PROLOGUE

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

—Theodore Rothke, “In a Dark Time”

DURING A BEAUTIFUL MIDDAY CEREMONY ON JANUARY 20, 2021, I watched the inauguration of a new American president. On this day Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as the president and vice president of the United States, respectively.

But it wasn’t the peaceful transfer of power from the sitting president to his successor that we normally experience. Donald Trump refused to attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. Trump forgot that four years earlier he said at his 2017 inauguration that “every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their graciousness throughout this transition. They have been magnificent.”(2)

Trump’s solipsism prevented him from attending the ceremony that would transfer his power to President-Elect Biden. After all, he’s made it clear that “only he can fix it.” How could he possibly recognize Biden as the next president? He’s not conceded and insists he won the election by a landslide.

Instead, he fled from Washington early in the morning on the same day, to Mar-a-Lago, a resort in Palm Beach, Florida. For four years this 2 president held America hostage. Regrettably, he continues with his pathetic fable that he didn’t lose the 2020 election, that it was stolen. 

From 2015 forward, my blog told story after story about a strangely coiffed New York television personality and businessperson with no experience in government or governing, except being sued by the Department of Justice for human rights abuses by refusing to rent to Black families.(3) 

Derived from my stories, The Trump Files: An Account of the Trump Administration’s Effect on American Democracy, Human Rights, Science, and Public Health tracks how Trump’s presidency, a grim period in American history, affected not only the United States but the entire world. 

During the four years that Trump was president, I was working in my home office in Marietta, Georgia, with a view of the woods in a protected wetlands called Mud Creek. For nearly thirty years, I’ve written from this office, which I share with my wife, Mary-Alice. 

I base the story I tell about Donald Trump on my research and blog writing, and on conversations with colleagues and friends here in the United States, as well as in Russia, Australia, and Spain. Much of the research was dependent on what my colleague Mercedes Schneider calls “digital research.”(4) 

Schneider has written several books on educational reform using digital research as her source of information. She is also a prolific blogger at https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/.I made use of scholarly journals, books, and government reports. I also utilized a vast array of media resources, especially newspapers and magazines written by acknowledged journalists and writers. 

FOUR POINTS OF VIEW 

I’ve authored this book from several personal angles. Perhaps the most significant perspective I bring to the book is my career as a science educator for nearly forty years. In 1962 I began as a high school science teacher in Weston and Lexington, Massachusetts. After attending graduate school at Boston University (while I was teaching), I received a National Science Foundation Academic Institute award to attend The Ohio State University, where I did my doctoral work in science education and geology. I began my career as a professor of science education at Georgia State University (GSU) in 1969. 

The personal experience of teaching science at the high school and university levels informs my Trump Files analyses of science. My authoring of science and science education textbooks (e.g., The Whole Cosmos Catalogue of Science Activities, 1977, 1992, Goodyear; Minds On Science, 1992, HarperCollins; Science as Inquiry, 1999, 2009, Goodyear; and The Art of Teaching Science, 2005, 2009, Oxford & Routledge) enhances my insights into how Trump’s malevolence and ignorance distorted science in the public sphere. 

I also wove citizen diplomacy into the book.(5) Citizen diplomacy is the idea that individual citizens can shape relationships with foreign nations.(6) 

I was mentored by Francis Underhill Macy, a dedicated environmentalist, energy activist, and citizen diplomat. He led the first trip that I took to the Soviet Union with the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP) in 1983. The association sponsored the first of many Soviet-American exchanges during the most dramatic period of the Cold War. Relationships between the Soviet and American governments were at an all-time low, with fear of nuclear war dominating the minds of people in the Soviet Union and America. The AHP exchange was a human potential movement pioneering project that brought psychologists, medical practitioners, educators, and activists together in the Soviet Union. 

Macy did groundbreaking work with hundreds of activists in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kazakhstan. He initiated scores of delegations and exchanges between Americans and their counterparts in the former Soviet Union, especially in the areas of psychology, environment, and citizen action. Indeed, in 1961, just after receiving his master’s degree from Harvard in Slavic studies, he led the first-ever citizen diplomatic mission to the USSR where Soviet citizens met Americans for the first time. A Russian speaker, scholar, and humanist, Macy was the inspiration for much of the work that would follow in educator and student exchanges and global environmental activism. 

