The UK's General Election: What You Need to Know

12/09/19 • 20 min

Ahead of the UK's General Election this Thursday (on Dec. 12), we brought Timothy Weaver of Rockefeller College to the show to share what's at stake and what to look out for in the last three days of the campaign trail.

Photo credit: "Brexit protestor flags near the Palace of Westminster, London," by Chiral Jon.

If you're interested in hearing more about Weaver's work, you might like our last episode, where we spoke with the political scientist on the Opportunity Zone Program.

The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at [email protected], and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

Photo credit: "Brexit protestor flags near the Palace of Westminster, London," by Chiral Jon.

If you're interested in hearing more about Weaver's work, you might like our last episode, where we spoke with the political scientist on the Opportunity Zone Program.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at [email protected], and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

Previous Episode

The Opportunity Zone Program: What 2019 Has Taught Us, with Timothy Weaver

Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill on Nov. 22 to repeal the now controversial Opportunity Zone Program. Other politicians, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, have begun criticizing the tax incentive following reports from The New York Times and other media outlets on the high-profile beneficiaries of the program.

We first spoke with political scientist Timothy Weaver last winter on the program and his major concerns with its potential repercussions. We’ve invited Weaver back to the series to share his insights on what 2019 revealed about the provision's effects on American cities and which of his predictions have already come true.

Weaver is an assistant professor at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, where his studies place-based tax incentives and their investment outcomes. He is the author of ‘Blazing the Neoliberal Trail: Urban Political Development in the United States and the United Kingdom’ (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

We'll also be releasing a second episode featuring Weaver next week ahead of the UK's General Election on Dec. 12. We spoke with Weaver about the most contentious issues on the political agenda as well as the sticking points preventing a final deal on Brexit.

You can tune in to that conversation on Monday. We'll see you next week.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at [email protected], and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.

Next Episode

How a Traveling Salesman in the 1970s Became a Leading Opponent to the Death Penalty

James Acker, a distinguished teaching professor at the School of Criminal Justice, and Brian Keough, head of the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives, are among the founders of the University’s National Death Penalty Archive (NDPA).

The NDPA contains a repository of publicly-accessible materials that track the history of capital punishment in the United States.

Acker and Keough join the series to share about the digitization efforts of a collection by M. Watt Espy, a researcher who spent three decades of his life gathering and indexing documentation of legal executions for what would become the nation’s largest database on capital punishment.

The M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives has since added 6,000 executions to the list through the verification process of Espy’s work.

Espy began the project in the 1970s as a traveling salesman pedaling encyclopedias and cemetery plots, among other goods. While the scholar was originally an advocate for capital punishment, he became an avid opponent following growing concerns about racial prejudice in the legal system.

During a pre-Internet era, Espy documented over 15,000 executions conducted between 1608 and 2002.

Espy died in 2009 at the age of 76.

The University at Albany Libraries was responsible for salvaging the “Espy File” from Espy’s home in Headland, A.L. following his passing and moving the database to its current home at the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives.

The NDPA is a partnership between the University at Albany Libraries and the Capital Punishment Research Initiative (CPRI) at the University’s School of Criminal Justice.

Learn more about the Espy Project.

Image from the "Espy File" collection: Mug shot of George Stinney, a 14-year-old who was convicted of murdering two white girls in Alcolu, S.C. He was executed by electric chair in 1944.

Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at [email protected], and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.