Autumn 2008 | Public lectures and events | Video: Recent Episodes
London School of Economics and Political Science
Video files from LSE's autumn 2008 programme of public lectures and events, for more recordings and pdf documents see the corresponding audio collection.
Contributor(s): Mirek Topolánek | Mirek Topolanek has been Prime Minister of the Czech Republic since September 2006. He has been chairman of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) since November 2002. Mr Topolanek will speak about the priorities of the forthcoming Czech Republic's EU Presidency.
Contributor(s): Michael Chertoff | Given the threats posed by terrorism and natural disasters, the issue of how to handle risk remains an essential one for nations. While in free societies, people routinely make risk calculations, markets do an imperfect job of risk allocation. Governments must sometimes step in, but in a way that carefully manages risk through prudent, measured regulation. On February 15, 2005, Judge Michael Chertoff was sworn in as the second Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Chertoff formerly served as United States Circuit Judge for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Contributor(s): Douglas Alexander, Professor Robin Burgess, Professor Paul Collier, Gobind Nankani | The UK's Secretary of State for International Development, Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP, will speak on the impact of the global economic downturn on the world's poorest countries. Professor Paul Collier, Oxford University, will be speaking about the latest academic thinking on promoting growth in the world's poorest countries. Professor Robin Burgess, LSE, will present on how the International Growth Centre will support economic growth in developing countries.Gobind Nankani, a Ghanaian native, was recently appointed President of the Global Development Network (GDN) in 2007. He is a development economist and had a distinguished 30 year career at the World Bank, holding management positions in various regions and sectors across the Bank.
Contributor(s): David Cameron MP | In December 2005 David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative Party. Prior to this he held the position of Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills. He was elected to parliament in 2001 representing Witney. Before he became an MP, David worked in business and government. He worked as a Special Adviser in government, first to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and then to the Home Secretary. Afterwards he spent seven years at Carlton Communications, one of the UK's leading media companies, and served on the management Board.
Contributor(s): Baroness Haleh Afshar, Professor Dominic Lieven, Sam Moorhead, Nigel Spivey, Professor Norman Stone | Unfortunately due to a technical fault the last fifteen minutes of this event are missing from the recording
Contributor(s): Shami Chakrabarti, Jonathan Cooper, Professor Conor Gearty, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Professor Francesca Klug, Professor Peter Townsend | To mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this fun yet challenging event will ask which is the greatest right.
Contributor(s): Cherie Blair, Howard Davies | Cherie Blair is a noted barrister and QC, specialising in human rights law. She is married to Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister. Cherie studied law at LSE and is a governor and honorary fellow of the School. In this event she will talk to Howard Davies, LSE Director about her autobiography published earlier this year entitled Speaking for Myself (May 2008, Little, Brown).
Contributor(s): Alessandro Profumo | Banks are called upon to play a primary role, in cooperation with policymakers and regulators, in the quest for better levels of financial stability for the system as a whole. The real economy's needs must be central to the bank's characteristic function. Alessandro Profumo has been the Chief Executive Officer of UniCredit Group since it was founded in 1997; as of December 2005 he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of HVB and as of July 2006 he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bank Austria Creditanstalt. Previously he held the post of Chief Executive Officer of Credito Italiano which he had joined in 1994 as its Chief General Manager in charge of Planning & Group Control, a year after that bank was privatised. At an international level, he is Member of the Board of the European Banking Federation - Brussels, of the European Financial Services Round Table - London, of the Trilateral Commission (Italian Group), of the Investment Advisory Council for Turkey - Istanbul and of the Institut International d'Etudes Bancaires - Brussels.
Contributor(s): Jonathan Fenby, Professor Athar Hussain, Martin Jacques, Professor Chen Jian | Whether we think sport and politics should or should not be mixed, it is clear that in the case of the Beijing Olympics the two have never been more closely intertwined. But how has the Olympics impacted on China? Has it improved or worsened China's image in the world? And how will it effect its future relations with the West? Jonathan Fenby is a British journalist, and was editor of The Observer newspaper from 1993-1995. He wrote The Penguin History of Modern China 1850-2008, which was published in June 2008. Athar Hussain is director of the Asia Research Centre. Martin Jacques is a visiting research fellow in the Asia Research Centre, LSE. Chen Jian is the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE.
