The Age of American Unreason

Susan Jacoby on FORA.tv

Booksmith

San Francisco, CA

Apr 24th, 2008

Writer and scholar Susan Jacoby is sure to raise some hackles with The Age of American Unreason - an unsparing jeremiad that attacks the dumbing-down of the American public. Jacoby's area of study is US intellectual history, though she worries that the field is becoming a moot point in the face of our country's pervasive "infotainment" complex.
As politics get folded into entertainment, she argues, so too does morality become indistinguishable from consumerism. Though hardly the first to bemoan the pitfalls of mass culture, Jacoby's portrait of American anti-intellectualism is especially germane in the middle of an election year.

Susan Jacoby’s website

Bill Moyers talks

with Susan Jacoby
about her new book:

THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON

The notion that Americans aren't often at the top of the ladder of erudition isn't new. Every year the media points out how poorly U.S. kids perform in math and geography feats compared to many other nations' school children. Susan Jacoby follows a notable scholarly tradition with her new book, THE AGE OF ,AMERICAN UNREASON. In 1964 historian Richard Hofstadter won the Pulizter Prize with his lament — ANTI-INTELLECUTALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE: "The national distaste for the intellectual appeared to be not just a disgrace but a hazard to survival." Jacoby says of Hofstatder's work now: "It is difficult to suppress the fear that the scales of American history have shifted heavily against the vibrant and varied intellectual life so essential to functional democracy."

Biography
Susan Jacoby, who began her writing career as a reporter for THE WASHINGTON POST, is the author of five books, including WILD JUSTICE, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, she has been a contributor to THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NATION, TomPaine.com and the AARP BULLETIN, among other publications. She is also director of the Center for Inquiry-Metro New York and lives in New York City.
Bill Moyers spoke with Jacoby about FREETHINKERS: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN SECULARISM in 2004, in which Jacoby offered an impassioned history that challenges the current marginalization of secular values.
You can read an excerpt from THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON on Susan Jacoby's Web site.

WNYC: Naomi Klein on the Global Financial Crisis

WNYC's Brian Lehrer speaks to Naomi Klein about the global financial crisis.

The Political Mind

George Lakoff, author of Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, Whose Freedom?, and Don't Think of An Elephant!, explores the connections between cognitive science and political action. Why do many Americans vote against their own interests? Humans, he argues, are not the rational creatures we've so long imagined ourselves to be. And savvy political campaigns, therefore, should not assume people will use objective reasoning when deciding how to vote. Lakoff discusses his new book, The Political Mind, and explores how the mind works, how society works, and how they work together.

How to Make Friends and Manipulate Irrational Voters

Are Americans irrational when it comes to politics -- voting against their own interests? Or is this phenomenon a function of the interaction between mind, politics and society?

George Lakoff is a New York Times bestselling author and his new book, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century American Politics with an 18th Century Mind, will be released May 2008.

LONGVIEW: Deer Hunting With Jesus

Much has been said about white working-class voters. But those who've been doing all the talking are pollsters and political operatives. As part of our Long View series, ANP traveled to rural Virginia to talk to someone who's lived the life and knows from personal experience what those voters are thinking -- author Joe Bageant. His highly-acclaimed recent book, Deer Hunting With Jesus, was lauded by one reviewer as a "raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck." In addition to being that, it's also one of the most prescient pieces of analysis about American politics and culture in this election year.

Naomi Klein: Disaster Capitalism

From the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to the unending war in Iraq, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Klein chronicles the rise of free-market policies and how they have been used to capitalize on disaster.

Are the communities that have been struck by tragedy being manipulated by our current politics and economics for profitable gain?

Klein challenges the ideology of the free market revolution and argues that it is not a peaceful global movement
- The Commonwealth Club of California

Market Meltdown: The Bailout, the Economics of Inequality and the Election

A discussion of economic inequality, market instability and the 2008 presidential race. With the meltdown on Wall Street, will the growing polarization of wealth and income become part of the election debate? The last time nequality was this extreme was 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression. What are ways that inequality contributes to economic instability? What practical political program to reverse these inequalities can expect from the Presidential candidates?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1799828763957317166

The Tyranny of Oil: Antonia Juhasz on “The World’s Most Powerful Industry—What We Must Do to Stop It”

Along with so-called clean coal technology, both of the major presidential candidates also supporting expanded offshore oil drilling. We speak to Antonia Juhasz, author of the new book The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry—And What We Must Do to Stop It.

“Juhasz bravely and expertly exposes the inner workings of an industry and a government riddled with secrets, lies, and deception.”
- Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

In the tradition of the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Antonia Juhasz’s The Tyranny of Oil offers a chilling exposé of the modern American oil industry and its dire abuse of power. A leading international trade and finance policy expert and the author of The Bush Agenda, Juhasz presents eye-opening truths about a potentially catastrophic global energy crisis that only promises to get much worse in the coming years—and provides possible solutions for meaningful change. Terry Tamminen, former Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, calls The Tyranny of Oil “a bold blueprint for ending the madness,” and the Christian Science Monitor tells us, “a good first step toward true energy independence is to read this insightful book.”

Ralph Nader: Whistle-Blower. Advocate. Spoiler?

Without ever having held political office, Nader has had a tremendous political impact by advocating for improved consumer safety through seat belts, air bags, product labeling, and helping 100 organizations become watchdogs over corporate, government and environmental corruption.

Nader's role in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections fueled controversy, and he's set to challenge the two-party system again this fall as he runs for president for the fifth time
-The Commonwealth Club of California

The Predator State

How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too

on Bill Moyers Journal PBS

James K. Galbraith teaches economics and a variety of other subjects at the LBJ School. He holds degrees from Harvard (B.A. magna cum laude, 1974) and Yale (Ph.D. in economics, 1981). He studied economics as a Marshall Scholar at King's College, Cambridge in 1974-1975, and then served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1985. He directed the LBJ School's Ph.D. Program in Public Policy from 1995 to 1997. He directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an informal research group based at the LBJ School.

