Spring 2010 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdf: Recent Episodes
London School of Economics and Political Science
Contributor(s): Professor Julian Le Grand, Henk Bekedam, Professor Hu Yonghua, Howard Davies | The fifth LSE Asia Forum took place in Beijing on 25-26 March 2010 with the support of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS). The Forum addressed a wide range of issues of deep interest to policymakers and wider society, under a general theme relating to the recent challenges and changes that have affected the global economy. A key focus of the Forum was on the role of China in tackling the recent challenges, and what lessons can be learnt for the future. 15:30 - 17:00 - Plenary session: Health care: trust, mistrust, voice or choice? presented by Professor Julian Le Grand followed by a question an answer session, followed by closing remarks from Howard Davies.
Contributor(s): Professor Lord Nicholas Stern of Brentford, Vice Minister Liu He, Zhu Min | The fifth LSE Asia Forum took place in Beijing on 25-26 March 2010 with the support of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS). The Forum addressed a wide range of issues of deep interest to policymakers and wider society, under a general theme relating to the recent challenges and changes that have affected the global economy. A key focus of the Forum was on the role of China in tackling the recent challenges, and what lessons can be learnt for the future. 14:00 - 14:50 - Climate change and economic growth - question and answer session.
Contributor(s): Professor Lord Nicholas Stern of Brentford, Vice Minister Liu He, Zhu Min | The fifth LSE Asia Forum took place in Beijing on 25-26 March 2010 with the support of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS). The Forum addressed a wide range of issues of deep interest to policymakers and wider society, under a general theme relating to the recent challenges and changes that have affected the global economy. A key focus of the Forum was on the role of China in tackling the recent challenges, and what lessons can be learnt for the future. 114:00 - 14:50 - Plenary session: Climate change and economic growth, presented by Professor Lord Nicholas Stern of Brentford.
Contributor(s): Professor Arne Westad, Professor Wang Jisi, Michael Yahuda | The fifth LSE Asia Forum took place in Beijing on 25-26 March 2010 with the support of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS). The Forum addressed a wide range of issues of deep interest to policymakers and wider society, under a general theme relating to the recent challenges and changes that have affected the global economy. A key focus of the Forum was on the role of China in tackling the recent challenges, and what lessons can be learnt for the future. 1:30 - 12:45 - Plenary session: China: An Emerging Diplomatic Superpower? presented by Professor Arne Westad, followed by a question and answer session.
Contributor(s): Howard Davies, His Excellency Mr Yang Jiechi, His Royal Highness The Duke of York | The fifth LSE Asia Forum took place in Beijing on 25-26 March 2010 with the support of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS). The Forum addressed a wide range of issues of deep interest to policymakers and wider society, under a general theme relating to the recent challenges and changes that have affected the global economy. A key focus of the Forum was on the role of China in tackling the recent challenges, and what lessons can be learnt for the future. This session comprises the welcome and introduction from Howard Davies, followed by the keynote speech presented by His Excellency Mr Yang Jiechi, followed by an address by His Royal Highness The Duke of York.
Contributor(s): Howard Davies, His Excellency Mr Yang Jiechi, His Royal Highness The Duke of York | The fifth LSE Asia Forum took place in Beijing on 25-26 March 2010 with the support of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS). The Forum addressed a wide range of issues of deep interest to policymakers and wider society, under a general theme relating to the recent challenges and changes that have affected the global economy. A key focus of the Forum was on the role of China in tackling the recent challenges, and what lessons can be learnt for the future. This session comprises the welcome and introduction from Howard Davies, followed by the keynote speech presented by His Excellency Mr Yang Jiechi, followed by an address by His Royal Highness The Duke of York.
Contributor(s): Sheikha Hanadi Al-Thani | The lecture will aim to raise awareness and understanding of the obstacles preventing the full integration of young people in economic life. Sheikha Hanadi will also engage in analyzing and defining the prevalent attitudes toward work and the many societal barriers to employment and entrepreneurship in the Arab world.
Contributor(s): Karel De Gucht, Professor Marc De Vos | The subprime crisis and the global recession are receding. But what will be their long-term consequences? What future awaits globalization, international relations, and the market economy? What are the global trends of crisis policies and what do they mean for the post-crisis world? These fundamental questions will be addressed at an evening debate that will offer both the big global picture and the view from the new EU Commissioner for Trade.
