PODCAST · science
StocktonAfterClass
by Ronald Stockton
Ron Stockton was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn for 48 years. His specialty was non-western politics and political change. He taught classes on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Religion and Politics, the Politics of Revolution, Non-Western politics, and American politics. He also taught in the Honors Program, focusing upon foundational readings from the 18th and 19th centuries. He has an interest in religion and politics and in the role of religio-ethnic groups in the political system. The listener can anticipate talks on Arab-Americans, Jews, African-Americans, the Scots-Irish, and Evangelicals. He has lectured and written on American politics, public opinion, and voting behavior and on the role of religious organizations and ideologies in the political system. There will be occasional discussions of books and films that address serious issues. And he has lectured and published and even taught a class on gravestones, especially those of d
Episodes
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Ron's Talk on September 11
Send us Fan Mail The chancellor wanted to have a commemoration event on September 13, two days after Septembeer 11. He invited me to speak. As I look back on my comments 25 years later, I am pleased at how I detected the dangers inherent in the political system. But I also realize how much I…
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Abdul El Sayed Discusses Israel. And a Jewish response
Send us Fan Mail This is from an article on The Forward, a Jewish newspaper. It draws from an interview that Abdul El sayed gave with the New Yorker a day before the primary election. A Jewish journalist thought it deserved discussion so he provided key excerpts along with his comments. If you…
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Bad Hair Day. Two Tens and a Five, please. A True Story, Just for Fun
Send us Fan Mail This is a true story of a young woman cashier who was having a VERY bad day. I really didn't mean to add to her problems, but stuff happens.
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A Salvtion Army Graveyard and a Historic Poem by Vachel Lindsey.
Send us Fan Mail I once visited a Salvation Army graveyard section. It was a very interesting experience.
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Crazy Lady On The Phone: A True Story
Send us Fan Mail This is one of those episodes in life that descend upon you like a mosquitoe that just keeps buzzing around. You can either let it ruin your night's sleep or you can view it as an opportunity. I chose to turn it into an anecdote. By the way, there was a time, not long ago, when...
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Question Israel at Your Own Risk. The University of Michigan Graduation Speech, 2026
Send us Fan Mail Derek Peterson, Chair of the UM Faculty Senate, was asked to deliver remarks to the 2026 graduating class. He focused upon the tradition of protest on campus, going back to the period after the Civil War. Everything was ducky until he got to protests against the Gaza War. Well…
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Last Will and Testament, 1717 style
Send us Fan Mail Being my family historian, I bump into strange documents from time to time. A couple of years ago, I saw a will from 1717 that I thought might belong to an ancestor. It turned out that it did not, but the will was so fascinating that I wanted to discuss it with you. The logic and...
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At War With Iran! Everything You Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask
Send us Fan Mail This is a discussion of the historic context of this war, plus some thoughts on the strategic issues involved. Note: At one point I referred to the end of the Gulf War when I meant to say the end of World War II. Note: At this point (March 17) opposition to the war is about…
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Stop Blaming God. When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Kushner. The Story of Job, and the Lessons We Can Learn From It.
Send us Fan Mail In 1981 Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book on suffering. He decided to write this when he learned that his beloved son Aaron had a terrible disease that would turn him into an old man even as a child. Aaron died at eight. Kushner reflected upon why an innocent child should suffer…
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Venezuela And The Trump Empire.
Send us Fan Mail On January 3 American forces went into Caracas and captured Venezuelan President Maduro. He was taken to the United States to stand trial. Is this a one-off adventure because of a corrupt leader, or does it suggest a broader set of actions of which this is just the first of many?
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No Room in the Inn. An Alternative Nativity Story. (Probably more accurate than the one you learned as a kid).
Send us Fan Mail When I was in Turkey I visited a caravan serai. It was a place where a caravan would stop along the way. (And where travelers could find a place to spend the night). When we read that there was "no room in the inn" and Mary had to deliver in the stable, what does that mean? I...
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Trump in Decline. An Explanation
Send us Fan Mail I am very cautious about predictions. All the pundits are doing those, plus most of them seem to be chasing headines. I have made an exception in this case, because I think Trump has peaked and is on his decline. Am I just doing what others are doing and over-reading headlines?...
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The Georgia Vote Stealing Case. Dismissed today November 26, 2025. What Were the Charges?
Send us Fan Mail Biden carried Georgia by just under 12,000 votes. They had a Republican governor and Republican Secreatary of State. Trump called them and asked them to "find" those votes. I just need one more than Biden got to carry the state. Trump threatened the Secretary of State with...
