Terrell J Starr Official

Black Diplomats is back with Alexa Kellogg-Kurmanova, a PhD student in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Terrell met Alexa at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies conference in New Orleans and they hit it off immediately. Kellogg-Kurmanova is a queer Black woman from Chicago, and her husband is a trans man from Kyrgyzstan. She speaks Russian and has...

Welcome back! Black Diplomats is back from our hiatus with an update from Terrell about plans for the show and an all new interview. Our guest today is Alexa Kellogg-Kurmanova, a PhD student in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Terrell met Alexa at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies conference in New Orleans and they hit it off immediately. Kellog...

Haiti has been hit with another earthquake just weeks after the assassination of their President. As the world struggles to find ways to help one thing has become clear: the condescending Euro-centric model of aid has very little to offer. On this week’s episode of Black Diplomats host Terrell Starr welcomes Emma Ashford to talk about how the world community has failed Haiti, and what we’re suppos...

Hello everyone, Mike here, the producer of Black Diplomats. We have a couple of short announcements this week, so I thought I’d jump on your feed for the update. Terrell is dealing with a family emergency right now, so our regular episodes are postponed for a couple weeks. Please keep him in your thoughts. In more lighthearted news, we recently received a grant from the Ploughshares Fund to do a s...

After 100 years of lobbying the US government has finally recognized the Armenian genocide, carried out by the Turkish government in the transition out of the Ottoman empire. On this episode of Black Diplomats host Terrell Starr talks to Sophia Armen, a scholar and activist who lost eight members of her family in the genocide. She is the third generation of activists in her family who have fought...

The Republic of Georgia has a storied history in the heart of the Caucasus mountains. Host Terrell Starr first went there after the fall of the Soviet Union when they were still struggling to figure out a new way of life. In today’s episode of Black Diplomats he talks about that critical time, for him and for the nation of Georgia. He talks about living in the region as a Black man, and how he fou...

This week on Black Diplomats we’ve got a new format and new guests, but have faith - we’re still taking aim at white supremacist imperialism, and there’s nothing new about that. We’re all about giving platform to people who don’t get invited into mainstream media, and we’ve done a great job of it. We also want to broaden the foreign policy conversation by bringing in new audiences. One of the barr...

President Biden announced that he wants all US troops out of Afghanistan by 9/11/21, two decades after the attack that ostensibly launched our global war on terror. As usual, we’re hearing plenty of opinions from people who’ve never been there and don’t know what they’re talking about. This week on Black Diplomats host Terrell Starr is talking to three vets who have multiple tours in Afghanistan a...

There’s a lot happening in Florida right now! From whatever the hell is going on with Matt Gaetz, to the governor acting like the pandemic is over, and the state legislature trying to restrict voting. Of course there are progressives all over the state fighting back, but where are the Democrats? This week Black Diplomats welcomes Pam Keith to try to make sense of it all. Keith ran for congress in...

On this week’s episode of Black Diplomats we’re sharing an interview Terrell did on The Power Vertical , a podcast about Russian politics hosted by Brian Whitmore. They talk about Terrell’s op-ed in The Washington Post on Alexi Navalny, how race works in the former Soviet states, and what the US has to do to weaken Russian government interference in our society. How can we deal with urgent issues...

The political crisis in the Republic of Georgia continues. Parliament still isn’t functioning, and the accusations of creeping authoritarianism against the ruling party are getting louder. On this episode of Black Diplomats host Terrell Starr talks to George Khelashvili, an MP in the ruling Georgian Dream party. Khelashvili compares the situation in Georgia to the polarization in the United States...

The country of Georgia is one of the former Soviet states still fighting for autonomy from the Kremlin. With the ongoing Russian military occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it’s not just an academic discussion. Today on Black Diplomats we have Dr. Sergi Kapanadze, a professor and politician in the Georgian opposition party. Kapanadze explains why his party has decided not to take their seat...

Matt Duss is one of the good ones. A foreign policy advisor for Sen. Bernie Sanders, Duss is one of the folks in Washington trying to lead our government away from neoliberalism. After a career in progressive think tanks and left-leaning media, Duss started working for Bernie Sanders shortly after Trump was elected. They’ve got a lot done by D.C. standards, including the first invoking of the War...