Contributor(s): Vikram Seth | The Colorni lectures are held regularly in memory of Eva Colorni, who taught economics at the former City of London Polytechnic - now incorporated into London Metropolitan University - until her early death in 1985. A collection of the earlier lectures is published by Oxford University Press, under the title Living As Equals. This year's lecture will be delivered by the Indian poet and novelist Vikram Seth.
Contributor(s): Anwar Ibrahim | Anwar Ibrahim is a former Deputy Prime Minister (1993-1998) and Finance Minister (1991-1998) of Malaysia. He was dismissed from office in 1998 and imprisoned after a trial condemned by many critics as a "sham" orchestrated by the government led by Dr Mahathir Mohamed. After serving six years in prison, Anwar was released after the Malaysian courts overturned his conviction. Anwar taught and lectured at Oxford University, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Georgetown University, lecturing extensively on issues of governance, democracy and contemporary politics in Southeast Asia.
Contributor(s): Ingeborg Grssle, Tanja Fajon | It has been said that EU enlargement in the Western Balkans is about completing the Union. The key question is when and how to do it. Or whether it can be done at all! This public debate between two experienced MEPs aims to explore the argument from all sides. Ingeborg Grssle is a Member of the European Parliament in Germany and Tanja Fajon is a Member of the European Parliament in Slovenia.
Contributor(s): Javier Solana | After ten years of serving as EU High Representative for CFSP, Javier Solana reflects on the achievements and challenges ahead for Europe as a global security actor with Professor Mary Kaldor. Javier Solana is a Senior Visiting Professor at the LSE Global Governance. He was formerly the Secretary General of the Council of the EU and EU High Representative for CSFP (October 1999 - December 2009). Prior to that, he was the Secretary General of NATO from 1995 - 1999. He is a former physics professor and long time Spanish cabinet member
Contributor(s): Vince Cable MP, Greg Hands MP, James Plaskitt MP | Keeping in context the events that unfolded in the recent economic crisis, the fiscal burden of the associated policies enacted during that period, and with the likely possibility of a general election soon, the LSE Economics Society is proud to play host to an inter-party debate featuring key members from the three main contending parties of this year's General Election.
Contributor(s): G. Asenath Andrews, Stuart Gulliver, Bruce Katz, Richard Sennett | Detroit was once America's fourth largest city. Built by the car, with its groundbreaking suburbs, freeways and shopping centres, it was the embodiment of the American dream. With its intense race riots that brought the Army into the city, and violent union struggles against the fierce resistance of Henry Ford and the Big Three, it was also the scene of American 'nightmares'.
Contributor(s): Arun Kundnani, Nira Yuval-Davis, Joseph Harker | With immigration issues increasingly taking centre-stage during New Labour's tenure in government, and with the electoral success of the BNP and the rise of the Right arguably signalling a resurgence of racism and xenophobia in British society, this event will discuss the relationship between these two contentious developments.
Contributor(s): Lord Richard Rogers, Bruce Katz, Professor Anne Power, Julia Unwin | This discussion will debate the issues arising from a new book Phoenix Cities which examines seven cities from very different regions of the EU, comparing them with the US experience. Their dramatic decline, intense recovery efforts and actual progress on the ground underline the significance of public underpinning in times of crisis. Innovative enterprises, new-style city leadership, special neighbourhood programme, skills development, environmental reclamation are all explored. The American experience shows that cities left largely to their own devices deliver a slower, more uncertain recovery. The discussion will explore where next for Phoenix Cities, given the economic shocks, the pressures of climate change and the social inequalities that sharply divide these recovering cities.
Contributor(s): Professor Lord Stern | Nicholas Stern is IG Patel professor of economics and government at LSE and chairman of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy.
Contributor(s): Jeremy Rifkin | At this event Jeremy Rifkin will talk about his latest book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. His book is a sweeping new interpretation of the history of civilization, that looks at the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development-and is likely to determine our fate as a species.
Contributor(s): Helen Clark | In recent times, the challenges of the developing world have been compounded by multiple crises: the food and fuel crises, the global recession, and devastating natural disasters. There is also the huge climate challenge. How can the international community move the development agenda forward, and stay focused on achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015?
Contributor(s): John Elkington | This lecture will discuss adapting to climate change within a new economic framework. John Elkington is co-founder of think tank SustainAbility and founding partner and director of Volans.