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Turning Point in the Revolution: King's Mountain.
Send us Fan Mail After the catastrophic defeat at Charleston, the Patriot forces were on the ropes. General Clinton, commander of the British army, was so confident of the outcome, that he left his deputy, General Cornwallis, in charge and headed north. Cornwallis planned to link up with Tory...
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An American in Palestine: A Love Story. Memoir and Insights from Christa Bruhn
Send us Fan Mail Christa Bruhn was my student back in the 1980s. I remember very well the first time I met her. She told me she had lived for a semester in Gaza. I have been to Gaza twice and did not consider it a place for a young American woman to be spending a semester. But Christa was never...
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To Deport or Not to Deport. Stories From an Expert Witness (me)
Send us Fan Mail I have been an expert witness in four deportation hearings. The job of an expert witness is to given the judge reasons to permit the individual to remain in the U. S. The cases were people from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. The Palestinian case was the most interesting...
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No Heresy Trial (Yet). Four Entertaining Stories About Religion.
Send us Fan Mail This is a bit different from my typical podcast. This is four stories inspired by religion. The story of Rachel and Rebecca, and the mandrake. (You have never read this story so you know nothing about the mandrake (or even what it is). The Story of my close brush with the…
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Marx and the Jews. Not What You Expect. The 1844 Manuscripts.
Send us Fan Mail Bruno Bauer, an intellectual colleague of Marx, wrote two essays to which Marx reacted strongly. The first was called “The Jewish Question” (Die Judenfrage), the second “On The Capacity of Present-Day Jews and Christians to Become Free.” Marx wrote two essays responding to…
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The Gaza Genocide. A Public Talk
Send us Fan Mail This is a public talk I delivered on the concept of genocide and the arguments presented in the South African genocide charge against Israel in late 2023. Several people who wanted to attend but could not asked if it could be recorded. We tried, but somehow that did not work out....
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The Logic of the Israeli Hard Right.
Send us Fan Mail There are extremist groups in Israel that trace their origins to Rabbi Meir Kahane. Today they control the balance of power in the Israeli cabinet. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are the most prominent personalities. Both are extremely violent and are determined to complete the conquest…
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International Memoirs: Opening Paragraphs.
Send us Fan Mail This is Part II of a project I developed for my Honors Class. I typed up the opening paragraphs of scores of memoirs in my personal library. My students would read these and discuss them. They really liked this assignment. Part I (American authors) was posted earlier. This is…
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John Brown of Harper's Ferry Fame. The beginning of the Civil War.
Send us Fan Mail Jane and I recently went to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. This was the place where John Brown, in October of 1859, conducted his famous strike against slavery. Brown and all of his men were killed, which he anticipated might happen. So why did he engage in such a…
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That REALLY, REALLY Bad Word for African Americans. And My Struggle With It.
Send us Fan Mail I sometimes tell people that I am a recovering racist. It is not really my fault. I grew up in a culture (the 1950s in the border South) when that was just the way things were. The outward and visible sign of our moral failure was that word. You know the one I mean. We used that...
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Is Christianity Polytheistic? The Doctrine of the Trinity. A Reposting
Send us Fan Mail Today, June 15, is not only Father's Day. It is also Trinity Sunday. To me, the concept of the Trinity is incomprehensible. Which is why I am the perfect person to explain it to the rest of you. This podcast started twenty years ago when one of my Muslim students asked me to...
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Visit to Palestine During a Time of War and Genocide, One Year Anniversary. Reposting.
Send us Fan Mail In June of 2024 I spent eight days in occupied Palestine, i.e., the West Bank. It is now a year later and I thought this report might deserve a reposting. I went with a group of people who had religious connections. I was the only secular academic. I found this a valuable…
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Famous People I Met Along the Way
Send us Fan Mail This is the last lecture I delivered in my academic career. I discovered that I had miscalculated the end of the semester and that I had an extra class. I did have a regular academic topic but my wife said, "You are a senior professor. You have taught 48 years. Your students see...
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The Logic of a Moral Assassin. Why I Killed Gandhi. Relevant to the Killing of Two Israeli Embassy employees.
Send us Fan Mail Why I Killed Gandhi by Nathuram Godse Two employees of the Israeli Embassy in D. C. were shot to death this week (May, 2025) . The Manifesto of the shooter shows him to be very distressed by the mass death in Gaza. He felt what is called "the moral imperative to act." So did the...
