; and Luis Gomez Alfaro, an attorney in New York and New Jersey, with extensive experience in immigration law — about what Trump can truly do legally. They also discuss the possibility of ending birthright citizenship, what will be happening at the border and the impact Trump's plans will have on millions across the country. And they provided some specific, practical information for immigrants who are worried about being detained. Join the conversation, weigh in on Twitter using the hashtag #NY1YouDecide, give us a call at 212-379-3440 and leave a message, or send an email to YourStoryNY1@charter.com.
While Americans rely on debit transactions for the necessities of life, most are unaware of the networks that drive those transactions, nor are they aware that one company, Visa, has monopolized debit transactions, penalized industry participants that seek to use alternative debit networks, and co-opted innovators, technology companies, and financial institutions to forestall or snuff out threats to Visa's debit network dominance.” So begins the monopolization lawsuit filed on September 24 by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against the country's largest card company, Visa Inc.On one level, the case is simple: The DOJ alleges a clear violation of laws protecting markets against monopolies. But the case gets more complicated when looking at the details, in part because payment systems are mostly invisible part of the financial ecosystem. In effect, the DOJ alleges that Visa is pulling the levers of a really opaque and complex system to preclude competition and squeeze fees out of banks and vendors for itself.To understand the complexities and implications of the case, Bethany and Luigi are joined by Kathryn Judge, Harvey J. Goldschmid Professor of Law at Columbia University. Judge is an expert on banking, financial crises, regulatory architecture, and intermediation design beyond finance. Her book, Direct: The Rise of the Middleman Economy and the Power of Going to the Source (HarperBusiness, 2022), was on the long list for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. Together, the three of them discuss both the surface-level and structural issues of an economy where consumers and small businesses are shortchanged on what is essentially a private sales tax on all debit-card purchases—and how to look for collective solutions when opt-outs aren't possible.Episode Notes: Also check out the ProMarket article “A DOJ Victory Against Visa May Not Help Merchants or Consumers” by Lulu Wang, Assistant Professor of Finance at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
After an emergency intro looking at the Fifth Circuit's bonkers mail-in ballot decision, the ladies do a deep dive on two books. First, they speak with New York Times correspondents Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias about The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America. Then, David Pozen of Columbia Law School joins to talk about The Constitution of the War on Drugs, his book about how the war on drugs influenced the constitutional law we have today. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky
Elizabeth Kim, Gothamist and WNYC reporter, shares details from the indictment of Mayor Adams, how he is reacting and what might come next for him and the city. Then, Richard Briffault, professor of law at Columbia Law School, offers analysis of the five-count indictment, which included charges related to conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery.
Jane Bambauer, Professor at Levin College of Law; Ramya Krishnan, Senior Staff Attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School; Alan Rozenshtein, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and a Senior Editor at Lawfare, join Kevin Frazier, Assistant Professor at St. Thomas University College of Law and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to break down the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' hearing in TikTok v. Garland, in which a panel of judges assessed the constitutionality of the TikTok bill.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Without new congressional authorization for its post-Oct. 7 operations in the Middle East, the Biden administration has sought to legally justify its military activities in the region based on the president's constitutional authority and the application of existing statutory authorities to operations against new adversaries. These executive branch arguments are the outgrowth of similar arguments presidential administrations have made over the last few decades, largely related to the requirements in the War Powers Resolution. The International Crisis Group recently analyzed these arguments and related issues in a new report, “Bending the Guardrails: U.S. War Powers after 7 October.” Tyler McBrien and Matt Gluck of Lawfare spoke with Brian Finucane, a senior adviser for the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group and an author of the report, and Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School, about the Crisis Group's report. They discussed the history relevant to the current war powers moment, how the Biden administration has continued to justify its operations without new legislative authority, and the possibility of war powers legal reform moving forward.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/c/trumptrials.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
That's the worry. Even the humble eyeglass industry is dominated by a single firm. We look into the global spike in myopia, how the Lemtosh got its name, and what your eye doctor knows that you don't. (Part two of a two-part series.) SOURCES:Maria Liu, professor of clinical optometry at the University of California, Berkeley.Harvey Moscot, C.E.O. of MOSCOT Eyewear and Eyecare.Zachary Moscot, chief design officer of MOSCOT Eyewear and Eyecare.Cédric Rossi, equity research analyst at Bryan Garnier.Tim Wu, professor of law, science and technology at Columbia Law School. RESOURCES:"Meta in Talks to Buy Stake in Eyewear Giant EssilorLuxottica," by Salvador Rodriguez and Lauren Thomas (The Wall Street Journal, 2024)."The Story Behind Soaring Myopia Among Kids," by Manoush Zomorodi, Katie Monteleone, Sanaz Meshkinpour, and Rachel Faulkner White (Body Electric, 2024)."Why So Many People Need Glasses Now," by Christophe Haubursin (Vox, 2023)."Eyes on World Sight: Taking Action to Advance Eye Health in China," by EssilorLuxottica (2022)."Global Prevalence of Myopia and High Myopia and Temporal Trends from 2000 through 2050," by Brien A. Holden, Timothy R. Fricke, Serge Resnikoff, et al. (Ophthalmology, 2016)."Increased Prevalence of Myopia in the United States Between 1971-1972 and 1999-2004," by Susan Vitale, Robert D. Sperduto, and Frederick L. Ferris (Archives of Ophthalmology, 2009). EXTRAS:"The Economics of Eyeglasses," series by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
A single company, EssilorLuxottica, owns so much of the eyewear industry that it's hard to escape their gravitational pull — or their “obscene” markups. Should regulators do something? Can Warby Parker steal market share? And how did Ray-Bans become a luxury brand? (Part one of a two-part series.) SOURCES:Neil Blumenthal, co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker.Dave Gilboa, co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker.Jessica Glasscock, fashion historian and lecturer at the Parsons School of Design.Neil Handley, curator of the British Optical Association Museum at the College of Optometrists.Ryan McDevitt, professor of economics at Duke University.Cédric Rossi, equity research analyst at Bryan Garnier.Tim Wu, professor of law, science and technology at Columbia Law School. RESOURCES:"Leonardo Del Vecchio Dies at 87; Transformed Eyeglass Industry," by Jonathan Kandell (The New York Times, 2022).Making a Spectacle: A Fashionable History of Glasses, by Jessica Glasscock (2021)."Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal: A Vision for Business," by Lucy Handley (CNBC, 2020)."The Roots of Big Tech Run Disturbingly Deep," by Tim Wu and Stuart A. Thompson (The New York Times, 2019)."The Spectacular Power of Big Lens," by Sam Knight (The Guardian, 2018).The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, by Tim Wu (2018)."Statement of the Federal Trade Commission Concerning the Proposed Acquisition of Luxottica Group S.p.A. by Essilor International (Compagnie Generale d'Optique) S.A.," FTC File No. 171-0060 (2018).Cult Eyewear: The World's Enduring Classics, by Neil Handley (2011).A Far-Sighted Man, by Luca Goldoni (1991). EXTRAS:"Direct-to-Consumer Mattresses," by The Economics of Everyday Things (2024)."Are Two C.E.O.s Better Than One?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).“Are We in a Mattress-Store Bubble?” by Freakonomics Radio (2016).