Sunday, January 21, 2018

Energy (and Other) Events - January 21, 2018

Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater
Boston area that catch the editor's eye.

Hubevents  http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.

If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke@world.std.com
What I Do and Why I Do It:  The Story of Energy (and Other) EventsGeo

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Details of these events are available when you scroll past the index

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Index
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Monday, January 22 & Tuesday, January 23
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NorthEast Water Innovation Network & NEWEA Innovation Pavillion

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Monday, January 22
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10:30am  The Impact of Media Censorship: Evidence from a Field Experiment in China 
12:10pm  High-Resolution Remote Sensing and Population Dynamics in a Low-Density Tree Population
2pm  Additive manufacturing, fusion technology, wolves and places I like to hike
3pm  Awareness and Action: Conversations with Joi Ito and Tenzin Priyadarshi
4pm  An Integrative Approach To Predicting Plant-Insect Interactions Under Future Climates
4pm  Mellon Seminar- Digitizing Human Rights, Archiving Activism
6pm  Uniting for Refugees: Marking One Year Since President Trump's Travel Ban
7pm  How Democracies Die
7pm  Screening documentary Before the flood

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Tuesday, January 23 through January 25
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IAP Class Waste management 101: Where Does Our Trash Go?

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Tuesday, January 23
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12pm  The dark side of the networked public sphere: How the right-wing is (ab)using the internet's affordances
12:30pm  The Impact of Disruptive Technologies on Employment: Implications for an Aging Japan
12:30pm  SolSmart Resources Brown Bag
2pm  Starr Forum: The Uncondemned
4pm  Animals in the Picture: Faunal Impacts on Ecosystem Processes Across Changing Landscapes
4:30pm  Rituals of Resilience
5:30pm  The "Woman Inventor" as a Political Tool of Female Suffragists:  Patents, Invention, and Civil Rights in 19th-Century United States
6pm  Special Screening of "Ocean Frontiers III - Leaders in Ocean Stewardship & the New Blue Economy”
6:30pm  Cities of the Future (Brought to you by Alley powered by Verizon)
7pm  Libertarians on the Prairie

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Wednesday, January 24
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10am  You've Invented Something Cool! Now What?
11am  Gonson Daytime Lecture Series: Winter 2018:  PRACTICAL ECOLOGICAL ETHICS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
12pm  A Conversation on the Opioid Epidemic with Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams
12pm  [A] tone of voice peculiar to New-England”: Fugitive Slave Advertisements and the Heterogeneity of Enslaved Blacks in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Quebec
12:50pm  The State of the Union: Social Policy, Financial Regulation, and Populism in the Trump Era
1pm  From Living Cells to Artificial Cells and Back Again
1:30pm  Reading and Writing DNA, organs and ecosystems
2pm  Commercializing Research, Creating Change: MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation
4pm  Creating the Next Wave of Precision Biotherapeutics
4:15pm  Pass-Through of Input Cost Shocks Under Imperfect Competition: Evidence from the US Fracking Boom
6pm  Unleashing Alternative Futures: Constructing New Worlds through Imagination, Narrative, and Radical Hope
7pm  "You Can't Fire the Bad Ones!":  And 18 Other Myths about Teachers, Teachers' Unions, and Public Education

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Thursday, January 25
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11:45am  The Need to Rethink the Corporate Approach to Public Policy in an Age of Upheaval
12pm  From Spider Webs to Food Webs: How Species Interactions Shape the Causes and Consequences of Plant Invasions
12pm  Adapting to Climate Change in the Gulf of Maine
12:15pm  Conceptions of International Order during the Cold War: Russia, China, and the United States
1pm  Follow-Up Discussion: Using Federal Low-Income Energy Assistance Programs for Solar
4pm  Species Divergence Shaped by the Intersects of Ecology and Climate Change
4pm  US Foreign Policy from the Inside Out: A Lecture with Samantha Power
4pm  Iran in 2018: Between Regional Hegemony and Domestic Unrest
4pm  The Future of Climate Policy: Experts Discuss Carbon Pricing
4:30pm  Our Current State of Anxiety
5:30pm  Boston Batteries & Brews #3
6pm  Massachusetts State of Solar
6pm  RPP Colloquium with Canon Sarah Snyder: The Church as a Reconciling Presence in a World of Conflict: The Role of Religion in International Conflict Transformation
6pm  Advancing Cannabis Research in Massachusetts: First of Six Cannabis Science, Education, and Networking Events
6:30pm  Learn about and support the Bears Ears National Monument
6:30pm  Lecture with Rosa Sheng: “Why Equity Matters for Everyone: A new value proposition for Design”
7pm  Republican Like Me:  How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right
7pm  Uneasy Peace:  The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence
7pm  Film: Chasing Coral
7pm  Backpacks Full of Cash:  Free Screening & Discussion

