Podcasts about Lewis University

In this week's episode, Dustin speaks with Dr. Daniel Allen, President of La Salle University, about the institution's remarkable turnaround and the leadership principles behind its recognition as the "Comeback College." Rather than chasing flashy higher education trends, Dr. Allen shares how La Salle leaned into its core identity—prioritizing teaching excellence, student success, and a strong sense of community—to reverse enrollment declines and strengthen its financial position. The conversation also examines how institutional leaders can navigate uncertainty by making disciplined, mission-driven decisions, investing in areas of genuine strength, and resisting the temptation to pursue every new opportunity. Ultimately, Ian provides a compelling reminder that sustainable innovation comes not from becoming everything to everyone, but from becoming the best version of who you already are. Guest Name: Dr. Daniel Allen, President, La Salle University Guest Social: LinkedIn Guest Bio: Daniel J. Allen, Ph.D., is the 30th President of La Salle University. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in Catholic higher education, Dr. Allen is leading La Salle's strategy focused on enrollment growth, student retention and enhancing the student experience. Prior to joining La Salle, Dr. Allen served as senior vice president for advancement and external relations at DePaul University and held leadership roles at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, Lewis University and Loras College. He earned his Ph.D. in education from Loyola University Chicago and continues to pursue his interest in postsecondary educational access for low-income students. He also serves on the board of the International Association of Lasallian Universities, a global network of 64 universities. - - - -Connect With Our Host:Dustin Ramsdellhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinramsdell/About The Enrollify Podcast Network:The Higher Ed Geek is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too!Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pop culture has been full of Jekylls and Hydes: Bruce Banner and The Hulk, Norman Bates and Mother, Walter White and Heisenberg, The Nutty Professor and Buddy Love. They all echo the archetype that Robert Lous Stevenson established 140 years ago in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I explore at how these variations reflect different ideas about duality, depending on how “bad” the Hydes are and what the Jekylls choose to do about their alter egos. Lewis University professor Jamil Mustafa draws parallels between the original 1886 novel and modern stories like Twin Peaks, Fight Club, and Black Swan. Plus, I talk with Yannie ten Broeke, who teaches psychology at Touro University, about why the Jekyll and Hyde archetype reflects how little we understand our own minds. This episode is sponsored by There Is No Antimemetics Division, the national bestselling science-fiction horror novel by qntm. Get your copy now wherever books and audiobooks are sold. To support the show, you can donate on Patreon where you get access to the ad-free version and our companion show Between Imaginary Worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Winning is fun but culture is built long before the scoreboard lights up. In Part 2 of our conversation, John Ashaolu, Assistant Vice President for Athletics at Lewis University, breaks down what it really takes to build a championship-level athletic department. From revitalizing alumni engagement and transforming the annual golf outing at Cog Hill into a record-breaking experience, to rebranding the student section as “The Cockpit,” John shares how intentional fan experience drives brand equity and school pride. We also dive into his philosophy of curating an elite student-athlete experience, why that's his daily motivation, how it shapes hiring decisions, and how it contributes to Lewis finishing 11th nationally in the Division II Directors Cup rankings. This episode is about raising standards, refusing to rest on success, and understanding that culture isn't a slogan, it's what you do every single day. Connect with John: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jashaolu/ 

What do you do when the path you planned disappears overnight? John Ashaolu went from Division I basketball to coaching, then got fired and had to rebuild from scratch. In this episode of In The Club, John shares how he pivoted into athletic administration, started at the high school level (with zero experience), and worked his way up step by step to become Assistant Vice President for Athletics at Lewis University. We talk about earning his D1 scholarship after growing up in Toronto, why he believes in “taking the stairs,” and how he's using Fly As One as a rallying cry to break down silos and build real unity across teams, alumni, and campus.

In the first episode of season 5, special host Lois Goudeau, Doctor of Behavioral Health (DBH) program student at Cummings Graduate Institute for Behavioral Health Studies (CGI), is joined by Tamara Pryor, an innovative nurse whose work is bringing holistic, evidence-informed practices into school settings. The conversation explores how intentional breathwork and lifestyle approaches can support regulation of the endocannabinoid system, helping students manage stress, improve focus, and build emotional resilience. It also discusses the potential for these practices to reduce reliance on substances like cannabis and support individuals living with PTSD by promoting balance across mood, sleep, and stress responses.About the Podcast Guests:Lois Goudeau, M.Ed, LCPC, is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in Illinois, Indiana, and Mississippi with 25 years of combined experience in education and mental health. She spent 15 years as an educator in special education and early childhood settings and has worked as a mental health counselor for the past 10 years. For eight years, she has also led her private practice, NuVisions Transformative Wellness, LLC, where she supports individuals and families through compassionate, holistic, and experience-informed care. Lois holds three master's degrees in Family Studies, Special Education, and Counseling and is currently a Doctor of Behavioral Health candidate, reflecting her deep commitment to integrating mental health with whole-person care. Her work is grounded in the belief that everyone deserves clarity, purpose, and peace. In addition to clinical practice, she facilitates workshops for entrepreneurs and faith-based communities, speaks publicly to reduce mental health stigma, and advocates through media appearances such as WYCA-Talk Radio. Beyond counseling, Lois extends her impact through writing as the author of the Threads of Hope book collection, which centers on healing, resilience, and emotional connection. Her award-winning children's book Finding Henry's Smile compassionately introduces grief and loss, Take a Deep Breath, Relax, Cuz You Got This! supports blended families, and Holding Space for Yourself offers a 60-day journey of self-reflection and growth. Through therapy, education, and storytelling, Lois is dedicated to empowering individuals and families as they navigate life's transitions, loss, and new beginnings.Tamara Pryor, RN, MSN-Ed, PEL-CSN, CYT 200, is a holistic school nurse and breathwork facilitator with over 26 years of nursing experience, including 19+ years in high school health services. She helps students strengthen focus, emotional balance, and resilience through breathwork, lifestyle medicine, and social-emotional learning. Tamara integrates evidence-based strategies that support nervous system regulation and overall well-being in school environments. She teaches students practical tools to manage stress, anxiety, and attention challenges using breathwork, mindfulness, movement and other lifestyle practices. Her programs also help students understand the endocannabinoid system and how lifestyle habits—such as nutrition, sleep, and physical activity—support focus, learning, and emotional stability. Tamara is currently completing a certification as a Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Facilitator and holds an Master's in Nursing Education from Lewis University. Tamara's work bridges traditional health education and whole-person wellness, creating supportive learning environments where students are empowered and can thrive both academically, physically and emotionally.

In this special solocast of The Athletics of Business Podcast, host Ed Molitor takes us on a personal and powerful journey through the life, lessons, and lasting legacy of legendary coach George Raveling. This isn't about hearing what you want to hear; it's about hearing what you need to hear. Ed shares how Coach Raveling's words and philosophies shaped him as a young boy, carried him through dark times, and continue to guide his leadership and parenting today. Through stories of cassette tapes in a hot car, life-changing camp speeches, and powerful lessons on accountability and resilience, Ed paints a vivid picture of a man who impacted thousands, from athletes to leaders to everyday people, striving to be better.   In Loving Memory of George Raveling - Extract from letter by The Daily Coach On September 1st, the world lost a remarkable person: George Henry Raveling, our mentor, co-founder, and beloved "Coach." He passed away peacefully at 88, surrounded by his family, after a courageous battle with cancer. Coach Raveling was born in 1937 in a world that didn't recognize his humanity. Despite the challenges of segregation, he overcame adversity with determination and made a significant impact on countless lives. His legacy is more than just his success in sports and leadership; it's about the people he touched and the transformations he inspired. Coach was a gentle, compassionate, and humble soul. He believed in the importance of relationships over victories. His life was about guiding others, offering wisdom, and caring for people, no matter their background. His approach to leadership was uncommon, challenging the status quo and always staying true to his values. He was a friend, mentor, confidant, and source of inspiration to many. His wisdom and kindness left a lasting impression on all who knew him. Although we are deeply saddened by his loss, we celebrate his 88 years of life—years full of purpose and meaning. Coach's story reminds us that it's never too late to pursue what lights up our soul and make a difference in the world. His mantra, “If it is to be, it's up to me,” embodies his relentless spirit. Coach Raveling's impact transcends accolades. He was simply a good person who lived fully, helping others along the way. He will be remembered for his resilience, curiosity, love for life, and the legacy of kindness he leaves behind. Our condolences and love go to the Raveling family and all who were touched by Coach's life. We will continue to honor his legacy through how we live, love, lead, and treat others. Rest in peace, Coach. You will always be adored and missed.   Our Host Ed is a coach down to the very smallest molecule of his DNA. Whether he's a husband and father at home or working with a client in the business world, he is an energized, passionate, and near-obsessive coach who is fully invested in showing up with all he's got to help you show up with all you've got. His approach insists on presence. He knows no other way to catalyze change except by getting on the court with you, playing side-by-side, and encouraging you to keep pushing, especially when the going gets tough.  In the last 30 years, Ed has developed his leadership skills in both athletics and business. From working as an NCAA Basketball coach at Texas A&M, DePaul NIU, and Lewis University to becoming the Vice President of a national recruiting firm, Ed Molitor has experienced the potential and pitfalls of leadership at every level.  As the founder and CEO of The Molitor Group, today Ed guides emerging and established leaders across biopharma and biotech to apply the proven lessons of coaching in their pursuit of inspiring and driving their team's performance.  Through personalized training, workshops, keynote speeches, his writing, and as a podcast host, Ed seeks to empower individuals and their organizations to achieve victory through a focus on transformation, fundamentals, compassion, mental toughness, and vision. Ed graduated from St. Ambrose University with a B.S. in Business Administration and a minor in Economics where he was a member of the Men's Basketball team serving as the co-captain his Senior year. Before St. Ambrose, he studied business at Creighton University where he played on the Men's Basketball teams which included a 1989 MVC Regular Season and Tournament Champions, NCAA Tournament, and a 1990 NIT Tournament.   What You'll Learn in This Episode “If it is to be, it's up to me.” How Coach Raveling's famous mantra instilled ownership, responsibility, and resilience. The importance of telling people what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear. How leadership is less about wins and losses and more about relationships, impact, and transformation. Personal reflections on parenting, leadership, and carrying forward Coach Raveling's legacy. Why his influence extended beyond basketball shaping culture, mentorship, and even history (including his role in the March on Washington and the creation of Air Jordan).   Resources & Links Ed Molitor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themolitorgroup/ Website: https://www.themolitorgroup.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theathleticsofbusiness    Timestamps (00:00) Introduction to Coach George Raveling (01:13) The lasting impact of Coach Raveling's lessons (03:34) "If it is to be, it is up to me": The power of personal ownership (05:42) How Coach's teachings shaped Ed's life and leadership (07:53) The role of mentors in personal growth and leadership (10:45) Coach Raveling's influence on basketball and beyond (12:18) Stories from Ed's childhood and the influence of Coach Raveling (14:56) The importance of relationships over wins and losses (16:35) Reflections on mentorship and legacy (18:42) Coach Raveling's role in shaping Michael Jordan's partnership with Nike (21:00) The power of community in leadership (23:06) The importance of mentorship for emerging leaders (25:01) Final reflections on living a life of impact and leadership  

In this powerful solo episode, host Ed Molitor reflects on lessons from legendary coaches and his own leadership journey to share a core truth: you can't give away what you don't have. Whether you want your team to believe, grow, or stay inspired, you have to model it first. Drawing on the wisdom of John Wooden, Tony Dungy, Greg Popovich, and Marcus Freeman, Ed unpacks five principles every high-impact coaching leader must embrace: fueling yourself, shaping perspective, building habits, avoiding comparison, and focusing on what you have. With stories that connect athletics, business, and life, this episode challenges leaders to look inward, sharpen their daily practices, and multiply their impact.   Our Host Ed is a coach down to the very smallest molecule of his DNA. Whether he's a husband and father at home or working with a client in the business world, he is an energized, passionate, and near-obsessive coach who is fully invested in showing up with all he's got to help you show up with all you've got. His approach insists on presence. He knows no other way to catalyze change except by getting on the court with you, playing side-by-side, and encouraging you to keep pushing, especially when the going gets tough.  In the last 30 years, Ed has developed his leadership skills in both athletics and business. From working as an NCAA Basketball coach at Texas A&M, DePaul NIU, and Lewis University to becoming the Vice President of a national recruiting firm, Ed Molitor has experienced the potential and pitfalls of leadership at every level.  As the founder and CEO of The Molitor Group, today Ed guides emerging and established leaders across biopharma and biotech to apply the proven lessons of coaching in their pursuit of inspiring and driving their team's performance.  Through personalized training, workshops, keynote speeches, his writing, and as a podcast host, Ed seeks to empower individuals and their organizations to achieve victory through a focus on transformation, fundamentals, compassion, mental toughness, and vision. Ed graduated from St. Ambrose University with a B.S. in Business Administration and a minor in Economics where he was a member of the Men's Basketball team serving as the co-captain his Senior year. Before St. Ambrose, he studied business at Creighton University where he played on the Men's Basketball teams which included a 1989 MVC Regular Season and Tournament Champions, NCAA Tournament, and a 1990 NIT Tournament.   What You'll Learn in This Episode How legendary coaches like John Wooden, Greg Popovich, and Tony Dungy modeled habits, connection, and composure Why perspective shapes performance—and how to help your team “see what you see” The power of habits in creating culture and consistency How comparison undermines leadership and why authenticity builds trust Why resourcefulness always beats resources—and how Popovich built a dynasty with fundamentals and culture A simple but powerful weekly challenge to grow yourself and ripple growth to your team Resources & Links Ed Molitor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themolitorgroup/ Website: https://www.themolitorgroup.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theathleticsofbusiness   In this episode: [00:00:01] Introduction – “You can't give away what you don't have” [00:02:40] John Wooden and the power of discipline in details [00:03:24] Greg Popovich and investing in humanity before performance [00:05:08] Tony Dungy's composure on the sidelines [00:07:40] Habits as culture and Wooden's lesson on socks [00:08:34] Marcus Freeman and authentic leadership at Notre Dame [00:11:54] Popovich on resourcefulness, fundamentals, and culture [00:13:59] Five principles recap + weekly leadership challenge  

Calvin P. Warren, Assistant Chief Pilot, Adjunct Professor, Flight Team Advisor, joins Jon Hansen to give a Q&A about flight and piloting.

Meet Eleanor, a mom on a mission. When her son was diagnosed with severe food allergies in 2004, Eleanor was launched into a whirlwind of support and advocacy for the food allergy community, eventually leading her to found and lead the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Connection Team (FAACT). Alongside the FAACT leadership team, she provides the education, advocacy, awareness, and grassroots outreach needed for the food allergy community through programming available to all. Tune in to hear the story behind Eleanor's incredible efforts and successes and her commitment to inclusivity that drives everything she does.To learn more about FAACT, their amazing resources, and Camp TAG visit: https://www.foodallergyawareness.org/Follow on social media @faactnewsEleanor Garrow-Holding has worked, educated, and advocated in the food allergy community since 2004. She was inspired to start this work after her son, Thomas, was diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies to tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and sesame; eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) triggered by milk and wheat; asthma; and environmental allergies. In December 2015, Thomas had a food challenge with wheat and was no longer IgE-allergic to wheat. After a 3-month trial with wheat and another 3-month trial with milk (post wheat) in his diet and upper endoscopies, he has also outgrown the wheat and milk triggers for EoE and is in remission from EoE as of July 2016. Thomas outgrew his peanut allergy in 2016 at age thirteen. In October 2019, at age sixteen, Thomas outgrew almond, sesame, and brazil nut and continues to avoid walnut, cashew, pecan, hazelnut, and pistachio.As CEO of the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Connection Team (FAACT), Eleanor provides leadership, development, and implementation for all of FAACT's initiatives and programs, including Camp TAG (The Allergy Gang) – a summer camp for children with food allergies and their siblings that Eleanor founded in 2009. Eleanor has a Bachelor of Healthcare Administration degree from Lewis University in Romeoville, IL, and worked in hospital management for 15 years in Chicago and suburban Chicago prior to working in the nonprofit sector.After Thomas was diagnosed in 2004, Eleanor established a food allergy support group in a southwest Chicago suburb, Parents of Children Having Allergies (POCHA) of Will County, focusing on education and advocacy; chaired the FAAN Walk for Food Allergy in Chicago in 2007 and 2008; was awarded the FAAN Muriel C. Furlong Award for Community Service in 2008; and advocated in the Illinois state legislature on food allergy and Eosinophilic Disorders (EGID, EoE) issues. Thanks to the efforts of Eleanor and other patient advocates, legislation to ensure insurance coverage for elemental formulas was signed into law in 2007 and legislation establishing food allergy management guidelines for Illinois schools was signed into law in 2009.Eleanor joined the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network™ (FAAN) in 2009 as Vice President of Education and Outreach, where she oversaw educational initiatives, all food allergy conferences, the Teen Summit, Camp TAG (The Allergy Gang) now under FAACT's umbrella, a Teen Advisory Group, support group development, and more. She advocated for the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Management Act (FAAMA) in Washington, DC, with her son Thomas as part of FAAN's Kids Congress on Capitol Hill and also advocated on Capitol Hill for the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act. Eleanor served on the expert panel for the CDC's Voluntary Guidelines for Managing Food Allergies in Schools and Early Care and Education Programs and was a reviewer for the National Association of Education (NEA) Food Allergy Book: What School Employees Need to Know. Eleanor conducted numerous radio, television, and print interviews on food allergy issues and wrote articles for Allergic Living and Living Without magazines. She presented at national and regional conferences about food allergy management in school and restaurant settings and educated personnel in schools and school districts across the country on food allergy management in schools and continues to do so with FAACT.In 2013, Eleanor joined the Cincinnati Center for Eosinophilic Disorders (CCED) as Senior Specialist of Program Management at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Medical Center. There she led day-to-day clinical operations, clinical research projects, program development, marketing, and development.Eleanor has and continues to educate employees from numerous food industry companies and entertainment venues about food allergies, such as McDonald's Corporation, The Hain Celestial Group, Mars Wrigley, all SeaWorld Parks, and more.Leading the charge at FAACT, Eleanor and the FAACT Leadership Team provides the education, advocacy, awareness, and grassroots outreach needed for the food allergy community. Eleanor serves on the National Peanut Board's Allergy Education Advisory Council, Global Allergy & Airways Patient Platform Board (GAAPP), St. Louis Children's Food Allergy Management & Education (FAME) National Advisory Board, and Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) Food Allergen Control Committee. In August 2015, Eleanor was inducted into The National Association of Professional Women's (NAPW) VIP Professional of the Year Circle for her commitment to healthcare and nonprofit industries. FAACT is The Voice of Food Allergy Awareness. In 2022, Eleanor was a Contributor for The Change Guidebook (3-8-2022, HCI/Simon & Schuster).

Music Industry student, Gabe Seemann, discusses the music and background of the alternative duo Twenty One Pilots with two of his friends.

Dr. David Livingston, President, Lewis University in Romeoville, joins John Williams to talk about the alumni who work at WGN, how many students attend Lewis, how Lewis emphasizes practical experience as part of their curriculum, the success of their sports programs, the importance of his liberal education, why he believes good citizenship comes from a […]

Dr. David Livingston, President, Lewis University in Romeoville, joins John Williams to talk about the alumni who work at WGN, how many students attend Lewis, how Lewis emphasizes practical experience as part of their curriculum, the success of their sports programs, the importance of his liberal education, why he believes good citizenship comes from a […]

Lewis University aviation adjunct professor Rick DiMaio joins Lisa Dent to discuss how he approaches aviation disasters like the one seen last night from a teaching standpoint and his methods of informing the next generation of aviation students. Additionally, he gives his take on the event.

