The Modern Scholar Podcast

Dr. Max Smeets is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH Zurich and Director of the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative. He is the author of No Shortcuts: Why States Struggle to Develop a Military Cyber-Force from Oxford University Press and co-editor of two additional cyber-related titles, from Georgetown University Press and Edinburgh University Press, respec...

Shelby Fleming holds a BFA in Studio Art from the Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville and an MFA from the University of Arkansas School of Art with an emphasis in Digital Fabrication. She serves as the Fabrication and Robotics Lab Coordinator at the Fayetteville Public Library in Northwest Arkansas. In her first year she has assisted with over 1800 patron projects, offered 240 STEAM based...

Happy New Year, and welcome to SEASON 5! It’s no secret that we are very interested in the publishing process here on The Modern Scholar Podcast , and I am very excited for today’s episode because we have an opportunity to explore a very interesting and very important part of that process—cover design. I have Scott Levine and William Oates with me today—Scott is the art director and William is a g...

Dr. Luke Truxal is an American military historian who focuses on the application of American air power during the Second World War. He received his M.A. and Ph. D. from the University of North Texas in 2011 and 2018. His teaching fields include Europe in the twentieth century, United States history, United States military history, and United States political history in the twentieth century. Truxa...

Dr. Raymond James Raymond is a retired British diplomat. He is an adjunct professor in the department of social sciences, United States Military Academy, adjunct fellow of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, Newport, Rhode Island, and professor emeritus of government and history at the State University of New York campus at Stone Ridge. He is the author of Elite Souls: P...

Dr. Katherine Kornei is a freelance science writer based in Portland, Oregon. She covers Earth and space science for outlets such as Science News , Scientific American , and The New York Times. Katherine has reported stories from Asia, Europe, and the United States. She holds a BS in astrophysics from Yale University and an MS and PhD in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles. Th...

Dr. Suzanne Sutherland is an Associate Professor of History and General Education Director at Middle Tennessee State University . Dr. Sutherland’s teaching and research focus on the relationships between war and other developments in the early modern period including the scientific revolution, the republic of letters, and the growth of states and empires. Dr. Sutherland has been involved in multip...

Dr. Terilyn Johnson Huntington is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she also works with the Center for Teaching Excellence, is involved with student mentorship programs, and serves on the Faculty Senate. Dr. Huntington received her MA and PhD in political science from the University of Kansas, but prior to her time at Kansas she also completed...

Dr. Katherine Carroll is an Associate Professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. She earned her MA (1996) and PhD (2001) from the University of Virginia’s Department of Politics with a specialization in the comparative politics of the Middle East. She came to Vanderbilt University in 2001 as the Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Science. After five years in administration, sh...

Major Ben Griffin is the Chief of the Military History Division in the History Department at the United States Military Academy. He is the author of the recently published Reagan’s War Stories which examines how the Reagan Administration used fiction to think about the military balance of power in Europe and throughout the world. Ben holds a PhD and MA in History from the University of Texas at Au...

Dr. David Gellman is Professor of History at DePauw University, where he has taught since 1999. His book Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York was published in Spring 2022 by Three Hills, and imprint of Cornell University Press. Among his other publications are Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777-1827 and Jim Crow New York: A Documentary H...

Today I visited the Twinsburg Public Library in Twinsburg, Ohio to deliver a book talk about my book Rise of the Mavericks—the last book event of the year! It was a very special opportunity, because this is the library where I started my library career, first as a volunteer and then as a page, shelving books! Cari is the assistant director here, and so we took a few minutes to visit about the libr...

Betsy Rohaly Smoot is an intelligence historian interested in early twentieth-century cryptology and communications who has published articles in both Cryptologia and Intelligence and National Security . She spent 34 years at the National Security Agency as an analyst, manager, and, for her final ten years, as a historian in the Center for Cryptologic History. She is the author of the newly releas...

Dr. Rebecca Sharpless is a Professor of History at Texas Christian University, where she teaches American history, women’s history, history of food in America, the history of Texas, and Southern history. She is a past-president of the Oral History Association, a past-president of the Southern Association for Women Historians, and she has also served on the Executive Council of the Texas State Hist...

Dr. Jacqueline Hazelton is Executive Editor of the journal International Security at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Hazelton came to the Belfer Center from the Naval War College where she was an Associate Professor in the Department of Strategy and Policy. At the Naval War College, Hazelton taught strategy and policy to U.S. and internati...

Dr. Karin Wulf is a Professor of History at Brown University and the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library . Before coming to the John Carter Brown Library and Brown University in 2021, she was the Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture a and Professor of History at William and Mary. A historian o...

Dr. Kari Frederickson is a professor of history and past chair of the department of history at the University of Alabama. She is author of The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 and coeditor of Making Waves: Female Activists in Twentieth-Century Florida. She is also the author of Cold War Dixie: Militarization and Modernization in the American South, which is the subject of...

Dr. Edward B. Westermann received his PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is a Regents Professor of History at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. He has published extensively in the areas of the Holocaust, genocide, and German military history. He is the author of four books and two co-edited volumes including Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East (...

Katie Stallard is a senior editor at the New Statesman magazine where she writes about China and global affairs. She’s also a non-resident global fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., and she has written for various publications including The Atlantic , Foreign Policy , The Wall Street Journal , and The Diplomat , and has appeared as an analyst for multiple media outlets. Previously bas...

Dr. Brian Laslie is the Command Historian at the United States Air Force Academy. He previously served as the Deputy Command Historian at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and  as the Historian, 1st Fighter Wing, Langley Air Force Base, home to the 94th and 27th Fighter Squadrons. A 2001 graduate of The Citadel: The Military C...

Eric Jay Dolin is the author of fifteen books, including Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America , which was chosen as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe , and also won the 2007 John Lyman Award for U.S. Maritime History. His most recent book before Rebels at Sea is A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes , which...

Dr. Mark Stout is former Senior Lecturer in the Governmental Studies department at Johns Hopkins University. From 2013 to 2021 he was the director of the MA in Global Security Studies and he directed the post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Intelligence from 2014 to 2019. He previously worked for thirteen years as an intelligence analyst, first with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and R...

Rachel Bair is the Director for Sustainable Food Systems at Kalamazoo Valley Community College , where she has led the development of programming that focuses on sustainability and community economic development in the food system, including the launch and growth of the ValleyHUB food hub at the Food Innovation Center. Prior to her role at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, Rachel worked in the n...

Dr. Cameron Zinsou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Dr. Zinsou received his Ph. D. in History at Mississippi State University, and his master’s and bachelor’s in History at the University of North Texas. He is an active member of the Society for Military History and served as the Graduate...

*Apologies for a slight difference in audio quality on today's episode.* Ali Wyne is a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s Global Macro-Geopolitics practice, focusing on US-China relations and great-power competition. He has served as a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a research assistant at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a policy...