MPJI Sponsors Author Q&A Event For Launch of Prof. Clemente Lisi's World Cup Book

Prof. Clemente Lisi recently wrote a book titled “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet's Biggest Sporting Event.” The book was released on Oct. 12, a month before the official launch of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar on Nov. 20.

The Empire State Tribune, the independent student-run campus newspaper at The King’s College, sent Campus Editor Melinda Huspen to chat with Lisi about his new book, the World Cup and his time covering this global game of soccer.

Melinda Huspen: In one or two sentences, what is the book about?

Clemente Lisi: The book is about the history of the World Cup, which started in 1930. It’s also a bit of a preview of the next World Cup, which is going to be happening in Qatar on November 20. It gives a history of all the games, the key players and some behind the scenes that a lot of people around the world know about because they've been watching the World Cup for generations. American audiences, however, are fairly new to the World Cup. I think most Americans have probably been interested for the last three or four generations, so it gives a lot of that history ahead of time and full context into what the tournament is about.

Huspen: How long have you been working on this particular book?

Lisi: My publisher came to me a little over two years ago, so this has been a two-year process. Writing a book is a lot of work. It took a lot of research and going back to my own notes, as I've covered the last three World Cups as a freelance writer myself. The research took about a year, and then the rest of it was spent writing. I was on a pretty aggressive schedule at that point, the book had to come out in October because the World Cup was in November. I had to give it to them by June. I was basically writing a chapter a month and I had to keep by that schedule. Now, the one thing that was in my favor at the time was it was the middle of the pandemic. Researching the book was harder, but you learn a lot about using online sources and online libraries. You also have the time to write it because there's nothing else to do. I could do six to seven hours a day in the summer months to write the book.

Huspen: This isn't the first book you've written on the World Cup specifically, correct?

Lisi: Yes, and that was part of the issue. I've written books about the U.S. Men's National Team, the U.S. Women's National Team and the World Cup in the past. When a publisher came to me and said, “we want a whole new book with a whole new sort of tone,” I thought, “Well, how am I going to tackle a subject that I've sort of tackled already in many different ways? This book is heavily researched in a way that I wasn't able to do in the past. I think that's because teaching for the past five years and being in the academic world has sort of taught me more about what it's like to do research and use research tools like an academic would. I approached the first half of the book like an academic, and the second half of the book I approached more like a journalist because those World Cups happened in my memory, and the last three I attended. I wrote it as if to take the reader there in a way that we never did before. The other difference between this project and the other projects that I worked on was that the publisher was really adamant about being objective about the World Cup itself, and more importantly how FIFA [Federation Internationale de Football Association] as an organization is run. I have no qualms about saying that FIFA is one of the most corrupt organizations on the planet. The book makes clear, especially in the last few chapters, about the sort of seedy nature of awarding the World Cup and some of the financial wrongdoing that happened.

Huspen: How did you approach writing about the big FIFA corruption case? How does your efforts in covering it either expand on or differ from the coverage at the time?

Lisi: It's funny, because at the time I was working at ABC News and we were covering it aggressively. The financial wrongdoing case was in 2015, when the US Justice Department got involved and a bunch of FIFA officials got arrested. They really blew a big hole into what a lot of people already knew, which was that FIFA is a corrupt organization with a lot of money laundering and a lot of scandals involving tickets. FIFA as an organization has no policing, it's all self governed, it's located in Switzerland so there's no oversight and it’s very easy for people to basically use it as an ATM machine.The World Cup is a huge generator of revenue for them, which made it a perfect storm until the US government got involved because some of the financial dealings at some of the banks were located in Florida. That gave the US Justice Department the opportunity to say, “It’s on US soil, so we can investigate this. I have lots of memories of covering that event, being an editor at ABC when it was a big thing. I have all the legal paperwork, legal documents and press releases. I thought that this was an opportunity, since I'm doing a definitive book on the history of the tournament, to really go into detail. The thing I found difficult was that if you're doing this research, you have to go to 15 different sources to try to piece together a timeline of what happened. It's hard to keep track of all these characters, so I really focused on just a few. My goal was to basically condense it all into one source.

Huspen: When and how did you start covering the World Cup?