On this episode of Black Diplomats, host Terrell Starr convenes a panel of experts to talk about the recent decision by Amnesty International to revoke the “prisoner of conscious” status from Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Starr wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about the decision this week, criticizing the simplified discourse in the West. In order to bring some nuance to the conve...

This is the episode of Black Diplomats where Rep. Karen Bass starts the soft diplomacy on Terrell, trying to talk him into joining the State Department! Bass represents California’s 37th district in Los Angeles, and is a fierce advocate for all the good things. As Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa she has regular contact with folks from the Continent and a lot of good ideas...

Today on Black Diplomats we’re honored to host Alicia Garza, one of the three co-founders of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, and Shaw San Liu, Executive Director at the Chinese Progressive Association. They’ve known each other for many years, after meeting as on-the-ground organizers from their respective communities who were looking to find solutions to common problems. Host Terrell Starr...

On this week’s episode of Black Diplomats, host Terrell Starr does what very few American journalists do - talk to Iranians about Iran. Iran is surrounded by nuclear armed adversaries and American military bases. It is reasonable for them to feel threatened, but that’s a perspective we rarely hear in the U.S. media, because we keep being force fed the same crewcut white boys going on about the mul...

Pam Keith has a unique perspective from growing up in Turkey, Morocco, Syria, Brazil, and several U.S. cities, as the daughter of Ambassador Kenton Keith. She was an Officer in the Navy and a lawyer with some of the largest firms in the nation, before running for Congress from the 18th district in Florida. Host Terrell Starr has lots of questions! Their conversation went for more than two hours, s...

Pam Keith has a unique perspective from growing up in Turkey, Morocco, Syria, Brazil, and several U.S. cities, as the daughter of Ambassador Kenton Keith. She was an Officer in the Navy and a lawyer with some of the largest firms in the nation, before running for Congress from the 18th district in Florida. Host Terrell Starr has lots of questions! Their conversation went for more than two hours, s...

Malcolm Nance is a security specialist, intelligence analyst, author, military vet, and much more. He’s also a Black man in America, and a Black Diplomat overseas. On today’s episode host Terrell Starr asks Nance-stradamus to break down the missteps of the Trump administration, and what Biden will have to do to repair the damage. As two people who have a deep understanding of the history of global...

Terrell appeared on the excellent show Pod Save the World, a podcast by Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes, two long serving members of the Obama administration. Rhodes introduces Terrell by pointing out that he isn’t just talking about changing policy, he’s helping change the whole mindset of American power. These guys get it. Rhodes talks about being in rooms where Obama was the only one who isn’t whit...

This week on Black Diplomats we’re playing a recent episode of the Press the Button podcast from the Ploughshares Fund that features Terrell Starr talking about American nuclear policy, what “healing” means for our politics, and how white supremacy colors our views of our adversaries. It’s a great episode of the PTB podcast, and a fun opportunity to hear Terrell sit on the other side of the table...

On today’s episode of Black Diplomats , host Terrell Starr is joined by two military vets, Arti Walker-Peddakotla and Shaniyat Chowdhury, to talk about the violent white supremacist insurrection on January 6th, where supporters of disgraced ex-president Donald Trump brutalized Federal employees and vandalized the Capitol. At this point we’ve seen there were a lot of ex-military in the crowd, so Te...

The high-stakes Senate runoff in Georgia went to the Democrats - both Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won their special election races, defeating Republican incumbents to flip the Senate. One of the people we have to thank for this outcome is Ms. LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. Brown is a world traveller who brings a global perspective to American politics. Host Terrell Starr talk...

Happy new year, and welcome back to Black Diplomats ! On this episode host Terrell Starr welcomes National Security expert Asha Castleberry-Hernandez, and nuclear policy analyst Lovely Umayam to talk about what safety means in 2021. For all the bluster of the last four years, not even the US nuclear umbrella can protect us from COVID-19. Intro: 00:00: Terell, Asha and Lovely talk about what foreig...