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Friday, January 25, 8PM - Sunday, January 28, 2PM
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She Hacks: #MAKING THE NEW NORMAL

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Friday, January 26
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8am  ILAR/Harvard Animal Law Meeting:  Future Directions for Laboratory Animal Law in the United States
9am  EARTH HACK 2018: Save Spaceship Earth
11am  The cosmic origin of the chemical elements
12pm  Ken Yeang, “Ecoarchitecture and Ecomasterplanning: The Work of Ken Yeang”
3pm  True Enough
7pm  Real American:  A Memoir

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Saturday, January 27
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8:45am  Mothers Out Front Massachusetts Assembly 2018:  Celebrating Connection
9am  Human Rights: Adapting to the Challenges of Our Times
10am  Creativity + 7 Intelligences = Your Superpower
12pm  Public Interested Conference
12:30pm  A New Vision for Carl Barron Plaza
1pm  CivilServant Community Research Summit

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Sunday, January 28
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12pm  Cambridge Solar Access: A Celebration of Light
3pm  Be the Change: Daring Democracy

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Monday, January 29
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9:30am  Arts and Culture Discussion Series #2: Art and Green Infrastructure
9:30am  FESTIVAL OF LEARNING
9:30am  Operations Research for Social Good
10:30am  Innovation Day 2018: Megatrends & the Future of #TechinMA
12pm  Leadership – Lessons academics could learn from business schools
12:10pm  Sibling cooperation and interparental conflict in a seed: how plant mothers, fathers, and siblings
12:30pm  Who Pays to Save the Planet? A Sectoral Political Economy of Climate Change Mitigation
1pm  Passive House Affordable Housing Forum
4pm  Conserving Ecosystems and Their Services in a Changing and Uncertain World
4pm  EAPS IAP 2018: Origin of Life Seminar Series:  "What is “I”: The Role of Compartmentalisation in the Origins of Life”
4pm  Norton Lecture I, 'The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part I' by Frederick Wiseman
6:30pm  Diversity and Doctors: The science of inclusive healthcare
7pm  Other Minds:  The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness

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Tuesday, January 30
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10am  Natural Gas Infrastructure and Public Health: From Local to Global
12pm  MIT Green Labs Info Session
12pm  Turkey and the Syrian Refugee Crisis: Responses and Perspectives
12pm  Threatening Whiteness: Islam’s Challenge to American White Supremacy
12pm  Legal Considerations for Blockchain Innovations and ICOs
1pm  RNA as medicine
3pm  Special Harvard Climate Seminar: Raymond Pierrehumbert
4pm  Multi-Host Fungal Pathogens: Challenges and Opportunities in Conserving Global Amphibian Diversity
5:30pm  Askwith Debates – Beyond “Free College”: Improving Opportunity and Success at Community Colleges
6pm  The Revolution in American Trade Policy
6pm  Building Climate Resilient Communities
6pm  Boston Green Drinks - JANUARY 2018 Happy Hour
6pm  The MIT Forum: Andre Borschberg SM ‘83
7pm  To Fight Against This Age:  On Fascism and Humanism
7pm  The Wizard and the Prophet
7pm  “What Should We Talk About When We Talk About Health?”

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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:

Zero Net Energy - January 19, 2018

The Iron Heel

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Monday, January 22 & Tuesday, January 23
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NorthEast Water Innovation Network & NEWEA Innovation Pavillion
Monday, January 22 & Tuesday, January 23 – 8:00AM – 4:00PM
NEWEA Annual Conference - Boston

The Water Innovation Pavilion highlights a selection of the most promising technology businesses in the industry while championing an important dialogue about innovation. NEWEA & NEWIN and its Innovation Partners, create a unique program for entrepreneurs, investors, customers, and regulators.
The Pavilion features a selection of early and growth stage companies. Some of these companies are investor-backed and working with high profile customers in the industrial and municipal markets. We will also highlight new technologies from our more established companies.