Galbraith has co-authored two textbooks, The Economic Problem with the late Robert L. Heilbroner and Macroeconomics with William Darity, Jr. He is the author of Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future (1989) and Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay (1998). Inequality and Industrial Change: A Global View (Cambridge University Press, 2001), is coedited with Maureen Berner and features contributions from six LBJ School Ph.D. students. His latest book The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too was published in 2008.

Galbraith maintains several outside connections, including serving as a Senior Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute and as Chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security. He writes a column called "Econoclast" for Mother Jones, and occasional commentary in many other publications, including The Texas Observer, The American Prospect, and The Nation. He is an occasional commentator for Public Radio International's Marketplace.

Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark - Naomi Oreskes

Naomi Oreskes is Provost of Sixth College, Professor of History and Science Studies and Adjunct Professor of Geosciences at UC San Diego and one of the nation's leading experts on the history of the earth and environmental science. Her work came to public attention in 2004 with the publication of "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change" in Science and was featured in Vice President Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth. Her forthcoming book is FIGHTING FACTS: How a Handful of Scientists Have Muddied the Waters on Environmental Issues From Tobacco to Global Warming.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7385517651729389593

Decisions: How Do We Animals Decide What To Do?

We make thousands of decisions every day: where to go, what to do, when to do it. Join UCSD's William Kristan and discover how neurons, synapses, and chemical input play out in decision making.

Grey Matters: Bird Brains - Pretty Darn Smart

Research has changed our concepts of brain organization and provided dramatic evidence showing far greater similarities between brains of birds and brains of all mammals. Harvey Karten explores what goes on inside a bird's brain. Learn how brains of birds compare to those of humans and other mammals and find out what the study of bird's brains can teach us about the nature and origins of human brains.

Beyond Belief 2008: Candles in the Dark

Panel - Human Flourishing - Eudaimonics 1-3


Panel - Human Flourishing - Eudaimonics 2-3


Panel - Human Flourishing - Eudaimonics 3-3


Speakers: Güven Güzeldere, Sonja Lyubmirsky, Owen Flanagan, A.C. Graying, George Koob, Roger Bingham

Topics: Culture, Eudaimonics, Happiness, Human Flourishing, Linguistics, Science and Society

Panel: Human Flourishing/Eudaimonics
With Sonja Lyubomirsky, Owen Flanagan, Güven Güzeldere, Anthony Grayling, and George Koob
Moderated by Roger Bingham

Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark - Guven Guzeldere

Güven Güzeldere is Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and of Neurobiology at Duke University. He has published articles on philosophy of mind, history and philosophy of psychology, and artificial intelligence. He is a founder of Stanford Electronic Humanities Review, a founding associate editor of Psyche: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Consciousness, and a founding member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6928402684221402673

Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark - Owen Flanagan

Owen Flanagan is James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He also holds appointments in Psychology and Neurobiology and is a Faculty Fellow in Cognitive Neuroscience. In 1998, he was recipient of the Romanell National Phi Beta Kappa award, given annually to one American philosopher for distinguished contributions to philosophy and the public understanding of philosophy. He has written several books; the most recent is The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1352377387766008093

America: Freedom to Fascism - Director's Authorized Version

America: Freedom to Fascism is a compelling and troubling account of how the wealth of our nation was silently passed from its citizens to a handful of powerful bankers in 1913. That's the year the Federal Reserve Act and the 16th Amendment were introduced, giving a privately held corporation the means to control our finances while ensuring its interest payments through the strong arms of the newly-formed Internal Revenue Service. Ever since then, Russo suggests, Americans have been gradually conditioned to accept fewer freedoms and a lower standard of living... all the while considering debt and servitude as distinctly American values.

Russo's first and most cogent point is simple: Americans are not required to pay a federal income tax. That's a bold statement to make, as few people believe that such a fraud could be perpetrated for so long. My father, himself an accountant, insists that the income tax is a very real thing. Russo takes that same belief to IRS employees and simply asks them to cite where it says an unapportioned income tax is required of us all. Guess what? They can't. In a telling segment Sheldon Cohen, former commissioner of the IRS, goes so far as to reject Supreme Court rulings and the Constitution as benchmarks over what is legal with regards to taxation. Russo also interviews members of the tax honesty movement as well as disenfranchised IRS agents who agree that no law on the books conjures up a requirement to send the government part of one's hard-earned paycheck. Russo then showcases court cases where those accused of tax evasion have won precisely because the prosecution cannot provide evidence of a legal federal income tax law.

It's shocking to have it hammered into your head over and over that you've thrown your money away for nothing, but repetition is good; it helps knock loose the deeply entrenched belief that we owe a portion of our livelihood to our government.

America: Freedom to Fascism

AMERICA: Freedom To Fascism. Aaron Russo Interview

Video and description taken directly from http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/
Please visit the website for MUCH more information on other such topics and interviews. "Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Aaron Russo began promoting rock and roll shows at local theaters while still a high school student. From there, he worked for his family's business, opened a night club in Chicago where he helped create the careers of such legendary acts as Led Zeppelin, The Who, Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. No stranger to success, Aaron was the first Hollywood Producer to command $1 million for his services, with titles such as 'Trading Places' and 'The Rose' after a seven year partnership with Bette Midler, whom he managed to become the superstar she now is. Aaron has now stepped out and produced a radical new movie called 'America: From Freedom to Fascism' and it has received standing ovations in theatres from all around the country in its test marketing. Destined to be one of this years great movies, he takes things way further than Michael Moore and proves that the there is nothing in the tax code that says you have to pay tax on your labor. Now it's time for you to decide for yourself. Do we stand up for our constitutional rights or do we bury our heads in fear from political and social pressure."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3254488777215293198

