Our founders knew how essential education is to have a functioning democracy. Teachers today face challenges more than one might imagine: balancing community demands with needs of individual students. In their new book, Dilemmas of Educational Ethics, authors Meira Levinson

Adam Hochschild has written best selling books about a Belgian King’s holocaust in the Congo and another about the brave British women who fought against the insanity of the first world war. His new book is Spain in Our Hearts:

Hundreds of thousands of people in France and elsewhere in Europe gather nightly. It is huge, but you probably have never heard of it. The blackout has been intentional. It’s more than a protest, it’s a serious movement. As Sorbonne

And not just for Palestinians. With the ascent of the nationalistic right, even Jewish Israelis are feeling the sting of government assaults on democracy. Allan Brownfeld, editor of the magazine of The American Council for Judaism, explains how democracy is

To research for his new book, Thomas Frank specifically went to pro-Bill Clinton sources. Yet what he found left a profoundly negative impression of his presidency and what it did to the Democratic Party. Author of 2004’s What’s The Matter

Q: When is a donation not a donation? A: When it’s an investment. It is a rare super wealthy philanthropist who gives without need of great public recognition? From feudal times, it has been in the interests of the baronial

A teenager kills another with his knife and is tried and sentenced as an adult. Is this the best we can do? Is justice served? In her new book: Boy with a Knife, activist, author and professor Jean Trounstine explores

American exceptionalism is a reality in terms of locking up almost 5 times as many citizens as all other advanced industrialized democracies. Over the last 40 years, the incarceration rate has skyrocketed by nearly 400 percent. How did we get

Tremendous wealth is being sheltered from taxation. The rules for the rest of us apparently don’t apply to the super rich of the world. But think about how that now-hidden wealth might help millions throughout the world. This is the

America Aflame is a major new interpretation of the civil war era. In this interview with author David Goldfield, light is shed into important dark corners, such as the tragic role played by evangelicalsm on both sides, why a post-war

It’s not just the rapacious, perhaps truly pathological greed of the super rich. The Supreme Court has actively participated in the devastation of the formerly-large middle class. According to law professor Michel Gilman, the US Supreme Court has taken a

“Our mother was not a spy, and her execution was wrongful… The government cannot return our mother to her loving family. But it can admit this miscarriage of justice…exonerate our mother” These words from guest on this show Robert Meeropol

How significant a change in policy toward Latin America does Obama’s trip to Havana mean? As Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy research explains, while the opening to Cuba is beneficial, it seems the American tradition

He’s a mirror of our culture, the question is: will America look in the mirror? Guest on this show is Erin Aubry Kaplan, author of the new book “I (heart) Obama,” and a long time writer about the black experience

http://media.blubrry.com/keeping_democracy_alive/dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48358971/Brexit.mp3The European Union was supposed to mean a continent of nations united by democratic ideals. Instead power and decision making has become more concentrated and centralized. First it was Greece, then Spain threatening to pull out of the EU, now

She may not be trusted on many things, but at least she never claimed to be a peace candidate. If you liked the Bush/Cheney policy of selective “humanitarian intervention,” you’ll be fine with Hillary Clinton’s positions. Researcher and author Nicolas

Throughout American history there have been times, rare moments in which the political establishment’s movers and shakers quiver as their best laid plans have gone awry. Their too-often successful efforts to keep citizens believing that we are powerless are on

Work hard, do well at school, play by the rules and you’ll do OK. That does not seem to apply to the more than 2 million young Americans whose parents may have fallen through the large cracks in our broken

The ice princess, the black widow. Since the circus of a trial on 1990, Pam Smart has remained in jail with a sentence worse than for Charles Manson. It was a made-for-the-movies spectacle in which the judge said he wanted

When the combined power of the Troika–European Central Bank, European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund–puts the squeeze of austerity on places like Spain and Portugal, a lot of people feel severe economic pain. But in the Iberian countries, they

Talk about threats to democracy and to America itself: The Trump phenomenon is blatantly racist, xenophobic, and fascist, more and more from both parties are recognizing this. Does Trump give voice to what many Americans secretly feel? In this discussion,

Chuck Collins, founder of Wealth for the Common Good and senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies talks about the new report on the top .01 percent and the impact on our democracy. They are not job creators as

The horror of ISIS terrorism today grew from the “peace” imposed by the most powerful Western nations on the former Ottoman Empire at the finish of the first world war, a war that never ended. Many more civilians were killed

SuperPACs are one of the greatest threats to what remains of democracy in the USA. These slippery legal entities circumvent campaign finance laws and enable huge money to own government and elections. The founders idea of democracy is destroyed by

Is there a worse crime than child abuse? Is the complicity by knowing adults just as bad? Is there something about the very nature of authoritarianism in schools? Guest on this show lived through an atmosphere of abuse in a

Of course America is a mosaic of cultures, and all citizens are equally American. But since 9/11, South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Americans have been routinely harassed and often bullied and terrorized, often by actual government policies. People are

In their chilling and intense new novel Broken! , authors Michael Kearns (who taught “enhanced interrogation”) and Ronald Solomon, former TV producer and creator, paint a vivid picture of a world only slightly different from today, filled with swarms of

While the left has had very few actual electoral victories, author Michael Kazin argues it has very effectively changed the nation. The author of “A Godly Hero: William Jennings Bryan,” talks about his new book “American Dreamers.” What’s gone right

http://media.blubrry.com/keeping_democracy_alive/www.dropbox.com/s/6issbyw42inhgle/ArabSpringRedux.mp3?dl=0It started out so promising: peaceful revolutions for self-determination. From Tunisia through Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and of course Syria. Now Tunisia is the only stable secular democracy, and on this show author and professor Rebecca Gordon sheds light on

It started out so promising: peaceful revolutions for self-determination. From Tunisia through Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and of course Syria. Now Tunisia is the only stable secular democracy, and on this show author and professor Rebecca Gordon sheds light on