His encouragement and teaching gave me the foundation to create an American and Soviet education exchange program centered at GSU. Together with American and Russian colleagues, we designed and implemented a global environmental science program, the Global Thinking Project (GTP).(7) 

The GTP is a “hands across the globe” education project that provides a paradigm for students and teachers to participate in environmental study and to use new technology tools with peers around the world. During the project, students monitored and analyzed important physical and biological aspects of their environment, such as the environmental quality of their classroom and the quality of air and water in their community, as well as the study of solid waste, acid rain, tap water, and the creation of local community-based environmental topics.

The skills and knowledge that students constructed were then applied as students engaged in collaborative learning projects linking classrooms globally. In our view, students were seen as citizen scientists who integrated science and societal problems and issues. In so doing, students learned that problems that are typically addressed as science problems have social, political, economic, and ethical aspects as well.

This work came about through travel to Russia (formerly the Soviet Union) for twenty years and collaboration with multiple USSR research institutions and schools in Moscow, Tbilisi, St. Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Chelyabinsk, and Pushchino. American and Russian researchers, teachers, and students worked together during the Soviet eras from Brezhnev to Gorbachev and then the Russian presidencies of Yeltsin and Putin. The GTP led to collaboration with educators in other countries, especially Australia and Spain.(8)

By participating in firsthand experiences in Russia for more than twenty-five three-week periods over two decades, I know Russia in a different way than Donald Trump does. I worked with Russian colleagues from the ground up, and little by little relationships built upon trust grew and developed over the years—and still exist to this day. 

Another perspective that I bring to the book is my sense of place. I live in Georgia, which has a diverse population of more than 10 million people spread across five distinct urban areas and many rural counties. I wasn’t born here, but I’ve lived in the Atlanta area for over fifty years, so I consider myself a citizen of Georgia. 

Near the end of the Trump era, Georgia became a focal point of the 2020 election, followed by the dual senatorial elections in January 2021 in which the Democrats prevailed to take back the US Senate. I’ve used my experiences as a citizen and a professor at GSU to write stories about Trump’s involvement in Georgia politics and the law. You’ll find blog posts and discussions of how Georgia played a significant role in the Trump administration’s demise. 

I have much to report about and learn from Georgia. In early January 2021, Donald Trump called Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to tell him to find votes that would change the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor. Beginning in 2021, Trump was under investigation for vote fraud by the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, because of that phone call. Georgia has also played a significant role in voter suppression, not only after Trump left office, but years earlier when hundreds of thousands of voters were purged from the roles. 

Another mindset that contributed to this book is the fact that I’ve been a blogger at The Art of Teaching Science since 2005 and have written there throughout the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump presidencies. During the Bush and Obama presidencies. 

I wrote about the social, economic, and corporate forces that affect public education. I explored the dreadful embrace of testing, Common Core goals, and standards that impede the work of classroom teachers, especially in science. I also criticized the movement to privatize public education, which advocates using public funding to support alternatives such as charter schools and vouchers. 

The core ideas of The Trump Files are based on four years of blogging while Trump was president. I’ve used the blog posts to share with you my personal and professional views of Trump and his administration. 

MALIGNANT NORMALITY 

Donald Trump presented the United States with what Dr. Robert Jay Lifton calls “malignant normality.”(9) 

Lifton’s concept of “malignant normality” emerged from of his study of Nazi doctors who over time and through perverse counseling, drinking together, and assurances and support of each other were adapted to evil. which occurs when society begins to see forms of destructive and dangerous behavior as normal. Donald Trump and Trumpism render an array of malignant normality. Lifton, born in 1926, is an American psychiatrist and author who is known for his studies of psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence, and he has been one of the most outspoken critics of Donald Trump. 