Contributor(s): Professor Allen Buchanan | It is becoming possible to extend human capacities and perhaps even create new ones through the application of biomedical technologies. Putting biomedical enhancements in a historical context can help us avoid common misunderstandings of ethical issues.
Contributor(s): Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Professor Steven Pinker | What happens when a novelist and philosopher talks to a cognitive neuroscientist about faith, reason, fiction, and God? Listen in as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and her husband Steven Pinker explore what Spinoza would say about Darwin, what role fiction should play in intellectual life, whether any of the arguments for the existence of God are any good, and other topics at the interface of literature, science, and philosophy.
Contributor(s): Wazhma Frogh, David Kilcullen, Horia Mosadiq, Michael Semple, Tom Tugendhat | Chaired by distinguished UN diplomat and envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, experts on Afghanistan will discuss the current situation in that country and possibilities for its future during a time of disintegrating support for western military involvement and a resurgent Taliban.
Contributor(s): Professor Allen Buchanan | Many consider genetic modification to be the riskiest mode of biomedical enhancement. The problem of unintended bad consequences is serious, but it is often misrepresented in terms of interference with the 'wisdom of nature' or the handiwork of the 'master engineer' of evolution.
Contributor(s): Ami Ayalon, Professor Christine Chinkin, Karma Nabulsi, Colonel Desmond Travers | This public discussion, chaired by the distinguished UN diplomat and envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, will discuss the findings of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict and the 'Goldstone Report' that it produced. Panellists will also examine the state of the peace process, and how this might unfold in the future.
Contributor(s): Sang-Hyun Song | Judge Sang-Hyun Song was appointed President of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March, 2009. He initially joined the ICC in 2003, when he became a judge for a term of nine years. President Song has extensive practical and academic experience in the area of court management, criminal procedure, and the law of evidence. For thirty years, he taught as a professor of law at Seoul National University Law School, beginning in 1972. He has also held visiting professorships at a number of law schools, including Harvard, New York University and Melbourne.
Contributor(s): Tony Juniper | This event will explore the role of universities in driving the sustainability agenda. Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, and a senior associate with the Cambridge University Programme for Sustainability Leadership. Professor Janet Hartley is Pro-director for teaching and learning at LSE.
Contributor(s): Sir Ken MacDonald QC | Public prosecutors must be free from political influence to command confidence. But if they are not answerable to politicians, how are they accountable to the public for their work?
Contributor(s): Dr David Kershaw | In this lunchtime series of 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.
Contributor(s): Professor John Bowen | We discuss 'Studying Islam across times and place: how to compare?' and this time we subject 'Islam' to an analytical discussion. The anthropological approach advocated here focuses on processes by which Muslims refer back to an Islamic tradition, and employ those references to explain and change the social world. Current debates in Aceh (Indonesia) about how to understand sharî`a provide an initial case study; these debates are then shown to be quite similar to some underway in Western Europe.
Contributor(s): Professor Ha-Joon Chang | Ha-Joon Chang is a reader in the political economy of development at Cambridge University. This event is supported by the LSE Annual Fund.
Contributor(s): Professor Tim Jackson | This lecture will discuss a new vision of shared prosperity. It will consider the capability of human beings to flourish within the ecological limits of a finite planet. Tim Jackson is professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey and economics commissioner on the UK Sustainable Development Commission.
Contributor(s): Dr John Darwin | It was perhaps no coincidence that Halford Mackinder, the most famous exponent of geopolitical theory, wrote his seminal essay in 1904 when British world power seemed on the verge of a secular crisis. This lecture examines how far the insights contained in Mackinder's four major works explain the geopolitical fortunes of the British world system in its age of blood and iron.
Contributor(s): Professor Rayna Rapp | Over the last three decades, an escalating proportion of US school children have been classified for special education. At the same time, scientists have focused increasingly on juvenile brains. This lecture looks at the work of both neuroscientists and psychiatric epidemiologists.
Contributor(s): Len Curran, Andrew Heiron | Fierce price competition, painstaking cost-cutting, and widespread volatility is making life in the auto industry incredibly challenging. How has Renault adapted, and where does it see the auto industry heading? As a fledgling technology (and one of the great hopes for reducing global carbon emissions) can any electric car concept overcome such an inhospitable environment? Renault Group Commercial Director Len Curran and Electric Vehicles chief Andrew Heiron will both be offering their insights.
