In this special edition of Think Tank, “New Jersey’s Next U.S. Senator,” Steve Adubato sits down individually with Congressman Andy Kim (NJ-03), Democratic candidate, and Entrepreneur Curtis Bashaw, Republican candidate, to discuss their views on the issues that matter most to voters, including affordability, immigration reform, and abortion policy…

Steve Adubato welcomes Divakaran Manimaran, President and Founder of Piscataway High School’s Donate Life Club and NJ Sharing Network Youth Volunteer, to discuss how he educates his classmates and community about the importance of organ and tissue donation. Dr. Teik Lim, President of NJIT, joins Steve Adubato to discuss the future of higher educati…

In The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game (UNC Press, 2024), Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva offer an existential challenge to one of America's favorite pastimes: college football. Drawing on twenty-five in-depth interviews with former players from some of the country's most prominent college football teams, Kalma…

Steve Adubato speaks with Amy Torres, Executive Director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, to understand our current U.S. immigration policy and the reform measures needed. Then, Senior Correspondent Jacqui Tricarico goes on-location to the NJ Sharing Network 5K Celebration of Life event to speak with Nancy Nusbaum, Double Eye Corne…

Perceptions of the United States as a nation of immigrants are so commonplace that its history as a nation of emigrants is forgotten. However, once the United States came into existence, its citizens immediately asserted rights to emigrate for political allegiances elsewhere. Quitting the Nation: Emigrant Rights in North America (UNC Press, 2024) r…

Steve Adubato welcomes Martha Minow, Professor at Harvard University and Author of Saving the News, for a compelling half-hour conversation about the role of media and journalism in our representative democracy. Show 615By Think Tank with Steve Adubato

Despite centuries of colonialism, Indigenous peoples still occupy parts of their ancestral homelands in what is now Eastern North Carolina--a patchwork quilt of forested swamps, sandy plains, and blackwater streams that spreads across the Coastal Plain between the Fall Line and the Atlantic Ocean. In these backwaters, Lumbees and other American Ind…

The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949 (UNC Press, 2022) explores the wartime partnership between China and the United States from the ground up. Beginning in 1941, and especially after Pearl Harbor, both sides had high hopes for wartime cooperation against Japan. But as The Tormented Alliance shows, ‘a m…

Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Ph.D., Author of “We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For” and Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, joins Steve Adubato to discuss how we as American citizens have the power to save our democracy, promote civil discourse, and lead change. Show 614By Think Tank with Steve Adubato

Steve Adubato sits down with William Hu, MD Ph.D., Director of the Center for Healthy Aging Research and Chief of Cognitive Neurology at Rutgers Health, to discuss the truth and the misconceptions about “long COVID.” Mussab Ali, Senior Advisor at Vote16 USA, talks about the national campaign to lower the voting age to sixteen for local elections an…

Barrett Young, CEO of the Rescue Mission of Trenton, joins Steve Adubato to examine the increasing homelessness in our state’s capital, the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision to criminalize homelessness, and the life-changing opportunities his organization provides. Then, Steve Adubato sits down with Jennifer Da Silva, Director of Operations at…

Steve Adubato is joined by Nadine Wright-Arbubakrr, Founder & Executive Director of Nassan’s Place, to examine the needs of children with autism and the future goals of her organization. Then, Steve Adubato is joined by Mariekarl Vilceus-Talty, President and CEO, and Emily Haines, Chief Nursing Officer, from the Partnership for Maternal and Child H…

From television to travel bans, geopolitics to popular dance, The Subject of Revolution: Between Political and Popular Culture in Cuba (UNC Press, 2024) explores how knowledge about the 1959 Cuban Revolution was produced and how the Revolution in turn shaped new worldviews. Drawing on sources from over twenty archives as well as film, music, theate…

Steve Adubato is joined by Michele Adubato, CEO of The North Ward Center and Founder of The Center for Autism, and Jonathan Seifried, Assistant Commissioner of the New Jersey Division of Developmental Disabilities, to discuss navigating the transition from childhood to adulthood for individuals with developmental disabilities. Show 612…

If you peer closely into the bookstores, salons, and diplomatic circles of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry is bound to appear. As a lawyer, philosophe, and Enlightenment polymath, Moreau created and compiled an immense archive that remains a vital window into the social, political, and intellectual fau…

In 1972, the Bureau of Indian Affairs terminated its twenty-year-old Voluntary Relocation Program, which encouraged the mass migration of roughly 100,000 Native American people from rural to urban areas. At the time the program ended, many groups--from government leaders to Red Power activists--had already classified it as a failure, and scholars h…