Science educator Charles “Kip” Ault, professor emeritus of science education at Lewis & Clark College, has suggested that Trump’s malignant normality includes megalomania, willful ignorance, dishonesty, and fraud.(10) 

Add Ault’s thinking to what Lifton says about Trump’s malignant normality and a condition of extreme abnormality emerges that replaces American democracy. The circumstance of Trump’s malignant normality includes extensive lying, falsification, systemic corruption, attacks on critics, disregard of intelligence agencies and findings, repudiation of climate change truths, embrace of dictators, and berating of international allies.(11) 

In Lifton’s view, professionals should use their knowledge to expose and bear witness to such normality. For instance, Lifton worked with Vietnam War veterans to help them deal with the painful realities of war so that they could continue their antiwar activities. He also worked in the doctors’ antinuclear movement to talk about the effects of nuclear weapons. Lifton said that his task in the Hiroshima study was to record surviving people’s experience after the atomic bomb was dropped on their city.(12) 

Over time he understood himself to be a witnessing professional. 

Lifton’s writing influenced the purpose of my writing—bearing witness—and indeed supplied the support and rationale to write often on my blog about Trump and his actions. In short, Lifton believes it is important that witnessing professionals decide to document what they see and observe and make their observations available to others. 

Even before Trump became president, I was incensed by his views and remarks about immigrants, African Americans, climate change, the environment, healthcare, rival politicians, and the press. Blogging was a way to share my views and find research that shed further light on Trump’s behavior and its effects on society. 

THEMES FOR WRITING 

There was much to write during the time Trump was in the White House. And it continued long after he was in office. For example, I describe how Donald Trump weakened American democracy, dishonored the nation’s foundational values, and perverted the rights of people to vote. He also disparaged science and scientists, belittled the work of medical and healthcare workers, and inflicted damage on environmental protections developed over the past fifty years. 

Trump’s abuse of power as president—by bribing the president of Ukraine—resulted in his first impeachment. Trump lied about the pandemic, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Near the end of his term, he instigated an attempted coup d’état of the United States government. The coup attempt resulted in his second impeachment while president. The subsequent trial took place in February 2021, after he left office. Fifty-seven senators found Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection. 

DAY OF INFAMY 

The events on January 6, 2021, revealed Donald Trump acting like any dictator or tyrant. The world witnessed the actions of a dictator trying to undermine a vulnerable American democracy. Trump tried to convince others that he won the 2020 presidential election and that he had the right to strongarm members of Congress, the Justice Department, and state officials to change the vote in his favor. He promoted conspiracy theories of wide-scale election fraud, digital vote manipulation, and mail-in voting irregularities, especially in Black voter precincts. 

The unprecedented attack on the nation’s Capitol building, encouraged by Trump and other actors who appeared on the rally stage on January 6, may result in sedition charges against the former president and his sycophants. But more dangerously, Trump left in his wake an autocratic and orchestrated movement to suppress and restrict voting rights across the country. State voter suppression has been at the center of voting rights abuses in the United States since the nation’s founding. Even after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, southern states continued to restrict and suppress Black people from voting in local and national elections. 

Dr. Bandy X. Lee, an American psychiatrist who has written two books about Trump. (13). 

These two books provide a core of the mental health of Donald Trump that I write about. about Donald Trump, reminds us that “when a coup attempt goes unpunished, it becomes a training exercise.”(14) 

Dr. Lee is an eminent psychiatrist whose scrutiny of Trump provided me with valid and reliable assertions of Trump’s unstable behavior. Although hundreds of American insurrectionists have been arrested and face myriad charges, the US Senate Republicans blocked an independent investigation of the January 6 riot. Republicans in Congress have, to their disgrace, even downplayed the failed coup. Trump has still not been held accountable for the coup attempt. 

