The Open Mind, Hosted by Alexander Heffner

Yale Law professor Justin Driver discusses constitutional law, the erosion of Brown v. Board of Education, and the struggle to preserve democracy. 

Political scientist Nicholas Buccola discusses his new book “The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America.

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Russian-American writer Anastasia Edel. She is author of the powerful New York Times Op-Ed The Tired and Poor Who Make America Great , which contends that as long as the Statue of Liberty stands, it renders Donald Trump an impostor; as well as author of Lightning Guides edition “Russia: Putin's playground: Empire, Revolution, a...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome  Sophie Ellman-Golan, a founding organizer for the Women's March. Now she helps lead Never Again Action, a mass mobilization of Jews who are organizing to shut down ICE and hold the political establishment accountable for enabling both the deportation machine that has separated immigrant families across the U.S. for decades and...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Malka Older, author of “Infomocracy” named one of the best books of 2016 by the Washington Post and author of sequels, “Null States” and “State Tectonics.” The full trilogy was nominated for the prestigious Hugo Award for Science Fiction. A humanitarian aid worker, an expert, Older was a fellow for technology and risk at the Carnegi...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Lawrence B. Benenson, co-owner and principal of Benenson Capital and founding member of and advisor to the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of Americans with incomes over $1 million dollars who are leading the charge to raise taxes on the rich and to combat political and income inequality. On the most pressing issues facing the Ameri...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Julie Salamon, a perceptive critic, prolific author and riveting storyteller. Her newest book is “An Innocent Bystander: The killing of Leon Klinghoffer.”  Daughter of Czech immigrants who were Holocaust survivors, Salamon was raised in Ohio, a rural village of 800 people where her father was a town doctor. A veteran of the New York...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Dan Abrams, the chief legal affairs anchor for ABC News and CEO and founder of Abrams Media. He also hosts Live PD on A & E Network and the Dan Abrams Show Where Politics Meets the Law on Sirius XM.  He is author of the new book “Theodore Roosevelt For The Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy.” As NPR recounts, “It&a...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome the brain trust of the newly inaugurated Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Trita Parsi and Stephen Wertheim. Trita is cofounder and executive V.P. of the Quincy Institute and founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council. Stephen is cofounder and research director of the Quincy Institute and resear...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Karim Amer, Director of The Great Hack.   On his quest for digital justice, Parsons School of Design professor David Carroll joined us last year to discuss his suit against Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for violating his right to personal data. As we filmed our episode a Netflix crew surrounded us and trailed Carroll's journ...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Susan Smith Richardson, the newest CEO of the Center for Public Integrity. Our viewers may remember our last conversation on ‘leaks with integrity’ with predecessor Peter Bale, a former CEO as well. Formerly editorial director of newsroom practice change at Solutions Journalism Network, Susan Smith Richardson has edited leading news...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Frank Bowman III, professor of law at the University of Missouri and visiting professor at Georgetown Law. A constitutional scholar, his new book is “High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump,” and it's a Cambridge University Press title.  I wanted to get right to it. We're recording in th...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Ed Lopez-Reyes to continue our discussion of the national popular vote movement with one of its most important grassroots advocates on the eastern seaboard.  A Connecticut-based Republican strategist Lopez is chief consultant of Wolf and King Strategies and served on the Joint Intelligence Operations Center Europe Analytics Center i...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Steven Knott, professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, Knott, co-chair, the presidential oral history program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at U. Va. Today, we consider the historical and contemporary character of the nation. “The Lost Soul of the American Presidency” is...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome two leading organizers in the movement to rebuild and preserve American democracy.  Ethan Todras-Whitehill is the cofounder and executive director of Swing Left. Prior to the election of Trump, he was a writer, journalist, and teacher. After the 2016 election, he decided to step off the sidelines and become more politically active....

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Dr. Jonathan Metzl, professor of sociology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University where he also directs the Center for Medicine, Health and Society. He is research director of the Safe Tennessee Project, a nonpartisan volunteer-based organization that's concerned with gun-related injuries and fatalities in America and in Tenne...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Yale University philosopher Jason Stanley, author of the edifying and essential Random House volume “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.” Stanley told Dana Milbank of the Washington Post that the Trump rendition of these tactics “uses emotion to circumvent reason, to overwhelm reason, wanting us to get the situation in w...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Jon Gertner, science writer for the New York Times Magazine . His first book “The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation” chronicled the exploits of a generation of scientists at the world's greatest laboratory.  Gertner is here to discuss his newest book by Random House “The Ice at the End of the Worl...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Brenda Wineapple, author of the recently released and critically acclaimed “The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation” heralded as a “riveting and absorbing book” by The New York Times and both “a guidebook” and “cautionary tale for our times” by the Boston Globe . The subject today: impeachment Thad...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, to discuss sanctions, tariffs, American energy, and national security.  Nephew is the author of “The Art of Sanctions: A View From the Field.” He was previously Principal Deputy Coordinator for Sanctions Policy at the Department of...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome John Bracken. We've been tracking the progress of the Digital Public Library of America since it's genesis: first with its founding visionaries, Robert Darnton and John Palfrey, then with its inaugural executive director Dan Cohen, and today with its second and current leader, John Bracken.  As I described it then, the DPL...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Jonathan Haidt. Haidt is the Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, based in the Business and Society program at New York University, a social psychologist whose research examines the intuitive foundations of morality. He’s coauthor of “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Maura O'Connor, a journalist who writes about the politics and ethics of science, technology and conservation. A former Knight Science MIT journalism fellow, O'Connor's work has appeared online in Slate and Foreign Policy in the New Yorker , Harpers , Undark, with investigations covering the disappearances and Sri Lan...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Arien Mack and Kian Tajbakhsh.  Mack is a professor of psychology at the New School. She founded the New University in Exile Consortium, described as an expanding group of universities and colleges publicly committed to the belief that academic community has both the responsibility and capacity to assist persecuted and endangered sc...

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey, vice chair of the Democratic Governors Association who will assume the chairmanship in 2020.  New Jersey became the latest state to raise incrementally it's hourly minimum wage to $15 after the Governor signed into law a measure phasing into action that higher rate over five years. “For far t...