Historic Interview with Aaron Russo, Fighting Cancer and the New World Order

Hollywood director Russo goes in-depth for first time on the astounding admissions of Nick Rockefeller, including his prediction of 9/11 and the war on terror hoax, the Rockefeller's creation of women's lib, and the elite's ultimate plan for world population reduction and a microchipped society Aaron Russo joins Alex Jones for a fascinating sit-down in depth video interview on a plethora of important subjects. Aaron begins by describing how the draconian and mafia tactics of Chicago police woke him up to the fact that America wasn't free after his nightclub was routinely raided and he was forced to pay protection money. Aaron and Alex then cover a broad range of topics including the private run for profit federal reserve, Aaron's experience in the late 80's with the IRS when they retroactively passed laws to punish silver and gold traders, the real meaning of the word "democracy," what really happened on 9/11 and Aaron's relationship with Nick Rockefeller, who personally tried to recruit him on behalf of the CFR. Aaron also relates how Rockefeller told him that the elite created women's liberation to destroy the family and how they want to ultimately microchip and control the entire population. Rockefeller also told before 9/11 Russo that an unexpected "event" would catalyze the U.S. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5420753830426590918

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

Howard Zinn discusses his latest collection of essays at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

A Power Governments Cannot Suppress critiques America's response to 9/11, examines the current state of democracy and government responsibility in America and cites examples of when government has overstepped throughout American history.
HowardZinn.org

Income inequalities: An interview with Raymond Torres

An interview with Raymond Torres, Director of the ILO's International Institute for Labour Studies

RealVideo

Despite strong economic growth that has produced millions of new jobs since the early 1990s, income inequality grew dramatically in most regions of the world and is expected to increase due to the current global financial crisis, according to a new study "World of Work Report 2008: Income inequalities in the age of financial globalization" published by the research arm of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

International Labour Organization

Grey Matters: Understanding Language

Why are humans the only species to have language? Is there something special about our brains? Are there genes that have evolved for language? In this talk, Jeff Elman, UCSD professor of cognitive science and co-director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, discusses some of the exciting new research that helps us understand what it is about human language that is so different from other animals' communication systems, and what about our biology might make language possible.

Anthony Grayling on Beyond Belief 2008

Beyond Belief 2008 -02- Anthony Grayling 1-2


Beyond Belief 2008 -02- Anthony Grayling 2-2


Anthony Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birbeck College, University of London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited many books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are a biography of William Hazlitt and a collection of essays. For several years he wrote the "Last Word" column for the Guardian and is a regular reviewer for the Times Literary Review and the Financial Times.

Decisions, Responsibility and the Brain

Neuroscientist Patricia Churchland explores how the human mind functions in guiding one's decisions.

Why Doesn't the Public Trust Scientists?

Baroness Onora O'Neill challenges the current approaches to accountability and explores the the public's perception of scientists.

BBC - Radio 4 - Reith Lectures 2003

The Emerging Mind

Lecture 1: Phantoms in the Brain
Scientists need no longer be afraid to ask the big questions about what it means to be human with empirical evidence now answering ancient philosophical questions about meaning and existence.

Lecture 2: Synapses and the Self
How does the activity of the 100 billion little wisps of protoplasm - the neurons in your brain - give rise to all the richness of our conscious experience, including the "redness" of red, the painfulness of pain or the exquisite flavour of Marmite or Vindaloo?

Lecture 3: The Artful Brain
Professor Ramachandran draws on neurological case studies and work from ethology (animal behavior) to present a new framework for understanding how the brain creates and responds to art. He will use examples mainly from Indian art and Cubism to illustrate these ideas.

Lecture 4: Purple Numbers and Sharp Cheese
Professor Ramachandran demonstrates experimentally that the phenomenon of synesthaesia is a genuine sensory effect. For example, some subjects literally "see" red every time they see the number 5 or green when they see 2.

Lecture 5: Neuroscience - the New Philosophy
Professor Ramachandran argues that neuroscience, perhaps more than any other discipline, is capable of transforming man's understanding of himself and his place in the cosmos.

Neurobiology of Memory:

How Do We Acquire, Consolidate and Recall Memory
MITWORLD Video

About Susumu Tonegawa
Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience, Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and BiologyInvestigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and Director of the RIKEN-MIT Neuroscience Research Center

Susumu Tonegawa received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of California, San Diego. After postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute, he joined the Basel Institute for Immunology. In 1981, he was appointed Professor of Biology at MIT and a member of the Center for Cancer Research. In 1994, he founded the Center for Learning and Memory at MIT. He is a recipient of the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Order of Culture "Bunkakunsho" from the Emperor of Japan, the Bristol Myers Squibb Prize in Cancer Research, the Albert and Mary Lasker Award, and the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

ABOUT THE LECTURE:
In labs around the world, mice learn to navigate complex mazes, locate chocolaty rewards, and after an interval, run the mazes again with maximum efficiency, swiftly collecting all the sweets. But in Susumu Tonegawa’s lab, the mutant mice he has created cannot perform these tasks. Tonegawa “ knocks out” a gene that impairs a specific part of the mouse hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for spatial memory, among other things. Mutant mice struggle to acquire and recall information about their surroundings. Tonegawa’s work involves manipulating genes to explore memory and learning from the most basic biochemical and cellular levels, up to the most complex behaviors. One of Tonegawa’s goals in designing defective mice is to simulate profound human disorders, like schizophrenia.
The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory

THE FUTURE OF THE BRAIN

The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT focuses the talents of a diverse array of brain scientists on a single mission: unraveling the mechanisms that drive the quintessentially human capacity to remember and to learn, as well as related functions like perception, attention and consciousness.