We face certainty that such an attack will happen again. A member of the Three Percenters, a right-wing militant group, wrote a letter in jail while being held on charges for storming the Capitol on January 6. He said that those attacking the building could have overthrown the government if they had wanted. He warns that another January 6 type of attack is possible. As of this writing, he faces twenty years in prison.(15) 

RUSSIAN CONNECTIONS 

Donald Trump had decades of connections with Russia before he entered the White House. Many of Trump’s senior advisors also had years of experiences and contact with Russian officials. However, he and his team downplayed their relationships with Russia throughout their time in office. But Russia played a significant role in getting Trump elected in 2016 and attempted that again in 2020. In fact the Trump campaign went out of its way to connect with anyone who could “get dirt” on Hillary Clinton, even from foreign governments. Russian interference in the 2016 election was not an anomaly, and it indeed might have been caused by Hillary Clinton’s political views of Russia. Perhaps the Russians felt Trump would be more agreeable to their worldview. As I will explore later, the United States has intervened in more foreign elections than the Russians. 

MY CONNECTIONS WITH RUSSIA 

My experience with Russia is different from Donald Trump’s associations with Russia. The foundation for my experiences began in 1981 as a private citizen joining with others to make contact and develop relationships with people in the Soviet Union. My story is shared by hundreds of other Americans and Canadians who were willing to travel to the Soviet Union, paying their own way, at a time when the governments of each country had little to no communication with each other. 

This was the early 1980s, and it was a time of heightening fears of nuclear war. The media played a role in exacerbating the tension that already existed between the United States and the Soviet Union. But through the actions of individuals and small groups of citizens, significant lines of communication were opened between our countries. Francis Underhill Macy, who I mentioned earlier, Paul von Ward, and Anya Kucharev opened these channels based on their previous work in international relations and citizen diplomacy. Fortunately, I met them at the same time in 1983 on our way to Moscow. 

Von Ward was a US diplomat for eighteen years, beginning in the Johnson administration. He later founded an international nonprofit dedicated to cross-cultural understanding and cooperation. 

Anya Kucharev was one of the originators of the Esalen Soviet- American citizen diplomacy gatherings in 1980. The AHP Soviet Exchange Project built itself on the work of the Esalen program. Consequently, Kucharev’s participation was crucial. She helped people build bridges with Soviets and became the “cross-cultural Sherpa” for many of us. (16)

Her book, Information Moscow, was designed for visitors from the West to Moscow and other locations in the Soviet Union. (17)

Those of us who traveled to the Soviet Union during this time were known as citizen diplomats. We chartered new territory by bringing our experiences in education, psychology, and psychiatry to find Soviet citizens in similar fields and talk with each other. That’s what we did: talk. We met in small groups and as individuals and discussed topics of mutual interest. 

Dr. Inna Volkova was one of the first persons that I met. She was a respected researcher at the Institute for US and Canadian Studies, a Soviet think tank. She and I talked about how our countries could improve their relationships with each other; to her, it was centered on the simple idea of talking and collaborating with each other. Just as Kucharev said, Volkova was ready for in-depth discussions on a range of subjects. She studied and wrote on Eastern religious movements in the United States and was also studying Buddhism and Zen.

From this early conversation with her, I realized that we and the Soviets had a lot in common and would be able to move forward and plan activities and events in the coming years. 

A week earlier, the Soviets had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, and here I was, talking about that tragedy with Dr. Volkova. I made notes of our conversation in my journal, which I kept for each trip that I made to the USSR/Russia. In my journal I wrote that Inna believed “we, the Soviets, are responsible, I am responsible.”

But tensions were high between the United States and the USSR, so when a Korean flight strayed over Soviet territory, the Soviets suspected it was a provocation to test its military preparedness. Both sides blamed the other for the plane’s downing. Reagan suspended all Soviet passenger air service to the United States. We were supposed to fly from Washington to Moscow on a Soviet flight, but Marylou Foley, our Washington, DC, travel agent who specialized in Soviet travel, had to reroute us through Helsinki. 

Traveling as citizens to the Soviet Union was the point of citizen diplomacy. Track I diplomacy (government officials to government officials) was at an all-time low between our countries. This was the perfect time to implement Track II, or citizen diplomacy. After meetings with two Soviet institutions, we met with Arthur A. Hartman, the US ambassador to the USSR. Hartman also realized the importance of citizen-to-citizen communication. Consequently he made it possible for all embassy staff to have a weekday off so that they could go out, away from their compound, and mingle with ordinary Soviet citizens. 

