Farouk Ramzan News Today

In this episode of Notes from Nash, host Farouk Ramzan talks with the team at Vanderbilt’s Fusion Project. The Vanderbilt Fusion Project, one of the most selective organizations on Vanderbilt’s campus, has successfully developed a miniature nuclear fusion reactor. Representing the project on this episode are Catherine Knox, Chief People Officer and team lead for...

In this episode of Notes from Nash, host Farouk Ramzan is joined by Sam Sliman. Sliman currently serves as president of Vanderbilt’s Student Government. A few months ago, Sliman was featured in a New York Times article titled “New York’s Hottest Steakhouse Was a Fake, Until Saturday Night.” The story details how Sam and his...

Larry Bartels is an American political scientist and the co-director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and Shayne Chair in Public Policy and Social Science here at Vanderbilt University. He has published books such as Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of The New Gilded Age and Democracy for Realists. In our conversation,...

“Vanderbilt just doesn’t care about its indigenous students,” senior Katey Parham said. Parham studies public policy and anthropology and previously served as vice president for the Indigenous Scholars Association and a campaign intern for Freddie O’Connell’s successful run for Nashville mayor. We talk about Vanderbilt’s treatment of Indigenous people, activism and data’s importance to politics.

Richard Haglund was educated at Wesleyan University and completed a Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics in 1975. He was a staff member at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1976 until joining the faculty of Vanderbilt University in 1984. In this conversation, we discuss the nature of physics, why it’s so hard to understand, and the genius of J.R. Oppenheimer.

“Media is much more objective and neutral now than it used to be,” Professor John Sides says. Sides is the Chair of the Department of Political Science. He is an author of “Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America,” “The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Election”...

Mr. Alberto Gonzales was the 80th United States Attorney General, serving from 2005 to 2007 under the leadership of President George W. Bush. He is the highest ranking Hispanic-American in executive government in the history of the U.S. We discuss the ethics of interrogation tactics during the ‘war on terror,’ Gonzales’ journey out of poverty,...

“[Art] is stuff that people make that carries meaning,” Dr. Lee Ann Custer says. Custer is a new art and architecture history professor at Vanderbilt. Custer work has been supported by institutions such as the Smithsonian and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Currently, Custer research is interested in the utilization, commoditization and artistic interpretation...

“When people are focusing on the negatives and saying ‘it’s never been like this,’ quite frankly…it’s always been like this, we just didn’t have access to information the way we do now,” Professor Alan Wiseman says about people being pessimistic about problems in the United States. Wiseman is Chair of the Department of Political Science...

The secret to living a good life is to make what you have to do into what you want to do for its own sake,” Dr. Michael P. Hodges says. He is an expert in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, American philosophy and philosophy of religion and education. Hodges has taught at Vanderbilt for over 50 years, amassing...