The Picower Institute: Events: Inaugural Symposium
The Picower Institute: Events: Open Mind Series

Vision of the Future (Part 1)
Vision of the Future (Part 2)
Change Your Mind: Memory and Disease
Expand Your Mind: Getting a Grasp on Consciousness

Conversations With History: Science and History

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes historian John Heilbron, the 2007 Hitchcock Lecturer, for a discussion of the history of science. He reflects on his contributions to the field, analyzes the challenges of studying science as a historian, and offers insight into the value of science history for society. John Heilbron also discusses his years as Vice Chancellor of the Berkeley campus.

Physics and History: Links Between Two Cultures Fractured in Modernity

Experimental physical science and modern universal history came into the world about the same time, around 1550, and developed symbiotically for 250 years or more. The lectures discuss their coevel origin, parallel development, and subsequent separation.

Virginia Postrel: The power of glamour

In a timely talk, cultural critic Virginia Postrel muses on the true meaning, and the powerful uses, of glamour -- which she defines as any calculated, carefully polished image designed to impress and persuade.
http://www.ted.com/

Critical Thinking Community

This instructional video was created from the Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children by the Foundation for Critical Thinking. There are 5 Parts to this video (including the introduction) that teaches the concepts of fair-minded critical thinking to children. Although intended for K-6 audiences, even adults can learn from and enjoy this video.

Critical Thinking for Children - 2. Three Kinds of Thinkers

Critical Thinking for Children - 3. Standards for Thinking

Critical Thinking for Children - 4. Parts of Thinking

Critical Thinking for Children - 5. Intellectual Virtues

Foundation for Critical Thinking

Mission and Purpose

Dr. Linda Elder, President of the Foundation for Critical Thinking, discusses the mission, purpose and goals of the Foundation. The Foundation for Critical Thinking seeks to promote essential change in education and society through the cultivation of fair-minded critical thinking.

Dr. Linda Elder is an educational psychologist and a prominent authority on critical thinking. She is President of the Foundation for Critical Thinking and Executive Director of the Center for Critical Thinking. Dr. Elder has taught psychology and critical thinking at the college level and has given presentations to more than 20,000 educators at all levels. She has co-authored four books, including Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life, Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life and Twenty-Five Days to Better Thinking and Better Living. She has co-authored eighteen thinker’s guides on critical thinking and co-authors a quarterly column on critical thinking in the Journal of Developmental Education.

Dr. Elder has also developed an original stage theory of critical thinking development. Concerned with understanding and illuminating the relationship between thinking and affect, and the barriers to critical thinking, Dr. Elder has placed these issues at the center of her thinking and her work.

With experience in both administration and the classroom, Dr. Elder understands first hand the problems facing educators. She is a dynamic presenter who reaches her audience on a person-to person level.

The Critical Thinking Community

TED Prize 2009

José Antonio Abreu

“Music has to be recognized as an…agent of social development in the highest sense, because it transmits the highest values - solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion. And it has the ability to unite an entire community and to express sublime feelings.”

The gulf between the rich and the poor in Venezuela is one of the worst in the world. Dr. José Antonio Abreu, a retired economist, trained musician, and social reformer founded El Sistema (”the system”) in 1975 based on the conviction that all Venezuelan kids can benefit from participating in classical music. After thirty years and 10 different political administrations, El Sistema is now a nationwide organization of 102 youth orchestras, 55 children’s orchestras, and 270 music centers.

Comprised of close to 250,000 young musicians, El Sistema uses music education to help youth, most from impoverished circumstances, to achieve their full potential and acquire values that favor their growth and have a positive impact on their lives in society. José views El Sistema as an alternative to the drugs and crime that plagues the lives of many Venezuelan children. The talented musicians have become a source of national pride, bringing classical music from the concert hall into the real world. Several participants of the program have gone on to have major international careers, including Gustavo Dudamel, conductor of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra and soon to be the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the double bass player Edicson Ruiz, who at the age of 17 became the youngest musician ever to join the Berlin Philharmonic.

There is a simple concept behind José’s work: for him an orchestra is first and foremost about togetherness, a place where children learn to listen to each other and to respect one another. José continues to believe in a better future for Venezuela, wanting to change people and structures through music.

TED Prize 2009
El Sistema (Film Trailer)
El SISTEMA: JUVENILE DETENTION/JAIL
Interview with Gustavo Dudamel - Proms 2007

Bill Moyers interviews E.O. Wilson

Bill Moyers talks about the future of our planet with noted entomologist and father of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson.
More about E.O. Wilson

Watch Video

E. O. Wilson - The Coming Synergism Between Science and the Humanities

Scientist and author Edward O. Wilson, draws on studies from a broad spectrum of disciplines to show how various fields of inquiry, and especially the humanities and sciences, intersect with each other. According to Wilson, "the greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and the humanities."

Goats and Votes in Tennessee

By Lagan Sebert on Oct 14, 2008

Tennessee polls as one of the strongest states for McCain. The Republican Women of Marshall County canvassed at the annual "Fainting Goat Festival" in a historically Democratic county. They say McCain has a better chance in this election because Obama can't relate to Marshall County voters.

Bill Maher: Religulous

Bill Maher's take on the current state of world religion.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3791007322683758535

Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 - Harold Kroto

Beyond Belief is an annual meeting organized by The Science Network (TSN), which brings together a community of concerned scientists, philosophers, scholars from the humanities, and social commentators to explore the human quest for the Good Life. The Science Network shares Carl Sagan’s vision of science as a candle in the dark. TSN is committed to enlarging the constituency of reason by making programs about science. More programs, more candles, more light.

Sir Harold Kroto, Chairman of the Board of the Vega Science Trust, a UK educational charity that produces science programs for television, in 1996 shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for the discovery of a new form of carbon, the C60 Buckminsterfullerene. He has received the Royal Society's prestigious Michael Faraday Award, given annually to a scientist who has done the most to further public communication of science, engineering or technology in the United Kingdom.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8445629715099909323

Richard Feynman - The Douglas Robb Memorial Lectures

Chosen by the New Scientist - best on-line videos 2007. A set of four priceless archival video recordings from the University of Auckland (New Zealand) of the outstanding Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman - arguably the greatest science lecturer ever. Although the recording is of modest technical quality the exceptional personal style and unique delivery shine through.

