Alex Hertel-Fernandez is Associate Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and the author of State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States – and the Nation. We discuss the efficacy of controlling state legislatures and implementing public policies to reshape the political terrain.

Billy Bragg is an acclaimed songwriter, activist, and author. We recently sat down in front of a live audience at Columbia University's Holder Initiative to discuss his latest book, The Three Dimensions of Freedom, the current state of Western Democracy, how we got here, and what we can do to make it better.

Ezra Levin is the Co-Executive Director of Indivisible, whose mission is to cultivate a progressive grassroots movement. We discuss the urgency of democracy reform, structural issues that relate to our nation’s history, and how we can achieve a democracy that truly reflects the will of the people.

Matthew Jones is a historian of science and technology at Columbia University. We examine the moral and ethical elements of big data, the big business of the surveillance of our personal information online, and how we can demand solutions that reflect our collective values.

Jonathan Lamontagne is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University School of Engineering. In his recent study, he finds that immediate global action is required for robust climate abatement. We discuss the narrow window that still remains for both a tolerable climate future and tolerable economic conditions.

Liz Willen is the Editor in Chief of the Hechinger Report, an independent, nonprofit, and award-winning newsroom that covers inequality and innovation in education. We discuss who is attending and completing college, who is not, and why higher education must be more widely accessible to all Americans.

James Knickman is a health economist and the Director of the Health Evaluation and Analytics Lab, a joint initiative on health policy and population health at NYU. We discuss the necessary components that contribute to better health outcomes in populations and how we can achieve them going forward.

Robing Steinberg is the founder and CEO of The Bail Project, an unprecedented national effort to combat mass incarceration by transforming the pretrial system in the US. We discuss how cash bail has been used to incarcerate millions of innocent people, what the collateral cost of this system is to our society, and how we should reconceive it.

Lynn Paltrow is the Founder and Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. We take a deep dive into the consequences of recognizing fetal personhood for the human rights of women and how reproductive health is at the center of the fight for equal rights.

Melissa Mark-Viverito is the former Speaker of the New York City Council and co-founder of the 21 in ’21 Initiative. She argues that electing women into government is critical for our society and democracy because their perspectives and experiences need to be represented in budgets, public policy, and legislation.

Rachel Leyland and Kendra Abel are public school teachers in Oklahoma City who participated in the walkout in April of 2018. We discuss how the walkout shed light on the problems caused by chronic underfunding of public education, the power of standing together to demand change, and the importance of supporting pro-education candidates for office. 

Ruth Milkman is a sociologist of labor and labor movements, and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and at the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies. We examine the role of unions for workers, the main factors of de-unionization, and the potential leadership by millennials in this space.