The Signal

The Beacon’s Emily Smith Interviews Boston University Geneticist Shoumita Dasgupta on Her New Book, Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins

Shoumita Dasgupta is the daughter of Bengali immigrants, a woman of color in STEM, and a scientist, educator, and geneticist. She is Professor of Medicine and Assistant Dean of Diversity & Inclusion at Boston University, a Fulbright Specialist, and a member of the inaugural cohort of faculty affiliates at the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.
Cyril first came across Shoumita’s work when the Beacon republished a piece she wrote for The Conversation entitled “Mass Deportations Don’t Keep Out ‘Bad Genes’: It’s Scientific Racism That’s Used to Justify Xenophobic Immigration Policies.” Well it turns out she grew up in Central PA and was childhood friends with our Publisher Emily Smith. So for today’s special International Women’s Day episode of the Signal, Emily takes over the hosting responsibilities and speaks with Shoumita about her work, and her new book Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA, which was just published in February.
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READ: 
Trump’s Executive Orders Seek to Erase Scientific Truth
Mass Deportations Don’t Keep Out ‘Bad Genes’: It’s Scientific Racism That’s Used to Justify Xenophobic Immigration Policies
Music by Maf é Tulà and Cartas a Felice, "La Loca." Panela Music. 
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Kadida Kenner Is Defending Democracy and Voting Rights in Pennsylvania

Kadida Kenner is the founding Chief Executive Officer of the New Pennsylvania Project. Kadida is a tireless advocate for social and economic justice issues and is motivated to empower and excite the electorate to enthusiastically vote in every election — all the way down the entire ballot.
Kadida has led efforts to stop the passage of a judicial gerrymandering constitutional amendment, raise the minimum wage, fairly fund public education, protect federal courts from problematic judicial nominees, and protect the state courts from extremist attempts to undermine their independence.
Kadida also serves as co-chair of Why Courts Matter – Pennsylvania, an advocacy campaign of the New Pennsylvania Project, seeking to protect the independence of our state and federal courts and educate the electorate about their importance. 
I first spoke to Kadida Kenner 3.5 years ago when I was writing a progressive column for the conservative Bucks County Courier Times when her voting rights organization the New Pennsylvania Project had just launched. Since then her group has grown to 65 full- and part-time staffers across the commonwealth, and Kadida and her colleagues tireless advocacy in defense of democracy and voting rights is needed now more than ever.
She joins us today on The Signal to talk about her lifelong journey in civil rights activism and what the New Pennsylvania Project is currently working on in order to defend, expand, and strengthen voting rights and voter engagement across the state.
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ALSO LISTEN TO:
Author Elaine Weiss on the Four Little-Known Activists Who Were the ‘Beating Heart’ of the Civil Rights Movement
Karen Downer Has Fought Racism Locally Since She Was a Child in Pre-Civil Rights Bucks County
Black History Is a History of Resistance and Liberation, with Rann Miller
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Elaine Weiss on Her New Book ‘Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement’

Elaine Weiss is an award-winning journalist, author, and public speaker. She is the author of The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote and Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army of the Great War. She joins us today to talk about Her new book, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement, which comes out March 4th. Her book, which tells the story about how four ordinary citizens through social movement organizing affect change, offers valuable lessons for today as the country finds itself engaged in a new Jim Crow moment and a renewed battle over civil rights. 
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ALSO LISTEN TO:
Karen Downer Has Fought Racism Locally Since She Was a Child in Pre-Civil Rights Bucks County
Black History Is a History of Resistance and Liberation, with Rann Miller
Music by Maf é Tulà and Cartas a Felice, "La Loca." Panela Music. 
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Karen Downer Has Fought Racism Locally Since She Was a Child in Pre-Civil Rights Bucks County

Karen Downer recently stepped down as president of Bucks County NAACP after holding the position for six years. In this conversation, Downer shares her experiences growing up as a Black girl in Bucks County, her early involvement in civil rights activism, and her leadership role and work with the local NAACP. She discusses the challenges faced by the Black (and broader) community, particularly in education and policing. She emphasizes the importance of allyship and inclusivity in the ongoing fight for civil rights and racial justice.
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ALSO LISTEN TO:
Black History Is a History of Resistance and Liberation, with Rann Miller
How Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement Will Legalize and Deploy Vigilantes to Push Their Agenda, with David Noll
Former FBI Agent Who Once Infiltrated Neo-Nazi Groups and Militias Explains Why Law Enforcement Fails to Take Far-Right Extremism Seriously
Music by Maf é Tulà and Cartas a Felice, "La Loca." Panela Music. 
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The Money, Lies and God Behind the Authoritarian and Fascist Movement Seeking to Destroy American Democracy, with Katherine Stewart

