A podcast dedicated to improving civil disagreement

A co-production of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership and Arizona PBS. Hosted by Henry Thomson, assistant professor of political science in ASU's School of Politics and Global Studies.

Featured episodes

What can future leaders learn from today’s most prominent scholars and commentators?

Keeping It Civil is co-produced by the School of Economic Thought and Leadership and Arizona PBS. The podcast seeks answers to key questions about the future of American life with fast-paced interviews with scholars and intellectuals. Hosted by Henry Thomson.

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About the host

Henry Thomson

Henry Thomson

Henry Thomson is an assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University's School of Politics and Global Studies. His research focuses on the political economy of authoritarianism and democratization. He has a special interest in the role that agriculture plays in processes of development and democratization. He has published a book and articles on variation in agricultural policy across political regime type and the role of landholding inequality in promoting civil conflict and authoritarian repression. He is also interested in collective mobilization and repression under authoritarian regimes, and is currently working on a comparative project comparing the size and activities of secret police agencies across communist East and Central Europe from 1945-1989.

From 2014-2017, he was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford; has been a DAAD Fellow in Berlin; a Visiting Fellow at Australian National University; and a Visiting Fellow at the Mercatus Center in Arlington, VA. His doctoral dissertation won the 2015 Juan Linz Prize for the Best Dissertation in the Comparative Study of Democratization from the American Political Science Association and his 2016 article on landholding inequality and civil conflict won the Best Paper in International Relations Award from the Midwest Political Science Association. He teaches classes in Comparative Politics, Political Economy and International Relations.

Musa Al Gharbi | The Actual Beneficiaries of “White Privilege” and Misconceptions of Trump’s Supporters

Al Gharbi’s remarkable life story and the smear campaign that drove him from Univ. of Arizona; How getting attacked by Fox News spurred his experiment in framing arguments, which changed his life. Debunking the sociological myths of Trump supporters.

Jonah Goldberg | Conflict vs. Consensus
history pt. 1 of 2

Part one of Duncan’s interview with Jonah Goldberg. Duncan and Jonah discuss how the Howard Zinn approach to American history (the so-called “conflict school”) has changed higher education and why American students fail to appreciate the uniqueness of the American liberal tradition.

Harvey Mansfield | The Ivy League’s Last Conservative on Cancel Culture

Harvey Mansfield, Harvard University professor and political philosophy scholar, joins Duncan Moench to discuss being the last (explicitly) conservative professor teaching at an Ivy League university, and how cancel culture reflects serious problems with contemporary liberalism.