Circumscription

Rose McDermott is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations at The Watson School of International and Public Affairs, at Brown University. She’s also a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. McDermott studies a variety of topics, including international relations, nuclear strategy, gender, the role of emotion in decision-making, and genetic contrib...

Guy-Uriel Charles is the Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he also directs the Charles Hamilton Institute for Race and Justice. Along with a coauthor, he’s also working on a book that focuses on the past and future of voting rights. He was appointed by President Joe Biden to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. Rick Hasen is Gar...

Brandon Yoder is Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University. He holds a Ph. D. in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. He studies a range of topics, including foreign policy, international security, US-China relations, and signaling and credibility. He’s the author of a 2025 article in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, titled, “Will there be war ov...

Chris Federico is Professor of Political Science and Psychology at the University of Minnesota and the Arleen C. Carlson Professor of American Government and Politics. He’s also past president of the International Society of Political Psychology. Eric McDaniel is a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of two books, The Everyday Crusade: Religio...

Paul Schofield is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bates College. His areas of speciality are ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of film. He teaches a range of courses, including Capitalism and Its Critics; Wellbeing and the Good Life; and Human Natura, Morality & Politics. Much of his recent public-facing writing has focused on the problem of homelessness. OTHER LINKS --YouT...

Danieli Evans is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Washington School of Law. She holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, and later earned a Ph. D. from Yale Law, completing a dissertation titled, “Belonging, Equality, and the Law.” Her work investigates how people's experiences with government institutions influence their sense of belonging, and how levels of belonging influence their wel...

In this conversation, we discuss the history of birthright citizenship in the U.S., as well as the current controversy, including the role of the courts, especially the Supreme Court. My guest is Jacob Hamburger . Hamburger is Assistant Professor of Law in the Marquette Law School. Previously, he taught at Cornell Law, and he earned his J.D. at the University of Chicago Law School. He teaches Immi...

ABOUT THIS EPISODE The utterance and writing of gendered and racial or ethnic slurs has often evoked controversy. My philosopher colleague Lauren Ashwell has taken up slurs as a subject of scholarly inquiry. In this episode, we sit for a 90-minute conversation about such issues as what makes a slur a slur, whether slurs can be reclaimed by members of the target group, and why the study of slurs ma...

This episode features a discussion of academic freedom with David Rabban , the Dahr Jamail, Randall Hage Jamail, and Robert Lee Jamail Regents Chair in Law, and Distinguished Teaching Professor in the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. Previously, he served as counsel, and then general counsel, to the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), and he has chaired its committee...

Gerald Higginbotham is an assistant professor in the Frank Batten School of Leadership & Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He holds a Ph. D. in social psychology from UCLA, and also a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanford University. He studies (in his words) “the imprint of history on people’s modern social perceptions and policy attitudes, and the psychological underpinnin...

Julia Azari is Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. She holds a Ph. D. in political science from Yale University, and she studies the American presidency, American political parties, political communication and American political development. She's the author of the 2014 book, Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate . Her newest book (a...

Clara Wilkins is Associate Professor and Earl R. Carlson Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington. Trained as a social psychologist, she leads the Social Perceptions and Intergroup Attiudes Lab (SPIA Lab). Along with her collaborators, she studies such topics as (a) the causes and consequences of dominant group members' perceptions of group-based victimization, and (b) how variation...

Samuel Perry is the Sam K. Viersen Presidential Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma. He has authored or co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed academic journal articles, and has authored or co-authored five books, including Taking America Back for God , as well as The Flag and the Cross . He’s also written for such journalistic outlets as The Dallas Morning News , Time Magazine , and...

David Gans is Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights & Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center. In this episode, we discussed voting rights and redistricting, with an emphasis on the Louisiana v. Callais case that is set to be reargued before the Supreme Court on October 15, 2025. OTHER LINKS -- Merrill v. Milligan (later retitled Allen v. Milligan ) oral argument -...

Kimberly Rios is Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She studies intergroup threat and also psychological issues at the intersection of religion and STEM. In this episode, we discuss the psychology of intergroup threat, applications to a salient contemporary case, and also issues involving religion and STEM. OTHER LINKS --Informational video on EPIC City --WFAA...

Paul Gowder is Professor of Law at the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University, in Chicago. He's the author of several books, including The Rule of the Law in the Real World , and The Rule of Law in the United States: An Unfinished Project of Black Liberation . In this episode, we discuss the history and current status of the rule of law in the U.S., exploring connections to the historic...

Arthur Remillard is Professor of Religious Studies and Department Chair of Theology and Philosophy, as well as Dean of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engingeering, Arts, and Mathematics) at Saint Francis University, in Loretto, Pennsylvania. He is author of the book Southern Civil Religions , as well as a new book, Bodies in Motion: A Religious History of Sports in America . OTHER LINKS --"Civil Reli...

Mikey Pasek is a social psychologist, and is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago. He leads the Belief, Identity, and Group Relations Lab at UIC. We discussed a range of topics, including religion, big and moralizing gods, Christian nationalism, race, and how to alter anti-democratic attitudes. OTHER LINKS --White House Executive Order: Eradicating Anti-Christ...