On another trip I met Dr. Alexander Orlov, who was a psychologist at the Institute for General and Educational Psychology. At the time, he was head of the institute’s Teacher Education Laboratory in Moscow, where I met him and his team members. He and I became close friends and colleagues over the years. Orlov was steeped in 12 

humanistic psychology and education. He helped me navigate the world of Soviet education and became an advisor on future projects. Orlov encouraged his lab associates to explore human potential and ways of improving teacher education research. He translated and made possible the publication of American psychologist Carl Rogers’s book Freedom to Learn. He is currently a professor of social science at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. 

The relationships I had with Inna Volkova and Alexander Orlov were typical of the kinds that formed because of the citizen diplomacy work of hundreds of Americans and Soviets. Soviets were active and interested in forming relationships and building on these in the years ahead. 

As citizen diplomats, we traveled regularly to the Soviet Union. Often we saw and worked with each other twice a year. As we kept coming back to the USSR, our relationships deepened and resulted in planning and collaboration. By 1987 our citizen diplomacy work resulted in a collaboration between the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and GSU.

This collaboration resulted in the development and implementation of the GTP. The Academy of Pedagogical Science is responsible for the administration of seventeen education research institutes spread across Russia. It is comparable to the US Department of Education’s Regional Education Laboratories, which are located across ten regions of the country. The Academy of Pedagogical Sciences later was renamed the Russian Academy of Education. The initial contractual agreement was signed by Vasily Vasilovich Davydov (18) head of the Academy of Pedagogical Science and the dean of the College of Education at GSU. The agreement, which was originally outlined in a popular restaurant in Atlanta. (19) 

Participants included twelve American teachers, administrators, and professors from Georgia and fifteen Soviet researchers from the Institute of Adult Education and Research. This meeting led to a formal research agreement between the Academy and GSU to implement research and writing projects that led to the formation of the GTP and years of official exchanges among researchers, teachers, and students. Two years later, because of this meeting, we established one of the first telecommunications networks between American and Russian schools. Six of the Soviets sitting in the room in the photo above would be the first group of Soviets to travel to Atlanta and help foster our plans for the future. 

The GTP brought hundreds of citizens from Georgia and Russia together, impacting not only these participants but also the families of these students, teachers, and researchers and resulting in many lasting relationships. Mathew Searels, a former student of the GTP from a rural part of Georgia, recently shared with me some of his impressions about his 1998 trip to Russia. I asked him how the exchange with Russia had impacted him. (20) 

He replied, “The ways the project impacted me are immense, uncountable, and there are many I likely haven’t realized. I reflect on the experience frequently (weekly at minimum).” And then he added, “Every time I hear the news or the public discussing their perception of global affairs, I recall how warm and inviting my Russian family is. I recall how excited the entire community was to meet me and how proud they were to have an American visiting. I was treated like a king.” 

But what I realized from talking with him was that the teenagers we brought together experienced a vision that we could not have expected. He added this: “I am fascinated with ecosystem dynamics, and I attribute the GTP as the catalyst that ignited the scientific exploration and fueled my unquenchable thirst for knowledge and discovery. It helped shape my viewpoint of the world as a system that does not have purely mutually exclusive parts, but our individual decisions have far-reaching impacts.” (21) 

Trump’s Russian Connections 

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has not traveled very often to Russia. And when he did, he didn’t seem interested in meeting ordinary Russian citizens. Trump’s purpose in traveling to Russia was very different from mine and the other citizen diplomats and people that we brought together. Trump’s first trip to Russia was in 1987 to propose the building of a Trump Tower in Moscow. He made another trip in 1997 to talk about building luxury hotels, followed by a 2007 trip to promote Trump Vodka. His final trip to Russia was in 2013 to host the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow. Trump never worked his way up from knowing Soviet and Russian citizens; he was only ever there to make a deal. He already had made deals selling hundreds of his New York luxury condominiums to Soviets; now he was there to cash in on other transactions. 