Lisi: I started watching the World Cup when I was five years old. In 1982, Italy won the World Cup and I happened to be on vacation with my family there. My family is from Italy. Even as a five or six year old, the passion that this sport evokes in people was very impressionable when you're that little. Maybe deep down I wanted to be a soccer player; I played as a kid but wasn't good enough at it to get very far. But I did the next best thing, which was write about it and get to travel around the world and watch it. I watched soccer in general and the World Cup all throughout my life, but it wasn't till 2010 that I started to work on it. You know, I think deep down I always wanted to be a sports writer too. It just never worked out for me, though, as I usually ended up covering news and other things. As a freelancer, though, I thought, “Oh, this would be fun to cover.” I got lucky in 2010 to actually be able to go to South Africa and cover the World Cup that year. That was my first and so far only time in Africa, and it was just an amazing experience. It wasn’t just because the World Cup was fun and soccer is a great sport, but also because of the whole culture around it. Being in a place I'd never would have been before, I got to see things and meet people I never would have met otherwise. I thought, “Every four years I have to make it a point to get to the World Cup one way or another. In 2014, I went to Brazil, and in 2018 I was in Russia. At that point I was already working at King’s. I'll also be able to go to Qatar for the final week of this World Cup, so I'm looking forward to that. I’ve never been to the Middle East either. It's an opportunity to meet lots of people and eat lots of food that I wouldn't normally eat, getting a new cultural experience.

Huspen: In the title of the book you call the World Cup the planet's biggest sporting event. Why do you make that claim?

Lisi: Yeah, I get a lot of pushback on that. The World Cup is the biggest sporting event just in terms of eyeballs. I think a billion people watched the World Cup Final four years ago between France and Croatia. Even the Olympics, a global event with lots of different sports, doesn't compare in numbers. The Super Bowl for sure doesn't get there. It's in the millions, obviously, but it's mostly just the United States or North America. That's why I make that claim, and I have the numbers to back it up. I think a lot of American sports fans are like, “This is not the biggest thing in the world,” but it is.

Huspen: What kind of cultural imprint has the World Cup left both inside and outside of the soccer and sporting world?

Lisi: Two things: first, if you've ever been in another country during the World Cup, you know that everything stops. It's a little bit like how Americans watch March Madness basketball; for like two, three weeks, almost no one is doing any real work and they're just watching basketball all day. That's what happens with the World Cup for a whole month. Everyone is just basically watching soccer on television. If you go to Brazil or Italy or Spain or any of these countries where soccer is a big deal, you'll see it firsthand. Second, it gives other people other countries an excuse to be nationalistic. Nationalism is kind of a bad word in a lot of places, particularly in Europe where it's tied to Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. This is an outlet for people in Germany to say, “I cheer for Germany because this is my soccer team” or “I cheer for Italy” in places where nationalism is a bad word. I think soccer is a good excuse for people to be proud of their country. If you meet any Brazilians or Argentines, they identify primarily with their soccer players and their soccer team, not with their politics or other cultural institutions, because that's what people know them for. It’s a sense of pride for a lot of people, and increasingly in America that's becoming the case too. I think that when the World Cup starts, people in the US will be very interested in watching the U.S. team.

Huspen: Do you call the sport in your book soccer or football?

Lisi: I call it soccer in the book because that's what Americans call it. I know that the rest of the English speaking world calls it football, but I also know why we don't call it football because we would confuse the heck out of people who are watching the NFL because we call that football too. What I dislike is when Americans start using English words to talk about soccer. They'll say football, which doesn't doesn't bother me as much, but then they’ll say “pitch” instead of “field” or use all these other British terms. Just say “soccer field,” we're not in England. I know England invented soccer, but they don't have a monopoly on the language of soccer. That's kind of my pet peeve, if you will.

Huspen: Is the goal to reach more of an American audience with that kind of decision in the book?

Lisi: Yes. It's kind of twofold; to reach more of an American audience, but also at the same time reach a global audience. I don't give more time in the book to the United States national team than with any other national teams. I try to be even-handed and give attention to the teams that are successful.

Huspen: How did you write the preview of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar if it hasn't happened yet?

Lisi: That was definitely hard, because I had to have it in by June and not every nation had qualified yet. The way I previewed it was to write about Qatar in general, answering questions like: What is this country like? How did they get the World Cup? Why is it being held here? Then I just did a snapshot of the teams that I thought were going to be competitive and that had already qualified. I think I did 10 in total. I went off on a lark and told my publisher, “I'm going to write about teams like Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, Qatar, Germany and the United States, because these countries have qualified and they might be halfway decent at the World Cup. I wish I had up until now to do it, but the deal with publishing as people may know is you have to have the book to them by a certain time. It goes through an extensive copy editing and fact checking process. I'm really thankful to my editors. They were great. That process went from June, July and then you have to get the book printers and publish it and all that takes time. At some point this was the final draft and I just had to let it go and keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best and that was it. I didn't write anything that I thought couldn't happen, because in journalism, you don't do that. You can't predict the future and write about things hoping they will happen. Ultimately the chapter on Qatar is very much just about the country itself and how strange it is to have a World Cup in November when it's 100 degrees, along with all the geopolitical FIFA mess around that decision.

