Dakota Access Pipeline, Middle East Panel, Rohingya Crisis
Dakota Access Pipeline Reversal Explained Guest: Deborah Sivas, JD, Professor of Environmental Law, director of Environmental and Natural Resources Law and Policy Program, Stanford University Just two months ago, the Obama Administration put the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline project on hold and ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to look for alternate routes. You’ll remember there were months of protests by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other supporters who fear the pipeline will endanger the nearby reservation’s water supply if it’s allowed to run beneath a lake on the Missouri River. Well, today, construction of the pipeline is back on and the developer expects it to be operational within three months. Work & Family: You Can’t Have it All Guest: Myra Strober, PhD, Professor Emerita, Stanford University “Can I have it all?” is the question labor economist Myra Strober says she got more than anything else from women in her course titled “Work and Family” at Stanford University. Her response was “No, you can’t have it all. Nobody can.” She wasn’t trying to discourage her students from pursuing demanding careers and having families. But her pioneering research in workplace inequality and her personal story both illustrate just how hard it’s always been for women to do both well. The Ivory Tower of Academia Guest: Amy Schalet, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Every day on Top of Mind, we talk to scholars researching and writing about information that can help us all better understand our communities and make better decisions. But often it’s a challenge for these academics to boil down their life’s work into a message that resonates with the rest of us – and do it in a language we’ll understand. Academic speak really is like a foreign language. That’s where the Public Engagement Project at the University of Massachusetts Amherst comes in. It teaches academics how to be part of the public debate. Middle East Panel Guest: Steven Lobell, Political Science Professor, UofU; John Macfarlane, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, UVU; Fred Axelgard, BYU Wheatley Institution President Trump’s executive order banning travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and halting the flow of all refugees into the US is still on hold, pending a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. So, for the moment, people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen can travel to the US and refugees from Syria are still welcome. Muslim Minority Terribly Mistreated in Myanmar Guest: Michael Kugelman, Deputy Director of the Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson Center Reports coming from UN officials and aid workers out of the South Asian country of Myanmar are grim. In the country’s north-western region, more than a million members of an ethnic group called Rohingya Muslims live in apartheid-like conditions. They’re denied citizenship and other rights. Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled over the border to Bangladesh, where they’re also despised and rejected, living in camps. And last week a UN report documented mass killings and gang rapes against the Rohingya by Myanmar government forces in the last several months. The horrors very likely amount to crimes against humanity, the report says. It also notes that the international community has largely ignored the plight of the Rohingya.