Contributor(s): Dr Ian Goldin | Dr Ian Goldin is the first Director of The James Martin 21st Century School at Oxford University taking up his position in September 2006. Goldin was Vice President of the World Bank (2003-2006) and prior to that the Bank's Director of Development Policy (2001-2003). He served on the Bank's senior management team, and was directly responsible for its relationship with the UK and all other European, North America and developed countries. Goldin led the Bank's collaboration with the United Nations and other partners. As Director of Development Policy, Goldin played a pivotal role in the research and strategy agenda of the Bank. From 1996 to 2001 he was Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and served as an adviser to President Nelson Mandela. He succeeded in transforming the Bank to become the leading agent of development in the 14 countries of Southern Africa. During this period, Goldin served on several Government committees and Boards, and was Finance Director for South Africa's Olympic Bid.
Contributor(s): Professor Iain Begg, Zaki Cooper, Dalia Grybauskaite | With the formal review of the EU budget under way, a panel of policymakers, experts and other stakeholders ask: what should the EU be spending taxpayers' money on? And what are the prospects for a radical overhaul? Iain Begg is professorial research fellow in the European Institute, LSE. Zaki Cooper is director of Business for a New Europe. Dalia Grybauskaite is European Commissioner responsible for Financial Programming and Budget, prior to this she served as Minister of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania.
Contributor(s): Peter Sutherland | Peter Sutherland is the United Nations special representative for migration. He is the chairman of Goldman Sachs International and chairman of BP. He is the chairman of the LSE Court of Governors.
Contributor(s): Silvana Turner | Applying forensic anthropology and related sciences, and working closely with victims and their relatives, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team seeks to shed light on human rights violations, contributing to the search for truth, justice, reparation, and prevention of future abuses. Silvana Turner is a forensic anthropologist, investigator and researcher for the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team.
Contributor(s): Professor Robert J. Shiller | Bubbles in the stock market and the housing market are the cause of a financial crisis that is wreaking havoc around the world. The bubbles in turn are caused, at their core, by popular misunderstandings. This contradicts the 'rational expectations' view of the economy that has guided much economic theorizing. In dealing with this crisis in the short run, some kind of bailout of injured parties is necessary to prevent damage to the social fabric. In the long run, we can help mitigate such crises by improving the financial information infrastructure, by expanding market coverage of important risks, and introducing new retail financial products. Robert J. Shiller is the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, and Professor of Finance and Fellow at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management.
Contributor(s): Lord Mackay, Ross Cranston | The separation of powers idea is at the heart of all legal democracies. Yet within those democracies there will often be positions of high office which require their holders to perform functions which are both legal and political. In this series of events senior figures who hold or have held positions of this type talk about their lives in the law, the nature of their office, the institutions which they serve, their roles and responsibilities within those institutions, the role of lawyers in government and their understanding of the relationship between law and politics. Ross Cranston is justice of the High Court and visiting professor of law at LSE. Lord Mackay of Clashfern, KT, PC was formerly Lord Advocate of Scotland, 1979-1984 and Lord Chancellor, 1987-1997.
Contributor(s): President of Kosovo, Dr Fatmir Sejdiu | Fatmir Sejdiu is President of Kosovo, a position he has held since February 2006. Dr. Sejdiu is a professor at the Faculty of Law and the School of Political Science of the University of Prishtina. On 28 June 2006 he received a 'Doctor Honoris Causa' from the University of Tirana in Albania. One of the founding members of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) which was established in late 1989, Fatmir Sejdiu was elected a member of the Presidency of the Party in 1992, whereas on 1994 he was elected Secretary General of LDK. In 1992 and 1998 elections, he was elected member of the Parliament of the Republic of Kosovo holding the positions of the general secretary of the Parliament and chairman of the Constitutional Issues Committee. In the first post-war elections in 2001 and 2004, Mr. Sejdiu was elected member of the Kosovo Assembly and a member of the Presidency of the Assembly. He was also a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Judicial, Legislative and Constitutional Matters and the Committee for International Cooperation and EU Integration.