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Monday, January 22
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The Impact of Media Censorship: Evidence from a Field Experiment in China 
Monday, January 22
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
MIT, Building E51-149, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge

David Yang (Stanford University)

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High-Resolution Remote Sensing and Population Dynamics in a Low-Density Tree Population
Monday, January 22
12:10 pm
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain

 Jim Kellner, Assistant Professor, Brown University

Arnold Arboretum Research Talk


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Additive manufacturing, fusion technology, wolves and places I like to hike
Monday, January 22
2:00pm to 3:00pm
MIT, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, NW17-218, 175 Albany Street, Cambridge

A talk by Richard Nygren, Sandia National Laboratory
Richard Nygren has spent four decades developing advanced materials and components for fusion in R&D at four national labs, the Dept. of Energy and UCLA. Currently at Sandia’s Advanced Materials Laboratory on the University of New Mexico’s south campus, he is exploring the use of Advanced Manufacturing (AM+) processes as a transformative technology for manufacturing robust plasma facing components (PFCs) for future fusion reactors.  The PFCs must survive in a fierce environment that includes very high heat loads, bombardment with energetic ions and damage from fusion neutrons. Additive Manufacturing, already widely used, is transforming the world’s products and introducing new materials, such as rigid lightweight parts for aerospace, bio-active interfaces for applications in medicine, and novel complex multi-material structures. The transformative capability of AM+ seems like the best approach to make some novel materials architectures for the high performance heat sinks in fusion systems.   In this seminar, Richard offers ideas about future fusion reactors, explains the various technologies needed, and the potential for AM+ to enable innovations.*

In this talk, Richard mixes his own humor and slides of his treks in the wilderness.  Students and faculty who visit the institutions where he has worked may appreciate his recommendations for side trips.  As an avid outdoor adventurer, he sought wilderness accessible from his work sites and travels. He has hiked in the Sierra, Cascades, southwest canyons and once took a month-long solo arctic journey 400 miles down the Noatak River. 

RE Nygren et al. 2016, A new vision of plasma facing components, Fus. Eng. & Des. 109–111 A 1, 192-202, invited oral presentation, Int. Symp, Fusion Nuclear Tech., Korea, October 2015
RE Nygren et al, 2017, Advanced Manufacturing – A Transformative Enabling Capability for Fusion, invited oral presentation,  Int. Symp, Fusion Nuclear Tech., Kyoto Sept 2017 (in review)
RE Nygren et al. 2017, Development of Fusion Sub-components with Additive Manufacturing,  https://www.burningplasma.org/activities/?article=FESAC TEC White Papers

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Awareness and Action: Conversations with Joi Ito and Tenzin Priyadarshi
Monday, January 22
3:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT, E14 6th Floor Lecture Hall, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge

What is awareness? Is self-awareness a “default” state or is it cultivated? Can it improve performance and wellbeing? What role does technology play in promoting or hindering awareness? Is there an ethical framework for our capacity to be aware? Can self-awareness be linked to happiness?

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An Integrative Approach To Predicting Plant-Insect Interactions Under Future Climates
Monday, January 22
4:00pm
Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue

Nathan Lemoine, Colorado State University
Abstract:  Rapid climate warming will induce numerous changes in community structure and ecosystem function. Most, if not all, of these changes emerge from temperature-driven changes in individual physiology and demographics. Therefore, quantitatively integrating physiological, population, and community ecology provides an excellent framework for predicting how climate change will impact species interactions, biodiversity, and ecosystem function. In this talk, I apply this approach to predicting plant-insect interactions under rapid climate warming. Rising temperatures stimulate insect metabolic demands and reduce insect nitrogen assimilation efficiencies, leading to temperature-induced nitrogen limitation of insect herbivores. This pattern is robust across multiple taxonomic groups, and causes host plant-dependent impacts of climate change on insect performance. Incorporating such temperature-by-nutrient interactions into population models significantly alters our expectations of population stability and species coexistence under increased temperatures. Finally, I demonstrate how warming alters the role of predators in a community and stress the importance of integrating behavioral ecology into predictions of species interactions. This integrative framework provides a strong baseline from which to assess the impacts of other aspects of climate change, e.g. drought, on evolution, species interactions, population dynamics, and terrestrial ecosystem function.