Steve Adubato welcomes Perry N. Halkitis PhD, Dean at Rutgers School of Public Health, for a special half-hour conversation about how politics and misinformation have impacted public trust in science and medicine in our country. Show #619By Think Tank with Steve Adubato

Anne Gray Fischer speaks about her path to and through research, including how sex workers informed her analysis of policing and state violence, the role of law enforcement in struggles over economic development, and the intellectual and practical factors of research design. Men, especially Black men, often stand in as the ultimate symbol of the ma…

Brandon McKoy, President, The Fund for New Jersey, joins Steve to discuss the foundation’s commitment to supporting New Jersey news and public affairs programming and informing citizens about important policy issues. Steve Adubato and “Think Tank” Correspondent Mary Gamba sit down with Carolyn M. Welsh, President & CEO of NJ Sharing Network, about …

Steve Adubato speaks with Chris Daggett, Board Chair and Interim Executive Director of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, to discuss the importance of supporting local news in marginalized communities and news deserts. Then, Steve Adubato sits down with Michellene Davis, Esq., President and CEO of National Medical Fellowships, to discuss …

Three impactful business leaders join Steve Adubato to examine the barriers that minority-owned businesses face in New Jersey, as highlighted in the NJ Statewide Disparity Study of Contracting Opportunities for Minority and Women-Owned Businesses. Panelists include: Marjorie Perry, President & CEO, MZM Construction and Management Company, Inc. Carl…

Myths about the powers held by the United States are often supported by the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, which derives its logic from the interpretation of a document that the US itself developed. Therefore, when pressure is placed on a specific legal precedent, the shallowness of its validity is revealed. Dr. Mónica A. Jiménez accomplishes t…

“Steve Adubato welcomes Batya Ungar-Sargon, Opinion Editor at Newsweek and Author of “Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women,” to examine the modern American Dream and the priorities of working-class voters ahead of the 2024 Presidential Election. Show #610By Think Tank with Steve Adubato

Today, the mention of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego conjures images of idyllic landscapes untouched by globalisation. Creatures of Fashion: Animals, Global Markets, and the Transformation of Patagonia (University of North Carolina Press, 2024) by Dr. John Soluri upends this, revealing how the exploitation of animals—terrestrial and marine, domesti…

As part of our Special Series “Addressing Youth Mental Health,” Kate Endries, LMSW, National Director of Trauma-Informed Practice at Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and Susan Haspel, State Director of Boys & Girls Clubs in New Jersey, sit down with Steve Adubato to have a meaningful conversation about their trauma-informed practices and how they’re …

In recent years, dozens of counties in North Carolina have partnered with federal law enforcement in the criminalization of immigration--what many have dubbed "crimmigration." Southern border enforcement still monopolizes the national immigration debate, but immigration enforcement has become common within the United States as well. While Immigrati…

A conversation with award-winning academic Dr. Shabana Mir discussing her book Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity (UNC Press, 2016) Interviewer: Sofia Rehman.By New Books Network

Pivoting from studies that emphasize the dominance of progressivism on American college campuses during the late sixties and early seventies, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd positions conservative critiques of, and agendas in, American colleges and universities as an essential dimension of a broader conversation of conservative backlash against liberal edu…

Omar Valerio-Jiménez's book Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory, and Citizenship (UNC Press, 2024) analyzes the ways collective memories of the US-Mexico War have shaped Mexican Americans' civil rights struggles over several generations. As the first Latinx people incorporated into the nation, Mexican Americans were offered US citizensh…

As part of our “Urban Matters” Special Series, Nicky Sheats, Ph.D, Esq., Director of the Center for the Urban Environment at the John S. Watson Institute for Urban Policy and Research at Kean University, sits down with Steve Adubato to discuss combating environmental injustice in urban communities. Then, Max Pizarro, Editor-in-Chief at InsiderNJ.co…

As part of our “Making A Difference” series, Steve Adubato is joined by three passionate women to examine creating sustainable change for those affected by period poverty. Panelists include: Emma Joy, Co-Founder, Girls Helping Girls. Period. Bridget Cutler, Founder and Co-Executive Director, Moms Helping Moms Foundation Asw. Shanique Speight (D) – …

Natural disasters and the dire effects of climate change cause massive population displacements and lead to some of the most intractable political and humanitarian challenges seen today. Yet, as Maria Cristina Garcia observes in State of Disaster: The Failure of U. S. Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change (UNC Press, 2022), there is actually…

The Jungle The Work of an Unknown Author Edited by Max de Silva 2020 A Dedication Whether or not the original text of The Jungle included a dedication can, sadly, only be a matter of random speculation given the passage of so many hundreds of years, but for my own part I would like to dedicate my contribution in its publication, the Preface and Not…

