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Today’s guests on Black Diplomats are Pam Campos-Palma and Melissa Bryant, two women who have complicated relationships with America. Both women are military vets, one the daughter of immigrants, one a fourth-generation service member. Both were taught that the military is a pathway to prosperity. Both experienced the racism and misogyny that are defining parts of living in America, and both perse...

Jerwayne Cook was an Operations Manager who worked at the CIA for over a decade during the height of the War on Terror. He has seen nations fall into civil war, experienced radical terror first hand, and dismantled networks aiming to destabilize governments. And that’s why he’s worried about America. Host Terrell Starr talks to Cook about what kind of assessments the Agency would be making if anot...

The 2020 election is mostly wrapped up and one of the big takeaways is the profound effect of BIPOC organizers nationwide, from the Stacey Abrams juggernaut in Georgia, to the turnout among Native Americans in Arizona, even as Covid-19 ravages their communities. Today on Black Diplomats, host Terrell Starr talks to activist Dr. Melina Abdullah and journalist Anoa Changa about what Democrats owe BI...

On this episode of Black Diplomats, host Terrell J. Starr is joined by the two people who got him into podcasting: Maria Hinojosa and Julio Ricardo Varela, hosts of the In The Thick podcast. The 2020 election for President of the United States was this week, and it looks like Joe Biden is going to win the Electoral College count, as well as the popular vote. What happens in the courts is yet to be...

kleptocracy noun klep·toc·ra·cy | \ klep-ˈtä-krə-sē \ plural kleptocracies : government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed also : a particular government of this kind On this episode of Black Diplomats host Terrell J. Starr is joined by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa, founders of the podcast juggernaut Gaslit Nation . Terrell asks them to define wh...

Today’s episode of Black Diplomats is a primer on the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region in the mountains between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Host Terrell J. Starr talks to Lika Zakaryan, a journalist who has spent her life in Nagorno-Karabakh, known as Artsakh to the locals. Over 90% of the population of Artsakh is ethnically Armenian, but due to political wrangling in the Soviet era it is co...

On Black Diplomats this week, host Terrell J. Starr is joined by two experts in world affairs to talk about President Trump’s foreign policies, and how he has tried to use the State Department to further his own interests. What does having a White Supremacist in Chief mean for American relations with the countries in Africa? They also discuss the advantages of diversity in the diplomatic corps fro...

Black Diplomats is back to talk about nuclear non-proliferation with two experts from Eastern Europe - Polina Sinovits from Ukraine, and Ekaterina Mikhaylenko from Russia. Both women study, write, and teach about the way nuclear weapons affect international relations, and the massive, stupid threat they pose to the world. Host Terrell J. Starr has interviewed many experts in the field and contribu...

This is the third episode in our special coverage of the revolution in Belarus. After their last election was rigged to keep a dictator in power, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand he step down. Top activists have been prosecuted, causing well known politicians and journalists to flee the country in fear for their safety. Host Terrell J. Starr talked to Katsiaryna...

Volodymyr Dubovyk has a resumé that is long enough to make you dizzy. He is a faculty member in the International Relations department at Odessa I. I. Mechnikov National University and an expert on the foreign policy of the US and Ukraine. As Ukraine’s leading “Americanist”, he often travels in the States to speak on Eastern Europe, and travels Eastern Europe to speak on the States. This cross-cul...

Mike Espy was born and raised in Mississippi, and was Assistant Secretary of State, then Assistant Attorney General, before becoming a Congressman in 1986. He was the first Black congressman from Mississippi since Reconstruction, and then became Secretary of Agriculture under Bill Clinton, the first Black person to hold that position in our nation’s history. Now Espy is running to replace Cindy Hy...

On this episode of Black Diplomats we’re talking to three Transgender Black Women in three different countries about what liberation looks like for them. There is more transgender representation in media and politics than ever before, but transgender people still have to deal with hate and misgendering. Host Terrell J. Starr brings together a brilliant panel of activists from the US, Nigeria, and...