Part 1: Photons - Corpuscles of Light

Part 2: Fits of Reflection and Transmission - Quantum Behaviour

Part 3: Electrons and their Interactions.

Part 4: New Queries

Feynman gives us not just a lesson in basic physics but also a deep insight into the scientific mind of a 20th century genius analyzing the approach of the 17th century genius Newton.
For the young scientist, brought up in this age of hi-tech PC / Power Point-based presentations, we also get an object lesson in how to give a lecture with nothing other than a piece of chalk and a blackboard. Furthermore we are shown how to respond with wit and panache to the technical mishaps that are part-and-parcel of the lecturer's life.
If you are unable to access the streaming video or would like a video copy of the lectures, they are available from the University of Auckland, contact physics@auckland.ac.nz, or The Tuva Trader.

The official Richard Feynman website

The Vega Science Trust Videos

Interview - Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty


Interview with Naomi Wolf author of "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries" given October 4, 2008 on Mind Over Matters, KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle.

Talk - Naomi Wolf - The End of America


Talk by Naomi Wolf author of "The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot" given October 11, 2007 at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus.

Interview with Naomi Wolf discussing "The End of America" available at http://youtube.com/watch?v=aW9PulYpjGs

Ann Fagan Ginger - US Human Rights Violations since 9-11

Ann Fagan Ginger, Constitutional Lawyer, Human Rights Attorney, in an intriguing interview on how US policies and actions since 9-11 violate US and International laws that prohibit torture and safeguard Human Rights. Topics covered include: The US Constitution, The UN Charter, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Social Uplift Foundation

Robert Fuller: Politics of Dignity

In his books, Robert Fuller exposed rankism - the abuse of the power inherent in rank to exploit or humiliate someone of lower rank. UCSB Professor Thomas Scheff and his students explore these themes of dignity and humilation with the author.

Robert W. Fuller, Ph.D., former president of Oberlin College, is an internationally recognized authority on the subject of rankism and dignity. His books and ideas have been widely covered in the media, including The New York Times, Oprah Magazine, National Public Radio, C-SPAN, The Boston Globe, the BBC and Voice of America. Fuller has also given more than 300 talks at a variety of organizations, from Princeton University to Microsoft to Kaiser Hospital.

Back Story:

After earning his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University in 1961, Robert Fuller taught at Columbia University and co-authored the book Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics. The mounting social unrest of the 1960s drew his attention to educational reform, and in 1970 he was appointed president of his alma mater Oberlin College at the age of 33.

In 1970 Fuller traveled to India (as a consultant to Indira Gandhi) and there witnessed firsthand the famine resulting from the war with Pakistan over what became Bangladesh. With the election of Jimmy Carter, Fuller began a campaign to persuade the new president to end world hunger. His meeting with Carter in the Oval Office in June 1977 led to the establishment of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger.

During the 1980s, Fuller traveled frequently to the USSR, working as a citizen-scientist to improve the Cold War relationship. This work led to the creation of the non-profit global corporation Internews, which promotes democracy via free and independent media, and for many years Fuller served as its chairman.

With the collapse of the USSR, Fuller’s work as a citizen diplomat came to a close and he began reflecting on his career and came to understand that he had, at various times, been a somebody and a nobody and the cycle was continuing. His periodic sojourns in “Nobodyland” led him to identify and investigate rankism – defined as abuse of the power inherent in rank – and ultimately to write Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank (New Society Publishers, 2003). In 2006 he published a sequel that focuses on building a dignitarian society titled All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (Berrett-Koehler).

Explorations of the Mind - Intuition: The Marvels and the Flaws

Daniel Kahneman is an internationally renowned psychologist whose work spans cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and the science of well-being. In recognition of his groundbreaking work on human judgment and decision-making, Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Prize. In this program he explores the idea of intuition.

Explorations of the Mind - Well-Being: Living and Thinking About It

Daniel Kahneman is an internationally renowned psychologist whose work spans cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and the science of well-being. In recognition of his groundbreaking work on human judgment and decision-making, Kahneman received the 2002 Nobel Prize. In this program he explores the idea of happiness.

Conversations with History: Intuition and Rationality with Daniel Kahneman

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Princeton Psychology Professor Daniel Kahneman for a discussion of his Nobel prize winning research on intuition and decision making.

Flogging of AIG Execs

By Lagan Sebert on Oct 07, 2008

In the wake of the $700 billion bailout, the public is finally getting a look at the faces behind the financial crisis. On October 7, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform grilled former AIG CEOs Robert Willumstad and Martin Sullivan. During the five-hour hearing the executives tried to dodge blame as congress members harshly criticized their management of AIG and questioned their compensation.

100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World

Politics and Prose Bookstore Washington, D.C.

Foreign policy analyst John Tirman discusses his book, 100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World.
Mr. Tirman examines the disintegration of American culture and the portrayal of the "ugly American" overseas. He looks at specific areas he believes America needs to improve.

John Tirman is the executive director of the Center for International Studies at MIT. Previously he was a Fulbright Scholar in Cyprus. He has written several books, including Spoils of War and Making the Money Sing: Private Wealth and Public Power in the Search for Peace. Mr. Tirman's articles have appeared in The Nation, Boston Review, the New York Times, and Los Angeles Times.