Contributor(s): Alexander Stubb | Alexander Stubb, Finland's Foreign Minister and current chairman of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is a graduate of the LSE. He became Minister for Foreign Affairs in April this year. Before that he served for four years as a member of the European Parliament.
Contributor(s): Mary McAleese | On 11th November, 1997, Mary McAleese was inaugurated as the eighth President of Ireland and was re-elected in 2004. She is a barrister and former Professor of Law and the first President to come from Northern Ireland. She graduated in Law from the Queen's University of Belfast in 1973 and was called to the Northern Ireland Bar in 1974. In 1975, she was appointed Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin and in 1987, she returned to her Alma Mater, Queen's, to become Director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies. In 1994, she became the first female Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Queen's University of Belfast. She has a longstanding interest in many issues concerned with justice, equality, social inclusion, anti-sectarianism and reconciliation.
Contributor(s): Professor Lord Meghnad Desai, Professor David Harvey, Professor Leo Panitch | This event brings together leading social and political thinkers to debate the contemporary meaning and relevance of Marx's legacy on the occasion of the republication of The Communist Manifesto, with an introduction by David Harvey. Meghnad Desai is emeritus professor of economics at LSE. David Harvey is professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Leo Panitch is professor of political science at York University, Ontario.
Contributor(s): Peter Hendy | Sprawl versus dense? Public transport versus private car? This debate will outline how London's transport strategy shapes - and is shaped by - environmental policy, quality of life and political imperatives. Peter Hendy is commissioner of Transport for London.
Contributor(s): Professor George Alogoskoufis | This lecture will address the impact of globalisation and the recent worldwide economic turmoil on Europe and in particular on the prospects of the Lisbon Strategy, the Stability and Growth Pact, and the European Social Model. George Alogoskoufis has been Greece's minister of economy and finance since 2004 and professor of economics at Athens University of Economics and Business since 1990.
Contributor(s): Professor Edward Glaeser | Improvements in transportation and communication technologies have led some to predict the death of distance, and with that, the death of the city. In this lecture Professor Ed Glaeser will argue that these improvements have actually been good for idea-producing cities at the same time as they have been devastating for goods-producing places. What, then, does the future hold for our cities? Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, where he also serves as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.
Contributor(s): Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta | Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta is Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, a position he has held since May 2006. Foreign Minister Spanta earned a Master degree in Political Sciences, Sociology and International Relations and a PhD degree from Aachen University in Political Sciences where he also taught as a professor from 1992 to 2005. In January 2005, Dr. Spanta returned to teach at Kabul University, and later became the advisor on foreign affairs to President Hamed Karzai. His nomination as Foreign Minister was approved by the Parliament on April 20, and he was sworn in on May 2, 2006.
Contributor(s): Professor Wendy Brown | In this lecture, Professor Wendy Brown will draw on discourse analysis, psychoanalysis, and feminist theory to examine the desire for walls in the context of eroding sovereignty. Why the current proliferation of nation-state walls, especially amidst widespread proclamations of global connectedness and anticipation of a world without borders? And why barricades built of concrete, steel and barbed wire when threats to the nation today are so often miniaturized, vaporous, clandestine, dispersed or networked? Why walls now and how are they to be understood?
Contributor(s): Navanethem Pillay | Navanethem Pillay is UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, she took up office on 1 September 2008. Ms. Pillay, a South African national, was the first woman to start a law practice in her home province of Natal in 1967. Over the next few years, she acted as a defence attorney for anti-apartheid activists, exposing torture, and helping establish key rights for prisoners on Robben Island.
Contributor(s): Jelena Bjelica, Anna Di Lellio, Enver Hoxhaj, Tim Judah | Uncertainty over the status of Kosovo had undermined stability in the Balkans since the early 1990s. The panel of experts discusses Kosovo's declaration of independence and its political, economic and security impact on the Balkans. Jelena Bjelica is the editor-in-chief of the weekly Gradjanski Glasnik, Kosovo. Anna Di Lellio is the editor of the book The Case for Kosova: passage to independence. Enver Hoxhaj is the current minister of education, science and technology of the Republic of Kosovo. Tim Judah is the author of the prize winning book The Serbs: history, myth, and the destruction of Yugoslavia.
