Today we have an election eve COVIDCalls discussion with Darien Williams, Rich Frankel, and Colleen Hagerty.
Richard E. Frankel is currently Associate Professor of modern German history and the Sagrera Family Memorial/BORSF Endowed Professor in History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His research interests center on nationalism, antisemitism, immigration, and political culture. His first book was Bismarck’s Shadow: The Crisis of German Leadership and the Transformation of the German Right, 1898-1945 with Berg Publishers. His latest book, States of Exclusion: A New Wave of Fascism uses German history—particularly the period of the Third Reich—to help us better understand the current situation in Trump’s America. Frankel is now seeking to understand antisemitism from an even broader, global perspective. He is currently at work on a new book-length project tentatively titled Globalizing Hate: The Impact of Globalization on Modern Antisemitism in Germany and the United States, 1880-1914.
Colleen Hagerty is a freelance journalist telling narrative stories through video, print, and social mediums. Much of her work reflects how global communities are reckoning with our changing climate, social dynamics, technologies, and politics. You can find her bylines across BBC News outputs and on Vox, High Country News, US News & World Report, Business Insider, and others. She also has a weekly newsletter about disasters.
Darien Alexander Williams is completing a PhD in urban planning at MIT, where he focuses on disaster recovery, community organizing, Black communities, and religious minorities. He is currently working on a few projects, including on Floridian hurricane recovery, natural gas pipeline explosions, and nonstate religious organization-led planning. Darien previously worked for the Southeast & Caribbean Disaster Resilience Partnership and the Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative.
And Versha Sharma senior correspondent, writer/editor at NowThis!