On December 8th, six “all-star environmental professors” came together at an event called “Harvard Thinks Green” and presented short, TED-style talks about the environment and strategies for reversing climate change. The event started with James McCarthy (Professor of Biological Oceanography) asking the question (see above), “Is it too late to avoid serious impacts of climate change?” A good question to ask given that 2010 witnessed the biggest annual jump in global carbon emissions—5.9%. This set the stage for Richard Lazarus (Professor of Law) to discuss ways that our political system could become more responsive to the crisis. (Did you know that Barack Obama only mentioned climate change once in public last year? Just once?) And then Rebecca Henderson (Co-Director of the Business and Environment Initiative) tries to make the difficult case that money-making and saving the world can go hand-in-hand — that capitalism can become environmentally sustainable. You can watch the remaining talks online here, or on iTunes here.

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Harvard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Environment Profs is a post from: Open Culture

Last Wednesday, the Occupy movement gained a little more intellectual momentum when eight faculty members from Harvard, Boston College, and N.Y.U. gathered in Cambridge to present a daylong Teach-In. In one talk, Archon Fung (Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy and Citizenship and Co-Director of Transparency Policy Project at Harvard) took a vague thesis of the Occupy movement — “Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit” — and gave it some academic depth in a data-filled talk called “Why Has Inequality Grown in America? And What Should We Do About It?” The other talks are available on YouTube (see links below) or via audio stream:

Heterodox Economics: Alternatives to Mankiw’s Ideology - Stephen Marglin, Walter Barker Professor of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

Wall Streetʼs Role in the European Financial Crisis - Richard Parker, Lecturer in Public Policy and Senior Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The Occupy Movement and Student Debt Refusal - Andrew Ross, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University

Economics for the 99% – Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College

Booms and Busts: The Legal Dynamics of Modern Money - Christine Desan, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Harvard University

Fear and Power - Brad Epps, Professor of Romance Languages & Literatures and Department Chair for Studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

Vigilance, Inquiry, Alienation & Hope at Harvard and in the USA - John Womack, Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

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Why is the U.S. F’ed Up? 8 Lectures from Occupy Harvard Teach-In Provide Answers is a post from: Open Culture

During his days as Harvard’s influential president, Charles W. Eliot made a frequent assertion: If you were to spend just 15 minutes a day reading the right books, a quantity that could fit on a five foot shelf, you could give yourself a proper liberal education. The publisher P. F. Collier and Son loved the idea and asked Eliot to assemble the right collection of works. The result was a 51-volume series published in 1909 called Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf. Later it would simply be called The Harvard Classics.

You can still buy an old set off of eBay for $399. But, just as easily, you can head to the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg, which have centralized links to every text included in The Harvard Classics (Wealth of Nations, Origin of Species, Plutarch’s Lives, the list goes on). Please note that the previous two links won’t give you access to the actual annotated Harvard Classics texts edited by Eliot himself. But if you want just that, you can always click here and get digital scans of the true Harvard Classics. Please note that the first two volumes appear at the bottom of the page. And, in case you want to deepen your liberal education yet further, don’t forget to check out our collection Free Online Courses — 385 in total, all from top universities.

A big h/t to @eugenephoto

The Harvard Classics: A Free, Digital Collection is a post from: Open Culture

10 Harvard professors. 10 fascinating ideas. 10 minutes each. That was the gist of Harvard Thinks Big, a TED-esque event held on February 11th. Now fast forward several weeks, and the talks all appear online for free. Find them on YouTube, iTunes, or Harvard’s dedicated web site.

Of all the 10 talks, we decided to feature one: Daniel Gilbert, a psych professor known for his book Stumbling On Happiness, presents a talk called “It’s the End of the World as We Know it, and I Feel Fine.” (Yes, a nod to R.E.M.) And it tries to make sense of a baffling question. Our planet is on the brink of an ecological catastrophe and we’re calmly sitting here watching videos. Humans have thrived because we take threats seriously. But why not this one?

Other speakers at the event include Steven Pinker, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Wrangham, and Elaine Scarry – some well known Harvard names. One figure not present was Michael Sandel. But here we have his TED Talk from 2010: The Lost Art of Democratic Debate.

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Harvard Thinks Big is a post from: Open Culture

I would go so far as to argue that [TED's] creating a new Harvard — the first new top-prestige education brand in more than 100 years.

Of course TED doesn’t look like a regular Ivy League college. It doesn’t have any buildings; it doesn’t grant degrees. It doesn’t have singing groups or secret societies, and as far as I know it hasn’t inspired any strange drinking games.

Still, if you were starting a top university today, what would it look like? You would start by gathering the very best minds from around the world, from every discipline. Since we’re living in an age of abundant, not scarce, information, you’d curate the lectures carefully, with a focus on the new and original, rather than offer a course on every possible topic. You’d create a sustainable economic model by focusing on technological rather than physical infrastructure, and by getting people of means to pay for a specialized experience. You’d also construct a robust network so people could access resources whenever and from wherever they like, and you’d give them the tools to collaborate beyond the lecture hall. Why not fulfill the university’s millennium-old mission by sharing ideas as freely and as widely as possible?

TED, the new Harvard. The new university. It’s a nice idea … until you think about it for a few moments. Will watching 18 minute lectures – ones that barely scratch the surface of an expert’s knowledge – really teach you much? And when the 18 minutes are over, will the experts stick around and help you become a critical thinker, which is the main undertaking of the modern university after all? (Will they assign the papers where you grapple with the difficult ideas? Will they make sure your arguments are sound? That your writing is lucid? Or will they even expand on their brief lectures and teach you something in-depth?) Nope, you’ll get none of that. The experts will give their 18 minute talks, and then they’re gone. Ultimately, Kamenetz seems to know she’s overreaching. She eventually circles around to say, “Sure, these talks have their limits as an educational medium. An 18-minute presentation, no matter how expert, can’t accommodate anything overly theoretical or technical — the format is more congenial to Freakonomics than economics.” And so the whole initial, catchy premise falls apart. (Maura Johnston rightly makes this point too, among other good ones, in her must-read reaction to the “breathless” Fast Company article.)