Contributor(s): Mohamed A El-Erian | The global economy is experiencing a number of consequential transformations that impact long-standing economic and financial relationships. The resulting change goes well beyond the emergence of a new destination for the global economy; it is also reflected in what is an inevitably bumpy journey that is prone to a series of market accidents and policy mistakes. In his presentation, Mohamed A. El-Erian will discuss the nature of the transformations. He will detail the drivers, and illustrate how they relate to the unusual developments being experienced by international markets. He will conclude by identifying some of the retooling challenges that confront investors, firms, governments, and the multilateral system.
Contributor(s): Professor Peter Berger, John Micklethwait | This event will reflect on the American presidential election, drawing on expert insights into the place of religion in the US, as compared with the European context. Peter Berger is professor emeritus of religion, sociology and theology at Boston University. John Micklethwait is editor-in-chief of The Economist.
Contributor(s): Professor Randall Coyne | Professor Coyne examines the cost to civil liberties and freedom of America's wars-without-end: the war on terrorism and the war on crime. Coyne's lecture touches on the constitutional questions raised by detention of foreign nationals at Guantanamo Bay, the US' continuing support of capital punishment, and his work for 'enemy combatants' and death-row prisoners. Randall Coyne is Edna Asper Elkouri and Frank Elkouri Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
Contributor(s): Professor Michael Cox, Jessica Mathews, Bob Singh | The 2008 race for the White House has been the most exciting in recent American history. But will it make much difference to the United States and the rest of the world who wins: Obama or McCain? Michael Cox is a professor of international relations at LSE. Jessica Mathews is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Rob Singh is a fellow of the RSA and an associate fellow of the Institute for the Study of the Americas.
Contributor(s): Emory Douglas | Emory Douglas, ex Minister of Culture for the Black Panther party, will speak about the history behind the art of the party, and take a look at some more recent works. Emory Douglas was born May 24th, 1943 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Douglas attended City College of San Francisco where he majored in commercial art. He was politically involved as Revolutionary Artist and then Minister of Culture for the Black Panther party in Oakland, CA from February, 1967 until its discontinuance in the Early 1980's. Douglas's art was always seen on front pages of the Black Panther Newspaper and, reflecting the ideals and rhetoric of the Black Panther Party. Offering a retrospective look at artwork created during in the Black Panther Party, Douglas's work has recently been displayed at the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, the Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles,Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Richmond Art Center, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art. And has appeared in June/July volume of Art in America, PRINT Magazine, and the American Institute of Public Arts.
Contributor(s): George Osborne MP | In a major and wide ranging speech George Osborne will ask why Britain's economy was not better prepared for the looming recession, and will outline what steps should now be taken.
Contributor(s): Howard Davies | Howard Davies is working on a book about the future of central banking to be published in 2009 by Princeton University Press. He will assess the ways in which central banks around the world have responded to the credit crisis and what that implies for their role in financial sector regulation in the future. Howard Davies is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Prior to this, from 1997-2003 he was Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the single regulator for the UK financial sector, which was created under his leadership from nine separate regulatory agencies. From 1995-1997 he was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.
Contributor(s): Lord Lawson, Dr Simon Dietz | Lord Lawson argues the case for a fully formed view of global warming, and against hysterical environmentalism. He looks at the facts behind the headlines and explains that for governments to make informed decisions about the path ahead, they must listen to economists as well as scientists, utilising economic forecasting to assess the likely evolution of the world economy.
Contributor(s): Lord Owen | The course of world history has been critically shaped by the physical and mental illnesses of heads of state, sometimes in the public eye but usually in secrecy. Long fascinated with the inter-relationship between politics and medicine, David Owen uses his deep knowledge of both to undertake a unique study of illness in Heads of Government during the last 100 years. Owen expertly scrutinises such diverse political personalities as Sir Anthony Eden at the time of Suez in 1956; John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961; the last Shah of Iran; and President Mitterrand of France who suffered from prostate cancer. Lord Owen also focuses on the "intoxication of power" and hubristic behaviour in such leaders as David Lloyd George and Margaret Thatcher and in particular President Bush and Tony Blair. Lord Owen outlines some of the safeguards that society needs to address as a consequence of illness in heads of government.