The Jungle The Work of an Unknown Author Edited by Max de Silva, 2020 I secrets Nothing yet does the jungle give, however long you wait or watch; it is eternal, it does not age. Its appearance is scarcely a hint of all that is hidden - tight-lipped, dark green; ceaselessly undisturbed, untouched, unconcerned even; indifferent to what begins where, …

In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha reveals in Vodou En Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States (UNC Press, 2023), that connection is manifest in the dynamic relationship between public religious ceremonies, material …

Sahar Aziz, Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School and Director of the Center for Security, Race and Rights at Rutgers University, joins Steve Adubato as part of a special series, “Confronting Racism & Prejudice,” to respond to the historic rise in Islamophobia across the nation, the vandalization of the Center for Islamic Life at Rut…

The Sandinista Revolution and its victory against the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua gripped the United States and the world in the 1980s. But as soon as the Sandinistas were voted out of power in 1990 and the Iran Contra affair ceased to make headlines, it became, in Washington at least, a thing of the past. In The Sandinista Revolution: A Globa…

Patrice Lenowitz, who lost her son to a fentanyl overdose and is now an advocate for substance abuse education and prevention, shares an important conversation with me about the extreme dangers of synthetic fentanyl and the loss of her son Max; Amy Tuininga, Ph.D., Director of PSEG Institute for Sustainability Studies at Montclair State University …

Matt Rawitzer, Executive Director of First Tee – Metropolitan New York, joins Steve Adubato to talk about using golf as a vehicle for growth, particularly for children and teens in underrepresented areas. President and CEO of Fulfill Triada Stampas talks about the heightened issue of food insecurity and the pathways to success that her organization…

As part of our “Race Matters” mini-series, Steve Adubato welcomes Cornel West, Ph.D., an Independent Presidential Candidate and Professor of Philosophy & Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary, for a special half-hour conversation to discuss race relations in our country, affirmative action, and his reasoning for not associating with the …

As Manifest Destiny took hold in the national consciousness, what did it mean for African Americans who were excluded from its ambitions for an expanding American empire that would shepherd the Western Hemisphere into a new era of civilization and prosperity? In The Race for America: Black Internationalism in the Age of Manifest Destiny (UNC Press,…

When Sharde M. Davis turned to social media during the summer of racial reckoning in 2020, she meant only to share how racism against Black people affects her personally. But her hashtag, BlackintheIvory, went viral, fostering a flood of Black scholars sharing similar stories. Soon the posts were being quoted during summer institutes and workshops …

Steve Adubato and Think Tank Correspondent Mary Gamba are joined by Bryan Crable, Ph.D., Founding Dean, College of Human Development, Culture, and Media at Seton Hall University, who discusses innovation in higher education and what leadership skills are essential for this next generation. Then, Senior Correspondent Jacqui Tricarico goes on-locatio…

Country music maintains a special, decades-long relationship to American military life, but these ties didn't just happen. This readable history reveals how country music's Nashville-based business leaders on Music Row created partnerships with the Pentagon to sell their audiences on military service while selling the music to service members. Begi…

The cassette tape was revolutionary. Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history. Make your own tapes! Trade them with friends! Tape over the ones you don't like! The cassette tape upended pop culture, creating movements and uniting communities. High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape (UNC Press, …

Steve Adubato welcomes Julienne Cherry, President & CEO of United Way Greater Union County, to discuss strengthening the family unit, rental assistance programs, and combatting food insecurity; Then, Mary Ellen Roberts, Director of Nursing Practice and Acute Care Practitioner Program at Seton Hall University, talks about the ongoing nursing shortag…

In Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses, Widows, and Runaways Shaped Modern America (UNC Press, 2023), Elizabeth Engelhardt argues that modern American food, business, caretaking, politics, sex, travel, writing, and restaurants all owe a debt to boardinghouse women in the South. From the eighteenth century well into the twentiet…

The birchbark canoe is among the most remarkable Indigenous technologies in North America, facilitating mobility throughout the watery world of the Great Lakes region and its borderlands. In Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent (UNC Press, 2023), Texas Tech University historian John William Nelson a…

Franklin Foer, Author of “The Last Politician,” joins Steve Adubato to analyze President Joe Biden’s leadership as both President and Vice President, his cognitive abilities, and the influence of those in his inner circle. 12724 #524By Think Tank with Steve Adubato

Hemispheric foreign policy has waxed and waned since the Mexican War, and the Cold War presented both extraordinary promises and dangerous threats to U.S.-Latin American cooperation. In Hemispheric Alliances: Liberal Democrats and Cold War Latin America (UNC Press, 2022), Andrew J. Kirkendall examines the strengths and weaknesses of new models for …