Trump went out of his way to try to meet up with Russian leaders. For example, in 1988 Trump claimed that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife would tour the Trump Tower while in New York for meetings at the United Nations and with US President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush. As a joke on Trump, a Gorbachev impersonator showed up at Trump Tower and talked with him for a few minutes on Fifth Avenue. 

While we were planning and coordinating meetings among American and Soviet teachers and educators across Russia, Trump tried to stage Soviet boxing matches and a “Tour de Trump” cycling event; neither ever happened. During these years, while the GTP was expanding across Russia and other countries, several of Donald Trump’s properties went bankrupt, including the Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. He was getting further into debt and looking for financial institutions that would lend him the funds he needed. 

Before Trump became president, he went out of his way to meet President Vladimir Putin of Russia, but these efforts went nowhere. His first contact occurred when Putin called to congratulate Trump as the winner of the 2016 presidential election. Little did Trump know that Putin directed Russian intelligence officers to hack Hillary Clinton’s campaign computers and coordinate with WikiLeaks to harm her campaign and to do what he could to help elect him president of the United States. 

ORGANIZATION OF THE TRUMP FILES 

This book is a record of what Donald Trump did as president as captured by my blog posts, which provide a live play-by-play of the era. The blog posts are presented in thirteen chapters. Within each chapter, they are listed chronologically and dated so that you can relate them to your own experience during this time. They are presented as a chronicle of my observations of Trump and his sycophants as they attempted to govern the country. 

You will find ahead discussions how Trump’s “America First” policy led to human rights violations in the United States and how his denial of truth and science led to worsening the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which became the leading cause of death in America. His administration created a botched program to deliver vaccines to millions of citizens. 

The book is divided into six parts, and each part tells a story about the Trump era’s immeasurable damage to American society and a democratic form of government. I’ve drawn upon the research and writing of journalists and scholars from around the world to enhance and expand upon my posts. 

Part I, Trumpism, sets the stage with the story of how extreme polarization of American society made it possible for Trump’s “America First” policy to gain the White House. The story explores how an authoritarian president led America’s democracy into danger. 

Part II, Rights, is a story of immigration violence, equity, and voting rights. I show how the Republican Party is suppressing the rights of Americans to have free and fair elections, the cornerstones of liberal democracy. 

Part III, Scrutiny, is a story of Donald Trump’s chronic violation of his oath of office. He was impeached twice, and he led a campaign to obstruct the Mueller investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is a story of corruption as seen by one citizen from Georgia. 

Part IV, Science, is a science educator’s story of how Trump’s administration dismantled and diminished science in all areas of government at the peril of the Earth’s air, water, land, climate, and—most importantly—citizens. The scientific and medical research communities were undermined not only by Donald Trump but also by hundreds of his appointees, including cabinet members carrying out orders to create disorder in the scientific community. 

Part V, COVID-19, is the tragedy of Donald Trump’s failure as a leader during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the impact on millions of Americans, including more than 700,000 American deaths in the first year and a half of the pandemic. The story explains how viruses come about, how they can be mitigated, and what happens if people are not told the truth about infectious diseases. 

Part VI, Departure, is the final chapter of Trump’s presidency. It describes how Trump promoted the Big Lie conspiracy that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though he lost the electoral college vote 306–232 and the popular vote by 7 million. It’s a story of how Trump instigated political violence by sending right-wing mobs to seditiously attack the nation’s Capitol, which led to his second impeachment for causing an insurrection. He departed on January 20, 2021.17 

Posts that were previously published on my blog have been edited for clarity and consistency in this book. In addition, I have added Author’s Updates with new information that has come to light since the original publication of these posts. 

The Trump Files is the product of my dissent and resistance to Trump’s presidency. In A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety (22), Sarah Jaquette Ray calls upon citizens globally to cultivate resiliency. In her words, being resilient is "finding yourself alive the day after, with some fight left.  

I also learned from Ray that resistance (for example, to Trump and Trumpism) means you fight not because you think you can win. You fight because you must. (23).

Footnotes:

2 “Inaugural Address, Donald Trump,” Inaugural Address | The American Presidency Project, January 20, 2017, retrieved April 1, 2022, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/inaugural-address-14.

