Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the refugee crisis on Turkey’s southern border with Syria where local Kurdish families are fleeing from an offensive by the Islamic State or ISIL.Asli Bali, a professor at the UCLA School of Law where she teaches International Law, International Human Rights and the Laws of War, joins us to discuss whether Turkey will adopt a more aggressive posture towards ISIL now that Turkey’s diplomats held hostage by the Islamic State have been released, and how Turkey will cope with the influx of 130,000 refugees in recent day, on top of the more than 200,000 Syrians refugees already living in camps on the border.

Part 2

Then we get an update on the U.N. climate summit underway in New York and speak with Cleo Paskal, who is a Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London, and a consultant to the U.S. Department of Energy, NATO and the OSCE. She is the author of “Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map” and has been engaged in climate diplomacy in the Pacific on behalf of endangered island nations facing extinction from rising sea levels. We will discuss why the first and third biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, China and India, are not sending their heads of state to the summit which President Obama will address on Tuesday.

Part 3

Then finally, we examine how the Koch Brothers are radically increasing their donations to American universities, in particular targeting economics departments with grants to hire professors who share the Koch’s libertarian philosophy and will teach courses in “economic freedom”.Connor Gibson, a member of Greenpeace’s Investigations team who is the co-author of Greenpeace’s new report “Koch Pollution on Campus: Academic Freedom under Assault from Charles Koch’s $50 Million Campaign to Infiltrate Higher Education,” joins us to discuss how Koch investments in universities have skyrocketed from just seven universities in 2005 to 254 today.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Ukrainian president’s appearance before a joint session of Congress where he made a plea for U.S. military hardware over and above the non-lethal assistance Ukraine is getting, stating that “one can not win a war with blankets”. Robert English, a Professor of International Relations at USC who formerly worked as a policy analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense and the Committee for National Security, joins us to discuss the possibility that Ukraine’s Petro Poreshenko is courting the more hawkish Congress to put pressure on Obama to arm the Ukrainians at a point where there is a stalemate that is inviting a diplomatic settlement.

Part 2

Then, as Scots go to the polls in record numbers, we  look at the political ineptitude of British Prime Minister David Cameron who has missed signals at every turn that the up-or-down referendum he decided on could blow up in his face as his complacent ministers ignored warnings from civil service professionals that the “No” vote was not a sure thing and that the United Kingdom could soon be split in half. James Cronin, a professor of history at Boston College and an associate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University where he chairs the British Study Group, joins us to discuss Cameron’s self-inflicted political wounds as his action threaten to take the “Great” out of Great Britain.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the out-of-control outbreak of Ebola in West Africa which the U.N. Security Council has called a threat to global security. Gregory Koblentz, a Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University and a member of the Scientist Working Group on Chemical and Biological Weapons at the Center for Arms Control and author of “Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security”, joins us to discuss the role of the Pentagon in combating Ebola in Liberia and the virulence of Ebola that was weaponized as a biological weapon in the former Soviet Union.