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Mellon Seminar- Digitizing Human Rights, Archiving Activism
Monday, January 22
4:00 pm to 6:30 pm
BU, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

A discussion of several projects promoting ethics and activism with technology. Speakers include Alexa Koenig (UC Berkeley Human Rights Center), Anat Biletzki (B’Tselem), Peter Manning (Northeastern) and members of the Charlie Hebdo Archives at Harvard University.

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Uniting for Refugees: Marking One Year Since President Trump's Travel Ban
Monday, January 22
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston

Boston groups unite for conversation and solidarity
Join Oxfam, Amnesty International, International Institute of New England, for an exhibit, panel discussion, and light reception
Featuring an acoustic performance by local musician Chadwick Stokes, of Dispatch and State Radio.
President Trump signed his first executive order travel ban in January 2017, slamming the door on refugees and triggering an outcry in support of refugees that continues today. Join Oxfam and fellow organizations for a panel discussion on the current state of the global refugee crisis and the US refugee resettlement program. You'll also learn how you can continue to stand up for refugees.

The panel will be followed by a light reception, featuring an acoustic performance by local musician Chadwick Stokes, of Dispatch and State Radio. 
Guests are also encouraged to explore Oxfam and Amnesty International's "Museum Without a Home" exhibition–on display in the District Hall lounge from Monday, 1/22 through Friday, 1/26. Museum Without a Home highlights real items given to refugees by the communities that welcomed them. This free exhibit celebrates the solidarity communities around the world have shown towards people forced to flee their homes.
Program Includes:
Isra Chaker, Oxfam America
Jeff Thielman, International Institute of New England
Susan Finegan, Mintz Levin
Chadwick Stokes, musician (Dispatch, State Radio)

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How Democracies Die
Monday, January 22
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline 

Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt 
A bracing, revelatory look at the demise of liberal democracies around the world–and a road map for rescuing our own. Harvard professors Levitsky and Ziblatt draw on decades of historical and global research to show how democracies perish and how ours can be saved.

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Screening documentary Before the flood
Monday, January 22
7:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Sid-Pac Seminar Room NW86, 70 Pacific Street, Cambridge

Features Leonardo DiCaprio traveling to five continents and the Arctic to witness climate change
Directed by Fisher Stevens and produced by Leonardo di Caprio
Dinner will be served, bring your plate and utensils
Event limited to 30 attendees

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Tuesday, January 23 through January 25
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IAP Class Waste management 101: Where Does Our Trash Go?
Tuesday, January 23 through January 25
1:00pm to 4:00pm 
MIT, Building 4-265, 77 Massachusetts Avenuw, Cambridge

This 3-day session will run through the end-of-life treatment of all types of waste--trash, recycling, and compost--following their path from the trash receptacle to their ultimate end. By the end, you will walk away with a greater awareness and understanding of materials as they run through the disposal and recycling parts of their lifecycle.

Day 1 & 2 will focus on the ins and outs of waste streams in our MIT community and beyond. Speakers will address the situation regarding MIT waste, household waste and current waste research. Day 3 of this course will be an interactive brainstorming session on what it takes to bring innovative ideas to fruition in the waste space.

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Tuesday, January 23
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The dark side of the networked public sphere: How the right-wing is (ab)using the internet's affordances
Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Harvard, Pound Hall, Room 101, Ballantine Classroom
Event will be live webcast at 12:00 pm at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/luncheon/01/Kaiser

featuring Jonas Kaiser, Berkman Klein Affiliate 
The right-wing is rising. Not only in the United States but also in Germany and other European countries. And the internet helped. Right-wing actors are active all over the internet, adapt to platforms, game the system, blur the lines between off- and online, and create their own virtual spaces. In addition, social media platforms like YouTube contribute involuntarily to the right-wing's reach and, perhaps, influence with their algorithms. But how bad is it? How should we deal with right-wing actors? And what would be a way forward?

About Jonas
Jonas Kaiser is a DFG postdoctoral fellow and affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and Associate Researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin. His research interest are the transformation of the networked public sphere, digital methods, and political communication. At the Berkman Klein Center he is working on his research project on the "right-wing web," in which he aims to understand how and where right-wing actors make use of the internet to connect online and form international networks. He wrote his doctoral thesis at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen about online climate change scepticism in Germany. His academic writing has been published in journals like International Journal of Communication, Communication and the Public, Media and Communication, or Environmental Communication as well as handbooks and edited volumes.