Huspen: Is it usually held in November?

Lisi: No, it's usually held in June or July every four years. Because Qatar got the World Cup under some dubious circumstances, they then realized only after the fact that in the summer it's 120 degrees there and just too hot to host. So they'll be hosting in November when it's a better 85 degrees. It actually disrupts the entire soccer calendar, because between August and May there's domestic soccer leagues around Europe. The Premier League and all these other competitions are being held during that time. Everyone has to take a month break in the middle of their domestic seasons to accommodate this tournament, and then go back to playing domestically again. What will also happen is these really weird situations where you're watching the World Cup on Thanksgiving weekend, which has never happened before. On Black Friday, the United States is playing England. That'll be a huge game, and people are often off work that day unlike in the rest of the month. Instead of shopping, they can stay home and watch the World Cup. I think that game might end up becoming the highest rated game in American history because people are home for Thanksgiving and the US/England game is going to be really big here.

Huspen: When did the book officially launch and how are you advertising it?

Lisi: The book came out October 12, and marketing the book is a lot easier in an internet world where you have Twitter and Instagram. I've been interviewed by a lot of podcasts already and have tried to do a lot of appearances like this one. It's been fun, even though I don't love talking about myself that much to be honest. It's a necessary evil to publicize the book and sell copies. There was an excerpt that ran in Religion Unplugged recently as well. I'm hoping to get excerpts of the book to run in other places as well, as that gets people interested in buying the book.

This interview was published with permission from the Empire State Tribune.

Paige Hagy elected King's SPJ chapter president for the 2022-23 academic year

Paige Hagy, outgoing editor-in-chief of the Empire State Tribune, has been elected president of the student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists at The King’s College for the 2022-23 academic year. Hagy replaces current president Sofia Valdes.  

In addition to her new position, Hagy will be interning this summer at American Banker through the Dow Jones News Fund.

Chapter members also elected Valdes the chapter’s vice president and Melinda Huspen as secretary. Both students have also worked for the EST, the award-winning independent student newspaper at King’s. 

In addition to electing a new executive team, the chapter co-sponsored a series of events with MPJI this year. The chapter helped co-sponsor and promote “Alumni Night” in the fall and spring semesters, where King’s and NYCJ alums discuss what it was like to work in the news media during the pandemic.  

The highlight of the year was a talk on April 13 by publisher Walter E. Hussman Jr., which served as MPJI’s eight annual lecture and co-sponsored by the chapter. 

The campus SPJ chapter was founded by students in 2018. Past chapter presidents have been Anastassia Gliadkovskaya (2018-19), Jillian Cheney (2019-20) and Gabriela Kressley (2020-21).  

The Society of Professional Journalists is the nation’s most broad-based journalism organization, dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism and stimulating high standards of ethical behavior.

SPJ, founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, promotes the free flow of information vital to a well-informed citizenry through the daily work of its members. The organization works to educate current and future journalists through professional development and protects First Amendment guarantees of freedom of press and speech through its advocacy efforts.

For more information on how to become a member, please visit www.spj.org or fill out the application form here.

Politico Editor Peter Canellos Explores The Moral Formation Of An American Hero For Equality

This article was originally published on Religion Unplugged on January 21, 2022.

John Marshall Harlan. Photo via Mathew Brady or Levin Handy — Brady-Handy Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).

(REVIEW) When former President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed John Marshall Harlan to the Supreme Court in 1877, anti-slavery Republicans mistrusted him, calling him “the sycophantic friend and suppliant tool” of White supremacists. Harlan had been born into a slaveholding family in 1833, and he was the lone Southerner on the court. 

To the surprise of his critics, Justice Harlan turned out to be the sole defender of civil rights in a series of Supreme Court cases that sharply limited the scope of the civil rights of Black Americans. Today, we read Harlan’s dissents as authoritative interpretations of the Constitution, and we repudiate the racist logic of many of the decisions of Harlan’s judicial contemporaries. How did Harlan get so much right at a time when his colleagues were getting so much wrong? 

