Whistleblower Archives - Public Seminar

Activism

A Public Service

Whistleblowing, Disclosure and Anonymity

December 12, 2019 • by Tim Schwartz

In 1965, 28-year-old Peter Buxtun was hired by the U.S. Public Health Service in San Francisco as a venereal disease investigator. Shortly after starting his job, Buxtun began hearing about a little-known, ongoing study on African-American males with syphilis. To Buxtun’s ears, this didn’t sound right -- by the late ...

History

The Whistleblowers of the My Lai Massacre

How three ordinary soldiers exposed a crime

November 19, 2019 • by Howard Jones

On March 16, 1968, about 200 American soldiers from Bravo and Charlie companies -- part of the Americal Division’s 11th Infantry Brigade -- entered the complex of South Vietnamese villages now known as My Lai, and killed 504 unarmed villagers, including elderly men, women, children, and babies. The “My Lai ...

Past Present

Whistleblowers, Church Arsons, and Co-Working Spaces

Episode 199

October 8, 2019 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: An intelligence officer has filed a complaint regarding Donald Trump’s interactions with the president of Ukraine. We discussed the history of whistleblowing and Niki noted the role of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers in shaping contemporary ideas about whistleblowing. Natalia referenced the founding fathers’ ...

Blue Monday

The Trump “Whistleblower” Situation Is Very Dangerous for Democracy and for the Democrats

Biden’s disingenuousness is no match for Trump

September 23, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Do the recent revelations by investigative journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and most notably the Wall Street Journal represent an “inflection point,” exposing a level of malfeasance and criminality that can no longer be ignored? Perhaps. It is too early to tell. But the record of the past seems pretty ...