The Baldy Center Podcast

Episode 29 of The Baldy Center Podcast features Anya Bernstein discussing judicial populism, the bureaucratic role of law clerks, and the dangers of exclusionary worldviews in law and society.

In Episode 28, Matthew Dimick explains Pareto optimality and the differences between income taxation and legal rules for wealth redistribution. He discusses capitalism, Marxism, and how economists measure the effects various methods of redistribution may have on the economy.

Episode 27 features Seth Parker Woods speaking about the cello and its use in classical music and performance pieces, including the ice cello. At the University at Buffalo, Dr. Woods is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar (2021-22) hosted by the Center for Diversity Innovation. In this podcast he discusses the Fluxus movement, Black composers, and using music and performance to create pieces that reflect events and social issues such as police brutality and the emotions they cause. This episode concludes with a performance by Dr. Woods of two pieces: Bach’s Allemande; and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay’s asinglewordisnotenough.

Episode 26 features Rachael K. Hinkle, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University at Buffalo. Dr. Hinkle speaks about her forthcoming book, co-authored by Morgan Hazelton, Persuading the Supreme Court: The Significance of Briefs in Judicial Decision Making. Hinkle discusses the process of analyzing tens of thousands of briefs, who’s allowed to submit these briefs, and how these documents and who wrote them can influence Supreme Court decisions.

Episode 25 features Victoria Wolcott, a professor in the UB Department of History at the University at Buffalo, speaks about her upcoming book, Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement. Wolcott discusses activists such as Martin Luther King Jr., Father Divine, and Howard Thurman, and how their shared belief in radical pacifism holds utopian yearnings.

In Episode 24 Daniel Brantes Ferreira, Baldy Center Research Fellow ('20-'22) discusses online sports betting and arbitration in Brazil. He describes how sports betting websites are hosted internationally, not in Brazil, and therefore those business operations are not regulated by Brazilian law. He identifies issues involving 'terms of services' on those websites. His research on mediation and other types of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) requires empirical data, as yet unavailable.  He offers an insider's perspective on Brazil's arbitration process, as an 'ADR-friendly' country. Brantes Ferreira, a professor at Universidade Cândido Mendes, is an arbitrator and vice president for academic affairs at the Brazilian Center of Arbitration and Mediation.

Episode 23 features Devonya Havis, PhD, a 2021-2022 UB Center for Diversity Innovation Distinguished Scholar, and, associate professor in Philosophy at Canisius College. Dr. Havis discusses her research examining the nature of truth and the importance of broadening the field of philosophy to include the ways in which people encountering struggle engage in critical engagement about their condition. Havis specifically explores community practices, black ancestral practices, as an archive or guide for practice on how to push back.

Episode 22 of The Baldy Center Podcast features Department of Sociology Assistant Professor Jordan Fox Besek. Besek discusses his new project with Brooklyn College professor Daniel Shtob, humanity’s relationship with nature, and climate change. He explores the ways in which humans effect the environment, sometimes producing poor outcomes despite green intentions, and the ripple effect those actions have.

From the heights of his long tenure at the University at Buffalo School of Law, in Episode 21 of The Baldy Center Podcast, Distinguished Professor John Schlegel discusses US economic history, American Legal Realism, and his lived experience with legal education over the last half century, in particular, Critical Legal Studies. In this extemporaneous conversation, Del Cotto Professor David Westbrook affectionately provokes Schlegel to grapple with the necessary and complex ongoing negotiations between our concepts of adventure and stability, serious and fun, the endeavor of intellectual freedom... and the Borg.

Episode 20 features David Herzberg, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of History, University at Buffalo. Herzberg discusses repeated waves of addiction to pharmaceutical opioids and other medicines in the 20th and 21st century U.S. Among other things, he examines how the predominantly white consumers labeled as “patients” were understood as innocent victims when they became addicted, while consumers who became addicted outside of medical channels were portrayed as dangerous criminals. Herzberg is the author of a history of addictive pharmaceuticals titled White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction, and co-author of a forthcoming book with Helena Hansen and Jules Netherland about how the politics of whiteness has shaped the history of opioids, opioid addiction, and drug policy in the United States.

Episode 19 features Helen Drew, Professor of Law, and Marissa Egloff, a third year JD candidate, in the University at Buffalo School of Law. Professor Drew and Ms. Egloff discuss their research examining the number of women and minorities in executive or coaching positions in professional sports. They are exploring why, even with proactive policies such as The Rooney Rule in the NFL, women and people of color find it difficult to obtain these “front office” positions. They are also exploring how nondiverse work environments can become toxic.

Episode 18 features Samantha Barbas, Professor of Law and Director of The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy in the University at Buffalo School of Law. Professor Barbas discusses her new book from University of Chicago Press (2021) The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst: Free Speech Renegade. In the 1930s and ’40s, Morris Ernst was one of America’s best-known liberal lawyers. The ACLU’s general counsel for decades, Ernst was renowned for his audacious fights against artistic censorship.