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The Election of Pope Leo XIV, An American Pope.
Send us Fan Mail I was amazed at how much information is available on the internet about this election. Of course, biographical information is public, but the cardinals swear an oath of secrecy before they go into the conclave. And yet somehow information leaks out. I wish I could say I had a...
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Everything You Wanted To Know About the Catholic Church (But Were Afraid to Ask). Reposting
Send us Fan Mail This was an orientation lecture in my course on Religion and Politics in 2020. It does have a few of those classroom comments ("don't forget to turn in your papers" sort of things), but otherwise it has quite a bit of information about sometimes confusing topics. Don't forget to...
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Pope Leo XIII. Rerum Novarum (an inspiration for Pope Leo XIV). A Reposting
Send us Fan Mail Are you interested in why the new pope took the name of an old pope? Is he sending us a message? Leo XIII was a modernizing pope whose most famous encyclical (1891) was called Rerum Novarum (New Things). This is a class lecture that I delivered on that encyclical. I discussed key...
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I Am Running for Pope. (Seriously. Don't Laugh)
Send us Fan Mail Back in 2013, when Pope Benedict stepped down, I was concerned for the future of the Church and threw my hat into the ring. I am not sure how many votes I got but the vigorous insistence of the Vatican that they had never heard of me convinced me that my impact was real. There…
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Interview with Adel Bsesio regarding his family archive of property held in southern Palestine, confiscated by the Israelis in 1948.
Send us Fan Mail This is interview three on this remarkable project. The frist interview was with Amine Zreikh who made me familiar with this historical cache of documents -- deeds, maps, contracts, etc. Adel Bsesio is the posessor of his family archive. It is now in an archive in Columbia...
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Glitch: This is a duplicate of the interview with Adel Bsesio. Sorry for that. Please listen to the other Bsesio interview. It focuses upon the archive.
Send us Fan Mail This is a duplicate n interview with Adel Bsesio regarding the Bsesio family deeds and documents, now an archive. This family had extensive holdings in southern Palestine that were confiscated by the Israelis in 1948. They are now housed in an archive avilable at the Columbia...
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A Unique Story of Palestinian Land in 1948. Original interview with Amine Zreikh
Send us Fan Mail My former student, Amine Zreikh, contacted me about an archive of deeds from pre-1948 Palestine, and the effort to create a site where those could be stored. I conducted three interviews on this project. One with Zreikh and two are with Adel Bsesio, the custodian of those...
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Pope urges American Bishops to pursue Christian policies towards immigrants, not Trump policies.
Send us Fan Mail Just after being released from the hospital, where he nearly died, the Pope issues a pastoral letter to the American Bishops. He urged them to focus upon Christian principles, and to support immigrants as they face the actions of the Trump administration (which they did not...
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Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing, 1983
Send us Fan Mail There is a new book on the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983. 241 people were killed as they slept. It was the greatest single-day death toll for the Marines since Iwo Jima. The decision to put these Marines in Lebanon in the middle of a civil war was veery...
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"Defeated and Overrun" The Israeli Military (IDF) Report on the Hamas Attack of October 7
Send us Fan Mail This is an IDF assessment of what happened on October 7, 2023, what went wrong, and why. It is a military report, not a political assessment, but it is very interesting.
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Ukraine War (Reflections at the Start) A Reposting
Send us Fan Mail My colleagues and I held a Faculty Forum when the Ukraine War started. It was done soon after Russia grabbed some provinces and the Crimean peninsula in 2014. This is my contribution. I listened to it when the current war started and found it still worth the time. With the…
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Should America Annex Gaza? President Trump's serious proposal
Send us Fan Mail President Trump has proposed annexing Gaza, clearing it of Palestinians, and turning it into a resort area. He seems to be deadly serious. This is a discussion of what would be involved in such a development. Note: There was a slight disconnect with the sound. After the...
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Darn it, Kamala. I told you there was an iceberg just ahead. I even told you how to avoid it. Why the heck did you not listen to me?
Send us Fan Mail After struggling for three months to try to figure out why Kamala lost to Trump, I finally figured it out. Is this explanation too simple, or is it exactly on target? If you are willing to devote 20 some minutes of you life, you can judge for yourself.
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Classified Documents Taken By Trump. Case dropped by Trump Administration. Reposting.