Contributor(s): Professor Robert Baldwin, Julia Black | In this lunchtime series of 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.
Contributor(s): Professor Sally Healy, Dr Jeremy Lind, David Peppiat, Elizabeth Winter | The Obama administration has abandoned the term 'War on Terror' and taken steps to undo the worst excesses of the post-9/11 security regime. However the legislation, structures and practices introduced after the attacks remain deeply embedded. The event is followed by the launch of Jude Howell and Jeremy Lind's new book Counter-terrorism, Aid and Civil Society.
Contributor(s): Stephen Green, Dr. M. Umer Chapra | This lecture discusses the growing role alternative financing arrangements, such as Islamic finance, have on the global financial markets. It explains how morality or faith based forms of finance can continue to enhance modern finance in the future.
Contributor(s): Professor Gilles Kepel | This lecture will assess how successful President Obama's engagement with the Muslim world has been. Gilles Kepel is Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS.
Contributor(s): Professor Leszek Balcerowicz | Leszek Balcerowicz is an economist, a Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics, Former President of the National Bank of Poland and Former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in the first non-communist Polish Government after the Second World War.
Contributor(s): Professor David Goldblatt | Globalisation has seen sport achieve a hitherto unequalled global cultural significance, but it has also left it in thrall to capitalism. Will economic forces continue to shape sport? David Goldblatt is a writer, broadcaster and teacher. He is author of The Ball is Round: a global history of football.
Contributor(s): Steve Pyke, Dr Alex Voorhoeve | Alex Voorhoeve builds on Plato's arguments for philosophising about ethics in dialogue form. Steve Pyke will describe how he photographs philosophers, including how he approaches his subjects and what his portraits reveal about them.
Contributor(s): Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff | Let's call a spade a spade. Today's financial system, with its limited liability, insider rating, political kickbacks, director sweetheart deals, non disclosure, and internal corporate raiders, was built for hucksters -- hucksters who systematically manufactured and sold trillions in fraudulent securities, grabbed hoards of loot, and left the public to pick up the pieces.
Contributor(s): Professor Lord Anthony Giddens, Professor David Held, Professor Mary Kaldor, Professor Danny Quah | The world now confronts crises unique in their global character. Distinguished LSE experts argue these crises provide an opportunity to transform the world and to build capacity for responding to extreme global challenges.
Contributor(s): David Willetts MP | David Willetts will analyse the distribution of income and wealth between different generations in Britain. He will investigate why the baby boomer generation have done particularly well for both income and wealth. He will then look at why the younger generation face much less favourable economic circumstances. Drawing on his new book The Pinch he will firmly place the issue of fairness between the generations on the political agenda.
Contributor(s): James Purnell MP | The credit crunch was followed by a consensus on the centre-Left that the world was entering a "progressive moment", and that the financial crisis represented a failure of the ideas of the New Right. Yet, in Europe at least, social democracy has struggled to articulate what the progressive response to the crisis, and has struggled electorally as a consequence. To resolve this paradox, the Left needs to recognise that the financial crisis challenges its received ideology too, and that if it wants to survive electorally, it will need to renew itself intellectually. The lecture will argue that such a renewal can come from re-examining Labour's traditions, and from having the courage to be bolder about goals and methods.
Contributor(s): AS Byatt, Ben Okri, Helen Simpson, Colin Thubron | Four very different writers consider four very different aspects of love: love as enchantment, and love as madness; passion in youth, and compassion in age. They read their favourite passages on love both from their own work, and from the work of others, and, on Valentine's eve, discuss Shakespeare's notion that 'The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact'.
Contributor(s): Zeina Frangie-Eyres, Dr Simon Glendinning, Professor Marina Warner, Dr Mark Wright | An event that combines a story-telling of the 1000-year-old eco-fable The Animals' Lawsuit against Humanity with a panel discussion on the story's historical and literary origins; current biodiversity in the midst of species extinction; the philosophical relationship between humans; and animals and the need for a myth for our times.
Contributor(s): Matt Charman, John Caird | Theatre has a rich tradition of raising political issues, as evidenced in LSE founder George Bernard Shaw's work. A discussion between a playwright and director on whether contemporary drama still aims to challenge audiences.
