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