Dr. David Livingston, President, Lewis University in Romeoville, joins John Williams to talk about the alumni who work at WGN, how many students attend Lewis, how Lewis emphasizes practical experience as part of their curriculum, the success of their sports programs, the importance of his liberal education, why he believes good citizenship comes from a […]

Ed Molitor dives into a recent podcast episode with Matt Painter, Men's Basketball Coach at Purdue University. About Matt Painter One of America's top basketball coaches, Matt Painter enters his 17th year at Purdue. He owns a 355-164 record at Purdue. He has led the Boilermakers to 12 NCAA Tournaments, five Sweet 16s, three Big Ten regular-season championships, a Big Ten Tournament title, an Elite Eight, and an international gold medal. His peers voted him as the NABC National Coach of the Year after leading a team that started with a 6-5 record to the 2019 Elite Eight.  Purdue's six straight NCAA Tournament appearances are the seventh-longest active streak in America and Purdue is one of just three teams to have a top-five seed in each of the last five NCAA Tournaments.  Off the court, his program had 68 Academic All-Big Ten honorees in his 16 previous years at Purdue, and every player but one who has exhausted his eligibility at Purdue has graduated.    About Ed Molitor Ed is a coach down to the very smallest molecule of his DNA.  Whether he's a husband and father at home or working with a client in the business world, he is an energized, passionate, and near-obsessive coach who is fully invested in showing up with all he's got to help you show up with all you've got. His approach insists on presence. He knows no other way to catalyze change except by getting on the court with you, playing side-by-side, and encouraging you to keep pushing, especially when the going gets tough.  In the last 29 years, Ed has developed his leadership skills in both athletics and business. From working as an NCAA Basketball coach at Texas A&M, DePaul NIU, and Lewis University to becoming the Vice President of a national recruiting firm, Ed Molitor has experienced the potential and pitfalls of leadership at every level.  As the founder and CEO of The Molitor Group, today Ed guides emerging and established leaders across biopharma and biotech to apply the proven lessons of coaching in their pursuit of inspiring and driving their team's performance.  Through personalized training, workshops, keynote speeches, his writing, and as a podcast host, Ed seeks to empower individuals and their organizations to achieve victory through a focus on transformation, fundamentals, compassion, mental toughness, and vision.  Ed graduated from St. Ambrose University with a B.S. in Business Administration and a minor in Economics where he was a member of the Men's Basketball team serving as the co-captain his Senior year. Before St. Ambrose, he studied business at Creighton University where he played on the Men's Basketball teams which included a 1989 MVC Regular Season and Tournament Champions, NCAA Tournament, and a 1990 NIT Tournament.  What You'll Learn in this Episode: Impactful takeaways from Episode 196 with Matt Painter How personal growth is crucial for team performance The importance of transparency in setting recruitment expectations Techniques for developing a culture where expectations are clear and met Insights into managing the complexities of NIL and the transfer portal The need to align winning with ethical practices Resources & Links Matt Painter Website: https://www.purdue.edu/  Website: https://purduesports.com/  LinkedIn: Purdue University Twitter: @BoilerBall Instagram: @boilerball Ed Molitor LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themolitorgroup/ Website: https://www.themolitorgroup.com/

A longtime educator discusses getting an aviation education. In the news, companies partner to address corporate aviation safety and security, an A321 engine shutdown after a birdstrike, a proposal to remove ATC from the FAA, and when pigs fly. Also, notable flybys, AI flight controls, taking care of business on long flights, and an aircraft incident investigation on another planet. Guest Dr. Stanley Harriman is the Department Head of Aviation Science at Orange Coast College (OCC) in Costa Mesa, California. OCC focuses on getting students certificates that allow them to move into the workforce. The College partners with flight schools for those who want to become pilots and with Southern Illinois University to earn a bachelor's degree in Aviation Management. In our conversation with Stanley, we looked at aviation education, what students should look for in a school, and a tip for getting into the industry. Degrees and Certificates offered by OCC: Aircraft Dispatcher, Certificate of Achievement Airline Transport Pilot, Certificate of Specialization Aviation Science, Associate in Science Degree Aviation Science, Certificate of Achievement Commercial Pilot, Certificate of Specialization Flight Operations, Certificate of Achievement Instrument Pilot, Certificate of Specialization Private Pilot, Certificate of Specialization Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Certificate of Achievement Stanley earned a Master's in Aviation Safety and a Doctorate in Aviation Education from Purdue University. During his time at Purdue, his research focused on cognitive learning styles, scenario-based training, and aviation human factors.  Following his graduate studies at Purdue, Stanley joined the Aviation Department at Lewis University near Chicago, Illinois. He continued his aviation safety research by investigating nano-particle coatings and their application on aircraft windshields to minimize environmental effects on pilots. He also led a team to design infrared warning systems to prevent airport runway incursions.  Along with his research, Stanley's teaching experience involved many facets of aviation. He taught courses in the Professional Pilot program, Aviation Maintenance program, and the Master's program as the Director of Graduate Research.  Stanley sits on national aviation committees providing aviation curriculum ideas and reform, aviation scholarships, and aviation safety research. He has been a safety research consultant and has traveled the country implementing these organizational and cultural changes within various aviation institutions, airlines, and maintenance facilities.  Aviation News Aviation Safety Solutions and Corporate Aviation Security International Join Forces to Fill Needed Gap in Aviation Safety and Security Aviation Safety Solutions is a Safety Management Systems (SMS) consultant, and Corporate Aviation Security International (CASI) provides specialized security services for business aviation. The two companies have created a strategic partnership to address security shortfalls in the corporate aviation industry by integrating advanced safety and security services. Bird strike disables a jetliner engine and forces an emergency landing at JFK airport American Airlines flight AA-1722 departing from New York La Guardia to Charlotte, NC, an Airbus A321-200 (N133AN), experienced a bird strike that disabled one of the engines. The Aviation Herald reports the plane “was in the initial climb out of La Guardia's runway 31 when the right-hand engine (V2533) ingested a bird and suffered stalls. The crew stopped the climb at 5000 feet, shut the engine down, and diverted to New York JFK Airport for a safe landing on runway 31L about 20 minutes after departure.” See Wildlife Strikes to Civil Aircraft in the United States 1990 - 2023 from DOT/FAA and U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services. The report presents an analysis of data from the National Wildlife ...

In this KEEN ON Andrew Keen special, guest host David Masciotra interviews Andrew about his controversial book Cult of the Amateur. While David generously describes it as prescient, Andrew focuses more on what the 2007 book got blatantly wrong - like dismissing Google's $1.5 billion acquisition of YouTube. Duh. What both David and Andrew agree on, however, is that the book'sn focus on the damage that the supposedly “democratizing” Web 2.0 revolution did to both our culture and politics is still of massive significance. Perhaps it might be time for a 20th anniversary rewrite, a Cult of the Amateur 2.0 for our brave new AI world. 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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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.David Masciotra is an author, lecturer, and journalist. He is the author of I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters (I.B. Tauris, 2020), Mellencamp: American Troubadour (University Press of Kentucky), Barack Obama: Invisible Man (Eyewear Publishers, 2017), and Metallica by Metallica, a 33 1/3 book from Bloomsbury Publishers, which has been translated into Chinese. In 2010, Continuum Books published his first book, Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. His next book, Exurbia Now: Notes from the Battleground of American Democracy, is scheduled for publication from Melville House Books in 2024. Masciotra writes regularly for the New Republic, Washington Monthly, Progressive, the Los Angeles Review of Books, CrimeReads, No Depression, and the Daily Ripple. He has also written for Salon, the Daily Beast, CNN, Atlantic, Washington Post, AlterNet, Indianapolis Star, and CounterPunch. Several of his political essays have been translated into Spanish for publication at Korazon de Perro. His poetry has appeared in Be About It Press, This Zine Will Change Your Life, and the Pangolin Review. Masciotra has a Master's Degree in English Studies and Communication from Valparaiso University. He also has a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from the University of St. Francis. He is public lecturer, speaking on a wide variety of topics, from the history of protest music in the United States to the importance of bars in American culture. David Masciotra has spoken at the University of Wisconsin, University of South Carolina, Lewis University, Indiana University, the Chicago Public Library, the Lambeth Library (UK), and an additional range of colleges, libraries, arts centers, and bookstores. As a journalist, he has conducted interviews with political leaders, musicians, authors, and cultural figures, including Jesse Jackson, John Mellencamp, Noam Chomsky, all members of Metallica, David Mamet, James Lee Burke, Warren Haynes, Norah Jones, Joan Osborne, Martín Espada, Steve Earle, and Rita Dove. Masciotra lives in Indiana, and teaches literature and political science courses at the University of St. Francis and Indiana University Northwest. Keen On 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