Contributor(s): Professor Catharine Mackinnon | Analyzing the nature of the international in gendered terms, Professor MacKinnon provides a perspective on developments in women's human rights globally. Catharine A. MacKinnon, Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, is a teacher, lawyer, writer, and activist on sex equality domestically and internationally. She has taught at ten law schools including Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Osgoode Hall (Toronto), and Columbia, and been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin, 1992-3) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford, 2005-6). Widely published in many languages, her dozen books include Sex Equality (2001), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989), Only Words (1993), Sexual Harassment of Working Women (1979), and in the last two years, Women's Lives, Men's Laws (2005) and Are Women Human? (2006). She created the concept that sexual violence violates equality rights, pioneering the legal claim for sexual harassment as sex discrimination and, with Andrea Dworkin, recognition of the harms of pornography as civil rights violations. Representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual atrocities, she established legal recognition of rape as an act of genocide and won a $745 million verdict at trial. She works with Equality Now, an international NGO promoting sex equality. Empirical studies document that Professor MacKinnon is one of the most widely-cited legal scholars in the English language.
Contributor(s): Professor Robert Sampson, Professor Paul Gilroy | A look at classic urban themes as they are manifested in the contemporary city, focusing on social reproduction of inequality, the meanings of disorder, and the link between the two. Paul Gilroy is Anthony Giddens Professor in Social Theory at LSE. Robert Sampson is Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences and chair of sociology, Harvard University.
Contributor(s): Sir Simon Milton, Professor Ricky Burdett, Deyan Sudjic | What is the new administration's vision for London? Speakers discuss how to design and manage the powerhouses of the global economy, assessing London's development compared to the megacities of the world. Simon Milton was appointed deputy mayor for policy and planning after serving as chairman of London's Local Government Association. Ricky Burdett, chief adviser for the London 2012 Olympics, and Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum in London, are co-editors of The Endless City.
Contributor(s): Dr Gerd Gigerenzer | We think of intelligence as a deliberate, conscious activity guided by the laws of logic. Yet much of our mental life is unconscious, based on processes alien to logic: gut feelings, or intuitions. In his lecture Dr Gigerenzer argues that intuition is more than impulse and caprice; it has its own rationale. This can be described by fast and frugal heuristics, which exploit evolved abilities in our brain. Heuristics ignore information and try to focus on the few important reasons. He shows that biased minds that intuitively rely of heuristics can make better inferences about the world than information-greedy statistical algorithms. More information, more time, even more thinking, are not always better, and less can be more.
Contributor(s): Will Hutton, Martin Wolf | Will Hutton is chief executive of the Work Foundation. Prior to this, he spent four years as editor-in-chief of The Observer and continues to write a weekly column for the paper. He is also a governor of LSE. Martin Wolf is associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 "for services to financial journalism". He is also an honorary graduate of LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor Jeremy Waldron | Many human rights charters contain prohibitions on inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners and detainees. Terms like "inhuman" and "degrading" are difficult to interpret, but they are certainly not meaningless. It is important to attend to attend to the meanings of the words themselves, as well as to the decisions that courts have made about particular practices. Reflection on the meanings of these highly-charged terms reveals important complexity, which we can unpack in a way that enables us to better focus our debate about the proper treatment of prisoners and detainees. Jeremy Waldron is University Professor at New York University School of Law and teaches legal and political philosophy.
Contributor(s): Toomas Hendrik Ilves | Toomas Hendrik Ilves has served as President of Estonia since 2006. Prior to this he was a member of the European Parliament. He has held a variety of diplomatic posts including serving two terms as Foreign Minister. He graduated with a BA from Columbia University and an MA from Pennsylvania University, both in Psychology.
Contributor(s): Howard Davies | Howard Davies sits on the International advisory councils of the China banking and securities regulatory commissions. In the fourth lecture of an annual series he reviews the progress of reform in china's financial markets, and the implications for the rest of the world. Howard Davies is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Prior to this, from 1997-2003 he was Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the single regulator for the UK financial sector, which was created under his leadership from nine separate regulatory agencies. From 1995-1997 he was Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.
Contributor(s): Penny Wong | With its ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in December 2007 and commitment to introduce an emissions trading scheme - the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme - in 2010, the Australian Government has taken the opportunity to approach climate change policy from a fresh perspective. Senator Wong will outline the Government's global and domestic policy approach, with particular emphasis on the key role of market-based mechanisms.