Contributor(s): Lionel Shriver | Lionel Shriver will be discussing and reading from her new novel So Much for That on the cusp of release in March. Described in HarperCollins's spring catalogue as "about illness, death, and money", Shriver's latest explores four different scenarios with a medical aspect, in a kind of literary "ER". The book examines the catastrophic personal fall-out of America's dysfunctional health-care system, while also raising tough questions that all Western countries are having to wrestle with--the most signal among them: how much money is one life worth?
Contributor(s): Professor Richard Sennett | Richard Sennett's award winning Sociology of Literature explores the role of narrative in social research and in writing sociology.
Contributor(s): Dr Jane Darcy, Brian Dillon, Sally O'Reilly | Consciousness of our own mortality is at the heart of the human experience, and has long fascinated writers and artists, inspiring quite an obsession with the body and its well-being. This panel will examine the relationship between creativity, illness and the imagination.
Contributor(s): Will Alsop, Professor Rosemary Ashton, Leo Hollis, Hans Ulrich Obrist | How do we attempt to understand the sprawling "modern Babylon" that is London, with its layers of social, political and cultural history? Can art, architecture and literature help us to 'read' this complex city?
Contributor(s): Michael Blackburn, Mario Petrucci, Richard Tyrone-Jones | Three poets discuss the interrelationship between art and literature and the social sciences. What are the links between these seemingly polarised disciplines? Does art have any concrete influence on the social and political sciences?
Contributor(s): Professor Mary Evans, Professor Nicola Lacey, Robert Mighall, Professor Juliet Mitchell | Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde develops an extraordinarily rich intersection between literary fiction, legal norms and the scientific imagination. This panel discussion brings together legal academics, psychoanalytical theorists and specialists in nineteenth-century literature in a conversation focused on the historical and cultural significance themes in the novel. The discussion will span the emergence of the new science of criminology, late nineteenth-century anxieties about the permeability of social divisions, the consistency of scientific and popular theories of monstrosity, degeneration and depravity, and Stevenson's dismay that he had been turned into a professional author by the success of Jekyll and Hyde.
Contributor(s): Stephen Grey, Andrew Mueller, Ros Wynne-Jones | A discussion of war journalism in its historical context. How the great correspondents of the past managed to tell the world about conflicts around the globe. And how in the digital age, governments and the military seek to prevent free reporting of war. Can we ever really report objectively and openly on war?
Contributor(s): Justine Mann | Does the task of writing a novel both excite and daunt you? Using the political novel as an example, this workshop will examine how to progress from initial ideas to a successful draft. Participants should emerge with an understanding of the task that lies ahead and a greater sense of what is required in terms of structure, characterisation and plot.
Contributor(s): Yannis Stavrakakis | How is order sustained in capitalist societies? This lecture highlights the mutual engagement between authority, fantasy and enjoyment. Yannis Stavrakakis is associate professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Contributor(s): Richard Bronk, Professor Margot Finn, Dr Neil Vickers | The session examines how the reading of literature can expand the analytical imagination, provide alternative metaphors and supply vital empirical evidence. Three academics from very different disciplines discuss ways in which literature can be invaluable to the broader research community.
Contributor(s): Andrew Franklin, John Lanchester, Adrian Wooldridge | The publishing industry has arguably seen its worst financial year in decades, with flagging book sales and dwindling literature coverage in the national press. How will literature will fare in the current climate, and in the years to come? Will major publishers' dwindling revenues mean fewer - and less varied and ambitious - books on the market? Or is this a golden age for hard-edged, gritty recession literature, and incisive coverage of current social and political issues?
Contributor(s): Giles Foden, Professor David Lewis, Jack Mpanje, Sunny Singh | Do we learn more about global poverty issues and the worlds of international development agencies from works of popular fiction such as Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance or Helen Fielding's Cause Celeb than we do from official reports and academic research? A recently-published paper written by David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock suggests that fiction is an important and sometimes under-recognised source of knowledge about 'development' issues that may offer useful and different insights compared to more standard forms of research publication and policy reports.
Contributor(s): Professor Helen Thomas, Jasmin Vardimon | Dance is generally concerned with non-verbal bodily communication, while literature is text-based and disembodied. However, the long relationship between dance and text has been explored both through textual interfaces by collapsing the boundaries between different art forms such as physical theatre, dance and literature and within the world of text, these boundaries are negotiated through the body of literature written about dance.