So how can The Dude and The Boss save America? According to the cultural critic, David Masciotra, Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski and Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen, represent the antithesis of Donald Trumps's illiberal authoritarianism. Masciotra's thesis of Lebowski and Springsteen as twin paragons of American liberalism is compelling. Both men have a childish faith in the goodness of others. Both offer liberal solace in an America which, I fear, is about to become as darkly surreal as The Big Lebowski. Transcript:“[Springsteen] represents, as cultural icon, a certain expression of liberalism, a big-hearted, humanistic liberalism that exercises creativity to represent diverse constituencies in our society, that believes in art as a tool of democratic engagement, and that seeks to lead with an abounding, an abiding sense of compassion and empathy. That is the kind of liberalism, both with the small and capital L, that I believe in, and that I have spent my career documenting and attempting to advance.” -David MasciotraAK: Hello, everybody. We're still processing November the 5th. I was in the countryside of Northern Virginia a few days ago, I saw a sign, for people just listening, Trump/Vance 2024 sign with "winner" underneath. Some people are happy. Most, I guess, of our listeners probably aren't, certainly a lot of our guests aren't, my old friend John Rauch was on the show yesterday talking about what he called the "catastrophic ordinariness" of the election and of contemporary America. He authored two responses to the election. Firstly, he described it in UnPopulist as a moral catastrophe. But wearing his Brookings hat, he's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, described it as an ordinary election. I think a lot of people are scratching their head, trying to make sense of it. Another old friend of the show, David Masciotra, cultural writer, political writer. An interesting piece in the Washington Monthly entitled "How Francis Fukuyama and The Big Lebowski Explain Trump's Victory." A very creative piece. And he is joining us from Highland Indiana, not too far from Chicago. David. The Big Lebowski and Francis Fukuyama. Those two don't normally go together, certainly in a title. Let's talk first about Fukuyama. How does Fukuyama explain November the 5th? DAVID MASCIOTRA: In his. Well, first, thanks for having me. And I should say I watched your conversation with Jonathan Rauch, and it was quite riveting and quite sobering. And you talked about Fukuyama in that discussion as well. And you referenced his book, The End of History and the Last Man, a very often misinterpreted book, but nonetheless, toward its conclusion, Fukuyama warns that without an external enemy, liberal democracies may indeed turn against themselves, and we may witness an implosion rather than an explosion. And Fukuyama said that this won't happen so much for ideological reasons, but it will happen for deeply psychological ones, namely, without a just cause for which to struggle, people will turn against the just cause itself, which in this case is liberal democracy, and out of a sense of boredom and alienation, they'll grow increasingly tired of their society and cultivate something of a death wish in which they enjoy imagining their society's downfall, or at least the downfall of some of the institutions that are central to their society. And now I would argue that after the election results, we've witnessed the transformation of imagining to inviting. So, there is a certain death wish and a sense of...alienation and detachment from that which made the United States of America a uniquely prosperous and stable country with the ability to self-correct the myriad injustices we know are part of its history. Well now, people--because they aren't aware of the institutions or norms that created this robust engine of commerce and liberty--they've turned against it, and they no longer invest in that which is necessary to preserve it.AK: That's interesting, David. The more progressives I talk to about this, the more it--there's an odd thing going on--you're all sounding very conservative. The subtitle of the piece in the Washington Monthly was "looking at constituencies or issues misses the big point. On Tuesday, nihilism was on display, even a death wish in a society wrought by cynicism." Words like nihilism and cynicism, David, historically have always been used by people like Allan Blum, whose book, of course, The Closing of the American Mind, became very powerful amongst American conservatives now 40 or 50 years ago. Would you accept that using language like nihilism and cynicism isn't always associated--I mean, you're a proud progressive. You're a man of the left. You've never disguised that. It's rather odd to imagine that the guys like you--and in his own way, John Rauch too, who talks about the moral catastrophe of the election couple of weeks ago. You're all speaking about the loss of morality of the voter, or of America. Is there any truth to that? Making some sense?DAVID MASCIOTRA: That's a that's a fair observation. And Jonathan Rauch, during your conversation and in his own writing, identifies a center right. I would say I'm center left.AK: And he's--but what's interesting, what ties you together, is that you both use the L-word, liberal, to define yourselves. He's perhaps a liberal on the right. You're a liberal on the left.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yes. And I think that the Trump era, if we can trace that back to 2015, has made thoughtful liberals more conservative in thought and articulation, because it forces a confrontation and interrogation of a certain naivete. George Will writes in his book, The Conservative Sensibility, that the progressive imagines that which is the best possible outcome and strives to make it real, whereas the conservative imagines the worst possible outcome and does everything he can to guard against it. And now it feels like we've experienced, at least electorally, the worst possible outcome. So there a certain revisitation of that which made America great, to appropriate a phrase, and look for where we went wrong in failing to preserve it. So that kind of thinking inevitably leads one to use more conservative language and deal in more conservative thought.AK: Yeah. So for you, what made America great, to use the term you just introduced, was what? Its morality? The intrinsic morality of people living in it and in the country? Is that, for you, what liberalism is?DAVID MASCIOTRA: Liberalism is a system in and the culture that emanates out of that system. So it's a constitutional order that creates or that places a premium on individual rights and allows for a flourishing free market. Now, where my conception of liberalism would enter the picture and, perhaps Jonathan Rauch and I would have some disagreements, certainly George Will and I, is that a bit of governmental regulation is necessary along with the social welfare state, to civilize the free market. But the culture that one expects to flow from that societal order and arrangement is one of aspiration, one in which citizens fully accept that they are contributing agents to this experiment in self-governance and therefore need to spend time in--to use a Walt Whitman phrase--freedom's gymnasium. Sharpening the intellect, sharpening one's sense of moral duty and obligation to the commons, to the public good. And as our society has become more individualistic and narcissistic in nature, those commitments have vanished. And as our society has become more anti-intellectual in nature, we are seeing a lack of understanding of why those commitments are even necessary. So that's why you get a result like we witnessed on Tuesday, and that I argue in my piece that you were kind enough to have me on to discuss, is a form of nihilism, and The Big Lebowski reference, of course--AK: And of course, I want to get to Lebowski, because the Fukuyama stuff is interesting, but everyone's writing about Fukuyama and the end of history and why history never really ended, of course. It's been going on for years now, but it's a particularly interesting moment. We've had Fukuyama on the show. I've never heard anyone, though, compare the success of Trump and Trumpism with The Big Lebowski. So, one of the great movies, of course, American movies. What's the connection, David, between November 5th and The Big Lebowski? DAVID MASCIOTRA: Well, The Big Lebowski is one of my favorite films. I've written about it, and I even appeared at one of the The Big Lebowski festivals that takes place in United States a number of years ago. But my mind went to the scene when The Dude is in his bathtub and these three menacing figures break into his apartment. They drop a gerbil in the bathtub. And The Dude, who was enjoying a joint by candlelight, is, of course, startled and frightened. And these three men tell him that if he does not pay the money they believe he owes them, they will come back and, in their words, "cut off your Johnson." And The Dude gives them a quizzical, bemused look. And one of them says, "You think we are kidding? We are nihilists. We believe in nothing." And then one of them screams, "We'll cut off your Johnson." Well, I thought, you know, we're looking at an electorate that increasingly, or at least a portion of the electorate, increasingly believes in nothing. So we've lost faith.AK: It's the nihilists again. And of course, another Johnson in America, there was once a president called Johnson who enjoyed waving his Johnson, I think, around in public. And now there's the head of the house is another Johnson, I think he's a little shyer than presidents LBJ. But David, coming back to this idea of nihilism. It often seems to be a word used by people who don't like what other people think and therefore just write it off as nihilism. Are you suggesting that the Trump crowd have no beliefs? Is that what nihilism for you is? I mean, he was very clear about what he believes in. You may not like it, but it doesn't seem to be nihilistic.DAVID MASCIOTRA: That's another fair point. What I'm referring to is not too long ago, we lived in a country that had a shared set of values. Those values have vanished. And those values involve adherence to our democratic norms. It's very difficult to imagine had George H. W. Bush attempted to steal the election in which Bill Clinton won, that George H. W. Bush could have run again and won. So we've lost faith in something essential to our electoral system. We've lost faith in the standards of decency that used to, albeit imperfectly, regulate our national politics. So the man to whom I just refered, Bill Clinton, was nearly run out of office for having an extramarital affair, a misdeed that cannot compare to the myriad infractions of Donald Trump. And yet, Trump's misdeeds almost give him a cultural cachet among his supporters. It almost makes him, for lack of a better word, cool. And now we see, even with Trump's appointments, I mean, of course, it remains to be seen how it plays out, that we're losing faith in credentials and experience--AK: Well they're certainly a band of outlaws and very proud to be outlaws. It could almost be a Hollywood script. But I wonder, David, whether there's a more serious critique here. You, like so many other people, both on the left and the right, are nostalgic for an age in which everyone supposedly agreed on things, a most civil and civilized age. And you go back to the Bushes, back to Clinton. But the second Bush, who now seems to have appeared as this icon, at least moral icon, many critics of Trump, was also someone who unleashed a terrible war, killing tens of thousands of people, creating enormous suffering for millions of others. And I think that would be the Trump response, that he's simply more honest, that in the old days, the Bushes of the world can speak politely and talk about consensus, and then unleash terrible suffering overseas--and at home in their neoliberal policies of globalization--Trump's simply more honest. He tells it as it is. And that isn't nihilistic, is it?DAVID MASCIOTRA: Well, you are gesturing towards an important factor in our society. Trump, of course, we know, is a dishonest man, a profoundly dishonest--AK: Well, in some ways. But in other ways, he isn't. I mean, in some ways he just tells the truth as it is. It's a truth we're uncomfortable with. But it's certainly very truthful about the impact of foreign wars on America, for example, or even the impact of globalization. DAVID MASCIOTRA: What you're describing is an authenticity. That that Trump is authentic. And authenticity has become chief among the modern virtues, which I would argue is a colossal error. Stanley Crouch, a great writer, spent decades analyzing the way in which we consider authenticity and how it inevitably leads to, to borrow his phrase, cast impurity onto the bottom. So anything that which requires effort, refinement, self-restraint, self-control, plays to the crowd as inauthentic, as artificial--AK: Those are all aristocratic values that may have once worked but don't anymore. Should we be nostalgic for the aristocratic way of the Bushes?DAVID MASCIOTRA: I think in a certain respect, we should. We shouldn't be nostalgic for George W. Bush's policies. I agree with you, the war in Iraq was catastrophic, arguably worse than anything Trump did while he was president. His notoriously poor response to Hurricane Katrina--I mean, we can go on and on cataloging the various disasters of the Bush administration. However, George W. Bush as president and the people around him did have a certain belief in the liberal order of the United States and the liberal order of the world. Institutions like NATO and the EU, and those institutions, and that order, has given the United States, and the world more broadly, an unrivaled period of peace and prosperity.AK: Well it wasn't peace, David. And the wars, the post-9/11 wars, were catastrophic. And again, they seem to be just facades--DAVID MASCIOTRA: We also had the Vietnam War, the Korean War. When I say peace, I mean we didn't have a world war break out as we did in the First World War, in the Second World War. And that's largely due to the creation and maintenance of institutions following the Second World War that were aimed at the preservation of order and, at least, amicable relations between countries that might otherwise collide.AK: You're also the author, David, of a book we've always wanted to talk about. Now we're figuring out a way to integrate it into the show. You wrote a book, an interesting book, about Bruce Springsteen. Working on a Dream: the Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen has made himself very clear. He turned out for Harris. Showed up with his old friend, Barack Obama. Clearly didn't have the kind of impact he wanted. You wrote an interesting piece for UnHerd a few weeks ago with the title, "Bruce Springsteen is the Last American Liberal: he's still proud to be born in the USA." Is he the model of a liberal response to the MAGA movement, Springsteen? DAVID MASCIOTRA: Well, of course, I wouldn't go so far as to say the last liberal. As most readers just probably know, writers don't compose their own headlines--AK: But he's certainly, if not the last American liberal, the quintessential American liberal.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yes. He represents, as cultural icon, a certain expression of liberalism, a big-hearted, humanistic liberalism that exercises creativity to represent diverse constituencies in our society, that believes in art as a tool of democratic engagement, and that seeks to lead with an abounding, an abiding sense of compassion and empathy. That is the kind of liberalism, both with the small and capital L, that I believe in, and that I have spent my career documenting and attempting to advance. And those are, of course, the forms of liberalism that now feel as if they are under threat. Now, to that point, you know, this could have just come down to inflation and some egregious campaign errors of Kamala Harris. But it does feel as if when you have 70 some odd million people vote for the likes of Donald Trump, that the values one can observe in the music of Bruce Springsteen or in the rhetoric of Barack Obama, for that matter, are no longer as powerful and pervasive as they were in their respective glory days. No pun intended.AK: Yeah. And of course, Springsteen is famous for singing "Glory Days." I wonder, though, where Springsteen himself is is a little bit more complex and we might be a little bit more ambivalent about him, there was a piece recently about him becoming a billionaire. So it's all very well him being proud to be born in the USA. He's part--for better or worse, I mean, it's not a criticism, but it's a reality--he's part of the super rich. He showed out for Harris, but it didn't seem to make any impact. You talked about the diversity of Springsteen. I went to one of his concerts in San Francisco earlier this year, and I have to admit, I was struck by the fact that everyone, practically everyone at the concert, was white, everyone was wealthy, everyone paid several hundred dollars to watch a 70 year old man prance around on stage and behave as if he's still 20 or 30 years old. I wonder whether Springsteen himself is also emblematic of a kind of cultural, or political, or even moral crisis of our old cultural elites. Or am I being unfair to Springsteen?DAVID MASCIOTRA: Well, I remember once attending a Springsteen show in which the only black person I saw who wasn't an employee of the arena was Clarence Clemons.AK: Right. And then Bruce, of course, always made a big deal. And there was an interesting conversation when Springsteen and Obama did a podcast together. Obama, in his own unique way, lectured Bruce a little bit about Clarence Clemons in terms of his race. But sorry. Go on.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yeah. And Springsteen has written and discussed how he had wished he had a more diverse audience. When I referred to diversity in his music, I meant the stories he aimed to tell in song certainly represented a wide range of the American experience. But when you talk about Springsteen, perhaps himself representing a moral crisis--AK: I wouldn't say a crisis, but he represents the, shall we say, the redundancy of that liberal worldview of the late 20th century. I mean, he clearly wears his heart on his sleeve. He means well. He's not a bad guy. But he doesn't reach a diverse audience. His work is built around the American working class. None of them can afford to show up to what he puts on. I mean, Chris Christie is a much more typical fan than the white working class. Does it speak of the fact that there's a...I don't know if you call it a crisis, it's just...Springsteen isn't relevant anymore in the America of the 2020s, or at least when he sang and wrote about no longer exists.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yes, I agree with that. So first of all, the working class bit was always a bit overblown with Springsteen. Springsteen, of course, was never really part of the working class, except when he was a child. But by his own admission, he never had a 9 to 5 job. And Springsteen sang about working class life like William Shakespeare wrote about teenage love. He did so with a poetic grandeur that inspired some of his best work. And outside looking in, he actually managed to offer more insights than sometimes people on the inside can amount to themselves. But you're certainly correct. I mean, the Broadway show, for example, when the tickets were something like a thousand a piece and it was $25 to buy a beer. There is a certain--AK: Yeah and in that Broadway show, which I went to--I thought it was astonishing, actually, a million times better than the show in San Francisco.DAVID MASCIOTRA: It was one of the best things he ever did.AK: He acknowledges that he made everything up, that he wasn't part of the American working class, and that he'd never worked a day in his life, and yet his whole career is is built around representing a social class and a way of life that he was never part of.“Not too long ago, we lived in a country that had a shared set of values. Those values have vanished. And those values involve adherence to our democratic norms.” -DMDAVID MASCIOTRA: Right. And he has a lyric himself: "It's a sad, funny ending when you find yourself pretending a rich man in a poor man's shirt." So there always was this hypocrisy--hypocrisy might be a little too strong--inconsistency. And he adopted a playful attitude toward it in the 90s and in later years. But to your point of relevance, I think you're on to something there. One of the crises I would measure in our society is that we no longer live in a culture of ambition and aspiration. So you hear this when people say that they want a political leader who talks like the average person, or the common man. And you hear this when "college educated" is actually used as an insult against a certain base of Democratic voters. There were fewer college-educated voters when John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan ran for president, all of whom spoke with greater eloquence and a more expansive vocabulary and a greater sense of cultural sophistication than Donald Trump or Kamala Harris did. And yet there was no objection, because people understood that we should aspire to something more sophisticated. We should aspire to something more elevated beyond the everyday vernacular of the working class. And for that reason, Springsteen was able to become something of a working-class poet, despite never living among the working class beyond his childhood. Because his poetry put to music represented something idealistic about the working class.AK: But oddly enough, it was a dream--there's was a word that Springsteen uses a lot in his work--that was bought by the middle class. It wasn't something that was--although, I think in the early days, probably certainly in New Jersey, that he had a more working-class following.DAVID MASCIOTRA: We have to deal with the interesting and frustrating reality that the people about whom Springsteen sings in those early songs like "Darkness on the Edge of Town" or "The River" would probably be Trump supporters if they were real.AK: Yeah. And in your piece you refer to, not perhaps one of his most famous albums, The Rising, but you use it to compare Springsteen with another major figure now in America, much younger man to Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has a new book out, which is an important new book, The Message. You seem to be keener on Springsteen than Coates. Tell us about this comparison and what the comparison tells us about the America of the 2020s.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Well, Coates...the reason I make the comparison is that one of Springsteen's greatest artistic moments, in which he kind of resurrected his status as cultural icon, was the record he put out after the 9/11 attack on the United States, The Rising. And throughout that record he pays tribute, sometimes overtly, sometimes subtly, to the first responders who ascended in the tower knowing they would perhaps die.AK: Yeah. You quote him "love and duty called you someplace higher." So he was idealizing those very brave firefighters, policemen who gave up their lives on 9/11.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Exactly. Representing the best of humanity. Whereas Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has become the literary superstar of the American left, wrote in his memoir that on 9/11, he felt nothing and did not see the first responders as human. Rather, they were part of the fire that could, in his words, crush his body.AK: Yeah, he wrote a piece, "What Is 9/11 to Descendants of Slaves?"DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yes. And my point in making that comparison, and this was before the election, was to say that the American left has its own crisis of...if we don't want to use the word nihilism, you objected to it earlier--AK: Well, I'm not objecting. I like the word. It's just curious to hear it come from somebody like yourself, a man, certainly a progressive, maybe not--you might define yourself as being on the left, but certainly more on the left and on the right.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yes, I would agree with that characterization. But that the left has its own crisis of nihilism. If if you are celebrating a man who, despite his journalistic talents and intelligence, none of which I would deny, refused to see the humanity of the first responders on the 9/11 attack and, said that he felt nothing for the victims, presumably even those who were black and impoverished, then you have your own crisis of belief, and juxtaposing that with the big hearted, humanistic liberalism of Springsteen for me shows the left a better path forward. Now, that's a path that will increasingly close after the victory of Trump, because extremism typically begets extremism, and we're probably about to undergo four years of dueling cynicism and rage and unhappy times.AK: I mean, you might respond, David, and say, well, Coates is just telling the truth. Why should a people with a history of slavery care that much about a few white people killed on 9/11 when their own people lost millions through slavery? And you compare them to Springsteen, as you've acknowledged, a man who wasn't exactly telling the truth in his heart. I mean, he's a very good artist, but he writes about a working class, which even he acknowledges, he made most of it up. So isn't Coates like Trump in an odd kind of way, aren't they just telling an unvarnished truth that people don't want to hear, an impolite truth?DAVID MASCIOTRA: I'm not sure. I typically shy away from the expression "my truth" or "his truth" because it's too relativistic. But I'll make an exception in this case. I think Coates is telling HIS truth just as Trump is telling HIS truth, if that adds up to THE truth, is much more dubious. Yes, we could certainly say that, you know, because the United States enslaved, tortured, and otherwise oppressed millions of black people, it may be hard for some black observers to get teary eyed on 9/11, but the black leaders whom I most admire didn't have that reaction. I wrote a book about Jesse Jackson after spending six years interviewing with him and traveling with him. He certainly didn't react that way on 9/11. Congressman John Lewis didn't react that way on 9/11. So, the heroes of the civil rights movement, who helped to overcome those brutal systems of oppression--and I wouldn't argue that they're overcome entirely, but they helped to revolutionize the United States--they maintained a big-hearted sense of empathy and compassion, and they recognized that the unjust loss of life demands mourning and respect, whether it's within their own community or another. So I would say that, here again, we're back to the point of ambition, whether it's intellectual ambition or moral ambition. Ambition is what allows a society to grow. And it seems like ambition has fallen far out of fashion. And that is why the country--the slim majority of the electorate that did vote and the 40% of the electorate that did not vote, or voting-age public, I should say--settled for the likes of Donald Trump.AK: I wonder what The Dude would do, if he was around, at the victory of Trump, or even at 9/11. He'd probably continue to sit in the bath tub and enjoy...enjoy whatever he does in his bathtub. I mean, he's not a believer. Isn't he the ultimate nihilist? The Dude in Lebowski?DAVID MASCIOTRA: That's an interesting interpretation. I would say that...Is The Dude a nihilist? You have this juxtaposition... The Dude kind of occupies this middle ground between the nihilists who proudly declare they believe in nothing and his friend Walter Sobchak, who's, you know, almost this raving explosion of belief. Yeah, ex-Vietnam veteran who's always confronting people with his beliefs and screaming and demanding they all adhere to his rules. I don't know if The Dude's a nihilist as much as he has a Zen detachment.AK: Right, well, I think what makes The Big Lebowski such a wonderful film, and perhaps so relevant today, is Lebowski, unlike so many Americans is unjudgmental. He's not an angry man. He's incredibly tolerant. He accepts everyone, even when they're beating him up or ripping him off. And he's so, in that sense, different from the America of the 2020s, where everyone is angry and everyone blames someone else for whatever's wrong in their lives.DAVID MASCIOTRA: That's exactly right.AK: Is that liberal or just Zen? I don't know.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yeah. It's perhaps even libertarian in a sense. But there's a very interesting and important book by Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke called Why It's Okay to Mind Your Own Business. And in it they argue--they're both political scientists although the one may be a...they may be philosophers...but that aside--they present an argument for why Americans need to do just that. Mind their own business.AK: Which means, yeah, not living politics, which certainly Lebowski is. It's probably the least political movie, Lebowski, I mean, he doesn't have a political bone in his body. Finally, David, there there's so much to talk about here, it's all very interesting. You first came on the show, you had a book out, that came out either earlier this year or last year. Yeah, it was in April of this year, Exurbia Now: The Battleground of American Democracy. And you wrote about the outskirts of suburbia, which you call "exurbia." Jonathan Rauch, wearing his Brookings cap, described this as an ordinary election. I'm not sure how much digging you've done, but did the exurbian vote determine this election? I mean, the election was determined by a few hundred thousand voters in the Midwest. Were these voters mostly on the edge of the suburb? And I'm guessing most of them voted for Trump.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Well, Trump's numbers in exurbia...I've dug around and I've been able to find the exurbian returns for Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona. So three crucial swing states. If Kamala Harris had won those three states, she would be president. And Trump's support in exurbia was off the charts, as it was in 2020 and 2016, and as I predicted, it would be in 2024. I'm not sure that that would have been sufficient to deliver him the race and certainly not in the fashion that he won. Trump made gains with some groups that surprised people, other groups that didn't surprise people, but he did much better than expected. So unlike, say, in 2016, where we could have definitively and conclusively said Trump won because of a spike in turnout for him in rural America and in exurbia, here, the results are more mixed. But it remains the case that the base most committed to Trump and most fervently loyal to his agenda is rural and exurban.AK: So just outside the cities. And finally, I argued, maybe counterintuitively, that America remains split today as it was before November the 5th, so I'm not convinced that this election is the big deal that some people think it is. But you wrote an interesting piece in Salon back in 2020 arguing that Trump has poisoned American culture, but the toxin was here all along. Of course, there is more, if anything, of that toxin now. So even if Harris had won the election, that toxin was still here. And finally, David, how do we get rid of that toxin? Do we just go to put Bruce Springsteen on and go and watch Big Lebowski? I mean, how do we get beyond this toxin?DAVID MASCIOTRA: I would I would love it if that was the way to do it.AK: We'll sit in our bathtub and wait for the thugs to come along?DAVID MASCIOTRA: Right, exactly. No, what you're asking is, of course, the big question. We need to find a way to resurrect some sense of, I'll use another conservative phrase, civic virtue. And in doing--AK: And resurrection, of course, by definition, is conservative, because you're bringing something back.“Ambition is what allows a society to grow. And it seems like ambition has fallen far out of fashion.” -DMDAVID MASCIOTRA: Exactly. And we also have to resurrect, offer something more practical, we have to resurrect a sense of civics. One thing on which--I have immense respect and admiration for Jonathan Rauch--one minor quibble I would have with him from your conversation is when he said that the voters rejected the liberal intellectual class and their ideas. Some voters certainly rejected, but some voters were unaware. The lack of civic knowledge in the United States is detrimental to our institutions. I mean, a majority of Americans don't know how many justices are on the Supreme Court. They can't name more than one freedom enumerated in the Bill of Rights. So we need to find a way to make citizenship a vital part of our national identity again. And there are some practical means of doing that in the educational system. Certainly won't happen in the next four years. But to get to the less tangible matter of how to resurrect something like civic virtue and bring back ambition and aspiration in our sense of national identity, along with empathy, is much tougher. I mean, Robert Putnam says it thrives upon community and voluntary associations.AK: Putnam has been on the show, of course.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Yeah. So, I mean, this is a conversation that will develop. I wish I had the answer, and I wish it was just to listen to Born to Run in the bathtub with with a poster of The Dude hanging overhead. But as I said to you before we went on the air, I think that you have a significant insight to learn this conversation because, in many ways, your books were prescient. We certainly live with the cult of the amateur now, more so than when you wrote that book. So, I'd love to hear your ideas.AK: Well, that's very generous of you, David. And next time we appear, you're going to interview me about why the cult of the amateur is so important. So we will see you again soon. But we're going to swap seats. So, David will interview me about the relevance of Cult of the Amateur. Wonderful conversation, David. I've never thought about Lebowski or Francis Fukuyama, particularly Lebowski, in terms of what happened on November 5th. So, very insightful. Thank you, David, and we'll see you again in the not-too-distant future.DAVID MASCIOTRA: Thank you. I'm going to reread Cult of the Amateur to prepare. I may even do it in the bathtub. I look forward to our discussion.David Masciotra is an author, lecturer, and journalist. He is the author of I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters (I.B. Tauris, 2020), Mellencamp: American Troubadour (University Press of Kentucky), Barack Obama: Invisible Man (Eyewear Publishers, 2017), and Metallica by Metallica, a 33 1/3 book from Bloomsbury Publishers, which has been translated into Chinese. In 2010, Continuum Books published his first book, Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen.His 2024 book, Exurbia Now: Notes from the Battleground of American Democracy, is published by Melville House Books. Masciotra writes regularly for the New Republic, Washington Monthly, Progressive, the Los Angeles Review of Books, CrimeReads, No Depression, and the Daily Ripple. He has also written for Salon, the Daily Beast, CNN, Atlantic, Washington Post, AlterNet, Indianapolis Star, and CounterPunch. Several of his political essays have been translated into Spanish for publication at Korazon de Perro. His poetry has appeared in Be About It Press, This Zine Will Change Your Life, and the Pangolin Review. Masciotra has a Master's Degree in English Studies and Communication from Valparaiso University. He also has a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from the University of St. Francis. He is public lecturer, speaking on a wide variety of topics, from the history of protest music in the United States to the importance of bars in American culture. David Masciotra has spoken at the University of Wisconsin, University of South Carolina, Lewis University, Indiana University, the Chicago Public Library, the Lambeth Library (UK), and an additional range of colleges, libraries, arts centers, and bookstores. As a journalist, he has conducted interviews with political leaders, musicians, authors, and cultural figures, including Jesse Jackson, John Mellencamp, Noam Chomsky, all members of Metallica, David Mamet, James Lee Burke, Warren Haynes, Norah Jones, Joan Osborne, Martín Espada, Steve Earle, and Rita Dove. Masciotra lives in Indiana, and teaches literature and political science courses at the University of St. Francis and Indiana University Northwest. 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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 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

September marks National Suicide Prevention Month and on this episode of Policy Outsider, Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium Executive Director Jaclyn Schildkraut speaks with Hannah Klein, an affiliate scholar with the Consortium and an assistant professor at Lewis University, about the role of safe firearm storage in suicide prevention. The conversation covers what safe storage really means, what we know about where people receive and want to receive safe storage education, and why safe storage is so important in reducing firearm suicides. Guests: Jaclyn Schildkraut, Executive Director, Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium Hannah Klein, Affiliate Scholar, Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium; Assistant Professor, Lewis University

Happy Monday! This morning we have another great and meaningful discussion to start our week off with. Our guests today are Steve McHugh of Be SMART for Kids, Kaitlin Soriano of the Kane County Health Department, Dr. Hannah Klein, Assistant Professor of Justice, Law, and Public Safety Studies Department at Lewis University & Julianna Henrichs, senior at Lewis University majoring in Criminal Justice. This amazing team was responsible for the Firearm Focus Group event that took place just last week at the Kane Count Health Department. We will discuss what opinions and ideas were shared as well as next steps for public safety in our community. Let's get ready to learn! Here's the news: - Professional and reliable electrical work is just a phone call away! Call AA Electric Contractors at (630) 393-1100 for your next service and receive a discount on service, free estimate, and 24 hour service. Support a local American company with over 20 years of dedication to Aurora. They've got you covered! Follow AA Electric on Facebook! - If you like coffee and business get ready for the 1st Annual Small Business Resource Fair! This fun event will be held at Society 57 on Wednesday August 7th from 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm. The City of Aurora is committed to supporting small businesses and providing them with the resources and information to help them succeed. Scan the QR code to learn more or visit the link on the flyer and in our bio! - Rush Copley Medical Center is currently accepting applications for interested community members to join the Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC). This is a great way to learn about the care given to families and to advocate for their care. The PFAC meets monthly for 90 minutes and members are asked to commit for a 3 year period. See the flyer for more details or visit this link to apply: https://www.rush.edu/rush-copleys-patient-family-advisory-council-application - The Kids Expo hosted by Illinois House District 84 will be Saturday, September 14th from 10 am to 4 pm at Phillips Park Aquatic Center! Our team will be there delivering helpful information and resources for families as well as our partners of the Aurora Financial Empowerment Center. Admission is free for this event and there will be many emergency vehicles for kids to explore as well as food and more! See the flyer for more details, see you there! Have a great rest of the day! Good Morning Aurora will return with more news, weather and the very best of Aurora. Subscribe to the show on YouTube at this link: https://www.youtube.com/c/GoodMorningAuroraPodcast The second largest city's first daily news podcast is here. Tune in 5 days a week, Monday thru Friday to our FB Live from 9 am to 10 am. Make sure to like and subscribe to stay updated on all things Aurora. Threads: https://www.threads.net/@goodmorningaurorail Instagram: goodmorningaurorail Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6dVweK5Zc4uPVQQ0Fp1vEP... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../good-morning.../id1513229463 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora ACTV (Aurora Community Television): https://www.aurora-il.org/309/Aurora-Community-TV #positivevibes #positiveenergy #downtownaurora #kanecountyil #bataviail #genevail #stcharlesil #saintcharlesil #elginil #northaurorail #aurorail #auroraillinois #cityofaurorail #auroramedia #auroranews #goodmorningaurora #news #dailynews #subscribe #youtube #podcast #spotify #morningnews #morningshow #monday #kanecountyhealthdepartment #lewisuniversity #publicsafety #endgunviolence #safety --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/goodmorningaurora/support

