Disagree with a Professor

For our Season 1 finale, Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle welcome Mary Kate Cary — UVA's Assistant Vice President and Deputy Chief of Staff in the Office of the President, founder and director of Think Again (the civic education initiative that created Disagree with a Professor), and a UVA alumna who spent her early career writing speeches at the White House for President George...

Can a machine have free will? The question sounds like science fiction — but Professor David Danks, who holds a distinguished professorship spanning philosophy, AI, and data science at the University of Virginia, thinks it’s one of the most important questions we face right now. In this episode of Disagree With a Professor, hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Pro...

Ever wondered what it's like to disagree with a professor face-to-face? In this bonus minisode, hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle pull back the curtain on the live events that inspired their podcast. They share memorable conversations from the University of Virginia's civil discourse initiative, discuss why students fear speaking up in class, and explore a controversial deba...

What if every college student had to take a philosophy class? And what if thinking about your own death every single day was actually good for you? In this episode of Disagree With A Professor, student hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle bring the statements, and Professor Carah Ong Whaley disagrees with them. Join us for two back-to-back discussions on philosophy education an...

Veganism, Ghosts & the Folding of Time | with UVA Professor Scott Miller What happens when a certified vegan, trained historian, and finance professor sits down with three students who came prepared to push back?   This week, Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Professor Scott Miller -- Assistant Professor of Business Administration at UVA's Darden School, Director...

What if democracy didn’t require a single vote? In Episode 5, hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Prof. Evan Pivonka — lecturer in Constitutionalism and Democracy at UVA — to debate some genuinely provocative ideas about power, education, and the future of civic life. First: the case for abolishing elections. Prof. Pivonka introduces “sortition” — randomly select...

What separates murder from terrorism? When does surveillance technology protect us versus invade our privacy? In this episode, UVA students Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Professor Ashley Waters-Gundersen. Gundersen, a UVA School of Law lecturer and former special counsel for Intelligence Affairs with the New York City Police Department, to tackle two of the most...

In this thought-provoking episode of Disagree With A Professor, UVA students Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down with Professor David Leblang to tackle one of the most contentious debates in American politics: isolationism versus globalization. Professor Leblang, the Miller Center's Randolph P. Compton Professor and Director of Policy Research, brings decades of expertise i...

Could mandatory military service unite a divided America—or make things worse? UVA students debate Professor Allan Stam, former Green Beret and distinguished political scientist, on military conscription, national service, and whether forcing young Americans into uniform would build character or destroy creativity. In This Episode: Professor Stam's journey from college dropout to Special Forces to...

Are the college years truly the best of your life, or are you being sold an expensive bill of goods? In this thought-provoking episode, UVA students Peter, Lydia, and McKayla sit down with Dr. Meg Jay—developmental clinical psychologist, bestselling author of The Defining Decade, and UVA faculty member—to wrestle with two competing cultural narratives about college. Dr. Jay challenges the hosts to...

What do terrorism law, American isolationism, the military draft, and the psychology of your 20s have in common?   They’re all things a University of Virginia professor has spent their career on — and three UVA students were brave enough to disagree with them, respectfully, on microphone.   Welcome to Disagree With a Professor. Hosts Peter McHugh, Lidia Zur Muhlen, and Makayla Castle sit down each...