At an online book talk organized by the King’s College in New York, Politico editor Peter Canellos said that his interest in the life of John Marshall Harlan was a “search for the roots of wisdom in the law.” 

“What makes Harlan wise in the estimation of history?” Canellos asked. “What made his colleagues unwise?” 

Peter Canellos

Canellos has a law degree from Columbia University, and he covered the nominations of Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court for The Boston Globe. His legal and journalistic training have equipped him to write “The Great Dissenter,” an engaging, popular and accessible book on Harlan and his jurisprudence. 

Canellos said that Harlan’s distinctive value system lay behind the differences between Harlan and his colleagues on the court. Harlan was a deeply religious man who served as an elder in the Presbyterian church, and he brought to his work a conviction that he was tasked with doing God’s will on Earth. He was not afraid to stand as a lone dissenter in cases to which he perceived his colleagues to be morally blind. In a letter to Harlan, Frederick Douglass wrote, “One man with God is a majority.”

A second source of Harlan’s moral courage was his commitment to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. American democracy was a great experiment in a world full of monarchs and authoritarians. He felt the wisdom of the Founding Fathers akin to a secular religion. He believed that a court that lived up to the spirit of America’s founding documents would ensure that all people who lived under the American flag were treated equally before the law. 

A third source of Harlan’s morality was his personal experience. He grew up in a family steeped in reverence for the law. He was the son of a prominent Kentucky lawyer and politician, and his father groomed him early in life to follow in his footsteps. John had a probable Black half-brother, Robert Harlan, whom his father brought up as a member of the family. In the face of Promethean odds, Robert thrived as a businessman, entrepreneur, politician and philanthropist. John’s relationship with Robert inoculated John from internalizing prevailing cultural concepts of Black inferiority. 

The Great Dissenter

Peter Canelloss, “The Great Dissenter,” Simon and Schuster, 2021.

In the civil rights cases of 1883, Harlan broke with his colleagues when the court ruled that the 14th Amendment applied only to the actions of state governments. In his dissenting opinion, Harlan argued that business owners who perform public functions should be subject to Congress’ power to enforce the 14th Amendment.

Harlan wrote his dissenting opinion using the inkwell with which former Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) — a case that Harlan considered to be America’s original judicial sin. It appalled Harlan that the same court that upheld Congress’ power to force private individuals to turn over runaway slaves in Dred Scot would now deny Congress’ power to prevent racial discrimination against freed men and women in places of public accommodation.  

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), eight Supreme Court justices set up the legal structure for Jim Crow by upholding a Louisiana law that mandated separate railroad cars for Black customers. In his dissent, Harlan wrote, “In the eyes of the law, there is no superior, dominant ruling class of citizens in this country. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color blind and does not know or tolerate classes among its citizens.”  

Peter Canelloss, “The Great Dissenter,” Simon and Schuster, 2021.

In 1906, Harlan intervened in the case of Ed Johnson, a Black man from Kentucky who was convicted of raping a White woman at night in a cemetery even though the victim testified that she wasn’t sure her assailant was Black. Harlan ordered a stay of Johnson’s execution.

A White mob responded to Harlan’s ruling by descending on Chattanooga’s jail and dragging Johnson from his cell. The mob murdered Johnson and pinned a note to his dead body, saying, “To Chief Harlan, Here is your Negro.” Harlan convinced his fellow justices to try for contempt local court officials in Chattanooga who failed to protect Johnson. This resulted in the first and only time in history that the Supreme Court functioned as a criminal trial court. 

At the height of the Gilded Age, Harlan continued his dissents. He defended legislative efforts to break up corporate monopolies, institute an income tax and protect children and other exploited workers. Harlan’s colleagues on the court were corporate lawyers whose commitment to economic freedom precluded government intervention to protect labor rights. 

In the 1901 cases on the status of U.S. territories acquired in the Spanish-American War, Harlan sought to extend full legal protections to people of newly acquired territories in Hawaii, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. He warned that the court must not treat people who live under the American flag as “subjects” or “dependent peoples” lest it “engraft on our republican institutions a colonial system … abhorrent to the principles that underlie and pervade our Constitution.” 

In Berea v. Kentucky (1908), Harlan issued one of his most anguished dissents. An abolitionist preacher had founded Berea College in 1855 to educate Black and White men and women side-by-side, in a state of biblical unity. In 1904, the Kentucky legislature passed a bill to prohibit Black and White students from attending the same institution, public or private. Berea College challenged the law, arguing that it violated its property rights and constitutional liberties. 

The Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s prohibition as a reasonable application of the state’s police powers, citing the state’s interest in preventing racial commingling. Harlan’s dissent rang with righteous indignation. “The capacity to impart instruction to others is given by the Almighty for beneficent purposes, and its use may not be forbidden or interfered with by government,” Harlan wrote. “The right to impart instruction ... is beyond question part of one’s liberty as guaranteed … by the Constitution of the United States.”

Robert Harlan

Robert Harlan was probably the most important influence of John’s views on racial equality. Robert was 16 years older than John. In John’s eyes, Robert loomed as a fearless man of action. Robert’s refined cultural interests and entrepreneurial successes shaped John’s perceptions of what Black Americans could achieve in an atmosphere of freedom. 

Because he was African American, Robert was prevented from pursuing a formal education. Instead, he had to navigate from a young age the rough and tumble rituals of frontier life. At various times in his life, Robert succeeded as a horse racing impresario, a gold rush entrepreneur, a financier of Black businesses, a world traveler and an elected member of the Ohio House of Representatives. 

Robert opened a store in San Francisco during the California gold rush, and he returned to Kentucky with a fortune, which he invested in businesses in the free state of Ohio. Robert helped finance the first public school for Black children sanctioned by the Cincinnati school board. He also held the lease on the Duma House, a hotel that was the “beating heart of the Cincinnati Black community, honeycombed with hiding places for runaway slaves.” When John Harlan was nominated to the Supreme Court, Robert helped galvanize Republican support for his appointment. 

With his large house, fashionable clothing and biracial heritage, Robert became a representative of America’s aristocrats of color. When traveling, Robert and his influential Black friends — such as Frederick Douglass, Louisiana Governor P.B.S. Pinchback and Howard Law School founder John Mercer Langston — would stay in one another’s homes and host lavish dinners. Robert raised his children in a world of cosmopolitan sophistication, community service, political activism and appreciation for the arts. As John was resisting the legal threats to Black rights on the high court, Robert was fighting in the Ohio legislature to protect Black Americans’ access to inns, restaurants and public transportation. The New York World stated that Robert’s influence in Black America rivaled that of Douglass. 

During his lifetime, John Harlan was dismissed by many White Americans as an eccentric outlier. However, Black Americans responded enthusiastically to the justice whom they considered to be their sole ally on the Supreme Court. When Harlan died in 1911, Black congregations around the country organized spontaneous memorial services. The massive Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington hosted a multi-faith service in which Harlan’s Plessy dissent was read aloud.

“When the spirit of John Marshall Harlan left its temple of clay last Saturday morning, a great light went out,” proclaimed the Washington Bee. “An entire race, today, is weeping because ... a friend has been taken from us. ... Now that he has gone, we cannot help but tramble, and fear that no one after him may dissent against decisions against our race.”

In the 1950s, the NAACP found in Harlan’s Plessy dissent the legal basis to overturn segregation. Constance Baker Motley, who clerked for Thurgood Marshall, recalled, “Marshall would read aloud passages from Harlan’s amazing dissent. I don’t believe we ever filed a brief in which a portion of that opinion was not quoted.”

When Justice Marshall died in 1993, Judge Motley wrote, “Marshall admired the courage of Harlan more than any justice who has ever sat on the Supreme Court. Even Chief Justice Warren’s forthright and moving decision for the court in (Brown v. Board of Education) did not affect Marshall in the same way. Earl Warren was writing for a unanimous Supreme Court. Harlan was a solitary and lonely figure writing for posterity.”

Robert Carle is a professor at the King’s College in Manhattan. Dr. Carle has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The American Interest, Religion Unplugged, Newsday, Society, Human Rights Review, Academic Questions, and Reason. Some of the material in this essay was published in The Public Discourse on July 13, 2021.

King’s Journalism Professor Launches Acclaimed Book About Cell-Free Zone in West Virginia

Stephen Kurczy has taught media law and ethics at The King’s College since 2018 and recently released an acclaimed non-fiction book, published Aug. 3 by Dey Street Books, titled “The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence.” It has already been named one of USA Today’s five books not to miss and a Washington Post top 10 book for August. 

Kurczy spent years reporting on the town of Green Bank, West Virginia, which is a technological paradox. It’s home to the Green Bank Observatory, where astronomers “search the depths of the universe using the latest technology, while schoolchildren go without WiFi or iPads.” For the observatory’s radio telescopes to hear the faint whispers of deep space, the surrounding area must remain largely free of radio noise, which is why WiFi, smartphones, and even microwaves are banned at the observatory and discouraged in the surrounding area. Cell service is out of the question. Kurczy explores the characters and subcultures in this town. The New York Times calls the book “a reminder of the simple pleasure of reconnecting with real people in real life.” 