What do George W. Bush, Wal-Mart, Halliburton, gangsta rap, and SUVs have in common? They're all among the hundred ways in which America is screwing up the world. The country that was responsible for many, if not most, of the twentieth century's most important scientific and technological advancements now demonizes its scientists and thinkers in the twenty-first, while dumbing down its youth with anti-Darwin/pro-"Intelligent Design" propaganda. The longtime paragon of personal freedoms now supports torture and illegal wiretapping—spreading its principles and policies at gunpoint while ruthlessly bombing the world with Big Macs and Mickey Mouse ears.

At once serious-minded and satirical, John Tirman's 100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World is an insightful, unabashed, entertaining, and distressing look at where we've gone terribly wrong—from the destruction of the environment to the promotion of abhorrent personal health and eating habits to the "wussification" of the free press—an alternately admonishing and amusing call to arms for patriotic Blue America.

100 WAYS AMERICA IS SCREWING UP THE WORLD
The List

Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge PBS

Paul Farmer and Jim Kim are changing the way the world combats multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

An Incurable TB?
Part I: Poverty and the Rise of MDR TB in Peru
Part II: Everyone Around Her is at Risk
Part III: Facing TB Head-On
Part IV: Reason to Endure
Rx for Survival: A Global Health Challenge PBS
Global Health Champions

Bridging the Delivery Gap to Global Health

ABOUT THE LECTURE

Jim Yong Kim and Partners in Health are paradoxically suffering from their own success. They demonstrated over the past decade that it is possible to set up effective HIV and primary care clinics in such developing nations as Haiti, and that it’s possible to cure multiple drug resistant tuberculosis. They even managed to persuade pharmaceutical companies to permit the production of generic, less expensive antiretroviral medicines so they could be affordable to the poorest people. But now, as billions of dollars flow into efforts to attack diseases that needlessly kill and maim the world’s poor, we find ourselves “living in the middle of an implementation bottleneck,” says Kim.

Whether from the Gates or Clinton Foundations, or from international government initiatives, money is flowing into new products like HIV/AIDS vaccines, TB vaccines, microbicides, anti-malarial drugs, and surgical services such as male circumcision. It could all “have a huge impact,” says Kim, helping to forestall 10 million preventable deaths per year, but for the increasingly massive logjam in delivering all the care. Why is it so hard to distribute the expertise, technology, resources, to the people in need? There are all kinds of “just answers” that Kim gets: just align incentives; just make the markets work better; just fund infrastructures adequately; just give workers the management skills.

While he agrees that these are all relevant issues, Kim really wants an integrated response. He’d like to see medical schools like Harvard, where he’s on staff, develop the kind of case studies commonly employed at business and engineering schools to dissect complex strategy problems. For instance, medical students today have no idea how smallpox was eradicated – the story of this immense project combining management and epidemiology has been lost as a teaching tool. Just as Harvard Business School was “teaching the Jet Blue meltdown three weeks after it happened,” so must medical schools capture current problems and approach them both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Kim calls on institutions like MIT Sloan to help devise new analytic frameworks for examining and improving global health delivery. “There’s room for a whole new field, health care delivery science,” says Kim, combining multiple disciplines, and developing leaders to advance evidence based strategies. We can’t alleviate human suffering caused by disease “just being the lab, or by doing clinical research.” It’s now time “to build functioning health care systems everywhere in the world.”

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jim Yong Kim was director of the World Health Organization's HIV/AIDS department, a post he was appointed to in March 2004 after serving as advisor to the WHO director-general. He oversaw all of WHO’s work related to HIV/AIDS, focusing on initiatives to help developing countries scale up their treatment, prevention, and care programs, including the “3x5” initiative designed to put three million people in developing countries on AIDS treatment by the end of 2005.

Kim was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003; and was named one of America's 25 best leaders by US News & World Report in 2005; and one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2006. He was a contributing editor to the 2003 and 2004 World Health Report, and his edited volume Dying for Growth: Global Inequity and the Health of the Poor analyzes the effects of economic and political change on health outcomes in developing countries.

Kim trained dually as a physician and medical anthropologist. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Kim's Brigham and Women's Hospital website

François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health & Human Rights

Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health

Global Health Equity

ABOUT THE LECTURE

Don’t foolishly advise Paul Farmer that his bold projects can’t succeed. For the past 20 years, Farmer’s been toppling orthodoxies concerning the delivery of health care to people of developing nations, and to our country’s inner city poor. In a talk full of insights and anecdotes, Farmer brings his audience up to date on his groundbreaking work and methods.

In the early 80s, Farmer was a Harvard medical student studying infectious disease in Haiti. HIV was taking a deadly toll there and in the U.S., but Farmer was struck by the inequity of treatment. “The idea of a different standard of care for people 1 ½ hours from Miami didn’t strike me as a good idea.” Health care, Farmer came to believe, is a basic human right.

In the early 90s, antiretroviral drugs emerged in the U.S. as a powerful treatment for AIDS -- but were priced beyond the reach of developing countries. Farmer and his colleagues began a public battle against such global inequalities. They demanded affordable drugs, and support for community-based health care initiatives, viewed by international funders as unsustainable and cost-ineffective.

With a loan from a commercial bank in Boston, Farmer set out to prove everyone wrong. Starting with one facility, Farmer established community medical clinics across Haiti, run by and for Haitians, securing and disbursing affordable drugs for HIV and TB, and educating the community in preventive medicine. Local workers spread out into neighborhoods, to initiate and follow up on care. Farmer used his AIDS programs “as a battle horse to ride into the fight against poverty, and to talk about education, food security and housing.”

Farmer’s support broadened to include such powerful funders as the Clinton Foundation. This has enabled him to take his program into Africa, first to Rwanda and more recently to Lesotho and Malawi. Farmer’s Partners in Health group rebuilds medical infrastructure weakened by war or years of neglect; takes care of the sick; and then trains hundreds of local citizens. Haitians, whom Farmer describes as his teachers, have been spearheading much of the work in Africa. The costs of scaling up come less from labor, than from basic goods like food, and bumps in the supply chain. But the biggest obstacle of all, says Farmer, is “nay-saying, low expectations, a certain undertow of censorious opinion. As if it weren’t hard enough to do the work, you have to fight a lot of skepticism, not from patients, coworkers or family members, but from your peers.”