Ann Marie Jonkman, Senior Director of Global Industry Strategies at Blue Yonder, advises Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) on leveraging technology and best practices to enhance their business strategies. With over 20 years of experience in continuous improvement and consulting, particularly in distribution, e-commerce, and transportation, she brings a unique blend of operational insight and software expertise. Collaborating closely with product development teams, Ann Marie ensures alignment with customer needs and drives innovation to deliver tangible results. Prior to Blue Yonder, she held positions at leading organizations like XPO Logistics and Radial. Ann Marie holds degrees in Political Science and History, with ongoing education in Business Technology Design and strategic communication from esteemed institutions like Lewis University, Tuck School of Business, and Dartmouth. Based in Chicago, she devotes her personal time to supporting animal rescue initiatives and enjoys golfing and football.SHOW SUMMARYIn this episode of eCom Logistics Podcast, during MODEX 2024 in Atlanta, Ann Marie Jonkman from Blue Yonder shares her insights on the logistics industry, focusing on technological advancements and the need for strategic adaptation. The discussion covers topics like AI, machine learning, and the importance of software in enhancing supply chain operations. Marie emphasizes the relationship between technology and operational improvement, highlighting the role of data, automation, and robotics in driving industry change. She also stresses the significance of a consultative approach to client relations, advocating for solutions that not only meet immediate needs but also align with long-term business goals. The conversation reflects on the challenges faced in 2023, the potential of AI and machine learning, and the importance of a user-friendly approach that prioritizes safety and efficiency for workers.HIGHLIGHTS[00:01:31] Introducing Ann Marie from Blue Yonder[00:03:29] Exploring the Post-2023 Logistics Landscape[00:07:06] The Evolution of Software in Logistics[00:13:16] The Future of Warehouse Operations and Technology[00:17:59] Exploring the Impact of AI in Logistics[00:20:02] The Power of Generative AI and Machine Learning[00:23:16] Empowering the Mid-Market with AI Technology[00:27:03] Human-Centric Approach to Technological Adoption[00:29:14] The Future of Work: Automation, AI, and User ExperienceQUOTES[00:01:17] "Technology should deploy that. It should enable it for people and it should be easy."[00:05:51] "People are very mindful where they put their money, but it's open. I feel the change."[00:12:49] "It's really being a partner because if we all haven't noticed, this tech is changing fast."[00:17:50] "That billing piece is just, from a 3PL perspective, you're right. It's a small army of people."[00:20:13] "It's more so enabling that to your point to where we truly capture what's happening."Find out more about Ann Marie Jonkman and her company in the link below: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajsupplychainleader/This episode is sponsored by G&P Construction. If you're in need of top notch, all-inclusive Material handling solutions for logistics and commercial real estate, look no further than G&P Construction. Be sure to visit www.gandpconstruction.com to discover your one-stop shop for turnkey MHE integrations.

He was chosen by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the eighth round of the 1983 NBA Draft. He has been enshrined in both the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Valley Conference Hall of Fame. He is the Lewis University men's basketball all-time scoring leader and helped the program to its first conference championship and to their first two NCAA Tournament berths. Present day he is the president of Marist High School, a Catholic institution in Chicago where the SportsPlex was named after him this past December, having been their principal for 22 years and a basketball player back in his days as a student-athlete there.

Often students find that majoring in chemistry limits their ability to have experiences abroad relative to their peers in the humanities and social sciences. Listen and learn about one example of a program designed to give chemistry students both an international and research experience. CUR Representative Dr. Kari Stone (Associate Professor of Chemistry at Lewis University) talks with Dr. Kyle Grice (Associate Professor of Chemistry at DePaul University) about international research experiences for undergraduates. In DePaul University's program, projects are developed by students in concert with chemistry and biology faculty during the semester for academic credit. The capstone experience for these students is to travel to Spain to work on their projects for two and a half weeks. Dr. Grice talks about the scope of student projects and how students are evaluated and assessed at the end of the program. Dr. Grice's website: https://sites.google.com/site/drkyleagrice/

We cover so many important topics that are top of mind for parents and educators these days including… At what age is it ok for my child to have a smartphone? How about access to social media? Is the structure we have placed in our kids' lives impacting their creativity in a negative way? How far should I go in monitoring my kids' phones? How to help a shy child develop friendships. Dr. Valerie Hill is a Developmental Psychologist who enjoys teaching psychology courses and workshops that explore various aspects of human development (e.g. Adolescence, Parenting, Friendships, Alzheimer's Disease). She is a Professor and the Undergraduate Program Director in the Psychology Department at Lewis University and author of the books, Inside Diseases and Disorders: What You Need to Know about Alzheimer's Disease and Hanging Out: The Psychology of Socializing. Thank you for listening to the Raising Resilient Kids Podcast where we provide parents, teachers and coaches with ideas and strategies to help kids and teens build their resilience and achieve their potential in a healthy, fulfilling way.  It takes a village to raise a healthy, resilient child and this podcast gives you, as members of your village, tools to do exactly this.  For more information on the podcast or if you have a question you would like answered by one of our expert guests, please visit us at - https://www.smarthwp.com/raisingresilientkidspodcast.  A special thanks to our sponsors:  The So Happy You're Here YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@sohappyyouarehere  and  The Resilient Youth Teach-the-Teacher Program - https://www.smarthwp.com/RY4teachers

“When the well's dry, we know the worth of the water.” – Benjamin Franklin We are excited to publish the opening salvo in our series of panel discussions aimed toward addressing the most pressing challenges faced by business leaders today. It makes sense to begin with wellbeing, as this topic received by far the greatest share of votes in our topics of interest survey. More than that, employee wellbeing is essential for all our business strategies to have hope of success. Humanity first is a core principle of this community. Lastly, we don't have to look far to see the financial, morale and engagement drain from failure to address wellbeing. Our guests for the first panel are: Dr. Lesley Page, professor of organizational leadership at Lewis University. Dr. Michele Kramer, holistic nurse and currently the track coordinator for the healthcare leadership track at Lewis University. Jeremy Vesta, Chief Operating Officer of Curally. Curally allows for organizations to provide personalized nurse-led healthcare to their employees. This panel of experts is well suited to address wellbeing from the individual, team, enterprise, and societal level. There is often a great disconnect between the business case for wellness and the business case. Leaders must build bridges between the business and people strategies. In this dynamic conversation, we discussed: The importance of raising our consciousness of self-care and how we can create a lifelong sense of nurturing ourselves by finding an intrinsic motivation. Research in resilience that looks beyond survival and asks how we can thrive through crisis. Mindful leadership opens the opportunity to develop broader perspectives on the holistic organization. Again, we see how our internal lens allows for a global lens; care for yourself, care for the world. Understanding the qualities which lead to fulfilment and thriving at work can help leaders to create environments conducive to meaning at work.       Health care costs are out of control, pressuring HR to “do something about it”. Expecting HR to have the expertise to solve this crisis directly or alone is unrealistic. Innovative partnerships such as Curally offer the path forward that makes business sense and human sense. Curally created a relationship-based system that will bring personalized care to employees with a focus on prevention.       Alignment of compassionate leadership to wellness and growth can be fostered to scale wellbeing. An employer is not capable, nor would it be appropriate to have the type of discussions a nurse care practitioner can. Through Curally's model, the employer can effectively do this with confidentiality. We are hopeful! Our guests demonstrate the great possibilities that leaders have for leveraging the current wellbeing crisis to transform themselves and their organizations toward better health, better work, and a better world. To quote Dr. Page from a previous interview, “Leaders, this is your moment”. We CAN do it, but not alone! A Leadership Beyond is committed to being a conduit for the resources and connections needed for this vision to be realized. Many experts expressed interest in being part of this discussion – so we'll continue this topic with additional guests. Please reach out to us if you'd like your voice in the conversation. We will be publishing topical reels as well as being open to articles, posts and 1:1 interview. “See you next time!” A Leadership Beyond is led by Change Management Consultant Adrienne Guerrero and Leadership Communication Strategist Tom Rosenak, and exists to support the alignment between business strategy and people strategy - to drive results with people not at the expense of people (Talent Optimization).  Subscribe to our podcast to join the Leadership Beyond Community of Conversation and hear insights from thought leaders and human development experts leading the way in the field of Talent Optimization. As always, we'd love to hear from you about your insights, challenges, and successes around leading (self and others) through transitions.  To learn more visit https://aleadershipbeyond.com.  

Chicago Way w/John Kass (04/05/24): This week, an update from Kass on his health and Jeff Carlin tags in Rick DiMaio, longtime meteorologist and adjunct professor of Aviation Meteorology at Lewis University, to celebrate the total eclipse on April, 8th and the outlook for cloud cover or clear skies. Check out more from Kass at JohnKassNews.com or […]

According to David Masciotra, the real battleground for the future of American democracy lies in that no-man's land between suburban and rural America - what he calls the “exurb”. It's here, Masciotra argues in his new book EXURBIA NOW, that we can find the pathologies of a 21st century American totalitarianism. The America that Masciotra finds in these outer suburbs is the antithesis of Tocqueville's small town America - a fragmented, alienating place without public space or communal interaction. What Masciotra uncovers is Marjorie Taylor Greene's America and this grey often overlooked zone between suburb and countryside, he suggests is the Gettysburg of American democracy, the battleground which will determine the fate of the Republic in the 2020's and beyond.David Masciotra is an author, lecturer, and journalist. He is the author of I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters (I.B. Tauris, 2020), Mellencamp: American Troubadour (University Press of Kentucky), Barack Obama: Invisible Man (Eyewear Publishers, 2017), and Metallica by Metallica, a 33 1/3 book from Bloomsbury Publishers, which has been translated into Chinese. In 2010, Continuum Books published his first book, Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen. His next book, Exurbia Now: Notes from the Battleground of American Democracy, is scheduled for publication from Melville House Books in 2024. Masciotra writes regularly for the New Republic, Washington Monthly, Progressive, the Los Angeles Review of Books, CrimeReads, No Depression, and the Daily Ripple. He has also written for Salon, the Daily Beast, CNN, Atlantic, Washington Post, AlterNet, Indianapolis Star, and CounterPunch. Several of his political essays have been translated into Spanish for publication at Korazon de Perro. His poetry has appeared in Be About It Press, This Zine Will Change Your Life, and the Pangolin Review. Masciotra has a Master's Degree in English Studies and Communication from Valparaiso University. He also has a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from the University of St. Francis. He is public lecturer, speaking on a wide variety of topics, from the history of protest music in the United States to the importance of bars in American culture. David Masciotra has spoken at the University of Wisconsin, University of South Carolina, Lewis University, Indiana University, the Chicago Public Library, the Lambeth Library (UK), and an additional range of colleges, libraries, arts centers, and bookstores. As a journalist, he has conducted interviews with political leaders, musicians, authors, and cultural figures, including Jesse Jackson, John Mellencamp, Noam Chomsky, all members of Metallica, David Mamet, James Lee Burke, Warren Haynes, Norah Jones, Joan Osborne, Martín Espada, Steve Earle, and Rita Dove.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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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. 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

In this podcast episode, Dr. Jeff Williamson interviews Dr. Scott Goslin, superintendent of Bradley School District 61, about his leadership journey. Dr. Goslin discusses the influential role of his parents, coaches, and mentors in shaping his career path from teacher to administrator. He reflects on his hands-on leadership style, which includes helping with tasks like directing traffic and cleaning, and emphasizes the importance of being authentic and adapting to the needs of his team. Dr. Goslin also contemplates his future after retirement, considering roles in leadership or consulting. The conversation highlights the value of building trust, fostering a positive culture, and empowering others within an organization.About Our GuestDr. Scott Goselin is in his nineteenth year as superintendent of Bradley School District 61. He has been an administrator in the Bradley School District for the past twenty-eight years. Before coming to Bradley, he taught for five years in the Reed-Custer School District.He is a graduate of Bradley-Bourbonnais High School, Olivet Nazarene University, Governor's State University, Lewis University and received a doctorate degree from National Louis University in 2008.He has served in numerous community leadership roles: Kankakee-Iroquois United Way, Kankakee Chamber of Commerce, Bradley-Bourbonnais Rotary Club, Bradley-Bourbonnais High School Academic Foundation, Educators of Illinois League, Knights of Columbus, Kankakee NAACP, Illinois Association of School Administrators Board of Directors, and Maternity BVM Church Council.He was most recently awarded the 2017 Three Rivers Region “Superintendent of Distinction” by the Illinois Association of School Administrators.Dr. Goselin is married to his wife (Sue) and have two daughters (Claire and Lily). He enjoys all types of sports and spending time with my family.

Discovered and published in 1740 by the Ambrosian librarian Ludovico Muratori, the so-called “Muratorian Fragment” has long featured for New Testament scholars as a piece of second-century evidence for a canonical impulse in early Christianity. Challengers to this second-century dating in recent decades have done little to shake a popular conception that the Fragment authentically reflects a remarkably early and idiosyncratic view on Christian scriptural collections that do not seem to have been meaningfully codified, by other means, until the late fourth century.  Stepping into this impasse with The Muratorian Fragment: Text, Translation, Commentary (Mohr Siebeck, 2022), Clare K. Rothschild freshly evaluates the text of the singly attested eighth-century manuscript and its wider context in situ within the “Muratorian Codex,” offering both a neutral presentation of the evidence as well as a novel argument attributing its composition to the orbit of the fourth-century treatise writer Ambrosiaster. The result is a true “critical edition” for the Muratorian Fragment, advancing scholarship and allowing fellow academics who marshal its data to confront the manuscript's unparalleled oddity within the landscape of early Christian writ. Rothschild joined the New Books Network to discuss her conscientious handling of this “lightning rod in biblical studies,” its limited comparative material from prologues and early apologetics, and especially the ways that scholarship might progress beyond deeply held commitments to the Muratorian Fragment's relevance to the question of the New Testament canon. Clare K. Rothschild (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2003) is Professor of Scripture Studies at Lewis University. Her research interests range throughout the textual landscape of the New Testament and other early Christian texts, from Luke-Acts to Pauline texts and from the Apostolic Fathers to the Muratorian Fragment, and her other major publications with Mohr Siebeck have included Hebrews as Pseudepigraphon: The History and Significance of Pauline Attribution of Hebrews (2009) and The Benedictine Prologue: A Contribution to the Early History of the Latin Prologues to the Pauline Epistles (2023, with Jeremy C. Thompson). She is currently preparing a commentary on the Epistle of Barnabas for Fortress Press's Hermeneia series and serves as General Editor of the journal Early Christianity and the Society of Biblical Literature series Writings from the Greco-Roman World. In her spare time, Rothschild enjoys yoga and playing cello in various small orchestras and ensembles. Rob Heaton (Ph.D., University of Denver, 2019) hosts Biblical Studies conversations for New Books in Religion and teaches New Testament, Christian origins, and early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana. He recently authored The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon (Lexington Books, 2023). For more about Rob and his work, or to offer feedback related to this episode, please visit his website at https://www.robheaton.com. 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

Discovered and published in 1740 by the Ambrosian librarian Ludovico Muratori, the so-called “Muratorian Fragment” has long featured for New Testament scholars as a piece of second-century evidence for a canonical impulse in early Christianity. Challengers to this second-century dating in recent decades have done little to shake a popular conception that the Fragment authentically reflects a remarkably early and idiosyncratic view on Christian scriptural collections that do not seem to have been meaningfully codified, by other means, until the late fourth century.  Stepping into this impasse with The Muratorian Fragment: Text, Translation, Commentary (Mohr Siebeck, 2022), Clare K. Rothschild freshly evaluates the text of the singly attested eighth-century manuscript and its wider context in situ within the “Muratorian Codex,” offering both a neutral presentation of the evidence as well as a novel argument attributing its composition to the orbit of the fourth-century treatise writer Ambrosiaster. The result is a true “critical edition” for the Muratorian Fragment, advancing scholarship and allowing fellow academics who marshal its data to confront the manuscript's unparalleled oddity within the landscape of early Christian writ. Rothschild joined the New Books Network to discuss her conscientious handling of this “lightning rod in biblical studies,” its limited comparative material from prologues and early apologetics, and especially the ways that scholarship might progress beyond deeply held commitments to the Muratorian Fragment's relevance to the question of the New Testament canon. Clare K. Rothschild (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2003) is Professor of Scripture Studies at Lewis University. Her research interests range throughout the textual landscape of the New Testament and other early Christian texts, from Luke-Acts to Pauline texts and from the Apostolic Fathers to the Muratorian Fragment, and her other major publications with Mohr Siebeck have included Hebrews as Pseudepigraphon: The History and Significance of Pauline Attribution of Hebrews (2009) and The Benedictine Prologue: A Contribution to the Early History of the Latin Prologues to the Pauline Epistles (2023, with Jeremy C. Thompson). She is currently preparing a commentary on the Epistle of Barnabas for Fortress Press's Hermeneia series and serves as General Editor of the journal Early Christianity and the Society of Biblical Literature series Writings from the Greco-Roman World. In her spare time, Rothschild enjoys yoga and playing cello in various small orchestras and ensembles. Rob Heaton (Ph.D., University of Denver, 2019) hosts Biblical Studies conversations for New Books in Religion and teaches New Testament, Christian origins, and early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana. He recently authored The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon (Lexington Books, 2023). For more about Rob and his work, or to offer feedback related to this episode, please visit his website at https://www.robheaton.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Discovered and published in 1740 by the Ambrosian librarian Ludovico Muratori, the so-called “Muratorian Fragment” has long featured for New Testament scholars as a piece of second-century evidence for a canonical impulse in early Christianity. Challengers to this second-century dating in recent decades have done little to shake a popular conception that the Fragment authentically reflects a remarkably early and idiosyncratic view on Christian scriptural collections that do not seem to have been meaningfully codified, by other means, until the late fourth century.  Stepping into this impasse with The Muratorian Fragment: Text, Translation, Commentary (Mohr Siebeck, 2022), Clare K. Rothschild freshly evaluates the text of the singly attested eighth-century manuscript and its wider context in situ within the “Muratorian Codex,” offering both a neutral presentation of the evidence as well as a novel argument attributing its composition to the orbit of the fourth-century treatise writer Ambrosiaster. The result is a true “critical edition” for the Muratorian Fragment, advancing scholarship and allowing fellow academics who marshal its data to confront the manuscript's unparalleled oddity within the landscape of early Christian writ. Rothschild joined the New Books Network to discuss her conscientious handling of this “lightning rod in biblical studies,” its limited comparative material from prologues and early apologetics, and especially the ways that scholarship might progress beyond deeply held commitments to the Muratorian Fragment's relevance to the question of the New Testament canon. Clare K. Rothschild (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2003) is Professor of Scripture Studies at Lewis University. Her research interests range throughout the textual landscape of the New Testament and other early Christian texts, from Luke-Acts to Pauline texts and from the Apostolic Fathers to the Muratorian Fragment, and her other major publications with Mohr Siebeck have included Hebrews as Pseudepigraphon: The History and Significance of Pauline Attribution of Hebrews (2009) and The Benedictine Prologue: A Contribution to the Early History of the Latin Prologues to the Pauline Epistles (2023, with Jeremy C. Thompson). She is currently preparing a commentary on the Epistle of Barnabas for Fortress Press's Hermeneia series and serves as General Editor of the journal Early Christianity and the Society of Biblical Literature series Writings from the Greco-Roman World. In her spare time, Rothschild enjoys yoga and playing cello in various small orchestras and ensembles. Rob Heaton (Ph.D., University of Denver, 2019) hosts Biblical Studies conversations for New Books in Religion and teaches New Testament, Christian origins, and early Christianity at Anderson University in Indiana. He recently authored The Shepherd of Hermas as Scriptura Non Grata: From Popularity in Early Christianity to Exclusion from the New Testament Canon (Lexington Books, 2023). For more about Rob and his work, or to offer feedback related to this episode, please visit his website at https://www.robheaton.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biblical-studies

Ed is a coach down to the very smallest molecule of his DNA. Whether he's a husband and father at home or working with a client in the business world, he is an energized, passionate, and near-obsessive coach who is fully invested in showing up with all he's got to help you show up with all you've got. His approach insists on presence. He knows no other way to catalyze change except by getting on the court with you, playing side-by-side, and encouraging you to keep pushing, especially when the going gets tough.  In the last 29 years, Ed has developed his leadership skills in both athletics and business. From working as an NCAA Basketball coach at Texas A&M, DePaul NIU, and Lewis University to becoming the Vice President of a national recruiting firm, Ed Molitor has experienced the potential and pitfalls of leadership at every level.  As the founder and CEO of The Molitor Group, today Ed guides emerging and established leaders across biopharma and biotech to apply the proven lessons of coaching in their pursuit of inspiring and driving their team's performance.  Through personalized training, workshops, keynote speeches, his writing, and as a podcast host, Ed seeks to empower individuals and their organizations to achieve victory through a focus on transformation, fundamentals, compassion, mental toughness, and vision.   Ed graduated from St. Ambrose University with a B.S. in Business Administration and a minor in Economics where he was a member of the Men's Basketball team serving as the co-captain his Senior year. Before St. Ambrose, he studied business at Creighton University where he played on the Men's Basketball teams which included a 1989 MVC Regular Season and Tournament Champions, NCAA Tournament, and a 1990 NIT Tournament.  What you'll learn in this episode: How to master relationship building with the 7 Pillars of VICTORY The role of authenticity in developing deep and meaningful relationships Why building meaningful relationships is essential for leadership and personal growth The questions that coaching leaders should ask to build trust effectively Why giving unsolicited advice can undermine trust and what to do instead How the quality of individual relationships impacts retention and loyalty within an organization The significance of viewing relationships through the lens of possibilities and purpose The Molitor Group's authenticity checklist to help you develop profound and lasting relationships Additional resources: Website: www.themolitorgroup.com  LinkedIn: The Molitor Group Facebook: The Molitor Group Twitter: @TheMolitorGroup Instagram: @EdMolitor

Andrew Ross is a pilot at a major airline flying the Boeing 787 domestically and internationally.  Andrew has served as a union representative, committee chairman, and is a member of the National Education Steering Committee for the ALPA.  He has also served as an airline check airman and is a Gold-Seal Flight Instructor.  Andrew is also a member of the National Intercollegiate Flying Association (NIFA) Board of Directors, furthering collegiate aviation education through competition all over the US.  Andrew holds his masters degree in organizational leadership with a focus in non-profit management and executive coaching and counseling from Lewis University.  He currently runs his own coaching and consulting firm.  He is also a published author.