Send us Fan Mail The Mara-Lago Classified Documents Case seemed to me to be the strongest of all the cases against Trump. Those were highly sensitive documents. Some were so sensitive that even their classifications were classified. As a private citizen Trump had no right to any of those.…
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Anti-Semite? Bigot? Enemy of Israel? Reactions to Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine: Peace or Apartheid.
Send us Fan Mail When Jimmy Carter published this book in 2006 he was subjected to a barrage of vilification. As we look back on this book today, we might well ask ourselves, "What was the problem?" In fact, as we looked at the book when it was published, we might ask the same question. The...
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RIP Jimmy Carter. Citizen, Patriot, Peacemaker, Visionary, Christian.
Send us Fan Mail Jane and I were on our way from Mobile (where her family had originated) to Andersonville, the terrible Confederate prison camp where both of us had lost relatives. She realized that we would be very close to Plains. Not only that, Jimmy would be teaching Sunday School that day.…
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Thoughts on Syria (December 27, 2024)
Send us Fan Mail I have visited Syria several times, running or participating in academic programs. These are my reflections. I noticed a couple of glitches along the way, but nothing that will not be obvious to you. (If the Israelis withdrew from the Golan, they would be replaced by Syrians, not...
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Adam and Eve (And the Snake). A Creative Re-Telling (just for fun).
Send us Fan Mail Back in 2009 Jonathan Goldstein wrote an entertaining book entitled "Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!" For those looking for orthodox teaching, it might veer a bit off base. But for those looking for 15 minutes of entertainment, maybe you will like this.
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Temporary Protected Status. How to Stay in America (at Least for a while) When Your Home Country Falls Apart.
Send us Fan Mail This is a different type of podcast. It is not me explaining someting to you. It is my former student, now an immigration attorney, explaining something to me. Shahad Atiya has practiced law for several years. She knows the ins and outs and how the system actually works.…
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Shall We Zoom? An Invitation for Sunday December 8 at 2:00 Eastern Standard Time
Send us Fan Mail Well, I'm feeling good about StocktonAfterClass. We just passed 60,000 downloads. That is not many compared with media Superstars but to me it is an impressive number. And you are from over 130 different countries. I am not told anything about any of you except where you live but...
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Arrest Netanyahu? For Real? Here is a Summary of the Charges Submitted to the International Criminal Court, complete with Evidence and Points of Law. Reposting in Case You Missed It First Time Around.
Send us Fan Mail In late November, 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his Defense minister Gallant. Also for one of the remaining Hamas leaders the Israelis had not assassinated. This is different from the Genocide Accusation before the International...
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Lincoln was Far More Discouraged Than You have Ever Been. He Thought God had Turned on America and had Brought its Affliction as Punishment. Stop blaming someone else, God said. Look in the Mirror, God Said. The Second Inaugural Address.
Send us Fan Mail I can hardly read this address without getting emotional. Lincoln believed God was stretching out America's affliction because we as a nation had allowed grievous injustice in our land. Our punishment was a protracted Civil War that took 700,000 lives. Or to borrow from the great...
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A Tribute to Bernie Klein, a Unique and Amazing Professor.
Send us Fan Mail Bernie was a legendary professor. He was the senior political scientist when I was hired and was beloved by his students. Bernie was famous for his anecdotes into how the political system actually worked. And for his jokes, one of which got him in trouble. He had been the...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Ron Stockton was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn for 48 years. His specialty was non-western politics and political change. He taught classes on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Religion and Politics, the Politics of Revolution, Non-Western politics, and American politics. He also taught in the Honors Program, focusing upon foundational readings from the 18th and 19th centuries. He has an interest in religion and politics and in the role of religio-ethnic groups in the political system. The listener can anticipate talks on Arab-Americans, Jews, African-Americans, the Scots-Irish, and Evangelicals. He has lectured and written on American politics, public opinion, and voting behavior and on the role of religious organizations and ideologies in the political system. There will be occasional discussions of books and films that address serious issues. And he has lectured and published and even taught a class on gravestones, especially those of d
HOSTED BY
Ronald Stockton
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How many episodes does StocktonAfterClass have?
StocktonAfterClass currently has 236 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is StocktonAfterClass about?
Ron Stockton was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn for 48 years. His specialty was non-western politics and political change. He taught classes on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Religion and Politics, the Politics of Revolution, Non-Western politics, and...
How often does StocktonAfterClass release new episodes?
StocktonAfterClass publishes regularly with 236 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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You can listen to StocktonAfterClass on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts StocktonAfterClass?
StocktonAfterClass is created and hosted by Ronald Stockton.
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