Thomas Albert Howard, "Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History" (Yale UP, 2025)
A sweeping history of the violence perpetrated by governments committed to extreme forms of secularism in the twentieth centuryA popular truism derived from the Enlightenment holds that violence is so...
9 Jan 45min
Charles G. Thomas, "Ujamaa's Army: The Creation and Evolution of the Tanzania People's Defence Force, 1964-1979" (Ohio UP, 2024)
The immediate postcolonial moment brought both promise and peril for the states of Africa and their security. The process of decolonization generated instability, and the emergent Cold War caught up t...
8 Jan 57min
Mary E. Stuckey, "Remembering Jefferson: Who He Was, Who We Are" (UP of Kansas, 2025)
Mary E. Stuckey, the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, has a brilliant new book that dives into the question of who we are as Americans, a ...
8 Jan 41min
Dylan Loh, "China's Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy" (Stanford UP, 2025)
How has China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs transformed itself into one of the most assertive diplomatic actors on the global stage? What explains the rise of “wolf warrior” practices, and how should ...
7 Jan 34min
What happens when liberalism stops feeling like a victory and starts feeling like an exhaustion?
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director (acting) Eli Karetny speaks with philosopher Alexandre Lefebvre about liberalism not merely as a political doctrine, but as a lived way of life....
5 Jan 1h 25min
Florentine Koppenborg, "Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Florentine Koppenborg’s Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance (Cornell UP, 2023) begins with the understated observation that the triple disaster of March 2011 “exposed severe...
5 Jan 42min
James Greenwood-Reeves, "Justifying Violent Protest: Law and Morality in Democratic States" (Routledge, 2023)
Was the use of violence on January 6th Capitol attacks legitimate? Is the use of violence morally justified by members of Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil campaigners? Justifying Violent Protest:...
4 Jan 1h 14min
Philip A. Wallach, "Why Congress" (Oxford UP, 2023)
To achieve legitimate self-government in America's extended Republic, the U.S. Constitution depends on Congress harmonizing the country's factions through a process of conflict and accommodation. Why ...
31 Dec 202549min