Episode 15 features Athena Mutua, Professor and Law and Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar in the University at Buffalo School of Law. Professor Mutua discusses the origins and goals of ClassCrits, which focuses on the heterodox, or political economy approach in law. She presents the new online journal, The Journal of Law and Political Economy and discusses ways in which ClassCrits engages with ongoing and on the ground activist work in significant social issues.

Episode 14 of our podcast series is about the work of the Alison L. Des Forges Memorial Committee, and its international symposia held at the University at Buffalo. Beginning in 2012, the symposia has been sponsored, in part, by The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy. This episode features Roger Des Forges, the group's co-founder. He is joined in discussion with the Committee co-chairs, Ellen Dussourd and Shaun Irlam. Together, they offer insight on aspects of sustaining the Alison Des Forges International Symposia. This year's event takes place April 30, 2021. Learn more, here.

Episode 13 features Victoria-Idongesit Udondian, interdisciplinary artist and University at Buffalo Center for Diversity Innovation Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art. Udondian discusses her new sculptural work The Republic of Unknown Territory on exhibit in the UB Arts Collaboratory. The work is focused on immigrants’ experiences in migrating and building society. Udondian art installation highlights the politics of the post-colonial global market in second-hand clothing. The gallery exhibit runs from February 27 to March 27, 2021, in The Space Between.

Episode 12 features Marie Jauffret-Roustide, PhD, Senior Fellow in Interdisciplinary Legal Studies at The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, and, Research Fellow at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, France. Jauffret-Roustide discusses the effectiveness of drug policies that are embedded in human rights and harm reduction, and compares them to repressive drug policies that are ineffective in protecting vulnerable people and the communities in which they live.

Episode 11 features Erkin Özay, assistant professor of Architecture at the University at Buffalo, School of Architecture and Planning. Özay discusses his new book “Urban Renewal and School Reform in Baltimore: Rethinking the 21st Century Public School” (Routledge 2021), and his holistic approach to the relationships among urban development, urban design, and schools.

Episode 10 features co-authors Waverly Duck, Distinguished Visiting Scholar, 2020-21, Center for Diversity Innovation, University at Buffalo, and Anne Rawls, Professor of Sociology at Bentley University. They discuss their new book, Tacit Racism (University of Chicago Press, 2020). Their research focuses on understanding how centuries of institutional racism have shaped interactions between white people and Black Americans into patterns of implicit bias and tacit racism. 

Episode 9 of The Baldy Center Podcast features Jessica Castner, a board-certified emergency nurse and an emergency nurse scientist. In 2014 she received a research grant from The Baldy Center, entitled, Complaint-Specific Protocols: Layers of Regulation and Emergency Nurse Scope of Practice.  In this podcast Castner discusses her current research and recent publication on nurse-initiated protocols in emergency departments, and offers perspective on policy and protocol impacts on pandemic emergency room care in hospitals.

Keywords: Health and Society, Health Policy, Regulation, Emergency Nursing, COVID-19, pandemic.

In episode 8 of the podcast Sarah Ludin discusses her developing book manuscript focused on the socio-legal history of the Early Reformation in Germany, which relies on close readings of 1521-1555 C.E. case files in the Holy Roman Empire to understand the historiography of secularism and the definition and significance of religion as a modern secular legal category.

Episode 7 features Daniel Platt, Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Springfield and former Baldy Center Postdoctoral Fellow. Professor Platt discusses his recent article “The Domestication of Credit,” focused on the moral politics of personal finance in 19th and 20th century U.S., paying specific attention to women’s contributions to household finances, to credit, debt, and financial institutions, and to the roles of coercion and discrimination in a debt economy.

Episode 6 of the podcast features David Gerber, emeritus professor of history at UB and Bruce Dierenfield of Canisius College. Professors Gerber and Dierenfield discuss their new book, focused on the Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District case at the crossroads of disability rights and church-state separation.

In Episode 5 of the podcast Jennifer Gaynor discusses her current research and her previous book, Intertidal History in Island Southeast Asia, which drew on European and Southeast Asian sources, as well as four years in Indonesia, where she worked with rare Bugis language manuscripts and lived in communities of Sama sea people.

Episode 4 of the podcast features Amanda Hughett discussing the history of prisoner labor unions. The work examines how efforts to litigate around prison conditions in the 1970s unintentionally cut against imprisoned people’s efforts to mobilize at the grassroots level.

Episode 3 of the podcast features David A. Westbrook, UB School of Law and Mark Maguire, National University of Ireland Maynooth. Professors Westbrook and Maguire discuss airport security and counterterrorism, and their new book, Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern (Routledge, 2020).

Episode 2 of the podcast features UB School of Law professor Irus Braverman discussing her upcoming workshop, Medical Posthumanities: Governing Health Beyond the Human. Braverman's work explores holistic approaches to health that include scientific, natural science discussions between ecologists and virologists that also takes into consideration social and cultural understandings and also legal norms.

Episode 1 of the podcast features UB School of Law professor Mark Bartholomew. Professor Bartholomew discusses the pandemic, contact tracing, and the tension between public health security and privacy in using technology to track the coronavirus. Mark Bartholomew received a 2018-2019 research grant from the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy to help support his research, “The Law of Advertising Outrage.”