Contributor(s): Dr Zlatko Lagumdzija | Dr Zlatko Lagumdzija is leader of the Social Democratic Party and a former Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Contributor(s): Dr Kavita Abraham, Dr Jon Adams, Dr Robert Hudson | Don't judge a book by its cover? Don't be ridiculous. We constantly make judgements on books - from where it appears in a shop, its pretty cover, its heft or subject matter, the praise and criticism we hear about it. Reviewers are even more prejudiced. They know the author, or hate the publisher or, even worse, are a meticulous and lucid expert on the subject. All human readings are subjective. Is there another way? Would an objective reading - some preconceptionless robotic analysis, for instance - be preferable? Is it even possible? And what questions might a robot help us answer?
Contributor(s): Rebecca Clee, Patrick Ness, Alex Scarrow, Mark Walden | The culmination of LSE's second creative writing competition for London state schools, this panel of award-winning and innovative authors, alongside one teenager with her finger on the pulse of young-adult writing, will be discussing, and asking you in the audience, what's in store for teen fiction?
Contributor(s): Professor Fawaz A Gerges | Today's Middle East is broken. The crisis of prolonged authoritarianism and failed economic policies have caused chronic poverty, pervasive corruption and the rise of extremism in Arab societies. A wasted decade of war on terror has reinforced widely held perceptions that the West is waging a crusade against Islam and Muslims. Fawaz Gerges is a professor of Middle Eastern politics and international relations at LSE.
Contributor(s): Professor Thomas J Sargent | Combining an historical approach with macroeconomic theory, Thomas Sargent will discuss ways of thinking about American fiscal and monetary policies - exploring how contradictions have developed and how they have been resolved. Thomas Sargent is professor of economics at New York University and senior fellow at Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Contributor(s): Douglas Alexander MP | The first decade of the 21st Century has shown the extent to which we are increasingly interdependent for our prosperity, security and environmental sustainability. Tackling global poverty in today's world is not only a moral imperative, but in our common interest. Douglas Alexander will assess the importance of the World Bank in the fight against poverty, and propose the reforms that are necessary to equip it for the challenges that lie ahead.
Contributor(s): Professor Anne Power | This lecture addresses how we can drastically reduce energy consumption and consequent carbon emissions by considering existing buildings. Anne Power, professor of social policy, is head of LSE Housing and Communities, a research group in the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion.
Contributor(s): Professor Joseph Stiglitz | Stiglitz lays out not only the course of the financial crisis which began in 2007, but its underlying causes, and shows why much more radical reforms are needed than are currently being contemplated if we are to avoid similar 'systemic' crises in the future. Showing why the bailout has been only marginally effective and how it could have been much more so, and outlines the enormous opportunity - not yet taken - to design a new global financial architecture.
Contributor(s): Chris Bryant MP | After the recent focus on internal issues, the EU is now turning its attention to global matters. What impact will the emerging economic powerhouses of India, China and Brazil have on Europe's revitalised outward-looking perspective? Chris Bryant MP is UK Minister for Europe.
Contributor(s): John Lanchester | Has the credit crunch exposed the futility of academic economics? Should LSE be closed down and converted into something more socially productive? In this lecture John Lanchester challenges the profession of economics with fundamental questions about its purpose and direction.
Contributor(s): Jonathon Porritt | At the beginning of this new decade more people in the US and UK remain unpersuaded by the science of climate change than this time last year. Could it be that people have spotted the yawning gap between the politicians' apocalyptic rhetoric and the bland lifestyle advice to change your light bulbs or drive more slowly? What if there's no solution to climate change without freeing ourselves from our obsession with economic growth?
Contributor(s): Professor Sonia Livingstone | In this lunchtime series of 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.
Contributor(s): Tim Judah, Nick Thorpe | After months of renewed celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, has a new malaise taken over? Are there any indicators of hope in the shadow of the unfinished project? Tim Judah is Balkans correspondent for The Economist. Nick Thorpe is Eastern Europe correspondent for the BBC.
Contributor(s): Tim Bale | Why did the world's oldest and most successful political party dump Margaret Thatcher only to commit electoral suicide under John Major? Just as importantly, what stopped the Tories getting their act together until David Cameron came along? The answers, Tim Bale shows, are as provocative as the questions.