Contributor(s): Professor Kimberly Hutchings | In this lunchtime series lectures, a selection of LSE's academics from across the spectrum of the social sciences explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed. Kimberly Hutchings is Professor of International Relations at LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor Ha-Joon Chang, Cambridge University | The global economy is going through a turbulent time and it is time for a fundamental re-design of the global economic system. In doing this, Korea has a unique set of assets to provide. It is one of the few countries that have transformed itself from one of the poorest to the one of the industrialized in living memory, so it can understand the concerns that span across a huge spectrum of countries. In this lecture, Ha-Joon Chang will discuss how Korea can, and should, contribute to the reform of the global system, by drawing on its unique historical experience and becoming a mediator that genuinely understands the concerns of, say, Swaziland to Switzerland. Ha-Joon Chang is reader in the political economy of development at Cambridge University.
Contributor(s): Thomas L Friedman | Thomas L Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of our biggest challenges - the global environmental crisis and America's surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11 - and shows how they're linked. He argues that we need American commitment and leadership in a green revolution, a revolution that will be the biggest innovation project in history, one that will inspire us to summon all the intelligence, creativity, boldness and concern for the common good that are our greatest human resources.
Contributor(s): Sir David King | Without a new deal between rich and poor countries, climate change will continue to accelerate. How can this be tackled? David King, former chief scientific adviser to the government, is director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.
Contributor(s): Professor Richard Samuels | As the Soviet Union disappeared so did the most serious threat to Japanese security. But it was not long before four TnewU threats took its place. Japan, rarely credited for its foreign policy, has responded with surprising strategic agility. Richard Samuels is Ford International Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Contributor(s): Professor Chen Jian | Few countries have experienced changes as dramatic as did China in the past century - and the past quarter century in particular. From a "revolutionary country" to a "status quo power," and from an "outsider" to an "insider" of the existing international system, the realities of the grand transformation in China's state, society and international outlook have often been obscured by all kinds of myths. For the purpose of highlighting the realities and deconstructing the myths, Professor Chen discusses the origins, processes and implications of China's rise from the perspective of a historian of China's international relations.
Contributor(s): Luis Moreno-Ocampo | The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted in Rome on 17 July 1998 by 120 States. The first prosecutor of the ICC, Mr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, took office on 21 April 2003. His mandate is to investigate and prosecute the most serious crimes, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Contributor(s): Dr Nikolaus von Bomhard, Professor Ian Diamond, Jeremy Grantham, Professor Lord Stern of Brentford | To inaugurate the LSE's new Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Lord Stern of Brentford, author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, will discuss a global deal for climate change.
Contributor(s): Rajat M. Nag | Despite impressive growth over the past few decades, the Asia Pacific region is still home to two-thirds of the world's poor. In many Asian countries, the gap between rich and poor is widening and policymakers are faced with extraordinary challenges in closing this gap and spreading the benefits of growth to the most vulnerable in their societies. Rising fuel and food prices have exacerbated these inequities and placed millions more on the edge of poverty. The Managing Director General of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Rajat Nag, will discuss how the region is grappling with these complex challenges and how ADB's Strategy 2020 is targeted to make a difference in the lives of the poor.
Contributor(s): Connie Hedegaard, Heiner Flassbeck, Hilary Benn MP | Climate change is one of the most complex global challenges the world currently faces. Unless dealt with, climate change will potentially have disastrous effects on nature and human societies. It is the aim that a new global agreement shall be concluded at COP15 in Copenhagen in December 2009. Connie Hedegaard will share her observations on the status of the international negotiations and dwell upon hurdles and deadlocks that must be overcome in order to reach agreement.
Contributor(s): Supachai Panitchpakdi, Heiner Flassbeck, Professor Robert Wade | The report, which is under embargo until 4 September 2008, highlights the implications of commodity price volatility and one of the major paradoxes of globalization, namely that the "capital poor" developing world is exporting capital to the "capital rich" developed countries. Moreover, those developing countries that are the largest capital exporters tend to invest more domestically and to grow faster than those that still depend on capital imports. These facts create serious puzzles for mainstream economic models and reject most of their predictions.