Katherine Stewart is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, the award-winning book upon which the documentary feature, God & Country, produced by Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner, is based. She has covered the intersection of faith and politics for over 15 years; her work appears in the New York Times, The Washington Post, the New Republic, the Guardian, and Religion News Service and she has been featured on broadcast media outlets such as MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. Her 2012 book, The Good News Club, covered the religious right’s effort to infiltrate and undermine public education.
On Feb. 18th Stewart’s explosive follow-up to her 2020 book The Power Worshippers will be published. MONEY, LIES, AND GOD: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy  “exposes the inner workings of the ‘engine of unreason’ roiling American culture and politics, but aims at a bigger and more challenging target: how did we get to the point where there is an organized political movement within the United States that is working to destroy American Democracy? Furthermore, why have so many Americans turned against democracy?
Stewart takes readers to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist houses of worship, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down. She introduces us to reactionary Catholic activists, atheist billionaires, pseudo-Platonist intellectuals, self-appointed apostles of Jesus, disciples of Ayn Rand, women-hating opponents of ‘the gynocracy,’ pronatalists preoccupied with the dearth of white babies, Covid truthers, militia members masquerading as “concerned moms” and battalions of spirit warriors who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about attacking democracy at its foundations.”
Katherine joins us today to talk about her new book and the role Christian nationalism and the Christian right play in this broader, and ascendent authoritarian and fascist movement that has democracy in its crosshairs – both in the U.S. and abroad.
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ALSO LISTEN TO:
How Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement Will Legalize and Deploy Vigilantes to Push Their Agenda, with David Noll
Former FBI Agent Who Once Infiltrated Neo-Nazi Groups and Militias Explains Why Law Enforcement Fails to Take Far-Right Extremism Seriously
The Growing Fascist Threat To American Democracy, With Jeff Sharlet
The New Apostolic Reformation: A Revolutionary Theocratic Movement Coming For Pennsylvania, The Nation, And The World
Kristin Kobes Du Mez on Evangelical Support for Trump and Project 2025’s Christian Nationalist and Authoritarian Designs for the Nation
The Christian Right’s Crusade for Power and War on Democracy, with Katherine Stewart
Music by Maf é Tulà and Cartas a Felice, "La Loca." Panela Music. 
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Why Solidarity Journalism Can Help Restore Trust in Mainstream Media and Strengthen Democracy, with Dr. Anita Varma

Dr. Anita Varma is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Media at UT Austin where she focuses on media ethics. She leads the Solidarity Journalism Initiative at the university’s Center for Media Engagement. She received her Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University, and her dissertation, Solidarity in Action: A Case Study of Journalistic Humanizing Techniques in the San Francisco Homeless Project, received the inaugural Penn State Davis Ethics Award. Her research, teaching, and public engagement all focus on the role of solidarity in journalism. She believes journalism can help change the world for the better, and dedicates herself to helping journalists do their best work.
Anita joins us today to discuss the mainstream media’s credibility crisis and how solidarity journalism offers a way forward for the media industry to build public trust, strengthen democracy and better serve its audiences. 
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SOLIDARITY JOURNALISM RESOURCES: 
The Center for Media Engagement - Solidarity Journalism
Mainstream Media Faces a Credibility Crisis – My Journalism Research Shows How the News Can Still Serve the Public, by Dr. Anita Varma
Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Company, by Alice Driver
The Defender Handbook, by The Kansas City Defender and the Reynolds Journalism Institute 
Tahera Rahman
Cecilia Lei
285 South
The Texas Tribune 
Outlier Media
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Former FBI Agent Mike German Explains Why Law Enforcement Fails to Take Far-Right Extremism Seriously, Even Within Its Own Ranks

Mike German is a fellow with the Liberty and National Security program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. He has worked at the ACLU and served sixteen years as an FBI special agent, 12 of which he was tasked with combating domestic terrorism, sometimes going undercover and infiltrating white supremacist groups and militias.
German is the author of Thinking Like a Terrorist as well as Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Our Democracy. Today, he joins us to talk about his new book Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within, which comes out Jan. 7. In it, he urges law enforcement to prioritize combatting far-right violence and to finally end tolerance for racism and extremism within its ranks. 
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ALSO LISTEN TO:
How Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement Will Legalize and Deploy Vigilantes to Push Their Agenda, with David Noll
The Growing Fascist Threat To American Democracy, With Jeff Sharlet
BBC News Reporter Mike Wendling on His New Book ‘Day of Reckoning: The Far Right’s War on Democracy’
Interview with Alan Jenkins, author of 1/6: The Graphic Novel
Music by Maf é Tulà and Cartas a Felice, "La Loca." Panela Music. 
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How Donald Trump Will Deploy Vigilantes to Enforce His MAGA Agenda on America, with Rutgers University’s David Noll

David Noll is a professor of law at Rutgers University. An academic fellow of the National Institute for Civil Justice, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, the New York Law Journal, and many others. He clerked for Judges Pierre N. Leval and Raymond J. Lohier Jr. on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Judge Richard J. Holwell on the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
He joins us to talk about his new book, which he co-authored with Jon Michaels - VIGILANTE NATION: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy. We discuss the history of vigilantism in the country and how we can expect the second Trump Administration, with the help of the Christian right, to continue to normalize and legalize vigilante activities in order to serve and enforce this new militant, MAGA, political moment we find ourselves in after this past election.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, Google and iheart 
ALSO LISTEN TO:
The Growing Fascist Threat To American Democracy, With Jeff Sharlet
The New Apostolic Reformation: A Revolutionary Theocratic Movement Coming For Pennsylvania, The Nation, And The World
The Christian Right’s Crusade for Power and War on Democracy, with Katherine Stewart
Kristin Kobes Du Mez on Evangelical Support for Trump and Project 2025’s Christian Nationalist and Authoritarian Designs for the Nation
BBC News Reporter Mike Wendling on His New Book ‘Day of Reckoning: The Far Right’s War on Democracy’
Interview with Alan Jenkins, author of 1/6: The Graphic Novel
From the ‘Shadow Network’ to Christian Nationalists’ ‘Bad Faith’, with Journalist Anne Nelson
Music by Maf é Tulà and Cartas a Felice, "La Loca." Panela Music. 
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