José Miguel Vivanco, adjunct senior fellow for human rights at CFR and former executive director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch, leads the conversation on human rights in Latin America. FASKIANOS: Welcome to today's session of the Fall 2023 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record. The video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org, if you would like to share them with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have José Miguel Vivanco with us to discuss human rights in Latin America. Mr. Vivanco is an adjunct senior fellow for human rights at CFR and partner at Dentons Global Advisors. He formerly served as the executive director of the Americas Division at Human Rights Watch, where he supervised fact-finding research for numerous reports on gross violations of human rights and advocated strengthening international legal standards and domestic compliance throughout the region. He is the founder of the Center for Justice and International Law, an international civil society organization providing legal and technical assistance with the Inter-American Human Rights System. So, José Miguel, thank you very much for being with us today. I thought you could begin by giving us an overview of what you see as the most important human rights challenges and advances in Latin America today. VIVANCO: Well, thank you very much for this invitation. It is a pleasure to be with you all and to talk for an hour about human rights problems, human rights issues in Latin America. Let me first make a couple of points. First, I think it's very important that, in retrospect, if you look at Latin America in the 1960s, 1970s, and even 1980s, it was a region that was pretty much run by military dictatorships. So if you look at historically, the region is not in such a bad shape. I know that this comment is quite controversial and many experts who follow the region closely might disagree with that statement, but objectively speaking I think we need to recognize that most of the region is run today—with the exception, obviously, of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua—by democracies, weak democracies, the kind of democracies that we have in Latin America are facing very serious challenges and with endemic problems such as corruption, abuse of power, lack of transparency, lack of proper accountability, and so on and so forth. But in general terms, this is a region that has a chance to conduct some self-correction. In other words, electoral democracy is a very, very important value in the region, and the citizens—most of the people are able to either reward or punish the incumbent government at the times of elections. That is not a minor detail. It is extremely important, especially if you take into account that during the last twenty years in Latin America, if I'm not wrong, the vast majority of the governments elected were from the opposition. The statistics, I think, show that in eighteen of the twenty last presidential elections, the winner has been the party of the opposition; which means that even though our democracies in Latin America are dysfunctional, weak, messy, slow, you know, short-term-oriented, obviously, but at least citizens take their rights seriously and they exercise their powers so that is why you see a regular zigzag or, you know, transfer of power from a left-wing government to a right-wing government or vice versa. And that is, again, something that is, obviously, a very, very important tool of self-correction. And that, obviously, includes or has an impact in terms of the human rights record of those countries. You know, I'm not—I'm not addressing yet—I will leave it for the Q&A section—conditions in those three dictatorships in Latin America. Let me just make some few more remarks about one of the biggest challenges that I see in the region. And that is, obviously, the rise of autocracy or autocratic leaders, populist leaders, leaders who are not interested or as a matter of fact are very hostile to the concept of rule of law and the concept of independence of the judiciary. And they usually are very charismatic. They have high level of popular support. And they run and govern the country in a style that is like a permanent campaign, where they normally go against minorities and against the opposition, against the free media, against judges and prosecutors who dare to investigate them or investigate the government. Anyone who challenges them are subject of this type of reaction. And that is, unfortunately, something that we have seen in Mexico recently and until today, and in Brazil, especially during the administration of President Bolsonaro. The good news about, in the case of Brazil, is that, thanks to electoral democracy, it was possible to defeat him and—democratically. And the second very important piece of information is that even though Brazil is not a model of rule of law and separation of power, we have to acknowledge that, thanks to the checks-and-balance exercise by the Supreme Court of Brazil, it was possible to do some permanent, constant damage control against the most outrageous initiatives promoted by the administration of President Bolsonaro. That, I think, is one of the biggest challenges in the region. Let me conclude my—make crystal clear that there are serious human rights problems in Latin America today regarding, for instance, abuse of power, police brutality, prison problems. Prisons are really, in most of the countries in the region, a disaster. And you know, a big number of prisoners are awaiting trial, in detention and unable to really exercise their rights. And unfortunately, populist leaders use the prison system or essentially criminal law, by expanding the practice and enlarging the numbers of crimes that could be subject of pretrial detention, and—you know, regardless of the time that it will take for that case to be prosecuted in full respect for the rule—due process, and so on and so forth. And that—the reason is very simple. There is a real demand in Latin America for policies that will address insecurity, citizen security. If you look at statistics in terms of crime rate, it is going up in most of the country. Obviously, there are big difference between countries like Mexico, for instance, or Colombia, and if you link—if you look at the power of cartels and big mafias, and gangs in other countries, or petty crime impacting the daily life of the citizens. Regardless of that point, one of the biggest demands in Latin America is for better and more public security. And that's why political leaders, usually the solution for that request and demand is to put people in prison with essentially no real due process and increase the number of prisoners without conviction. There are challenges for free speech occasionally, of those leaders who resent scrutiny of their practice. And normally there is a campaign against free media. And there are some attempts in some countries to constantly look for ways to undermine the independence of the judiciary. Keep in mind, for instance, that now in Argentina the whole Supreme Court is under impeachment, and it's essentially an impeachment promoted by the current government because they disagree with the rulings, positions of the Supreme Court. All the justices on the Supreme Court are subject of this political trial conducted by the Argentine Congress. That is a concrete example of the kinds of risks that are present for judges and the judiciary in general, when they exercise their power and they attempt to protect the integrity of the constitution. So let me stop here and we can move on to the most interesting part of this event. FASKIANOS: Well, that was quite interesting. So, thank you, José Miguel. We appreciate it. We going to go to all of you now for your questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) We already have some hands up. We will go first to Karla Soto Valdes. Q: My name is Karla Soto. I'm from Lewis University. My question is, what specific measures could be implemented to address and/or prevent trafficking within the asylum-seeking community during their journey to the U.S.? VIVANCO: Irina, are we going to take several questions, or? FASKIANOS: I think we should do one at a time. VIVANCO: Well, Karla, there are multiple tools to address that specific issue. But this applies to essentially most of the human rights problems all over the world. The menu is pretty ample, but depends on one important factor—whether the government involved cares about its own reputation. That is a very important premise here, because if you we are dealing with a democratic government, once again, it's not—when I refer to a democratic government, I don't have in mind a sort of Jeffersonian model, I'm referring to the kind of democracies that we have in Latin America. But, if the leaders in charge are—you know, they care about their own reputation, they care about domestic debate, very important, because these types of revelations usually have ramifications at the local level. If they pay close attention to those issues, I think it's possible to apply, essentially, the technique of naming and shaming. In other words, collecting information, documenting what exactly is happening, and revealing that information to the public, locally and internationally. That is going to create naturally a reaction, a process, an awareness, and local pressure is—hopefully, it's not just twenty-four hours news, so splash—big splash, but also will trigger some dynamics. If we are dealing with a country that is run by a dictatorship, it is a very, very different question, because normally you're facing a leader, a government, who couldn't care less about its own reputation. They have taken already and assume the cost of doing business in that type of context. Now, sometimes conditions are kind of mixed, where you have democratic country in general—so there is still free media, there is an opposition, there is Congress, there are elections. But the government in charge is so—is run by an autocratic leader. That makes, you know, quite—a little more challenging to just document and reveal that information. And you need to think about some particular agenda, governmental agenda. Some specific interests of the government in different areas. Let me see—let me give you an example. Let's say that the Bolsonaro administration is seriously interested in an incorporation into the OECD in Paris. That is an important piece of information. Whatever you think that is relevant information regarding the record of that government, you could provide information to an entity that is precisely evaluating the record of the government. And the government will be much more willing to address those issues because they have a genuine interest in achieving some specific goal at the international level. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. We're going to go to Nicole Ambar De Santos, who is an undergraduate student at the Washington University in St. Louis: When we consider weak democracy in a more personal sense, like Peru, the controversy of obligation to help these nations arises. How much third party or other nations, such as the United States, intervene? VIVANCO: Tricky question. Peruvian democracy is quite messy. Part of the problem is that the system, the political system, needs some real reform to avoid the proliferation of small political parties and to create the real link or relationship between leaders, especially in Congress, and their constituencies, and so they are much more accountable to their community, the ones who elected them. I don't think the U.S., or any other government, has a direct role to play in that area. My sense is that when we are looking into a dysfunctional democracy that deserve some probably even constitutional reforms, that is essentially a domestic job. That is the work that needs to be done by Peruvians. Without a local consensus about the reforms that need to be implemented in the political system, my sense is that it's going to be very difficult for the U.S. or any other large democracy, to address those kinds of points. It's very different, that type of conversation, from a conversation or an assessment of universal values, such as human rights. When we are looking into cases of police brutality, for instance, the international community has a role to play. But if I were part of the conversation or evaluation by the U.S. government or the European Union with regard to this dysfunctional democracy in Peru, I would approach very carefully by suggesting creating the right type of incentives, more than questions of punishment, or sanctions. It's incentives for them to create the right conditions to address the domestic problem that is—has become quite endemic, in the case of Peru. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Matthew. Matthew, you don't have a last name, so can you identify yourself? Q: Hello. Yes, my name is Matthew. I am a junior student from Arizona State University studying business, but working on a thesis that has to do with human rights and the ethics of supply chain management. My question is, you were talking at the very beginning kind of just about history and how understanding history is important. And what I was hoping to get was, why is understanding history and culture important when working to address human rights issues, history of dictatorship, colonialism? In cultures it's socially acceptable things, like child labor, in some countries, that's not acceptable in Western ideology. So, yeah, just how is history and culture important when working to address human rights for the future? VIVANCO: Matthew, I think you're referring to two different issues. History is central. It's really, really relevant. Because that helps you—if you—if you follow your history, especially periods of time when massive and gross violations were committed in Latin America, it's important to put things in context and value what you have today. And the job is to—not only to preserve democracy, but also to look for ways to strengthen democracy. Because part of the problem is that domestic debate is so polarized today, not just in Latin America, all over the world, that sometimes people—different, you know, segments of society—in their positions, they're so dismissive of the other side, that they don't realize that we need to frame our debate in a constructive way. Let me put it—one specific example. If the government of Argentina, who is a government very receptive and very sensitive to vast and gross violations of human rights committed during the military dictatorship, so in other words, I don't need to lecture that government on that subject. They are actually the people who vote for the current government of Argentina—not the new government, the current government of Argentina—is deeply committed to those kinds of issues. I think that one of the biggest lessons that you should learn from the past is the relevance of protecting the independence of the judiciary. If you don't have an independent judiciary, and the judiciary becomes an entity that is an appendix of the ruling party or is intimidated by politics, and they could be subject of impeachment procedures every time that they rule something, that the powerful—the establishment disagree, I think they're playing with fire, and they're not really paying attention to the lessons that you learn from recent history in Latin America. That would be my first comment regarding that type of issue. And the second one, about you mentioned specifically cultural problems, culture, tensions or conflicts. And you mentioned—your example was child labor. And, and you suggested that that—the combination of child labor is something typical of Western ideology. If I'm not wrong, that was the language that you used. I would—I would push back on that point. And because this is not just a Western or European commitment. This is a universal one. And this is reflected on international treaties, and that are supposed to eradicate that kind of practice. If you give up to the concept of local traditions, you know, cultural, you know, issues that you need to pay attention, sure, as long as they are not to be in conflict with fundamental human rights. Otherwise, in half of the planet you're not going to have women rights, and women will be subject of traditional control. And you wouldn't have rights for minorities, and especially—and not only, but especially—the LGBTQ community. And you wouldn't have rights for racial minorities, or different religious beliefs. So, we have to watch and be very careful about what type of concessions we make to cultural traditions. I am happy to understand that different communities in Latin America might have different traditions, but there is some firm, solid, and unquestionable minimum that are the these universal human rights values that are not the property or monopoly of anyone. You know, these are—and this is not an ethical conversation. This is a legal one, because these values are protected under international law. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to combine or take two questions. The first question is from Lindsay Bert, who is at the department of political science at Muhlenberg College, who asks if you could speak on the efficacy of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in addressing the human rights violations you described. And the second question is from Leonard Onyebuchi Ophoke, a graduate student at Cavendish University in Uganda: Why is it almost impossible to hold the actors that violate human rights accountable? What could be done to make the mechanism more enforceable? VIVANCO: The inter-American system of human rights protection, there is nothing similar to inter-American system of human rights protection in the Global South. You don't have something similar in Asia, or Africa, or the Middle East. In other words, you don't have a mechanism where ultimately a court, a court of law—not just a commission, a court of law—handle individual cases, specific complaints of human rights abuses, and governments participate in public hearings. The parties involved have the obligation to present evidence before the court, and the court finally ruled on the specific matters where its decisions are binding. The number of issues that have been addressed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the last thirty years in Latin America are really incredible. And the impact—this is most important point—the impact at a local level is remarkable. In the area, for instance, of torture, disappearances. I'm referring to the elaboration of concepts and the imposing the obligation of local governments to adjust their legislation and practice, and to address specific problems or issues by providing remedies to victims. That is quite unusual. And the court has remarkable rulings on free speech, on discrimination issues, on indigenous populations, on military jurisdiction. One of the typical recourse of governments in the region when security forces were involved in human rights atrocities was to invoke military jurisdiction. So they say, no worries, we are going to investigate our own crimes. And the court has been actually very, very firm, challenging that notion to the point that I don't think there is a single case in Latin America today—once again, with the exception of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, that I hope that somebody will ask me a question about those three countries—and I don't think there is a single case where today security forces try to—or attempt to shield themselves from investigation invoking military jurisdiction. And the credit is to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. I can elaborate, and give you—provide you with a long list of examples of areas where the court has been actually really, really critical in advancing human rights in the region. Let me give you actually one last example that I think is very—is very illustrative, very revealing. In Chile, something like probably twenty years ago or fifteen years ago, full democracy. Full democracy. No Chile under Pinochet. The Supreme Court of Chile ruled that a mother who was openly lesbian did not qualify for the custody of her children because she was lesbian. And she had a couple. So that was sufficient grounds to rule in favor of the father, because the mother didn't have the moral grounds to educate her own kids, children. And this was decided by the Supreme Court of Chile. Not just a small first instance tribunal. And I will point out that the vast majority of the—I mean, the public in Chile was pretty much divided, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of Chileans thought that the Supreme Court was right, you know? The case went to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. And fortunately, after a few years, the court not only challenged that decision of the Supreme Court, forced Chile to change its legislation, and to change the ruling of the Supreme Court of Chile, which is supposed to be the last judgment in the country. And the impact of that one, not only in Chile, in the rest of the region, because it shapes the common wisdom, the assumptions of many people. It helps for them to think carefully about this kind of issues. And the good news is that that mother was able to have the custody of her kids. And not only that, the impact in Chilean society and in the rest of the region was remarkable. Now, the second question that was asked was about how difficult it is to establish accountability for human rights abuses against the perpetrators of those abuses. I mean, it's a real challenge. It depends on whether or not you have locally an independent judiciary. If you do have an independent judiciary, the process is slow, it's messy, it's complicated. But there is a chance that atrocities could be addressed. And that is— especially human rights atrocities or abuses committed during the military dictatorship. There are countries in the region, like for instance, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, where there are people in prison for those type of atrocities. In Brazil, thanks to an amnesty law that was passed in 1978, real investigation and prosecution of those atrocities actually never happened. And an important lesson that you could bear in mind is that Brazilian military are very dismissive of these type of issues, of human rights issues. But not only that, my sense is that Brazilian military officers at very high level are not afraid of stepping into politics, and give their opinion, and challenge the government. In other words, they were actually very, very active, and I'm referring to top officials in the Brazilian Army, during the Bolsonaro administration. There were top leaders who actually publicly argued that if they have to organize a coup again in Brazil, they are ready. That kind of language you don't find in Argentina, in Chile, in other countries where there have been some accountability. For one simple reason, the top military officers running the show are very much aware that if they get involved in politics, that they are part tomorrow of a coup d'état or something like that, at the end of the day they will be responsible. And they might be subject of criminal prosecution for atrocities committed during that period. And so there is a price to pay. So their calculation is much more, shall we say, prudent regarding this issue. But again, once again, how difficult it is? It's very difficult to establish accountability, and much more difficult when you're dealing with dictatorship, where you need to rely on the work done by, for instance, the ICC, the International Criminal Court, which is pretty active in the case of Venezuela. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Fordham. Q: Good afternoon, Mr. Vivanco. My name is Carlos Ortiz de la Pena Gomez Urguiza, and I have a question for you. El Salvador is currently battling crime and gangs with strategies such as mano dura, which have shown a significant decrease in crime at the cost of violating human rights. Do you see a possible effective integration of such policies in high-crime-rate countries, such as Mexico, to stop the growth of narco and crime gang activity? And if so, how? VIVANCO: Well, look, yeah, Carlos, very good question. Bukele in El Salvador is a real, real challenge. It's really, really a complicated case, for several reasons. He's incredibly popular. No question about it. He has managed to—thanks to that popularity—to concentrate power in his own hands. He fully controls Congress. But, much more relevant, he fully controls the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court today is subordinated to the executive branch. And he is constantly going after the civil society, and free media, and the opposition. Now, in violation of the Salvadorean constitution, he's going to run for reelection. And he will be reelected, because he's also very popular. And his policies to go after gangs are cruel, inhuman, and without—not even a facade of respect for due process. Essentially, the policy which is not sustainable and is—I don't think is something that you could export to other countries—is a policy—unless you have full control, unless you have some sort of dictatorship or quasi dictatorship. Which is based, in essence, in the appearance, in the number of tattoos that people, especially in the marginal communities in the periferia in El Salvador, where shanty towns are located. The police has a, you know, green light to arrest anyone who fit that profile. And then good luck, because it's going to be very, very difficult for that person to avoid something like several months in prison. The whole point of having an independent judiciary and due process is that law enforcement agencies have the—obviously, not only the right, the duty to prevent crimes and to punish criminals. Not physically punish them. You know, it's to arrest them, to detain them, and to use proportional force to produce that attention. But they need to follow certain rules. They cannot just go around and arrest anyone who they have some sort of gut feelings that they are involved in crimes, because then you don't—you're not—the whole system is not able to distinguish and to make a distinction between potential criminals and innocent people. But it is complicated, the case of Bukele, because, for instance, I was referring initially to the technique of naming and shaming as a technique, as a methodology to expose governments with deplorable human rights record. But in the case of Bukele, he couldn't care less about. In other words, actually, I think he used the poor perception that exists, already that is established outside El Salvador as a result of his persecution of gangs in El Salvador—he used that kind of criticism as a way to improve his support domestically. In other words, when the New York Times published a whole report about massive abuses committed by Bukele's criminal system, in the prison system in El Salvador, what Bukele does is to take that one, that criticism, as actually ammunition to project himself as a tough guy who is actually, you know, doing the right thing for El Salvador. It's a question of time. It's a question of time. All of this is very sad for El Salvador, one of the few democracies in Central America with some future, I think, because I think they managed after the war to create institutions that are—that were much more credible than in the neighboring countries, like Guatemala, Honduras, and I'm not going to even mention Nicaragua. But under the control of this strongman, everything is possible today in El Salvador. He will be able to govern El Salvador this way as long as he's popular. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has relaxed its attention and pressure on that government, based on the question of migration. So they are hostage by the cooperation of Bukele government to try or attempt to control illegal immigration into the U.S. So that point trumps or, I mean, supersedes everything else. And that is actually very unfortunate. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next two questions, written questions. One is on the subject that you wanted, from Brittney Thomas, who is an undergraduate at Arizona State University: How come the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are socialist or communist while other Latin America countries are predominantly democracies? And then from Roger— VIVANCO: I'm sorry, I couldn't understand the question. Obviously, it's about Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, but? FASKIANOS: Why are they socialist or communist while other Latin American countries are predominantly democracies? VIVANCO: Oh, I see. OK. FASKIANOS: Yeah. And then the next question is from Roger Rose, who is an associate professor of political science at University of Minnesota, Morris: Given the recent decline in the norms of U.S. democracy in the last seven years, does the U.S. have any credibility and influence in the region in promoting democracy? And, again, if you could comment specifically on nations with the least democratic systems—Venezuela, Nicaragua—how could the U.S. play a more constructive role than it is currently? VIVANCO: The U.S. is always a very important player, very, very important. I mean, it's the largest economy in the world and the influence of the U.S. government in Latin America is huge. However, obviously, I have to acknowledge that our domestic problems here and serious challenges to the fundamentals of the rule of law, and just the notion that we respect the system according to which one who wins the election is—you know, has the legitimacy and the mandate to form a new government. If that notion is in question, and there are millions of American citizens who are willing to challenge that premise, obviously undermines the capacity of the U.S. to exercise leadership on this—in this context. And the autocrats and the autocracies in the region—I'm not referring to the dictatorships, but I'm referring to the Andrés Manuel López Obrador, once again, from Mexico, or Bolsonaro in Brazil—they take those kinds of developments in the U.S. as green lights to do whatever they want at local level. So that is a serious—obviously, it's a serious problem. And what is going on here has ramifications not only in the region, but also in the rest of the world. Now, Cuba is a historical problem. It's going to be too long to address the question in terms of why Cuba is a dictatorship and the rest of the region. Part of the problem with Cuba is that you have a government that violates the most fundamental rights and persecutes everyone who challenges the official line. And most of the Cubans today are willing to leave the country and to go into exile. But the problem is that we don't have the right tool, the right instrument in place, to exercise pressure on Cuba. And the right instrument today is the embargo. And that embargo, that policy is a total failure. The Cuban government is the same, exactly the same dictatorship. There has been no progress. And there's going to be no progress, in my view, as long as the U.S. government insist on a policy of isolation. You should be aware that every year 99 percentage of the states in the world condemned the isolation against Cuba, with the exception and the opposition of the U.S. government, Israel, and in the past was the Marshall Islands. Now, I don't think even the Marshall Islands joined the U.S. government defending that policy. So the policy is incredibly unpopular. And the debate at international level is about the U.S. government policy on Cuba and not about the deplorable human rights record of Cuba. That's why I was actually very supportive of the change of policy attempted during the Obama administration. Unfortunately, the isolation policy depends on Congress. And since the times of Clinton, this is a matter of who is the one in control of Congress. And the policy of isolation, it once again makes Cuba a victim of Washington. And Cuba, by the way, is not isolated from the rest of the world. So the U.S. is incredibly, I would say, powerless with regard to the lack of democracy and human rights in Cuba. And at the time, offers a fantastic justification for the Cuban government to present itself as a victim. I think that is the—this is one of the most serious mistakes of the U.S. foreign policy in Latin America that I hope that one day will be—will be addressed effectively. The case of Nicaragua and Venezuela is different, in the sense that we are looking into countries that—Venezuela in particular—have democracy for—a very questionable democracy, very weak, subject of tremendous corruption, and so on and so forth. But they have a system of political parties, free media, and so on, for many, many years. And they end up electing a populist leader whose marching orders and, you know, actually first majors was to establish some effective control of the judiciary. And the Supreme Court became an appendage of the government many, many, many years ago, which means that they managed during the Chavez administration to run the country with some sort of facade of democracy. Today, under Maduro it's no a longer a façade, it's a clear dictatorship responsible for atrocities. Fortunately, it is under investigation by the ICC. And the case of Nicaragua is an extreme case, similar to Venezuela. And it's—it's a dictator who has managed to put in prison everyone who is not in full alliance with the government, including religious leaders, and academics, and opposition leaders, civil society, et cetera. The case of Nicaragua is more complicated because Nicaragua is subject of sanctions by the U.S. government, and the European Union, and Canada, and some governments in the region. But still, we don't see much progress there. FASKIANOS: Great. I'm going to go next to Nassar Nassar, who has a raised hand. You can unmute yourself and state your affiliation. Q: Yes. Hello. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. Q: Hi. My name is Nassar Nassar. I'm from Lewis University. So my question is, which are the most significant actors in the global governance of human trafficking? And how effective are they in tackling that? VIVANCO: Well, this is a matter that is usually—the main actors—so this is organized crime. This is organized crime. This is a question regarding—this is a—it's a huge business, and extremely profitable. And if you want to address these kinds of issues, you need regional cooperation, which is very challenging. Keep in mind that at a local level, in many of the most democratic countries in the region, you have tremendous tensions among the local police and different police. For instance, the local FBI—equivalent to an FBI, is usually in tension with other branches of law enforcement. And if you expect to have cooperation from the rest of the countries in the region, it's extremely challenging. So these type of issues require effective cooperation, adjustment on legislation. Require more better intelligence. The reason why you have this type—proliferation of this type of business is because, obviously, corruption and lack of accountability. So this is—my point is that it is a reflection of how weak is our law enforcement system, and how unprofessional, and subject many times of corruption. FASKIANOS: Just to follow up on that, a written question from Patricia Drown, who's at Regent University. How are the cartels and mafia being armed, and by whom? VIVANCO: Well, in the case of, for instance, Mexico, weapons comes from the U.S. Sometimes even legally. You know, the Second Amendment plays a role here. It's so easy to have access to weapons, all kind of weapons, in the U.S. So that helps. And a lack of actually an effective control mechanism to stop that type of traffic. The amount of money that cartels moved in countries like Mexico, but Colombia as well, and this mafia scene in Central America is significant. So they do have capacity to corrupt local enforcement officials that belongs to the police, the army, even the judiciary. And as long as you don't address the root cause of the problem, which is the lack of presence of the state—in other words, there are vast—as you know, there are regions of Colombia that are not under the control of the government, the territories in Colombia. And there are regions of Mexico that, unfortunately, are increasingly under more effective control of cartels than law enforcement and legitimate officials. So that unfortunately, is the—in my view, one of the reasons why it is relatively easy to witness this type of proliferation of illegal business. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. I think we are out of time. We have so many written questions and raised hands. Maybe I'll just try to sneak in one more from Andrea Cuervo Prados. You have your hand raised. I think you also wrote a question. So if you can be brief and tell us who you are. Q: OK. Hello. I'm adjunct faculty at Dickinson State University. And, Mr. Vivanco, I have a question related to Colombia. What do you think about the state of the human rights in Colombia under the new leftist president, Gustavo Petro, compared to the previous president, Ivan Duque? VIVANCO: Andrea, I think it's pretty much the same. When we witness actually an improvement of human rights conditions in Colombia, it was during the negotiations with the FARC. I'm referring to the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos. And with the signature of the peace agreement, when they signed the peace agreement, the numbers shows a serious decline in the cases of, for instance, internally displaced people, torture cases, executions, abductions, and many other of those typical abuses that are committed in Colombia in rural areas where this organized crime and irregular armed groups are historically present. But then the policies implemented during the Duque administration were actually not very effective. There was a sort of relaxation during that period, and not effective implementation of those commitments negotiated with the FARC. That had an implication in terms of abuses. And today I don't see a major shift. My sense is that the local communities are subject of similar abuses, including human rights activists as well as social leaders, in areas where there is a very weak presence of the state. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much. José Miguel Vivanco. We really appreciate your being with us today. And I apologize. Great questions. I'm sorry, we couldn't get to all of the written ones or raised hands. It's clear we will have to do this—focus in on this again and have you back. You can follow José Miguel on X at @VivancoJM. And the next Academic Webinar will be on Wednesday, November 29, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Shibley Telhami, who's a professor at the University of Maryland, will lead a conversation on public opinion on Israel and Palestine. And in the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers. You can follow us at @CFR_Academic. And visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Again, José Miguel, thank you very much for today, and to all of you for joining us. VIVANCO: Thanks a lot. FASKIANOS: Take care. (END)