Kurczy graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism. He has a degree in philosophy from Calvin College. He has reported from more than a dozen countries for publications ranging from The New York Times to The Christian Science Monitor. He also has functioned without a cellphone for more than a decade. MPJI executive director and JCS program chair Paul Glader asked Stephen some questions about his new book.

Q. How and why did you decide to report about Green Bank? 

I threw away my first and last cellphone in 2009. Since then, my initially trivial decision to live without a phone has escalated into an obstinate refusal to tote around a piece of technological hardware that I believe infringes on personal space, invades privacy, and erodes human capacity to focus and live in the moment. Seemingly every day, an article or piece of research is published about the downside of smartphones and how they keep us obsessively (and unhealthily) connected at all times. Yet I remain one of the few people to take the hardline response of abstaining from usage. 

In America today, 97 percent of people own cellphones and 85 percent own smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center. I’m an outlier. Is there any place where I still fit in? Is there a place where anyone can still eat dinner, watch a movie, or vacation uninterrupted by a cellphone? Those questions led me to do a simple online search for “places in the U.S. without cell service.” The top result was for a town called Green Bank in West Virginia, supposedly the “quietest town in America,” where cell service was outlawed and WiFi, smartphones, and other modern tech were reportedly banned. To me, it sounded like paradise. Within weeks, I was there.

Q. Who were some of the most interesting characters you reported on in this book? 

The book has a diverse cast. We meet one of the world’s foremost radio astronomers, who is also one of the best banjo players in Appalachia. We speak with the woman who oversees the 13,000-square-mile National Radio Quiet Zone and the man who patrols the area like a cop looking for renegade radio signals. We also interact with the other groups that have been attracted to life in a super-quiet place, including back-to-the-landers, neo-Nazis, government spies, a clown physician named Patch Adams, and a group of people who believe they’re made physically ill by cell service and WiFi. 

One of my favorite characters in the book is a drug-dealing ex-convict named De Thompson, who teaches me how to forage for ramps and takes me deep into a cave that is connected to a long-unsolved murder. He is a colorful, complicated figure, which basically sums up the area. Colorful and complicated. 

Q. Who are the “electrosensitives” that you report on in this book? 

I spent hundreds of hours over several years speaking with the area’s so-called electrosensitives, who believe they are pained to the point of debilitation from cell service, WiFi, smartphones, and almost any other kind of modern technology. Hundreds of these “WiFi refugees” have come to Green Bank from around the world looking for relief from their pain. These people are clearly suffering, though it’s unclear exactly from what. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) is unrecognized by the American Medical Association or the World Health Organization. 

I met one woman named Sue who moved to Green Bank from the New York City area—leaving behind her husband and kids—because she felt that living in the Quiet Zone was her only way to survive. Why would she and so many other people uproot their lives for something that wasn’t real? Their conviction brought me to see electrosensitivity as a kind of religion. Just as some people pray to Jesus and others to Muhammad to heal them, Sue essentially prays to the quiet. Who am I to say she’s wrong? And in any case, she’s a great asset to the Green Bank Observatory, as she truly believes in the area’s quiet mission.

Q. And you reported on the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group that was once selling $1 million annually of hate materials around the world? 

As I said, the Quiet Zone is a complicated place! Along with being home to the nation’s first federal radio astronomy observatory, it’s also home to what was once the “most dangerous and best organized neo-Nazi formation in America,” according to the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center. The National Alliance’s founder was William Pierce, author of an infamous novel called The Turner Diaries, considered the Bible of the racist right. That book and the National Alliance have been linked to dozens of acts of racist violence over the past half-century, and it’s in part because of the evil influence that Pierce wielded from the Quiet Zone. 

In essence, the neo-Nazis came to the Quiet Zone for the same reason as the astronomers, hippies, and electrosensitives: to get away from it all in one of the last great swaths of quiet in America. Pierce took refuge on a secluded mountain where he could pursue his agenda in relative peace, without being bothered by minorities, law enforcement, or civil liberties groups. He was able to thrive in the Quiet Zone in part because of the area’s “live and let live” attitude. Such a view on racism is dangerous, as I conclude in the book, as it also allows racism to fester and eventually erupt into violence. We can’t be quiet in the face of such evil. 

