Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “The Truth About Confessions,” an exploration of police interrogation practices and how they can lead the innocent to falsely admit guilt, with Hayley Cleary, associate professor of criminal justice and public policy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nv-confessions .]

Would you ever confess to a crime you didn’t commit? Most people say no, yet scores of research studies show it’s surprisingly easy to induce false admissions of guilt. Real-world data confirm that innocent people have falsely confessed to heinous and violent crimes under the stress of interrogation by police.

Join Dr. Hayley Cleary, an internationally recognized expert on police interrogations and false confessions, for an in-depth look at contemporary American interrogation practices and how they can pave the way toward wrongful convictions of crime.

She’ll discuss how police interrogation tactics both intentionally and inadvertently trade on the psychological weaknesses of vulnerable suspects.

She’ll also look at the risk factors that make people more likely to give false confessions. These can be dispositional, related to adolescence and developmental immaturity, intellectual disabilities, or certain forms of psychopathology. Or they can be situational and related to aspects of the interrogation environment or interactions taking place there, with examples being prolonged custody and isolation, the presentations of false evidence, or implied promises of leniency.

There will be some good news. Dr. Cleary will also discuss the innocence movement to free wrongfully convicted people and also the remarkable progress being made in the development of evidence-based investigative interviewing techniques that promote due process and elicit accurate, reliable information. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Truth About Confessions,” an exploration of police interrogation practices and how they can lead the innocent to falsely admit guilt, with Hayley Cleary, associate professor of criminal justice and public policy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/dc-confessions .]

Would you ever confess to a crime you didn’t commit? Most people say no, yet scores of research studies show it’s surprisingly easy to induce false admissions of guilt. Real-world data confirm that innocent people have falsely confessed to heinous and violent crimes under the stress of interrogation by police.

Join Dr. Hayley Cleary, an internationally recognized expert on police interrogations and false confessions, for an in-depth look at contemporary American interrogation practices and how they can pave the way toward wrongful convictions of crime.

She’ll discuss how police interrogation tactics both intentionally and inadvertently trade on the psychological weaknesses of vulnerable suspects.

She’ll also look at the risk factors that make people more likely to give false confessions. These can be dispositional, related to adolescence and developmental immaturity, intellectual disabilities, or certain forms of psychopathology. Or they can be situational and related to aspects of the interrogation environment or interactions taking place there, with examples being prolonged custody and isolation, the presentations of false evidence, or implied promises of leniency.

There will be some good news. Dr. Cleary will also discuss the innocence movement to free wrongfully convicted people and also the remarkable progress being made in the development of evidence-based investigative interviewing techniques that promote due process and elicit accurate, reliable information. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “When Nazis Prowled Our Coasts,” a look at how Hitler brought war to America, with Kevin Matthews, who teaches courses on World War II as an assistant professor of European history at George Mason University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/dc-nazis-off-our-coasts .]

A German submarine surfaces in New York’s harbor. Nazi saboteurs armed with explosives land on a Florida beach with orders to blow up factories in Tennessee and dams on the Ohio River. American ships are sunk in broad daylight while vacationers look on from New Jersey to Virginia Beach, from the Outer Banks to Key West.

It wasn’t the plot of a bad movie. Such events actually happened during the early months of 1942, helping to explain why watchtowers still stand near the beaches of Delaware and New Jersey today.

Come learn about this forgotten episode of our nation’s World War II past with Professor Kevin Matthews, who previously has given excellent Profs and Pints talks on the Battle of the Bulge and the history of the Irish Revolution.

He’ll describe how Nazi Germany sought both to make the United States pay for siding with Britain and defeat us at home before our forces could get to Europe by sending its forces places you now associate with boardwalks and bodysurfing. It ordered its U-boats to beat America like a “kettledrum” as part of a campaign known as Operation Paukenschlag (which translates as “drumbeat.”) And by the spring of 1942 its submarines also were prowling the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Aiding the success of Nazi Germany’s campaign were two unwitting allies: the U.S. Navy, which refused to change tactics in the face of Germany’s attacks; and the leaders of American cities, who refused to impose blackouts and thereby created a neon-lit shooting gallery the length of the East Coast.

You’ll learn how Britain’s Royal Navy and Royal Air Force helped defeat the U-boats at a time when they threatened our entire war effort, and how the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover helped establish himself as the nation’s top cop by doggedly tracking down Nazi agents.

It’s a talk that will give you plenty to think about on your next trip to the beach. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: The tanker S.S. Dixie Arrow after being torpedoed by a German submarine off Cape Hatteras in March 1942 (U.S. Navy photo).

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Emerging World Order,” on global shifts in power and what they portend, with John Rennie Short, geographer and professor emeritus of public policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and author of Geopolitics: Making Sense of a Changing World.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/emerging-world-order .]

We are witnessing a transformation in the geopolitical world order and, with it, renewed superpower rivalry and heightened security concerns in hotspots such as the Middle East and the South China Sea.

Why is all of this occurring? Who will gain advantage and who will lose out?

Get a big-picture understanding of recent geopolitical upheaval and what may be ahead with John Rennie Short, a scholar of national security issues who has written several acclaimed books on world trends and given several excellent Profs and Pints talks focused on geopolitical affairs.

He’ll walk us through the most important changes in the geopolitical world order since the end of the Cold War, focusing especially on 21st Century trends that appear likely to usher in increased instability.

Among the developments he’ll cover: The emergence of China as a competing superpower. A more assertive Russia’s flexing of muscle against former Soviet republics. The slow but strengthening emergence of a shift in Europe’s focus from economic integration to geopolitical security, with Sweden and Finland’s entering NATO in response to rising fears of Russian aggression.

We’ll examine the implications of our own nation’s withdrawal from its commitment as a global leader and adoption of a more insular foreign policy focused on immediate economic interests.

We’ll contemplate potential future scenarios like the rise of a China-Russia alliance to rival the U.S., and we’ll tackle questions such as whether a more security-minded Europe will become an independent source of power. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A Risk board as photographed by Ben Stephenson (Creative Commons).