Futures Forum

Our guest this week is Liz Neeley, founder of Liminal, a science communication collective that focuses on sensemaking. We discuss the ways storytelling can help us make meaningful change from our research, navigating risks of speaking out, and tools for working against the strategic onslaught of information overload. Liz also guides us through planning a security party, so you can take practical steps, in community, to ensure you and your data are protected.   Links to further reading from our discussion: You can see more of Liz Neeley’s work by visiting Liminal, subscribing to Meeting the Moment, and checking out Storymakers and Unbreaking When Liz mentions several tools for security and resourcing, she’s thinking of resources for whistleblowers, the Researcher Support Consortium, and Expert Voices Together Try working through these checklists at security parties The Liminal quadrant visual can help you make choices about when to speak up and take risks Additional resources not specifically mentioned in the podcast but which Liz refers to include Knight First Amendment Institute, American Association of University Professors (AAUP), lawyers in the public interest, FIRE Legal Network and Legal Defense Fund, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and PEN America

Victor Ray is one of the leading voices on race and racial justice in the United States. Jamila Michener and Neil Lewis, Jr. talk with Victor about the current backlash to DEI initiatives in a conversation that connects research and personal experience to systems and power structures. Tune in to this wide-ranging episode to hear more about the current turn toward resegregation in the US, how organizations uphold structural racism, and the risks (and benefits) of doing scholarship in public.   Links to further reading from our discussion: Throughout the conversation, we reference Victor Ray’s work on critical race theory, mental health services to veterans, anti-DEI initiatives as segregationist, and especially his theory of racialized organizations. In our brief discussion on “mesearch,” we consider Ray’s essay on the subject and Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, a seminal book on poverty and housing justice. On resegregation, we look at policies leading to job loss and the undoing of civil rights, what is happening in the U.S. military, and attacks on DEI. We apply lessons from the theory of racialized organizations to the Department of Justice, Equal Employment Opportunity, university DEI initiatives, and academic leadership and freedom. On resistance, we mention No Kings protests, coordinated resistance to ICE in Minneapolis, and what James Baldwin wrote in a 1962 essay for the New York Times: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

This Women's History Month, Jamila Michener and Neil Lewis, Jr. spoke with Marcia Easley, a long-time Ithacan and Assistant Dean for Human Resources in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. Marcia told us about the history of Black women at Cornell and students like Ruth Peyton, who could study, but not sleep, here. Marcia shares the struggles and accomplishments of Black students, the nonlinear path of inclusion and segregation, and how knowing our history can help us do better.   Links to further reading from our discussion: We discussed Black women and human rights in February with Keisha Blain Letters to and from Livingston Farrand, Cornell’s president from 1921–1937 In 1969, Black students at Cornell took over Willard Straight Hall Jane Eleanor Datcher was the first known Black woman to earn an undergraduate degree from Cornell Residency at Sage College wasn’t always offered to all Portrait of Ruth Peyton, Class of 1931 A historian reflects on Black students as “part and apart” at Cornell The political construction of systemic racism informs institutional decisions Neil Lewis, Jr. researches how people make meaning in a fragmented democracy and Jamila Michener wrote a book on those consequences for democracy Black women have been experiencing massive unemployment rates, and particularly in 2025

Keisha N. Blain, author of Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights, is a professor of Africana Studies and History at Brown University, and has been hailed as one the most innovative and influential historians of her generation. Jamila Michener and Neil Lewis, Jr. speak with Dr. Blain, the Center's 2026 Black History Month keynote speaker, about her new book, the writing process, how past work can help us build the future, and marking pathways for future researchers.