José Miguel Vivanco, adjunct senior fellow for human rights at CFR and former executive director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch, leads the conversation on human rights in Latin America. FASKIANOS: Welcome to today's session of the Fall 2023 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Today's discussion is on the record. The video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org, if you would like to share them with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have José Miguel Vivanco with us to discuss human rights in Latin America. Mr. Vivanco is an adjunct senior fellow for human rights at CFR and partner at Dentons Global Advisors. He formerly served as the executive director of the Americas Division at Human Rights Watch, where he supervised fact-finding research for numerous reports on gross violations of human rights and advocated strengthening international legal standards and domestic compliance throughout the region. He is the founder of the Center for Justice and International Law, an international civil society organization providing legal and technical assistance with the Inter-American Human Rights System. So, José Miguel, thank you very much for being with us today. I thought you could begin by giving us an overview of what you see as the most important human rights challenges and advances in Latin America today. VIVANCO: Well, thank you very much for this invitation. It is a pleasure to be with you all and to talk for an hour about human rights problems, human rights issues in Latin America. Let me first make a couple of points. First, I think it's very important that, in retrospect, if you look at Latin America in the 1960s, 1970s, and even 1980s, it was a region that was pretty much run by military dictatorships. So if you look at historically, the region is not in such a bad shape. I know that this comment is quite controversial and many experts who follow the region closely might disagree with that statement, but objectively speaking I think we need to recognize that most of the region is run today—with the exception, obviously, of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua—by democracies, weak democracies, the kind of democracies that we have in Latin America are facing very serious challenges and with endemic problems such as corruption, abuse of power, lack of transparency, lack of proper accountability, and so on and so forth. But in general terms, this is a region that has a chance to conduct some self-correction. In other words, electoral democracy is a very, very important value in the region, and the citizens—most of the people are able to either reward or punish the incumbent government at the times of elections. That is not a minor detail. It is extremely important, especially if you take into account that during the last twenty years in Latin America, if I'm not wrong, the vast majority of the governments elected were from the opposition. The statistics, I think, show that in eighteen of the twenty last presidential elections, the winner has been the party of the opposition; which means that even though our democracies in Latin America are dysfunctional, weak, messy, slow, you know, short-term-oriented, obviously, but at least citizens take their rights seriously and they exercise their powers so that is why you see a regular zigzag or, you know, transfer of power from a left-wing government to a right-wing government or vice versa. And that is, again, something that is, obviously, a very, very important tool of self-correction. And that, obviously, includes or has an impact in terms of the human rights record of those countries. You know, I'm not—I'm not addressing yet—I will leave it for the Q&A section—conditions in those three dictatorships in Latin America. Let me just make some few more remarks about one of the biggest challenges that I see in the region. And that is, obviously, the rise of autocracy or autocratic leaders, populist leaders, leaders who are not interested or as a matter of fact are very hostile to the concept of rule of law and the concept of independence of the judiciary. And they usually are very charismatic. They have high level of popular support. And they run and govern the country in a style that is like a permanent campaign, where they normally go against minorities and against the opposition, against the free media, against judges and prosecutors who dare to investigate them or investigate the government. Anyone who challenges them are subject of this type of reaction. And that is, unfortunately, something that we have seen in Mexico recently and until today, and in Brazil, especially during the administration of President Bolsonaro. The good news about, in the case of Brazil, is that, thanks to electoral democracy, it was possible to defeat him and—democratically. And the second very important piece of information is that even though Brazil is not a model of rule of law and separation of power, we have to acknowledge that, thanks to the checks-and-balance exercise by the Supreme Court of Brazil, it was possible to do some permanent, constant damage control against the most outrageous initiatives promoted by the administration of President Bolsonaro. That, I think, is one of the biggest challenges in the region. Let me conclude my—make crystal clear that there are serious human rights problems in Latin America today regarding, for instance, abuse of power, police brutality, prison problems. Prisons are really, in most of the countries in the region, a disaster. And you know, a big number of prisoners are awaiting trial, in detention and unable to really exercise their rights. And unfortunately, populist leaders use the prison system or essentially criminal law, by expanding the practice and enlarging the numbers of crimes that could be subject of pretrial detention, and—you know, regardless of the time that it will take for that case to be prosecuted in full respect for the rule—due process, and so on and so forth. And that—the reason is very simple. There is a real demand in Latin America for policies that will address insecurity, citizen security. If you look at statistics in terms of crime rate, it is going up in most of the country. Obviously, there are big difference between countries like Mexico, for instance, or Colombia, and if you link—if you look at the power of cartels and big mafias, and gangs in other countries, or petty crime impacting the daily life of the citizens. Regardless of that point, one of the biggest demands in Latin America is for better and more public security. And that's why political leaders, usually the solution for that request and demand is to put people in prison with essentially no real due process and increase the number of prisoners without conviction. There are challenges for free speech occasionally, of those leaders who resent scrutiny of their practice. And normally there is a campaign against free media. And there are some attempts in some countries to constantly look for ways to undermine the independence of the judiciary. Keep in mind, for instance, that now in Argentina the whole Supreme Court is under impeachment, and it's essentially an impeachment promoted by the current government because they disagree with the rulings, positions of the Supreme Court. All the justices on the Supreme Court are subject of this political trial conducted by the Argentine Congress. That is a concrete example of the kinds of risks that are present for judges and the judiciary in general, when they exercise their power and they attempt to protect the integrity of the constitution. So let me stop here and we can move on to the most interesting part of this event. FASKIANOS: Well, that was quite interesting. So, thank you, José Miguel. We appreciate it. We going to go to all of you now for your questions. (Gives queuing instructions.) We already have some hands up. We will go first to Karla Soto Valdes. Q: My name is Karla Soto. I'm from Lewis University. My question is, what specific measures could be implemented to address and/or prevent trafficking within the asylum-seeking community during their journey to the U.S.? VIVANCO: Irina, are we going to take several questions, or? FASKIANOS: I think we should do one at a time. VIVANCO: Well, Karla, there are multiple tools to address that specific issue. But this applies to essentially most of the human rights problems all over the world. The menu is pretty ample, but depends on one important factor—whether the government involved cares about its own reputation. That is a very important premise here, because if you we are dealing with a democratic government, once again, it's not—when I refer to a democratic government, I don't have in mind a sort of Jeffersonian model, I'm referring to the kind of democracies that we have in Latin America. But, if the leaders in charge are—you know, they care about their own reputation, they care about domestic debate, very important, because these types of revelations usually have ramifications at the local level. If they pay close attention to those issues, I think it's possible to apply, essentially, the technique of naming and shaming. In other words, collecting information, documenting what exactly is happening, and revealing that information to the public, locally and internationally. That is going to create naturally a reaction, a process, an awareness, and local pressure is—hopefully, it's not just twenty-four hours news, so splash—big splash, but also will trigger some dynamics. If we are dealing with a country that is run by a dictatorship, it is a very, very different question, because normally you're facing a leader, a government, who couldn't care less about its own reputation. They have taken already and assume the cost of doing business in that type of context. Now, sometimes conditions are kind of mixed, where you have democratic country in general—so there is still free media, there is an opposition, there is Congress, there are elections. But the government in charge is so—is run by an autocratic leader. That makes, you know, quite—a little more challenging to just document and reveal that information. And you need to think about some particular agenda, governmental agenda. Some specific interests of the government in different areas. Let me see—let me give you an example. Let's say that the Bolsonaro administration is seriously interested in an incorporation into the OECD in Paris. That is an important piece of information. Whatever you think that is relevant information regarding the record of that government, you could provide information to an entity that is precisely evaluating the record of the government. And the government will be much more willing to address those issues because they have a genuine interest in achieving some specific goal at the international level. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. We're going to go to Nicole Ambar De Santos, who is an undergraduate student at the Washington University in St. Louis: When we consider weak democracy in a more personal sense, like Peru, the controversy of obligation to help these nations arises. How much third party or other nations, such as the United States, intervene? VIVANCO: Tricky question. Peruvian democracy is quite messy. Part of the problem is that the system, the political system, needs some real reform to avoid the proliferation of small political parties and to create the real link or relationship between leaders, especially in Congress, and their constituencies, and so they are much more accountable to their community, the ones who elected them. I don't think the U.S., or any other government, has a direct role to play in that area. My sense is that when we are looking into a dysfunctional democracy that deserve some probably even constitutional reforms, that is essentially a domestic job. That is the work that needs to be done by Peruvians. Without a local consensus about the reforms that need to be implemented in the political system, my sense is that it's going to be very difficult for the U.S. or any other large democracy, to address those kinds of points. It's very different, that type of conversation, from a conversation or an assessment of universal values, such as human rights. When we are looking into cases of police brutality, for instance, the international community has a role to play. But if I were part of the conversation or evaluation by the U.S. government or the European Union with regard to this dysfunctional democracy in Peru, I would approach very carefully by suggesting creating the right type of incentives, more than questions of punishment, or sanctions. It's incentives for them to create the right conditions to address the domestic problem that is—has become quite endemic, in the case of Peru. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Matthew. Matthew, you don't have a last name, so can you identify yourself? Q: Hello. Yes, my name is Matthew. I am a junior student from Arizona State University studying business, but working on a thesis that has to do with human rights and the ethics of supply chain management. My question is, you were talking at the very beginning kind of just about history and how understanding history is important. And what I was hoping to get was, why is understanding history and culture important when working to address human rights issues, history of dictatorship, colonialism? In cultures it's socially acceptable things, like child labor, in some countries, that's not acceptable in Western ideology. So, yeah, just how is history and culture important when working to address human rights for the future? VIVANCO: Matthew, I think you're referring to two different issues. History is central. It's really, really relevant. Because that helps you—if you—if you follow your history, especially periods of time when massive and gross violations were committed in Latin America, it's important to put things in context and value what you have today. And the job is to—not only to preserve democracy, but also to look for ways to strengthen democracy. Because part of the problem is that domestic debate is so polarized today, not just in Latin America, all over the world, that sometimes people—different, you know, segments of society—in their positions, they're so dismissive of the other side, that they don't realize that we need to frame our debate in a constructive way. Let me put it—one specific example. If the government of Argentina, who is a government very receptive and very sensitive to vast and gross violations of human rights committed during the military dictatorship, so in other words, I don't need to lecture that government on that subject. They are actually the people who vote for the current government of Argentina—not the new government, the current government of Argentina—is deeply committed to those kinds of issues. I think that one of the biggest lessons that you should learn from the past is the relevance of protecting the independence of the judiciary. If you don't have an independent judiciary, and the judiciary becomes an entity that is an appendix of the ruling party or is intimidated by politics, and they could be subject of impeachment procedures every time that they rule something, that the powerful—the establishment disagree, I think they're playing with fire, and they're not really paying attention to the lessons that you learn from recent history in Latin America. That would be my first comment regarding that type of issue. And the second one, about you mentioned specifically cultural problems, culture, tensions or conflicts. And you mentioned—your example was child labor. And, and you suggested that that—the combination of child labor is something typical of Western ideology. If I'm not wrong, that was the language that you used. I would—I would push back on that point. And because this is not just a Western or European commitment. This is a universal one. And this is reflected on international treaties, and that are supposed to eradicate that kind of practice. If you give up to the concept of local traditions, you know, cultural, you know, issues that you need to pay attention, sure, as long as they are not to be in conflict with fundamental human rights. Otherwise, in half of the planet you're not going to have women rights, and women will be subject of traditional control. And you wouldn't have rights for minorities, and especially—and not only, but especially—the LGBTQ community. And you wouldn't have rights for racial minorities, or different religious beliefs. So, we have to watch and be very careful about what type of concessions we make to cultural traditions. I am happy to understand that different communities in Latin America might have different traditions, but there is some firm, solid, and unquestionable minimum that are the these universal human rights values that are not the property or monopoly of anyone. You know, these are—and this is not an ethical conversation. This is a legal one, because these values are protected under international law. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to combine or take two questions. The first question is from Lindsay Bert, who is at the department of political science at Muhlenberg College, who asks if you could speak on the efficacy of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in addressing the human rights violations you described. And the second question is from Leonard Onyebuchi Ophoke, a graduate student at Cavendish University in Uganda: Why is it almost impossible to hold the actors that violate human rights accountable? What could be done to make the mechanism more enforceable? VIVANCO: The inter-American system of human rights protection, there is nothing similar to inter-American system of human rights protection in the Global South. You don't have something similar in Asia, or Africa, or the Middle East. In other words, you don't have a mechanism where ultimately a court, a court of law—not just a commission, a court of law—handle individual cases, specific complaints of human rights abuses, and governments participate in public hearings. The parties involved have the obligation to present evidence before the court, and the court finally ruled on the specific matters where its decisions are binding. The number of issues that have been addressed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the last thirty years in Latin America are really incredible. And the impact—this is most important point—the impact at a local level is remarkable. In the area, for instance, of torture, disappearances. I'm referring to the elaboration of concepts and the imposing the obligation of local governments to adjust their legislation and practice, and to address specific problems or issues by providing remedies to victims. That is quite unusual. And the court has remarkable rulings on free speech, on discrimination issues, on indigenous populations, on military jurisdiction. One of the typical recourse of governments in the region when security forces were involved in human rights atrocities was to invoke military jurisdiction. So they say, no worries, we are going to investigate our own crimes. And the court has been actually very, very firm, challenging that notion to the point that I don't think there is a single case in Latin America today—once again, with the exception of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, that I hope that somebody will ask me a question about those three countries—and I don't think there is a single case where today security forces try to—or attempt to shield themselves from investigation invoking military jurisdiction. And the credit is to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. I can elaborate, and give you—provide you with a long list of examples of areas where the court has been actually really, really critical in advancing human rights in the region. Let me give you actually one last example that I think is very—is very illustrative, very revealing. In Chile, something like probably twenty years ago or fifteen years ago, full democracy. Full democracy. No Chile under Pinochet. The Supreme Court of Chile ruled that a mother who was openly lesbian did not qualify for the custody of her children because she was lesbian. And she had a couple. So that was sufficient grounds to rule in favor of the father, because the mother didn't have the moral grounds to educate her own kids, children. And this was decided by the Supreme Court of Chile. Not just a small first instance tribunal. And I will point out that the vast majority of the—I mean, the public in Chile was pretty much divided, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of Chileans thought that the Supreme Court was right, you know? The case went to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. And fortunately, after a few years, the court not only challenged that decision of the Supreme Court, forced Chile to change its legislation, and to change the ruling of the Supreme Court of Chile, which is supposed to be the last judgment in the country. And the impact of that one, not only in Chile, in the rest of the region, because it shapes the common wisdom, the assumptions of many people. It helps for them to think carefully about this kind of issues. And the good news is that that mother was able to have the custody of her kids. And not only that, the impact in Chilean society and in the rest of the region was remarkable. Now, the second question that was asked was about how difficult it is to establish accountability for human rights abuses against the perpetrators of those abuses. I mean, it's a real challenge. It depends on whether or not you have locally an independent judiciary. If you do have an independent judiciary, the process is slow, it's messy, it's complicated. But there is a chance that atrocities could be addressed. And that is— especially human rights atrocities or abuses committed during the military dictatorship. There are countries in the region, like for instance, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, where there are people in prison for those type of atrocities. In Brazil, thanks to an amnesty law that was passed in 1978, real investigation and prosecution of those atrocities actually never happened. And an important lesson that you could bear in mind is that Brazilian military are very dismissive of these type of issues, of human rights issues. But not only that, my sense is that Brazilian military officers at very high level are not afraid of stepping into politics, and give their opinion, and challenge the government. In other words, they were actually very, very active, and I'm referring to top officials in the Brazilian Army, during the Bolsonaro administration. There were top leaders who actually publicly argued that if they have to organize a coup again in Brazil, they are ready. That kind of language you don't find in Argentina, in Chile, in other countries where there have been some accountability. For one simple reason, the top military officers running the show are very much aware that if they get involved in politics, that they are part tomorrow of a coup d'état or something like that, at the end of the day they will be responsible. And they might be subject of criminal prosecution for atrocities committed during that period. And so there is a price to pay. So their calculation is much more, shall we say, prudent regarding this issue. But again, once again, how difficult it is? It's very difficult to establish accountability, and much more difficult when you're dealing with dictatorship, where you need to rely on the work done by, for instance, the ICC, the International Criminal Court, which is pretty active in the case of Venezuela. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next question from Fordham. Q: Good afternoon, Mr. Vivanco. My name is Carlos Ortiz de la Pena Gomez Urguiza, and I have a question for you. El Salvador is currently battling crime and gangs with strategies such as mano dura, which have shown a significant decrease in crime at the cost of violating human rights. Do you see a possible effective integration of such policies in high-crime-rate countries, such as Mexico, to stop the growth of narco and crime gang activity? And if so, how? VIVANCO: Well, look, yeah, Carlos, very good question. Bukele in El Salvador is a real, real challenge. It's really, really a complicated case, for several reasons. He's incredibly popular. No question about it. He has managed to—thanks to that popularity—to concentrate power in his own hands. He fully controls Congress. But, much more relevant, he fully controls the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court today is subordinated to the executive branch. And he is constantly going after the civil society, and free media, and the opposition. Now, in violation of the Salvadorean constitution, he's going to run for reelection. And he will be reelected, because he's also very popular. And his policies to go after gangs are cruel, inhuman, and without—not even a facade of respect for due process. Essentially, the policy which is not sustainable and is—I don't think is something that you could export to other countries—is a policy—unless you have full control, unless you have some sort of dictatorship or quasi dictatorship. Which is based, in essence, in the appearance, in the number of tattoos that people, especially in the marginal communities in the periferia in El Salvador, where shanty towns are located. The police has a, you know, green light to arrest anyone who fit that profile. And then good luck, because it's going to be very, very difficult for that person to avoid something like several months in prison. The whole point of having an independent judiciary and due process is that law enforcement agencies have the—obviously, not only the right, the duty to prevent crimes and to punish criminals. Not physically punish them. You know, it's to arrest them, to detain them, and to use proportional force to produce that attention. But they need to follow certain rules. They cannot just go around and arrest anyone who they have some sort of gut feelings that they are involved in crimes, because then you don't—you're not—the whole system is not able to distinguish and to make a distinction between potential criminals and innocent people. But it is complicated, the case of Bukele, because, for instance, I was referring initially to the technique of naming and shaming as a technique, as a methodology to expose governments with deplorable human rights record. But in the case of Bukele, he couldn't care less about. In other words, actually, I think he used the poor perception that exists, already that is established outside El Salvador as a result of his persecution of gangs in El Salvador—he used that kind of criticism as a way to improve his support domestically. In other words, when the New York Times published a whole report about massive abuses committed by Bukele's criminal system, in the prison system in El Salvador, what Bukele does is to take that one, that criticism, as actually ammunition to project himself as a tough guy who is actually, you know, doing the right thing for El Salvador. It's a question of time. It's a question of time. All of this is very sad for El Salvador, one of the few democracies in Central America with some future, I think, because I think they managed after the war to create institutions that are—that were much more credible than in the neighboring countries, like Guatemala, Honduras, and I'm not going to even mention Nicaragua. But under the control of this strongman, everything is possible today in El Salvador. He will be able to govern El Salvador this way as long as he's popular. Unfortunately, the Biden administration has relaxed its attention and pressure on that government, based on the question of migration. So they are hostage by the cooperation of Bukele government to try or attempt to control illegal immigration into the U.S. So that point trumps or, I mean, supersedes everything else. And that is actually very unfortunate. FASKIANOS: Thank you. I'm going to take the next two questions, written questions. One is on the subject that you wanted, from Brittney Thomas, who is an undergraduate at Arizona State University: How come the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are socialist or communist while other Latin America countries are predominantly democracies? And then from Roger— VIVANCO: I'm sorry, I couldn't understand the question. Obviously, it's about Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, but? FASKIANOS: Why are they socialist or communist while other Latin American countries are predominantly democracies? VIVANCO: Oh, I see. OK. FASKIANOS: Yeah. And then the next question is from Roger Rose, who is an associate professor of political science at University of Minnesota, Morris: Given the recent decline in the norms of U.S. democracy in the last seven years, does the U.S. have any credibility and influence in the region in promoting democracy? And, again, if you could comment specifically on nations with the least democratic systems—Venezuela, Nicaragua—how could the U.S. play a more constructive role than it is currently? VIVANCO: The U.S. is always a very important player, very, very important. I mean, it's the largest economy in the world and the influence of the U.S. government in Latin America is huge. However, obviously, I have to acknowledge that our domestic problems here and serious challenges to the fundamentals of the rule of law, and just the notion that we respect the system according to which one who wins the election is—you know, has the legitimacy and the mandate to form a new government. If that notion is in question, and there are millions of American citizens who are willing to challenge that premise, obviously undermines the capacity of the U.S. to exercise leadership on this—in this context. And the autocrats and the autocracies in the region—I'm not referring to the dictatorships, but I'm referring to the Andrés Manuel López Obrador, once again, from Mexico, or Bolsonaro in Brazil—they take those kinds of developments in the U.S. as green lights to do whatever they want at local level. So that is a serious—obviously, it's a serious problem. And what is going on here has ramifications not only in the region, but also in the rest of the world. Now, Cuba is a historical problem. It's going to be too long to address the question in terms of why Cuba is a dictatorship and the rest of the region. Part of the problem with Cuba is that you have a government that violates the most fundamental rights and persecutes everyone who challenges the official line. And most of the Cubans today are willing to leave the country and to go into exile. But the problem is that we don't have the right tool, the right instrument in place, to exercise pressure on Cuba. And the right instrument today is the embargo. And that embargo, that policy is a total failure. The Cuban government is the same, exactly the same dictatorship. There has been no progress. And there's going to be no progress, in my view, as long as the U.S. government insist on a policy of isolation. You should be aware that every year 99 percentage of the states in the world condemned the isolation against Cuba, with the exception and the opposition of the U.S. government, Israel, and in the past was the Marshall Islands. Now, I don't think even the Marshall Islands joined the U.S. government defending that policy. So the policy is incredibly unpopular. And the debate at international level is about the U.S. government policy on Cuba and not about the deplorable human rights record of Cuba. That's why I was actually very supportive of the change of policy attempted during the Obama administration. Unfortunately, the isolation policy depends on Congress. And since the times of Clinton, this is a matter of who is the one in control of Congress. And the policy of isolation, it once again makes Cuba a victim of Washington. And Cuba, by the way, is not isolated from the rest of the world. So the U.S. is incredibly, I would say, powerless with regard to the lack of democracy and human rights in Cuba. And at the time, offers a fantastic justification for the Cuban government to present itself as a victim. I think that is the—this is one of the most serious mistakes of the U.S. foreign policy in Latin America that I hope that one day will be—will be addressed effectively. The case of Nicaragua and Venezuela is different, in the sense that we are looking into countries that—Venezuela in particular—have democracy for—a very questionable democracy, very weak, subject of tremendous corruption, and so on and so forth. But they have a system of political parties, free media, and so on, for many, many years. And they end up electing a populist leader whose marching orders and, you know, actually first majors was to establish some effective control of the judiciary. And the Supreme Court became an appendage of the government many, many, many years ago, which means that they managed during the Chavez administration to run the country with some sort of facade of democracy. Today, under Maduro it's no a longer a façade, it's a clear dictatorship responsible for atrocities. Fortunately, it is under investigation by the ICC. And the case of Nicaragua is an extreme case, similar to Venezuela. And it's—it's a dictator who has managed to put in prison everyone who is not in full alliance with the government, including religious leaders, and academics, and opposition leaders, civil society, et cetera. The case of Nicaragua is more complicated because Nicaragua is subject of sanctions by the U.S. government, and the European Union, and Canada, and some governments in the region. But still, we don't see much progress there. FASKIANOS: Great. I'm going to go next to Nassar Nassar, who has a raised hand. You can unmute yourself and state your affiliation. Q: Yes. Hello. FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. Q: Hi. My name is Nassar Nassar. I'm from Lewis University. So my question is, which are the most significant actors in the global governance of human trafficking? And how effective are they in tackling that? VIVANCO: Well, this is a matter that is usually—the main actors—so this is organized crime. This is organized crime. This is a question regarding—this is a—it's a huge business, and extremely profitable. And if you want to address these kinds of issues, you need regional cooperation, which is very challenging. Keep in mind that at a local level, in many of the most democratic countries in the region, you have tremendous tensions among the local police and different police. For instance, the local FBI—equivalent to an FBI, is usually in tension with other branches of law enforcement. And if you expect to have cooperation from the rest of the countries in the region, it's extremely challenging. So these type of issues require effective cooperation, adjustment on legislation. Require more better intelligence. The reason why you have this type—proliferation of this type of business is because, obviously, corruption and lack of accountability. So this is—my point is that it is a reflection of how weak is our law enforcement system, and how unprofessional, and subject many times of corruption. FASKIANOS: Just to follow up on that, a written question from Patricia Drown, who's at Regent University. How are the cartels and mafia being armed, and by whom? VIVANCO: Well, in the case of, for instance, Mexico, weapons comes from the U.S. Sometimes even legally. You know, the Second Amendment plays a role here. It's so easy to have access to weapons, all kind of weapons, in the U.S. So that helps. And a lack of actually an effective control mechanism to stop that type of traffic. The amount of money that cartels moved in countries like Mexico, but Colombia as well, and this mafia scene in Central America is significant. So they do have capacity to corrupt local enforcement officials that belongs to the police, the army, even the judiciary. And as long as you don't address the root cause of the problem, which is the lack of presence of the state—in other words, there are vast—as you know, there are regions of Colombia that are not under the control of the government, the territories in Colombia. And there are regions of Mexico that, unfortunately, are increasingly under more effective control of cartels than law enforcement and legitimate officials. So that unfortunately, is the—in my view, one of the reasons why it is relatively easy to witness this type of proliferation of illegal business. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. I think we are out of time. We have so many written questions and raised hands. Maybe I'll just try to sneak in one more from Andrea Cuervo Prados. You have your hand raised. I think you also wrote a question. So if you can be brief and tell us who you are. Q: OK. Hello. I'm adjunct faculty at Dickinson State University. And, Mr. Vivanco, I have a question related to Colombia. What do you think about the state of the human rights in Colombia under the new leftist president, Gustavo Petro, compared to the previous president, Ivan Duque? VIVANCO: Andrea, I think it's pretty much the same. When we witness actually an improvement of human rights conditions in Colombia, it was during the negotiations with the FARC. I'm referring to the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos. And with the signature of the peace agreement, when they signed the peace agreement, the numbers shows a serious decline in the cases of, for instance, internally displaced people, torture cases, executions, abductions, and many other of those typical abuses that are committed in Colombia in rural areas where this organized crime and irregular armed groups are historically present. But then the policies implemented during the Duque administration were actually not very effective. There was a sort of relaxation during that period, and not effective implementation of those commitments negotiated with the FARC. That had an implication in terms of abuses. And today I don't see a major shift. My sense is that the local communities are subject of similar abuses, including human rights activists as well as social leaders, in areas where there is a very weak presence of the state. FASKIANOS: Thank you very much. José Miguel Vivanco. We really appreciate your being with us today. And I apologize. Great questions. I'm sorry, we couldn't get to all of the written ones or raised hands. It's clear we will have to do this—focus in on this again and have you back. You can follow José Miguel on X at @VivancoJM. And the next Academic Webinar will be on Wednesday, November 29, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Shibley Telhami, who's a professor at the University of Maryland, will lead a conversation on public opinion on Israel and Palestine. And in the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers. You can follow us at @CFR_Academic. And visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Again, José Miguel, thank you very much for today, and to all of you for joining us. VIVANCO: Thanks a lot. FASKIANOS: Take care. (END)