Q. What’s the military’s connection to Green Bank? 

Most reports about the Quiet Zone only mention Green Bank and its famous radio astronomy observatory. But in fact, the National Radio Quiet Zone protects both Green Bank and a town called Sugar Grove, where the U.S. military has since the 1960s operated its own collection of radio antennas used for communications and surveillance. The facility is today operated by the National Security Agency (NSA), the intelligence-gathering arm of the Defense Department. Using the antennas in Sugar Grove, the NSA eavesdrops on millions of private telephone calls and emails every hour. It’s a vital part of the military’s global spy operations. And it’s made possible by the Quiet Zone. Just as Green Bank requires quiet for its telescopes to hear deep space, so does Sugar Grove require quiet to listen in on the outside world’s communications.

Q. What role did religion and houses of worship play in people’s lives and in your reporting in Green Bank? 

Green Bank sits inside the most sparsely populated county east of the Mississippi River, with about 8,200 residents spread over an area the size of Rhode Island. You can imagine how challenging it is to connect with people when they’re all so spread out, and when many were wary of speaking with an outsider like me. I had to find an inroads, and that turned out to be the houses of worship. 

The county has about three dozen active churches, which also serve as community meeting places. I felt comfortable attending them, as my father is a minister and I went to a Christian college. This was a way I could show interest in local culture and respect for locals’ beliefs. In turn, people were more willing to speak with me, invite me for dinner, and point me in the right direction as I searched for answers to what this place was all about. 

Q. Will Green Bank ever change its rules against WiFi and cell service? 

Yes, but perhaps not formally. It’s already happening with WiFi. As I found over years of reporting, WiFi has become so pervasive that it’s hard to find many homes without it, which begs the question: Is something illegal if everybody does it? I compare it to speed limits. A sign may say the limit is 65 mph, but if everybody goes 75 mph then nobody will get in trouble. Same with almost everybody having WiFi in Green Bank. 

Cell service exists as close as nine miles from the observatory, at a ski resort that installed a special low-power system of distributed antennas that allows skiers to stay connected. As such technology gets cheaper, it might become affordable for the area’s towns to consider such investments. Another new technology is low-range WiFi, which might not impact the telescopes. The observatory has also considered building a giant wall or berm around itself, which would essentially shield it from the community’s WiFi. 

The world’s growing amount of radio noise may also force Green Bank to abandon its quiet policy. The Quiet Zone is increasingly under threat from overhead communications satellites as companies such as SpaceX and Google launch plans to establish global WiFi through thousands of low-orbiting satellites. At some point, there’ll be no option but to set up a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, a place that is truly radio silent. 

Q. What kind of lessons did you find from Green Bank that most interested you and might interest readers? 

The Quiet Zone has the power to challenge people to reconsider their tech habits. The absence of cell service and the sparsity of public WiFi is enough to shock outsiders into questioning their reliance on their devices. One visitor to Green Bank told me that he felt convicted to stop sleeping with his iPhone. Others said they felt like they were going through tech withdrawal in Green Bank. The area is a reminder of the virtues of a simplified life. 

But I also found that the Quiet Zone is no utopia. While Green Bank initially sounded to me like a modern Walden that held lessons for the good life, I found that people there struggle with many of the same digital issues as the rest of us. They feel tethered to their smartphones, even if it’s just through WiFi. They still feel like they spend too much time in front of digital screens, even if the internet is incredibly slow. There’s no getting away from the tech revolution. 

Q. You haven’t had a cell phone for some time? We always have to email you to reach you about class planning for your courses at King’s. :) Tell us why and what experience you have had being so unconnected from the smartphone era?

When King’s College contacts me, I only get that message when I’m at my laptop. It means that work is essentially sequestered on my computer—employers can’t follow me on a smartphone that I could hypothetically check during a hike, a party, a movie. It helps me keep work separate from my personal life. I think it also helps keep me sane, because I get a break from the online world. 

From reading a lot of research into the negative effects of being constantly connected and tethered to social media, I’m pretty convinced that life is no worse without a smartphone and that it may well be better. Smartphones have been blamed for falling fertility rates, loss of sleep, lazy thinking, depression and suicide, not to mention a recent surge in traffic fatalities because of distracted driving. 

Stephen Kurczy

At the same time, to be honest, I’m personally online a lot even without a smartphone. Like so many people during the pandemic, I’ve been stuck inside, in front of a computer, rarely away from WiFi and my laptop, which has forced me to consider setting new boundaries with tech in my life. This could be as simple an act as closing my laptop at 6 p.m. for the rest of the evening. We all have to create quiet zones within our own lives. 