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer is a founding director of Partners In Health, an international charity organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. He is medical director of a charity hospital, the Clinique Bon Sauveur, in rural Haiti.

Farmer has written extensively about health and human rights, and about the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases. He is the author of Pathologies of Power (University of California Press, 2003); Infections and Inequalities (University of California Press, 1998); The Uses of Haiti (Common Courage Press, 1994); and AIDS and Accusation (University of California Press, 1992). In addition, he is co-editor of Women, Poverty, and AIDS, (Common Courage Press, 1996) and of The Global Impact of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (Harvard Medical School and Open Society Institute, 1999).

Farmer is the recipient of the Duke University Humanitarian Award, the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the American Medical Association’s Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award, and the Heinz Humanitarian Award. In 1993, he was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius award” in recognition of his work.

Farmer is the subject of Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Random House, 2003).

Farmer received his Bachelor’s degree from Duke University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Partners in Health website

Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein

Jim's Reviews - Jarman's Wittgenstein

Jarman's next to last film, Wittgenstein is a witty, visually lush, and probing portrait of one of the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century. While unlocking the secrets of linguistics, logic, mathematics and philosophy of mind — and paving the way for artificial intelligence — Ludwig was more likely to be found tapping his toes to Carmen Miranda musicals than lucubrating about Aristotle. This landmark film biography achieves the seemingly impossible: in just over an hour, it dramatizes all of the major turning points in the eccentric philosopher's life (including his opening up as a gay man, in the arms of a handsome philosophy student), elucidates the main points of his abstruse philosophy, and is often hilariously funny. Yet it's genuinely moving too, as we come to understand the man (or is it über-nerd?) better than he seems to understand himself. The film has been praised by people who knew the philosopher, and by his biographer, Ray Monk. At the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival, it won the Teddy Award for Best Picture. Wittgenstein is a very special film. So rather than worry about not having done enough 'homework' on the subject, just sit back, relax, laugh, maybe cry a little. And don't be surprised if you find yourself haunted by its images, emotions and ideas, for long afterwards. Read more

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2608378371506756422

Bringing Management Tools and Ideas, Collaboration, and Learning-by-Doing to the Challenge of Global Health Delivery

ABOUT THE LECTURE
The Latin motto on the MIT seal, mens et manus – mind and hand –encapsulates Anjali Sastry’s view of the combined theoretical and practical education that students gain at the Institute. She cites MIT founder William Barton Rogers’s 1860 exhortation for “the most earnest cooperation of intelligent culture with industrial pursuits” as the paradigm of learning by doing, the ideal way to gain and apply knowledge. This undergirds her approach to teaching in tandem with projects in which students practice, test, reflect, share, and thereby enact change for the benefit of an enterprise.

The need for practice is a constant theme in Sastry’s view of learning. Just as in music, sports, and chess, practice in management skills results in organizational improvement. That is why she considers it imperative that students have opportunities to apply theory to real-world situations. Such hypothesis testing is the logical and essential extension of rigorous study. It takes place in many forms: team projects, extracurricular activities, competitions, and internships.

Sastry endorses David Kolb’s “learning loop” model: concrete experience, observation and reflection, forming abstract concepts, then further implementing and analyzing. She ponders if this cycle can transcend classroom learning to engender change in the world. Her own research and consulting in health care delivery are based on such a stepped method. She stresses that an integrated, holistic perspective is also required. For instance, a malnourished patient will be unable to absorb drugs administered for AIDS; medicine is insufficient without food. As to the larger picture, she says “obviously we’ve got to tackle global warming and carbon emissions, but we also need to tackle poverty.”

Sastry reminds us to recognize our intrinsic biases in examining data, leading to flawed conclusions. “Humans are prey to a variety of very systematic and known challenges to their thinking,” she says. To reinforce the point, she displays a list of 42 types of judgment errors, but adds that we can train ourselves to catch these fallacies through conscious attention.

Another principle of Sastry’s canon is the need for sharing ideas, “community conversations” as she calls it. She believes cumulative individual knowledge alone is not enough to bear fruit. Experience must be evaluated collaboratively to build a body of useful wisdom. She asserts that this is where promise lies to ameliorate great issues facing society.

In short, Sastry’s formula, informed by system dynamics, is “Act. Review. Improve.” Finally, she recommends that we inculcate “a culture of hope” in our efforts: we must believe that change is indeed possible.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Anjali Sastry specializes in system dynamics, organizational behavior, and human resource management. She followed up undergraduate degrees in Physics and Russian Studies with a Ph.D. in System Dynamics at MIT Sloan. Previous professional engagements included teaching at the University of Michigan and working at a prominent strategic business consulting firm.

Sastry’s academic inquiry encompasses the process of learning, evaluating, and iterative improvement; methods of effecting institutional change; collaboration through sharing ideas borne of reflection upon trial and error; and recognizing faulty thinking that impedes progress and insight. She has published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Energy Policy, Corporate Reputation Review, and Technology Review.

She is insistently enthusiastic about developing opportunities for students to apply classroom lessons to practical situations, and considers experiential learning a hallmark and virtue of MIT.

Sastry’s current interests and research address environmental sustainability and global health delivery, with regard to such broad-reaching problems as carbon emissions and tuberculosis, respectively. Optimism is her starting point.

Exploring the World of Music

Gain an understanding of the basic elements of music with this series, an introduction to music with a global perspective. Exploring the World of Music shows how elements such as melody, rhythm, and texture create an infinite variety of sounds and serve as expressions of culture. Through rare archival footage and contemporary performances, the series presents themes such as music and the environment, music as cultural memory, and how technology changes music. The featured artists perform music from around the world, including American jazz, gospel, and rock, and traditional music from Bosnia, the Caribbean, India, Ireland, Japan, and West Africa. This series is also valuable for teachers seeking to review the subject matter.