Today we're talking about the big topic of Sustainability within big business. Former Chief Sustainability & Social Impact Officer at McDonalds, Bob Langert, joins the show and shares his three decade long journey in making environmental change happen at one of the biggest organizations in the world.An environmental activist at heart, Bob shares how he was able to take a topic he cared deeply about but was low on the company priority list, and over time use his passion to make people notice and act. Sustainability started as Corporate Social Responsibility and Bob recalls how in the 1980's it was just starting to gain prominence and it took a long time for the topic to reach the mainstream status it has today in business. Companies need to be willing to change if they want to compete in a future environment 20 years from now which will look different to how it does today. Bob stresses the need for change agents within that; fewer people laying low and trying to stay out of trouble, more people who are open, patient and bring big ideas. Ultimately that passion and persistence helps the business, because as Bob says, “Businesses that are satisfied and content are going to die.”Bob does recognize that a key challenge in getting action on sustainability issues is trying to force it, either by being too emotional or pushing too hard. He describes how over time he achieved success by creating connections with people inside and outside the organization. These relationships rested on truthfulness, trust and empathy; putting yourself in others' shoes to see different ways of influencing them. That empathy allows you to see new allies, as often we assume people don't care, or will not be supportive, but they can surprise you. In fact some of your harshest critics can become your collaboration partners for change, or even your public advocates.Jo and Bob also discuss the need for companies to be more proactive and preemptive, but that often, that comes with little glory, as a hero in a crisis is easy to find, but credit for preventing a problem often never happens. But issues, like critics, will never stop coming, and Bob says that's a reality you need to accept, and a target you need to bear on your back, when part of a big organization that needs to make money (and there's nothing wrong with that).--To look outside, Bob reads a lot, particularly other perspectives of leadership and change through biographies. He also relies on travel to observe people across settings and cultures. He treats these as learning experiences that help him see things differently and promote a push beyond complacency, or accepting that 'things are the way they are'.--Bob Langert led McDonald's Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability efforts for more than twenty-five years before retiring in 2015. Currently, he provides corporate sustainability consulting through Mainstream Sustainability. Bob has been engaged in social responsibility issues at a global level since the late 1980s, leading environmental affairs, animal welfare, and Ronald McDonald Children's Charities' grants. He was appointed McDonald's first vice president to lead sustainability in 2006 with contributions spanning sustainable fish, coffee, palm oil, beef, packaging, extensive animal welfare progress, protecting the Amazon rainforest, nutrition strategy and CSR reporting, measurement, and accountability. His book about McDonald's sustainability journey, The Battle To Do Good: Inside McDonald's Sustainability Journey, was published in January 2019.Langert received his BA from Lewis University and his MBA from Northwestern University. In 2007, Langert was named as one of the 100 Most Influential in Business Ethics by Ethisphere. Follow Bob on