When asked about the security services in Belarus, journalist Hanna Liubakova has a simple message: “There are no rules.” Black Diplomats host Terrell J. Starr interviews Liubakova about the ongoing protests in her country, and the brutal methods being used to shut them down. As a frontline journalist Liubakova and her colleagues have documented the beatings, arrests, and other crowd control metho...

This week on Black Diplomats , host Terrell J. Starr welcomes Maryia Sadouskaya-Komlach, a media development specialist who has lived and worked all over Europe, but is from Belarus. There have been nationwide protests in her home country for more than a month at the time of this recording, with the goal of ousting dictator Alexander Lukashenko and establishing a democracy. “The constitution of Be...

In this very special episode of Black Diplomats, host Terrell J. Starr takes a break from the news cycle to talk about going abroad as a Black person from America. He’s been in the Carpathian mountains in Ukraine for a few weeks, away from the hustle and noise of New York, enjoying the countryside. With the separation comes a kind of clarity. Terrell talks about the pressures of being Black, and t...

On this episode Black Diplomats welcomes Asha Castleberry and Richard S. Brookshire III, two members of the Black Veterans Project. They provide an insiders perspective of life on deployment, how the military industrial complex doubles as America’s biggest federal jobs program, and how they feel President Trump is doing with our armed forces. Terrell’s mother and father both served in the Army, so...

In this week’s episode, I break down what I think the Biden/Harris ticket could mean for the future of American foreign policy. I cited a lot of numbers and other things dealing with climate change, defense spending and other topics to support my arguments, so I am linking out to a lot of those sources here. Remember, these links are just starting points for you to do your research. I am just citi...

Painter Aïcha Sacha grew up in a little village in Germany. Her father was from Germany and her mother from Benin in Africa, and she says there were no other Black people in town. This experience of feeling as if she were on display followed her in Germany, and made its way into her paintings. Last year Sacha moved to Marseille in France as part of her effort to focus full time on her art. Her wor...

Black Diplomats takes a deep dive into the global struggle for human rights with an episode about LGBTQ+ pride in Russia and Eastern Europe. As activists build their movement, they watch government propaganda, religious authorities, and far-right extremists join together to protest every step toward equality, often with violent results. Pride parades are celebrations in many places around the...

Beatrice Fihn is not playing. She has a Law degree from the University of London and a Bachelors in International Relations from Stockholm University. She also has a Nobel Peace Prize, accepted in her role as Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. According to her website Fihn has spent more than a decade working in disarmament diplomacy and civil society mobi...

Celina Caesar-Chavannes is a powerful businesswoman who lives in Whitby, Canada. In 2014 she decided to run for office and won, becoming the only Black woman in the Parliament of Canada. Caesar-Chavannes was appointed the Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a highly sought-after role, but she became frustrated by the lack of aggressive action to repair Canada’s deepest wounds...

Jessica Nabongo is the first Black woman to document traveling to every country in the world. She is a writer and photographer, and now she's added lifestyle guru to her resumé with the founding of her travel company Jet Black. Nabongo was born and raised in Detroit to parents who immigrated from Uganda. Her family thought nothing of hopping on a plane to any destination, and after getting a gradu...

Disinformation from Russia was a big subject during the 2016 election for President of the United States, and 2020 is turning out to be no different. The US isn’t the only one dealing with this issue, in fact it’s a lively topic in former Soviet states all over Eastern Europe. Ukraine has gone so far as to ban a Russian-backed media organization, who responded by labeling it an attack on free spee...

Romani people in Eastern Europe are joining protests in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. That seems strange to some people, but not to Terrell, or any of the guests on this episode. Host Terrell J Starr talks about his experiences being a Black man from Detroit visiting Ukraine, Georgia, and other Eastern European countries. He tells stories of meeting folk who...

Host Terrell J Starr talks to Banchi Yimer about the kafala system in this episode of Black Diplomats. Yimer traveled from her native Ethiopia to Yemen in search of work, and took a job as a domestic servant in Lebanon. She was promised a fair wage and the right to make decisions about her life, but she soon found herself trapped inside the house with no money or even her passport. When she was ab...