I have no beef with TED. Quite the contrary, I’m a big fan of their open lectures. (Get the full list here.) And you can’t blame TED when others read too much into what they do. But, echoing points made last week, I do have an issue with commentators reducing education to watching TV. So a quick request to the “edupunks” and “edupreneurs” out there. As you’re democratizing education and lowering tuition through technology, could you make sure that whatever you’re finally offering is an education in more than mere name? You feel me?

NOTE: Anya Kamenetz, the author of the Fast Company article, offers a response in the comments below. In fairness to her, please give them a read. We also have a little follow up.

Is TED the New Harvard? is a post from: Open Culture

• China: Traditions and Transformations (Peter K. Bol, PhD, Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and William C. Kirby, PhD, T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies)
• Shakespeare After All: The Later Plays (Marjorie Garber, PhD, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English)
• The Heroic and the Anti-Heroic in Classical Greek Civilization (Gregory Nagy, PhD, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature)
• World War and Society in the 20th Century: World War II (Charles S. Maier, PhD, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History)
• Bits (Harry R. Lewis, PhD, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science)
• Intensive Introduction to Computer Science Using C, PHP, and JavaScript (David J. Malan, PhD, Lecturer on Computer Science)
• Abstract Algebra (Benedict Gross, PhD, George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics)
• Sets, Counting, and Probability (Paul G. Bamberg, DPhil, Senior Lecturer on Mathematics)

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Harvard Presents Free Courses with the Open Learning Initiative is a post from: Open Culture

• Brief (one to two-minute) high-definition video tours of hard-to-see astronomical objects observed by the Chandra X-ray Observatory — we’re talking exploded stars and black holes. Highlights include: Galactic Center in 60 Seconds (there’s a black hole at the center of the Milky Way), Chandra’s Extraordinary Universe (an overview of the Chandra project), and Best of the Beautiful Universe (the pictures of galaxy clusters are stunning).
• A Harvard University Press podcast featuring 10-20 minute long interviews with authors of such titles as: Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity; Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness; and The Annotated Wind in the Willows.
• Videos of John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum speeches and panel discussions featuring prominent leaders, academics, and artists. As a follow-up to Michael Sandel’s Justice course linked to above, there’s a panel discussion with him and Niall Ferguson, Lani Guinier, and Peggy Noonan: JUSTICE: What’s the Right Thing to Do? There’s also a conversation with Dustin Lance Black, screenwriter of the movie MILK.

For free courses from Harvard and other fine institutions, visit our collection of Free Online Courses.

via MacWorld

Wes Alwan lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he works as a writer and researcher and attends the Institute for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture. He also participates in The Partially Examined Life, a podcast consisting of informal discussions about philosophical texts by three philosophy graduate school dropouts.

Harvard Comes to iTunes U is a post from: Open Culture

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw4l1w0rkjs

Lecture 3 of Michael Sandel’s ever popular course on Justice is now online. Here’s the summary of material covered by the newly added lecture. It’s provided by Harvard’s course web site:

Part 1 -- FREE TO CHOOSE: With humorous references to Bill Gates and Michael Jordan, Sandel introduces the libertarian notion that redistributive taxation—taxing the rich to give to the poor—is akin to forced labor.

PART 2 -- WHO OWNS ME?: Students first discuss the arguments behind redistributive taxation. If you live in a society that has a system of progressive taxation, aren’t you obligated to pay your taxes? Don’t many rich people often acquire their wealth through sheer luck or family fortune? A group of students dubbed “Team Libertarian” volunteers to defend the libertarian philosophy against these objections.

Michael Sandel on Justice: Lecture III is a post from: Open Culture

The Issue

The fiscal year for major university endowments ended June 30, and schools have been reporting their results: not good. In the Harvard-Yale portfolio game, the latter was down 24.6 percent, while its rival lost even more, 27.3 percent. If you are an Ivy alum, this might seem a good moment to donate to your alma mater, to help rebuild its battered portfolio. But should you, given the power of education to improve people’s lives?

The Argument

Do not donate to Harvard. To do so is to offer more pie to a portly fellow while the gaunt and hungry press their faces to the window (at some sort of metaphoric college cafeteria, anyway). Even after last year’s losses, Harvard’s endowment exceeds $26 billion, the largest of any American university, greater than the G.D.P. of Estonia. By contrast, among historically black colleges and universities, Howard has the largest endowment, about $420 million, a mere 1.6 percent the size of Harvard’s. (Donors gave Harvard more than $600 million just this fiscal year.) The best-endowed community college,Valencia, in Orlando, Fla., has around $67 million, or 0.26 percent of Harvard’s wealth. This is not to deny that Harvard does fine work or could find ways to spend the money but to assert that other schools have a greater need and a greater moral claim to your benevolence…  More here.

Should You Give to Harvard? is a post from: Open Culture

• “Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women.” 
• “An average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly, an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman. Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman.”
• “Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.”
• And finally, “the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets.”

The numbers suggest that Twitter is not sticking that well. People sign up and then most leave. That’s too bad. But it doesn’t negate the fact that Twitter has been a very useful tool for Open Culture. As we’ve written here before, Twitter has put a human face on our audience and allowed us to get to know you much better. Meanwhile, we can’t say the same about Facebook (although we’re not knocking it.) What’s your experience with Twitter?  (PS You can find us on Twitter @openculture).

Harvard Studies Twitter is a post from: Open Culture