Ed is a coach down to the very smallest molecule of his DNA. Whether he's a husband and father at home or working with a client in the business world, he is an energized, passionate, and near-obsessive coach who is fully invested in showing up with all he's got to help you show up with all you've got. His approach insists on presence. He knows no other way to catalyze change except by getting on the court with you, playing side-by-side, and encouraging you to keep pushing, especially when the going gets tough.  In the last 29 years, Ed has developed his leadership skills in both athletics and business. From working as an NCAA Basketball coach at Texas A&M, DePaul NIU, and Lewis University to becoming the Vice President of a national recruiting firm, Ed Molitor has experienced the potential and pitfalls of leadership at every level.  As the founder and CEO of The Molitor Group, today Ed guides emerging and established leaders across biopharma and biotech to apply the proven lessons of coaching in their pursuit of inspiring and driving their team's performance.  Through personalized training, workshops, keynote speeches, his writing, and as a podcast host, Ed seeks to empower individuals and their organizations to achieve victory through a focus on transformation, fundamentals, compassion, mental toughness, and vision.   Ed graduated from St. Ambrose University with a B.S. in Business Administration and a minor in Economics where he was a member of the Men's Basketball team serving as the co-captain his Senior year. Before St. Ambrose, he studied business at Creighton University where he played on the Men's Basketball teams which included a 1989 MVC Regular Season and Tournament Champions, NCAA Tournament, and a 1990 NIT Tournament.    What you'll learn in this episode: Ed's journey in his pursuit of completing an Ironman 70.3 race The importance of perseverance and self-discipline in achieving goals The immense power of preparation, hard work, and selflessness in achieving success How Ed overcame the challenges leading up to the race while balancing training with other commitments, such as work, family, and travel The impact of reframing and prioritizing inspiration over motivation for sustainable success The multiple lessons learned from his race and how they apply to leadership and business The importance of self-awareness, positive thinking, and staying focused and committed to the plan   Additional resources: Website: www.themolitorgroup.com  LinkedIn: The Molitor Group Facebook: The Molitor Group Twitter: @TheMolitorGroup Instagram: @EdMolitor  Coac Tim Hawley's Info:  Website: https://www.runrelated.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_timhawley_/

62 | Finding Hope in Education | A Conversation on prison education, equitable access and restorative justice with Michelle Clifton of Lewis University  Michelle Clifton earned her PhD in social ethics at Loyola University Chicago and has worked in higher education for twenty years. Michelle's passion is interrupting the US's over-reliance on incarceration, finding creative alternatives, such as equitable and accessible education or restorative justice solutions, through collaboration with those most impacted. In 2018, she founded the “School of Restorative Arts,” an MA program in Illinois' prisons serving over 100 incarcerated men and women at Stateville and Logan Correctional Centers. She currently serves as founding director of prison education at Lewis University launching BA programs in professional studies in Illinois prisons. In this episode, Michelle shares how she felt the first time she entered a prison classroom, how she processes the hard stories she experiences, and the moment she knew this would be her life's work. Hear her describe the joy of a graduation ceremony inside a prison, why she calls herself an abolitionist, and the dream she has to see decarceration and liberation in the state of Illinois.  Links to learn more: Watch this TED TALK by Michelle Follow Michelle on Twitter & Instagram Learn more about Back2Back Ministries Follow Back2Back Ministries on Social Media: Instagram | Facebook --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bethedifference/message

It's the most dramatic episode yet, as Amber & Lacey welcome the very much loved Kay Cannon. Kay is an expert on Vanderpump Rules' #Scandoval and is kind enough to give Amber & Lacey a crash course before the start of the "Celebrity Expert Quiz". It's hotter than the bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos Lacey has in her recording space and also the lime version which happens to be Amber's pick for "Can You Stand It". Lacey has a new skill that she wants everyone to know about (Amber doesn't like it) and Kay wants to turn listeners on to a special kind of workout (intenSati by Patricia Moreno). The "Biggest Fan in This Room" game goes off the rails when they try to fill in the blanks of Kay Cannon's personal stories. So that everyone wins, we will share Kay's answers as a bonus in the show notes below! Enjoy! ----- Hey Biggest Fans of Kay Cannon! Here are some of her personal short stories that she shared with our producers. We all wanted you to have them too: 1. Having summers off from school…               Working at the Polk-a-dot Drive Thru for $2.85/hr. After one shift and taxes taken out, I made a whole $16! But I got to eat all the french fries and mozzarella sticks I wanted!  2. A time your stomach was in a knot         Easier to answer when it ISN'T in a knot. Every time I take on a new job, my stomach gets crazy. Always feel like I'm going to barf. If I don't feel like I'm going to barf, I shouldn't take the job. It's gotta pass that barf test!  3. A souvenir that you cherish?        Jimmy Choo gifted me Cinderella's glass slippers after "Cinderella" (wrote and directed) came out. I also have a yellow audition cup from "Pitch Perfect."  4. Playing a sport as an adult…        Love it! I learned to play tennis and ran a marathon (without training). I know pickleball is considered an old person game but I don't care. I love the shit out of that pickleball. I'd play basketball again if I wasn't so afraid of getting hurt.  5. Coaching sports…        Double love it! I was a graduate coach at Lewis University for Track & Field and coached my daughter's soccer team. I was also a coach of an improv team. Does that count? I find it extremely satisfying to teach and watch other people win or get better at something they care about.   6. You just cleared security check at an airport …          And I'm exhausted. My double masks having gotten entangled with my glasses and are now useless. I have to go back because I forgot my fucking scarf in a container after pulling my back out trying to quickly remove my overpacked carry on.  My shoes are off and I'm walking barefoot. I'm TSA pre-check but for whatever reason it didn't say that on my ticket. Oh, and my other bag? It's in a line of bags needing to be checked because there's a tiny water in there that I forgot was in there.   7. A moment in the writer's room…       "30 Rock" room: We would play this game called "Lookey-stare-y" where someone would look through the hole of a paper towel roll. They would pan across all the writers, who would intentionally have sad faces and then land on my face -- which was smiling from ear-to-ear. Guaranteed laughter.  8. Growing up with many siblings…      I was raised in a pack. I never developed a good sense of direction because I would just follow the pack. West is always left. I have always described my childhood as "wonderful chaos." It was very loud, very competitive, and for the most part, crazy fun. I was the runt of the group so I had to learn how to be scrappy.  9. A moment in NYC …    SO MANY. 1. After an SNL afterparty, a group of us were walking to the after-after party and I turned to see what I thought was a guy holding a bong. He was actually holding his peen/balls and jerking it. He said, "What's up?" with a big smile on his face as I walked past him. 2. I once lived above Eliott Spitzer's prostitute. Ashley Dupre. I knew her as Ashley Yomen. We went on a double date. She cooked a lasagna in my oven. I borrowed a club shirt to wear to an SNL taping. 3. My husband, Eben, asked me to marry him on the pier off the west side highway. 4. Saw Spring Awakening five times, including opening night where I watched Lea Michele cry her eyes out during bows. The curtain went down and all the other actors left the stage and she stood there crying into her hands. 5. Tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center: Jack Burditt and I showed Rockefeller security a 30 Rock script we each had written to prove that we worked for the show and they let us go all the way -- as close as you could get -- to watching the tree get lit up. I could go on and on about all the craziness and fun and weirdness (I also got divorced while I lived there) while living in NYC.  10. Important lesson from improv class…    NEVER EVER judge someone from the back line while watching a scene. I saw that happen all too often. How dare you judge. You should be thinking about how you can "yes and..." and make better of a tricky situation. If you are judging, you are a dick. Important lesson is to never be a dick. 11. Life moment you're so proud of…    Cliche but... any moment I share or observe of my daughter, Leni. She da best.  12. Coaching sports…        Double love it! I was a graduate coach at Lewis University for Track & Field and coached my daughter's soccer team. I was also a coach of an improv team. Does that count? I find it extremely satisfying to teach and watch other people win or get better at something they care about. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The following interview was hosted by LUF's Human Performance Advisor and Senior Man's Performance Journal author, Jim McNamara. The conversation was recorded at our 2023 National Leadership and Performance Summit, which was held in Annapolis, Maryland. The interview features Jim Roussell who has served as one of the Leadership Under Fire team's chief mentors and advisors since LUF's formal inception in 2012. We hope you enjoy this episode, and Roussell's insightful contributions to the Summit.  James Roussell retired from the USMC and the Chicago Police Department after serving several decades as a leader in both organizations. Most recently, Jim served as the Chief of Staff for the Chicago Police Department. Prior to serving as the Chief of Staff, Jim served as the Executive Officer of Area Central and spent a preponderance of his 36-year career in gang-tactical units. He commanded the Rogers Park 24th District and the department's mobile strike force which targeted gang violence citywide. He has supervised all facets of emergency response and joint operations during his career. Jim is also a retired US Marine reserve Chief Warrant Officer 5. Jim served with the USMC for 39 years with the bulk of his service in infantry and intelligence assignments including three combat tours in Iraq. He has completed the Command and Staff College, Expeditionary Warfare School, and Marine Air Ground Task Force Intelligence Officer Course. Jim has a Doctor of Education from Olivet Nazarene University with emphasis on ethical leadership as well as a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees in Criminal Justice from Lewis University. 

In this episode, Mark talks with Phil Culcasi, a science and math teacher from Illinois, about his experience using modeling methodologies and leading workshops. They talk about asking questions to get at the students' thinking, grading without points, and whiteboarding. They also talk about Phil's work with aspiring teachers and his current project to bring whiteboards and discussion into the precalculus classroom. Guests Phil Culcasi Phil Culcasi has over 25 years of experience as a math and science teacher, and has taught at Wheaton Warrenville South High School since 2002 and served as science department chair since 2012. He is an active leader and participant in professional development sessions and workshops regionally and nationally, and also serves as assistant girls basketball coach at WWSHS. Culcasi is also an adjunct professor at the University of St. Francis, teaching graduate level education courses. Culcasi received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, an M.A. in secondary education from Lewis University, and administrative certification from Aurora University. In addition, Culcasi is a 2022 Golden Apple Fellow and was a Presidential Award Winner in Mathematics and Science Teaching in 2017. He is also National Board Certified. Twitter Highlights [8:55] Phil Culcasi "I think those are the ways to get better as a teacher and to get better at modeling is to watch other teachers, to record yourself and watch yourself, and then think about what you're gonna ask the kids, because it does take time and practice." [20:11] Phil Culcasi "The most difficult part, especially in the new world that we're living in, is getting kids to try the problems before we have the discussion." Resources Download Transcript Ep 45 Transcript Links Book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics

Ed is a coach down to the very smallest molecule of his DNA. Whether he's a husband and father at home or working with a client in the business world, he is an energized, passionate, and near-obsessive coach who is fully invested in showing up with all he's got to help you show up with all you've got. His approach is one that insists on presence. He knows no other way to catalyze change except by getting on the court with you, playing side-by-side, and encouraging you to keep pushing, especially when the going gets tough.  In the last 29 years, Ed has developed his leadership skills in both athletics and business. From working as an NCAA Basketball coach at Texas A&M, DePaul NIU, and Lewis University to becoming the Vice President of a national recruiting firm, Ed Molitor has experienced the potential and pitfalls of leadership at every level.  As the founder and CEO of The Molitor Group, today Ed guides emerging and established leaders across biopharma and biotech to apply the proven lessons of coaching in their pursuit of inspiring and driving their team's performance.  Through personalized training, workshops, keynote speeches, his writing, and as a podcast host, Ed seeks to empower individuals and their organizations to achieve victory through a focus on transformation, fundamentals, compassion, mental toughness, and vision.   Ed graduated from St. Ambrose University with a B.S. in Business Administration and a minor in Economics where he was a member of the Men's Basketball team serving as the co-captain his Senior year. Before St. Ambrose, he studied business at Creighton University where he played on the Men's Basketball teams which included a 1989 MVC Regular Season and Tournament Champions, NCAA Tournament, and a 1990 NIT Tournament.  What you'll learn in this episode: Why just showing up is not enough A different perspective on what being extraordinary means  The importance of being committed and reliable to one's team How coaching leaders can better impact and inspire their team members The impact of being intentional about having the right frame of mind every day, even when it's not convenient How our willingness and our ability to transform as coaching leaders can inspire and transform our people Additional resources: Website: www.themolitorgroup.com  LinkedIn: The Molitor Group Facebook: The Molitor Group Twitter: @TheMolitorGroup Instagram: @EdMolitor    Click here to learn more about our Coaching Programs!

Crain's residential real estate reporter Dennis Rodkin and host Amy Guth recap local housing news, including a look at the latest data around home prices in Chicago and how 100,000 red tulips in Washington Park mark sites of redlining. Plus: Trump hotel poised for $1 million tax refund, Foxx announced she won't seek another term as potential successors start to emerge, Lewis University and St. Augustine College to merge, Tinley Park concert venue renamed, and Jose Cuervo owner set to buy Wacker Drive office building.

Also in the news: Illinois rolling out homeowner loans program; Pizzeria operators ordered to pay $250,000 in back pay and damages to workers; Lewis University, St. Augustine College to merge and more.

Ed is a coach down to the very smallest molecule of his DNA. Whether he's a husband and father at home or working with a client in the business world, he is an energized, passionate, and near-obsessive coach who is fully invested in showing up with all he's got to help you show up with all you've got. His approach is one that insists on presence. He knows no other way to catalyze change except by getting on the court with you, playing side-by-side, and encouraging you to keep pushing, especially when the going gets tough. In the last 29 years, Ed has developed his leadership skills in both athletics and business. From working as an NCAA Basketball coach at Texas A&M, DePaul NIU, and Lewis University to becoming the Vice President of a national recruiting firm, Ed Molitor has experienced the potential and pitfalls of leadership at every level. As the founder and CEO of The Molitor Group, today Ed guides emerging and established leaders across biopharma and biotech to apply the proven lessons of coaching in their pursuit of inspiring and driving their team's performance. Through personalized training, workshops, keynote speeches, his writing, and as a podcast host, Ed seeks to empower individuals and their organizations to achieve victory through a focus on transformation, fundamentals, compassion, mental toughness, and vision. Ed graduated from St. Ambrose University with a B.S. in Business Administration and a minor in Economics where he was a member of the Men's Basketball team serving as the co-captain his Senior year. Before St. Ambrose, he studied business at Creighton University where he played on the Men's Basketball teams which included a 1989 MVC Regular Season and Tournament Champions, NCAA Tournament, and a 1990 NIT Tournament. What you'll learn in this episode: How to turn a hatred for losing into a strategy for winning Why it is important to face losses and recover from emotional setbacks What are the benefits of being brutally honest with yourself How to analyze your failures How to communicate positively regardless of the conversation's difficulty Additional resources: Website: www.themolitorgroup.com  LinkedIn: The Molitor Group Facebook: The Molitor Group Twitter: @TheMolitorGroup Instagram: @EdMolitor 

Dr. Michelle Clifton served for 20 years at North Park as professor and Dean of Faculty. She has published numerous books and scholarly articles in the area of theology and ethics. Michelle's passion is interrupting the US's over-reliance on incarceration and finding creative alternatives, such as equitable and accessible education or restorative justice solutions, through collaboration with those most impacted. In 2018, Michelle founded the “School of Restorative Arts,” an MA program in Illinois' prisons serving over 100 incarcerated men and women at Stateville and Logan Correctional Centers. The program is the first of its kind in the nation and offers a degree in restorative justice ministries. She is currently the founding director of prison education at Lewis University.

Music is a mental superfood—truly enjoyable and beneficial for both brain and soul! Music awakens imagination and even boosts math skills. Join host Janna and her guest Dana Dominiak as they talk about Piano Prodigy—a video game that teaches kids both music theory and how to play the piano. About our guest: Both a video game entrepreneur and a professor of Computer Science at Lewis University, Dana Dominiak has extensive experience in both games and education. Dana's companies have created many hit video games for Nintendo and other platforms including Dragonball Z: The Legacy of Goku series for Atari, and My Little Pony and Hello Kitty for Hasbro and Sanrio. Dana holds a PhD in Computer Science in AI from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Mostly, she just really likes to play video games. • — • — • — • — • LISTENER COUPON CODE ★Request your coupon code to use on any purchase at bookshark.com. • — • — • — • — • TIMESTAMPS 01:04 How Dana entered the homeschool field. 02:44 The art vs. computer science misconception. 05:53 How Prodigy Factory games boost creativity. 08:12 What's the value of music education? 13:29 Music can be hard to measure. Piano Prodigy provides levels, ribbons, medals, etc. that give a sense of tangible progression. 17:13 Music is one of the multiple intelligences. Listen to this podcast. 18:06 The creativity inherent in math. 21:48 Music wakes up the brain. 24:50 Playing music versus listening to music. • — • — • — • — • Thanks to show sponsor BookShark. Request a homeschool curriculum catalog or download samples at bookshark.com. If you'd like to share an aha moment, an inspirational quote, a homeschool hack, a book you're loving, or a suggested podcast topic/guest, leave a comment at bookshark.com/podcast. We'd love to feature your reflection on a future episode.

Katherine Helm, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology and Director of Graduate Programs inCounseling at Lewis University, Romeoville, IL. She is also a practicing psychologist in part-time private where she sees individuals and couples. Katherine has authored several publicationsabout racial and cultural issues in mental health, couples' issues, and pedagogy in multiculturalcourses and has an extensive background in facilitating counselor trainings. Katherine has hadseveral media appearances on radio and video and is a TEDx speaker. She is a sought-afterauthor, presenter, public speaker, professional trainer, and clinical supervisor.Dr. Helm can be found at @DrKatherineHelm on Twitter and DrKatherineHelm on Instagram.  She is also on LinkedIn.Katherine Helm: Revolutionize Your Relationship: A Little Goes a Long Way | TED Talkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5lhoEErIMA  Dr. Katherine Helm - Couples Therapy, Psychologist (drkhelmconsulting.com)  Column: Toxic Relationships Can Destroy your Mental Health (theblackwallsttimes.com)

In this week’s ABCA Podcast we check in with Homewood Flossmoor head baseball coach & counselor, John McCarthy. Coach McCarthy was a draft out of high school and headed to Mesa Community College out of the Chicagoland area. He finished his undergraduate degree playing for Tony Robichaux and the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajun baseball program. After his playing career Coach McCarthy got his Master’s in school counseling from Lewis University and coached with the Illinois Sparks travel program. His next step in his journey took him back to the Catholic League in Chicago coaching at Brother Rice. In this episode we discuss what he learned from Tony Robichaux & John Scefz, blending travel baseball with your high school program, getting things turned around at Homewood Flossmoor and how he is using his counseling degree to help his high school players. The ABCA Podcast is presented by Netting Pros. Netting Professionals are improving programs one facility at a time, specializing in the design, fabrication and installation of custom netting for backstops, batting cages, dugouts, bp screens and ball carts. They also design and install digital graphic wall padding windscreen, turf, turf protectors, dugout benches, dugout cubbies and more.