Contributor(s): Felix Kuehn, Alex Strick van Linschoten | Born in a small village of Kandahar, Abdul Salam Zaeef rose to become a senior member of the Taliban. His memoirs of his former role, recently translated from Pashto and edited by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, reveal an extraordinary and provocative counter-narrative to the standard accounts of Afghanistan since 1979. Using My Life with the Taliban as an entry point to discussion at this lunchtime event, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehnwill explore the history and role of Kandahar: the birthplace of the Taliban movement and focal area for the recently announced military 'surge'.
Contributor(s): Isabel Dedring | Isabel Dedring will discuss developing and implementing a vision for a low carbon London. Isabel Dedring is environment adviser to the Mayor of London. She has also been director of the policy unit at Transport for London.
Contributor(s): Professor John Bowen | During the 1980s people living in Europe and North America took cognizance of two major developments in religion and public life. Islam assumed a more prominent role both in majority Muslim societies and in societies of relatively recent residence. And forms of Christianity took on greater public roles in much of the West. These parallel developments have given rise to interrogations on many fronts: concerning the nature of secularism, the proper role of religious commitments in liberal democracies, and the accommodations required for Islam to assume its new role in those democracies. Confusion reigns over how to understand claims made in the name of Islam, or for that matter those made in the name of laïcité, toleration, or multiculturalism. This series of three lectures attempts to address some of these issues from a perspective that is anthropological, political-theoretic, and comparative.
Contributor(s): Jaron Lanier | Something started to go wrong with the digital revolution at the start of the 21st century. Individual creativity has begun to go out of fashion and people are being restricted to what can be represented on a computer. Are we deadening the human experience? Jaron Lanier delivers a call to arms in support of the human and reflects on the good and bad developments in design 20 years after the invention of the web. Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, philosopher and all round digital guru who has spent his careers pushing the transformative power of modern technology to its limits. From inventing virtual reality and creating the world's first immersive avatars, as one of the premier designers at work today he received in 2009 a lifetime achievement award from the IEEE and was named one of the top 100 public intellectuals by Prospect and Foreign Policy. This event celebrates the publication of his latest book You are Not a Gadget.
Contributor(s): Lee Bollinger | Bollinger explores the meaning of freedom of the press in our globalised, internet-dominated era. Lee C. Bollinger became the nineteenth President of Columbia University on June 1, 2002. A prominent advocate of affirmative action, he played a leading role in the twin Supreme Court cases - Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v Bollinger - that upheld and clarified the importance of diversity as a compelling justification for affirmative action in higher education. A leading First Amendment scholar, he is widely published on freedom of speech and press, and currently serves on the faculty of Columbia Law School.
Contributor(s): Andrew Simms | Andrew Simms considers the development of a new sustainable economic model, looking at environmental, social and economic aspects. Andrew Simms is an author and a policy director at the New Economics Foundation. His most recent work is Ecological Debt: global warming and the wealth of nations
Contributor(s): Dr Vincent Cable MP | Following the most devastating economic crisis since the Great Depression, electoral and institutional governance reform is high on the agenda of all political parties. Dr Cable identifies major targets for reform. Vince Cable is deputy leader and shadow chancellor of the Liberal Democrats. He is MP for Twickenham.
Contributor(s): Professor George Gaskell | In this lunchtime series of 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.
Contributor(s): Dr Omar Nashabe | The lecture places the crime - the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri - in its socio-political context, considers the process of the establishment of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in 2007, focuses on the structural properties of the tribunal, and closes by posing the central unanswered questions facing the same.
Contributor(s): Dr Montek Ahluwalia, Mukesh Ambani, Shobhana Bhartia, Professor Lord Desai, Shekhar Gupta, Ed Luce, Lord Patten, Nand Kishore Singh, Professor Lord Stern | Not by Reason Alone, written by Nand Kishore Singh a member of parliament in the Upper House in India is a comment on the past and present politics of change. This insightful analysis of the political economy of reform is coupled with the understanding that we need to be compassionate, passionate, creative, hopeful, and more. This book and discussion will give the audience an unusual window into the Indian political economy.
Contributor(s): Richard Allan, Kasey Chappelle, Alma Whitten, Usama M. Fayyad | Will the market and innovation decide the future of the internet, or will the future be led by law and policy? The Internet is rapidly evolving and has mutated in the space of a decade from a static information source to a dynamic organism. In the future its shape will be dramatically different, as the online space moves even further to the centre of almost every aspect of our lives.
