St. Lawrence students can now learn about current issues in a whole new way. Hammi Sylla ’21 created a conversation style show called “Let’s Just Talk! With Hammi”, where professors from a range of disciplines will share their views on different topics. 

Each episode has two segments. One part features two faculty members in different departments who will speak on a specific topic each week, and the other segment gives students the chance to share their own ideas. “It’s a talk show that’s designed to bring nuance and complexity to public discourse,” he says. “We do this by engaging different faculty members or scholars from across disciplines to offer their perspectives on the same issue.” 

“Let’s Just Talk! With Hammi” is available on a YouTube channel of the same name.

The talk show aims to generate conversation on campus. “The goal is to promote dialogue across differences and to expose the audience to different points of view to allow them to arrive at their own conclusion as to which worldview is best for them,” Sylla says. 

Students will be debating on the show. “As the saying goes, we are the experts of our own experiences. In other words there are some issues that students are best suited to discuss even though they are not PHDs,” Sylla says. “They have lived experiences they can speak on better than professors can.”

Sylla hopes these discussions show the complexity of each issue. “This is something that affects people, as in we’re dealing with these [issues] in real life, and for some people it’s a matter of life and death,” he says. “As scholars we tend to turn life into an academic matter and I believe it is not, there are different facets to it.” 

The idea for the show came to Sylla during a research project on big money in politics his first year. He was surveying professors across departments on the topic, and got different answers and reasoning from each one. Sylla then realized it was important to hear all points of view. “I realized at St. Lawrence over my four years that what happens is, we find professors that we like and we stick to them, and we don’t really go outside of that to challenge our views,” he says. 

So far, Sylla has produced episodes discussing issues such as the second impeachment of former President Trump and the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6, as well as about policing and identity. An upcoming episode will be on Israel and Palestine. “There are a million things we are going to talk about,” Sylla adds. 

Professors featured on the talk show have been from the government, sociology, global studies and psychology departments. The expertise of these professors includes the Constitution, media, and systemic issues. 

Students spoke on a range of issues, including cancel culture and code switching. 

More information about the show is available on the Instagram page @letsjusttalkwithhammi. 

Sylla hopes students engage with the online content. “Stay tuned, tell us which topics you want to hear,” he said. “Comment on the videos, leave your thoughts, let us know which professors’ thoughts you want to hear.”