The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Law, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick heads up…
Flumotion and the Open Video Alliance will be streaming a live event on Thursday, February 25th featuring Lawrence Lessig, the foundational voice of the free culture movement. The 45-minute speech will be delivered live from Harvard Law School via Flumotion’s Streaming Platform, and will explore the relationship between copyright, fair use, politics [...]
≡ Category: History, Politics, Science | ≅ Leave a Comment
You can’t get good democracy without science, and you can’t get good science without democracy. That’s why great political and scientific revolutions have historically gone hand-in-hand. It’s an intriguing argument that Timothy Ferris (UC Berkeley) makes in his new book, The Science of Liberty, and debates in an interview with Michael Krasny, aired last week on [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Law, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
Public confidence in the U.S. House and Senate is at an all-time low, and, after last week’s Supreme Court decision, it’s bound to sink even lower. On January 19th (the day before the decision), Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig returned to Stanford and highlighted the degree to which “institutional corruption” — in the form of [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Politics, Religion, Yale | ≅ 4 Comments
After he left office in 2007, Tony Blair went across the pond and spent time teaching at Yale. Exit Prime Minister Blair. Enter Professor Blair. During the 2008-09 academic year, Blair and Miroslav Volf co-taught “Faith and Globalization,” a course designed to help students understand the two intertwined forces shaping our world. In some ways, religion [...]
≡ Category: Business, Current Affairs, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
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When the global financial system collapsed last year, This American Life and its sister program, Planet Money (iTunes - RSS Feed - Web Site) began doing something that few others could pull off. They took very complex problems and made them understandable, often demystifying difficult concepts in a reliably engaging way. Now, they’re at it [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Philosophy, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
A quick heads up: The BBC is featuring a series of lectures with Michael Sandel (Harvard Professor of Government) that will collectively talk about “the prospects of a new politics of the common good.” Sandel is a very popular professor at Harvard. Some 15,000 students have taken his courses over 30 years. In the first lecture, [...]
≡ Category: History, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ Leave a Comment
Thanks to PBS, you can now download from iTunes a four-hour definitive biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR guided the US through the Great Depression, then World War II, serving as president for an unprecedented four terms. The video podcast run a good four hours, and it’s part of a series called American Experience: The [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 1 Comment
Michael Moore is getting wise to the virtues of free/open culture. Starting September 23, you can download his new film – Slacker Uprising – via the web for free. The unfortunate rub is that this download will only be available to US and Canadian residents, and it will remain free via the web for three [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Politics | ≅ 1 Comment
A rather sad commentary on the integrity, depth and sincerity of the American politics. But, it’s funny and it’s Friday, so here it goes. Take it away John Stewart (and thanks for the tip Larry):
PS Check out this WSJ article, The Biology of Ideology, which suggests that our political choices may be shaped by genetics.
Related [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Politics | ≅ 2 Comments
In response to China’s vigorous crackdown on Tibet (see this photojournalism account), a group of experts were convened to discuss Tibet and its future. The panelists included Robert Thurman (famed Buddhism scholar at Columbia University), John Kenneth Knaus (Harvard University), John Tkacik (Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation), and Amit A. Pandya (Henry L. [...]
≡ Category: History, Politics, Stanford | ≅ 7 Comments
Here’s a new, free course from Stanford University. Taught by James Sheehan, the History of the International System (iTunes) offers a historical view of international politics in the 20th century, exploring how international players have attempted to project their will and protect their interests, all while negotiating fluid and not always manageable external forces. The [...]
≡ Category: Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
His essay appearing in The Village Voice: Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Politics | ≅ 1 Comment
It’s rare that professors find themselves at the center of a political firestorm. But that’s where Samantha Power, Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard, found herself last week when, during an off-the-record conversation with a reporter, she referred to Hillary Clinton as a “monster” and then had to resign as [...]
≡ Category: Politics | ≅ 1 Comment
Liberals outnumber conservatives in the academy. That’s a known fact. What explains this divergence? Some have attributed it to liberals creating a hostile environment for conservatives. But new research calls that view into question and offers an intriguing alternative explanation.
As described in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Matthew Woessner (a conservative academic) and April Kelly-Woessner [...]
≡ Category: Politics, Video - Politics/Society, YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
If you’re a resident of a Super Tuesday state, we hope you can find some time to pull the lever tomorrow. Also, we hope you’ll forgive (at least) one more political post before Super Tuesday. Whatever your political affiliations, the video below is a compelling example of new media at work. According to the New [...]
≡ Category: History, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
Although he hasn’t served in government for more than 30 years, Henry Kissinger still exercises more power internationally than Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton combined. That’s a strong claim, and it comes from Professor Jeremi Suri, who has a new book out on the former Secretary of State. In a wide-ranging and [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Politics, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
The truism goes that laws and sausages are the two things you don’t want to see being made. Nevertheless, if more of us paid attention to what our congressional representatives are really up to (and let them know when they screw up), we’d probably be a little happier with how the system works overall. Two [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Film, Politics | ≅ 1 Comment
The Iowa caucus is finally and mercifully upon us. And right in time, filmmaker Michael Moore has offered an analysis of the Democratic field of candidates. There’s much here that I don’t particularly agree with here, but Moore makes two large claims that strike me as being fundamentally (and regretfully) true:
The “Democratic front-runners are a [...]
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Politics, Video - Politics/Society | ≅ 2 Comments
Again, no commentary needed. Informative in many ways, Bhutto’s talk was taped at the Council on Foreign Relations in August. More info here.
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≡ Category: History, Politics | ≅ Leave a Comment
Robert Dallek’s latest book recounts in plentiful detail (752 pages) the odd working relationship that existed between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger (Nixon’s national security adviser and, later, secretary of state). They were partly allies, in many ways strongly dependent upon one another, particularly when it came to making American foreign policy. But they also [...]
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