Individual Program Descriptions

1. Sound, Music, and the Environment
What do different cultures mean by music? This program explores the definition of music from the sine wave to poetic metaphor, and the impact of the cultural environment on musics as different as Bosnian ganga and becarac singing; Tuvan throat singing; Irish, West African, Trinidadian, and Japanese musics; and Western chamber music, jazz, and rock.

2. The Transformative Power of Music
Music can inspire religious devotion, prepare individuals for war, motivate work, enrich play, and stimulate the passions. The musical healing ceremonies of the Kung people in Namibia and Botswana, Epirote music in traditional Greek weddings, and modern rock, gospel, and folk musics all reveal music's power to transform lives.

3. Music and Memory
As a dynamic link to the past, music allows us to recall and revive our different cultural heritages through the performances we participate in now. West African griots, the Walbiri people of Australia, folksingers of Ireland and Appalachia, and modern practitioners of early music show us how our musical pasts live again today.

4. Transmission: Learning Music
How we learn musical traditions and how we maintain, modify, notate, teach, and perform them for a new, younger audience are exemplified here in Indian classical music, African village drumming, and modern jazz and gospel.

5. Rhythm
Marking time and moving through our bodies, rhythm has a special relationship to both musical form and worldwide dance traditions. How rhythm structures music is examined through the American marching band, North Indian tala, Japanese shakuhachi tradition, West African drumming, and Afro-Cuban dance music.

6. Melody
Melody — the part of music we most often remember — is examined here both scientifically and poetically, from a strict sequence of pitches to a group of notes "in love with each other." We see and hear melodies shaped, elaborated, and developed within Western classical music, the Arabic maqam tradition, Irish dance music and sean-nós singing, and Indian raga.

7. Timbre: The Color of Music
The tone color of music — or "timbre," as we call it in the Western tradition — is influenced by both technical and aesthetic factors. This program examines the creation and effects of timbre in jazz and Indian, West African, Irish, Bosnian, Indonesian gamelan, and Japanese musics.

8. Texture
The way different voices and instruments work together to produce the overall sound gives music its texture. This program examines texture in Japanese shakuhachi, Trinidadian steel band, Bosnian ganga, West African percussion, and modern Australian choral music.

9. Harmony
When two or more notes sound together, harmony occurs. This interaction of pitches, understood in vastly different ways around the world, is analyzed here in jazz, chamber music, Bosnian ganga singing, early music plainchants, and barbershop quartets.

10. Form: The Shape of Music
Form — the way music is organized and structured from beginning to end — guides composers, performers, and listeners in all musics. Here, the traditional Western sonata, the blueprints behind improvisational jazz, the narrative structure of traditional Japanese music, call-and-response forms in West African music and American gospel, and Irish fiddle tunes exemplify worldwide variations in musical form.

11. Composers and Improvisers
How are a composer and an improvisor alike? How are they different? The marriage between fixed elements and new variation is examined in American rock, Indian raga, classical and contemporary Western music, jazz, and Arabic classical music.

12. Music and Technology
New instrument types and new electronic media for distribution are obvious results of technology, but so were the first bone flute and the first stretched catgut. How technology affects music is examined here in a case study of the flute, and in an examination of developing recording and composing technologies where the roles of composer, musician, arranger, and conductor begin to fuse.
Learner.org

The Story of American Freedom: 1776-2005

ABOUT THE LECTURE

Although the idea of freedom is nearly ubiquitous in American public discourse -- and perhaps no more so than today – it has been subject to a remarkable degree of flux over the course of the nation’s history. Eric Foner describes it as “a subject of persistent conflict and debate,” from the earliest times. “This country founded with the rhetoric of freedom was also a slave society,” says Foner. “Slave owners insisted that slavery was the real foundation of freedom, because a free individual was a person who was autonomous, not reliant on others for their economic livelihood. Owning a slave enhanced one’s freedom.” Foner believes that battles “at the boundaries of freedom,” by African Americans and other racial minorities, women and workers, “have deepened and extended the meaning of freedom into more areas of life.” After the nation accepted the 14th amendment -- “a nonracial idea of freedom”-- the next battle coalesced around economic freedom. Should an individual be allowed to pursue economic self-interest without outside restraint, or should economic freedom come to mean economic security—a living wage, a safety net? World War II, and the encounter with fascism, helped “reshape the internal boundaries of freedom,” says Foner, and served as the origins of the civil rights struggle in the U.S. The Cold War refocused the nation on free enterprise, central to our global battle against tyranny. And now globalization and terrorism challenge our notions of freedom. Foner deplores the current administration’s belief in a single sustainable model of freedom – our own. This chauvinism, he believes, violates the very notion of an open society, and paves the way for restricting freedoms at home.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Eric Foner specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and 19th-century America. His books, which have received the Bancroft and Parkman prizes, include: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970), Tom Paine and Revolutionary America (1976), Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (1980), Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy (1983), Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988),Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction (1993), and The Story of American Freedom, (1998). In 2000, he served as President of the American Historical Association. His latest book, Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World, was published in 2002 by Hill and Wang.He received his B.A. from Columbia in 1963 and his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1969.

The Myth of American Exceptionalism

Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Boston UniversityMIT Host: Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) & Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program

Religion and American Politics

Alan Wolfe, SM ‘56, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, Boston CollegeMIT Host: Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) & Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program

The Story of American Freedom: 1776-2005

Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia UniversityMIT Host: Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) & Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program

Jay Gatsby and the Myth of American Origins

Leo Marx, Kenan Professor of American Cultural History (Emeritus) Program in Science, Technology, and Society, MIT MIT Host: Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) & Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program