Gary Fong Discusses Impact of Photojournalism at Seventh Annual MPJI Lecture

This article was written by The Empire State Tribune staff writer Myrian Garcia and published on The Empire State Tribune website on April 6th, 2021. You can read more articles from The Empire State Tribune here.

Photojournalist Gary Fong, whose photographs have won him many awards such as San Francisco Bay Area Photographer of the Year and earned him the honor of having his work published in TIME Magazine, The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, spoke at the Seventh Annual MPJI lecture on Wednesday, March 24.

Whether it is a shot capturing celebrity couples or biker gangs causing trouble, a photo entails a story that moves people, promotes change and advocates for action according to Fong.

“When we are out with cameras, we are a witness to history,” Fong said. “It is an awesome responsibility to watch history unfold.”  

During Fong’s career as a photojournalist in the ‘70s and ‘80s, photographers worked with the limitations of shooting film. 

“Be precise on what you shoot,” was the advice Fong gave to students aspiring to become photojournalists. 

With the development of digital cameras and editing software, it is much easier to create the perfect shot. However, new technology also makes it much easier to manipulate a photo from what it actually portrays. Fong warned the audience that precision and integrity will determine how a shot can move the hearts of viewers. 

Fong shared different pictures that depicted moments during wartime and damage caused by natural disasters. No matter how descriptive words in an article may be, a photograph of such devastation can allow the viewer to experience the event themselves. In history we’ve seen that a single photo can urge governments to fund programs and send help to those in need. According to Fong, the same photo that calls for government action can also unite the world. 

“Pictures have a tremendous amount of effect,” Fong said, “regardless of a person’s background.”

A message may get lost in translation, but photographs capture moments in a way that transcends language, nationality and culture.

Fong explained how he switched from a major in engineering to that of journalism per God's “calling.” After years of serving as a photojournalist, the stories he told and pictures he shared showed the audience that he fulfilled his calling by integrating his faith into his work. While Fong would have preferred to speak in person, he was still able to present his favorite captured moments on Zoom and tell stories that highlighted his career as a photojournalist.

The McCandlish Phillips Journalism Institute and Acton Institute Host Skeptech

This article was written by The Empire State Tribune staff writer Esther Wickham and published on The Empire State Tribune website on March 3rd, 2021. You can read more articles from The Empire State Tribune here.

The McCandlish Phillips Journalism Institute hosted SkepTech, a virtual webinar, last Thursday with bestselling author and political commentator David French.

The discussion centered around the discourse between the government, technology and free speech. Keynote speaker French, who currently serves as senior editor for The Dispatch and as a columnist for Time Magazine, opened the first half of the event with a lecture tackling free speech within technology and Big Tech companies.

“We’re weighting into a topic that has been more dominated by ignorance and outright dishonesty surrounding Section 230 and free-speech online,” French said.

Screenshot Courtesy of Esther Wickham

Discussing Section 230, French outlined why there is no trust between the government and individuals. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” This act aims to provide immunity from legal responsibilities to Big Tech companies that decide to censor violent content on their social media platforms.

“Online speech was specifically created for moderation but is not being treated much like offline speech. The real object is not their bigness. It’s their ideology,” French said. “You begin to realize that your lines of communication to your public are in the hands of people who do not like your speech, and so you feel an enormous sense of vulnerability.”  

French concluded his lecture by restating the main reason why we are having these discussions. 

“We need to be careful not to let micro issues distract us from macro truth,” French said. 

In the second half of the event, French moderated a panel of guest speakers, including Dr. Mary Anne Franks, professor at the University of Miami School of Law, Al Sikes, current President of Hearst New Media, and Scott Lincicome, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Cato Institute. The panelists then discussed how Section 230 is giving more power to big companies. 

“With Section 230, these big dominating companies get this bubble wrap protection around them while private citizens don’t get special protection,” Franks said. 

The panelist concluded that these big companies could do more harm than good with this legal protection.

Jerry Mitchell: A Race Against Time

Jerry Mitchell’s memoir was published earlier this year by Simon and Schuster. In "Race Against Time", he recounts the investigation that reopened four notorious “cold cases” of the Civil Rights Movement. Mitchell’s work as an investigative reporter helped to send four Klansmen to prison decades after these crimes took place. His lecture at The King’s College coincides with the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, giving black men the right to vote.

Jerry Mitchell's memoir was published earlier this year by Simon and Schuster. In "Race Against Time", he recounts the investigation that reopened four notor...