#302 Promoting Diversity, Defending Free Speech. Amna Khalid

In the months after George Floyd’s murder, colleges, universities, non-profits, and large corporations across the country embraced anti-racism and diversity training as a way to promote inclusion and racial justice.

But do these programs actually work to change minds and achieve their goals? Our guest, associate professor of History at Carleton College, Amna Khalid, argues that while training can improve customer service and knowledge of CPR and Excel spreadsheets, it’s woefully inadequate when confronting complex social problems such as poverty, inequality, discrimination, and racism.

Amna grew up under several military dictatorships in Pakistan and came to the U.S. with a passionate commitment to free speech and belief in the power of education to promote curiosity, understanding, and imagination.

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#300 Six years. Six guests. 300 episodes

We’ve made it to our 300th weekly episode! While it’s easy to congratulate ourselves for being among the few podcasts to produce this many shows, Jim and Richard are most proud of our extraordinary range of guests.

During our first six years together, we've often highlighted out-of-the-box thinkers, who share ideas that are too rarely discussed: People who speak about solutions through an independent lens— neither firmly left nor right.

For this episode, we revisit interviews with six guests— or roughly 2% of all the people we've spoken with for "How Do We Fix It?" We begin with the public intellectual and problem solver Philip K. Howard, who was our very first guest. Others featured here are Claire Cain Miller of The Upshot at The New York Times, Mike Rowe, who became famous with the TV show "Dirty Jobs", science evangelist, Ainissa Ramirez, Jerry Taylor, President and Founder of The Niskanen Center, and R&B musician Daryl Davis, who has personally persuaded more than 200 men and women to quit white supremacist groups.

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