3 United States v. Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump, and Trump Management, Inc.73-1529 (EDNY, 1975).

4 M. K. Schneider, A Practical Guide to Digital Research (New York: Garn Press, 2020).

5 J. V. Montville, “Track Two Diplomacy: The Work of Healing History,” The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 2006, http://blogs.shu.edu/journalofdiplomacy/files/archives/03Montville.pdf.

6 Jack Hassard, “Citizen Diplomacy to Youth Activism: The Story of the Global Thinking Project,” in M. Mueller and D. Tippins, eds., EcoJustice: Citizen Science and Youth Activism, Environmental Discourses in Science Education, vol I, Springer, Cham, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11608-2_25.

7 Jack Hassard and Julie Weisberg, Environmental Science on the Net: The Global Thinking Project (Chicago: Goodyear Books, 1999). Julie Weisberg and I were co-directors of the GTP. Dr. Weisberg, who holds a PhD in neurobiology and was professor of education at Agnes Scott College, most recently retired as associate dean, Georgia Gwinnett College.

8 Roger Cross in Australia and Ramon Barlam and Narcís Vives in Catalonia, Spain.I interviewed educators from these countries, and they will appear later in the book. 

9 R. J. Lifton, The Climate Swerve: Reflections on Mind, Hope, and Survival (New York: The New Press, 2017).

10 Kip Ault, personal email, August 6, 2021. Dr. Ault is the author of Challenging Science Standards, 2015, and Beyond Science Standards, 2021, Rowan & Littlefield Publishers.

11 R. J. Lifton, Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry (New York: The New Press, 2019), 189.

12 R. J. Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Random House, 1991).

13 Bandy X. Lee, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2019); Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul (New York: World Mental Health Coalition, Inc., 2020).

14 Bandy X. Lee, “When a coup attempt goes unpunished, it becomes a training exercise,” Twitter, May 9, 2021, retrieved April 1, 2022, https://mobile.twitter.com/BandyXLee1/status/1391376829844500482.

15 Joshua Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien, “In Exclusive Jailhouse Letter, Capitol Riot Defendant Explains Motives, Remains Boastful,” ProPublica, May 11, 2021, retrieved May 14, 2021, https://www.propublica.org/article /in-exclusive-jailhouse-letter-capital-riot-defendant-explains-motives-remains-boastful.

16 B. Menzel, P. Hillery, J. Christensen, and A. F. Costa, Anya Kucharev: Global Peacemaker (Heidelberg: Baier DigitalDruck, 2021). She was also a scholar and activist and wrote an important book, Information Moscow,17 

17 Anya Kucharev, Information Moscow, Western Edition, 1987–1988 (San Francisco: US Information Moscow, 1987).

18 Dr. Davydov and I met on several occasions. He was one of the most respected educators and psychologists in Russia. He is widely known for his work on psychology of instruction and in particular his work on activity theory. I had the pleasure of driving him around Atlanta to show him the sights and enable him to take pictures to show to his family when he returned to Moscow.

19 Dr. Yuvanali Koulutkin and Dr. Yulia Siroyezhina of the Leningrad Institute of Adult Education and Research joined me for coffee in Decatur, Georgia, in December 1988. We wrote an initial draft of an agreement for collaborative research between the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and GSU. They were members of the first Soviet delegation to visit Atlanta that culminated with a conference at GSU for local teachers and educators.led to the development of research projects between American and Soviet researchers and teachers. This in turn eventually led to the creation of the GTP.

20 Mathew Searels (vice president, CN Utility Consulting; former participant in the GTP American–Russian Exchange Program; former student, Lafayette Middle School, Lafayette, Georgia [1998]), LinkedIn interview with the author, August 13, 2021. 

21 Searels interview.

22 Sarah Jaquette Ray, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020). Sarah Jaquette Ray calls upon citizens globally to cultivate resiliency. In her words, being resilient “is finding yourself alive the day after, with some fight left. Resilience means trying to keep it going here, there, anywhere, everywhere.”23 

23 Ray, Field Guide, 140.