Contributor(s): John Bercow, Tony Travers | John Bercow was elected to the post of speaker in June 2009. It followed the resignation of the previous speaker in the wake of the controversy over MP's expenses. Speaker Bercow will discuss his views on parliamentary reform with Tony Travers. Tony Travers is director of LSE London.
Contributor(s): Professor Michael Cox | In this lunchtime series of 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.
Contributor(s): Professor Mark Mazower | What forces have shaped Europe's place in the world over the past two centuries? And how do the challenges of the two 'post-European' epochs - after 1945 and 1989 - compare? Mark Mazower is Ira D Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University.
Contributor(s): Professor Geoffrey Hodgson, Professor Albert Marcet, Paul Ormerod, Professor John Sutton | The recent global crisis has lead to questions being asked about whether the kind of economics being taught to students in leading economics departments was responsible for the widespread failure to predict the timing and magnitude of the events that unfolded in 2008. Critiques range from an absence of historical context in mainstream teaching of economics to excessive reliance on mathematical models. This panel brings together four leading economists to debate this issue and to discuss what changes in the economics curriculum and the way that it is delivered are desirable.
Contributor(s): Professor Paolo Mancini | Mostly outside Italy, there is a widespread common sense about Berlusconi and his political adventure: he has been able to enter successfully the political arena because of his television empire and because of his unclear links with illegal groups and business. This interpretation is undoubtedly true but it is also a limited one as it is not able to point out all the novelties that Berlusconi may represent. Indeed, the paper argues that the political adventure of the Italian tycoon may be interpreted as a signal of the end of the forms of politics that featured the last two centuries in Europe and that was constructed on the role of the mass parties and their ideological nature. This is not just an Italian phenomenon as many other European leaders underline striking similarities with the Italian Prime Minister. In particular three main features of the new forms of politics that these leaders represent are discussed: 1) commodification of politics; 2) life style politics; 3) televised politics. Examples from other political leaders and theoretical frameworks are provided.
Contributor(s): Professor Amartya Sen | This lecture is in honour of Dr Indraprastha Gordhanbhai (I.G) Patel who was the ninth director of the London School of Economics from 1984 to 1990. Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until recently the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He has served as President of the Econometric Society, the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association and the International Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of OXFAM and is now its Honorary Advisor.
Contributor(s): Dr Simon Glendinning, Dr Edward Skidelsky | This dialogue will examine the resources left to us to find meaning in our modern day lives. Simon Glendinning is a reader in European philosophy at the European Institute, LSE, and director of the Forum for European Philosophy. Edward Skidelsky is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Exeter.
Contributor(s): Misha Glenny, Michael Hartmann | The panel will discuss the impact of legalising and regulating the international trade in illegal drugs. They will look at whether it would curb crime and war financing, and if it would promote development in fragile states. Misha Glenny is a journalist and author of McMafia: seriously organised crime. Michael Hartmann is manager and senior adviser of the Criminal Justice Programme at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Contributor(s): Professor Richard Doner | Can the dynamic, export-oriented economies of Southeast Asia sustain their growth in light of the global economic crisis? Professor Doner will consider the questions economists typically overlook. Richard Doner is professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia
Contributor(s): Sara Parkin | In the absence of an adequate response to unsustainability by political leaders, it is up to the rest of us to lead the way. Sara Parkin is a founder director of Forum for the Future.
Contributor(s): Anders Borg | Faced with a record deficit and an accelerating debt, the UK will have to embark on a process of massive fiscal consolidation in order to bring public finances back to sustainability. How is this best done and what lessons can be learned from the Swedish experience of fiscal consolidation in the 1990s? Anders Borg is Minister for Finance in Sweden and has chaired the ECOFIN Council during the 2009 Swedish EU Presidency. He has previously worked as an advisor on monetary policy issues at the Swedish Central Bank and as chief economist at several Swedish banks.
Contributor(s): Martin Jacques | The years immediately following the end of the Cold War gave rise to the notion that the world was entering yet another American Century. But the next century will be decidedly Chinese and the rest of the world needs to adjust to this fact fast. Martin Jacques is a visiting senior fellow at LSE IDEAS. This event celebrates the publication of his book When China Rules the World: the rise of the middle kingdom and the end of the western world.
Contributor(s): Professor Gilles Kepel | This lecture will look at the complex character of the Muslim population in Europe and explain the many different ways in which they see the world around them. Gilles Kepel is the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at LSE IDEAS.