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The Impact of Disruptive Technologies on Employment: Implications for an Aging Japan
WHEN  Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
SPEAKER(S) Atsushi Seike, Edwin O. Reischauer Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies, Harvard University; Executive Advisor for Academic Affairs and Professor of Labor Economics, Keio University
Discussant: Mary Brinton, Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
Moderator: Mark Ramseyer, Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies, Harvard Law School
COST  Free and open to the public

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SolSmart Resources Brown Bag
Tuesday, January 23
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM EST
Metropolitan Area Planning Council, 60 Temple Place, Boston

This brown bag is an opportunity for municipalities to learn about resources available through the national SolSmart program. Seven MAPC communities recently recieved technical assistance from a SolSmart advisor to help them streamline their solar permitting and zoning and to reduce solar soft costs in their communities.
This event will be hosted at MAPC. Please note that in case of a snow cancellation, we will host the brown bag on Thursday, January 25th instead.
You can find out more about SolSmart by visiting: https://www.solsmart.org/

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Starr Forum: The Uncondemned
Tuesday, January 23
2:00pm to 3:30pm
MIT, Building 6-120, 182 Memorial Drive (REAR), Cambridge

About the film: "The Uncondemned" tells the gripping and world-changing story of a group of young international lawyers and activists who fought to make rape a crime of war, and the Rwandan women who came forward to testify and win justice where there had been none. Up until this point, rape had not been prosecuted as a war crime and was committed with impunity. A courtroom thriller and personal human drama, "The Uncondemned" beautifully interweaves the stories of the characters in this odyssey, leading to the trial at an international criminal court--and the results that changed the world of criminal justice forever.

Free & open to the public | Refreshments served
For more information or accessibility accommodations please contact starrforum@mit.edu

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Animals in the Picture: Faunal Impacts on Ecosystem Processes Across Changing Landscapes
Tuesday, January 23
4:00PM TO 5:00PM
Harvard, BioLabs Lecture Hall 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
OEB Special Seminar 

with Andrew Davies, Carnegie Institution for Science. Reception to follow.
Abstract: Animals affect ecosystems in complex and profound ways, but understanding how observed effects scale up to influence ecosystem processes across landscapes has been historically limited and challenging to achieve. The advent and recent advances of remote sensing techniques, such as Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and hyperspectral imagery, have enabled accurate measurement of multiple ecosystem attributes at high resolution, and, when coupled with geospatial data on environmental features and/or animal distributions, can enable new insights into animal-landscape interactions. Drawing on examples from animal groups ranging from termites to elephants, I will demonstrate the utility of these remote sensing tools to animal ecology, and highlight new insights into how animals influence ecosystem processes across changing landscapes that would have been difficult or impossible to extract from field-based studies alone. I will conclude with discussion of how such advances benefit ecosystem management and conservation planning.

Contact Name:  Wendy Heywood 

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Rituals of Resilience
Tuesday, January 23
4:30pm to 6:00pm
Northeastern, Renaissance Park 909, 1135 Tremont Street, Boston

Please join us for a presentation by Carie Hersh, Assistant Teaching Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Northeastern University, for the first Spring semester event in the Contemporary Issues in Security and Resilience Studies speaker series

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The "Woman Inventor" as a Political Tool of Female Suffragists:  Patents, Invention, and Civil Rights in 19th-Century United States
Tuesday, January 23
5:30 pm
Massachusetts Historical Society, Seminar Room, 1154 Boylston Street,Boston

Kara W. Swanson, Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law
After the Patent Act of 1790, patents played an important social and political role in the formation of American nationhood and citizenship. Part of a larger book project, this paper demonstrates how 19th-century American women mobilized patents granted to women as justification for civil rights claims. It identifies the creation of the “woman inventor” as a cultural trope and political weapon of resistance.

The Boston Seminar Series on the History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality—cosponsored by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—offers scholars and students an opportunity to discuss new research on any aspect of the history of women and gender in the United States, without chronological limitation.

Boston Seminar on the History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

The seminar series includes four meetings that will take place during the 2016–2017 academic year, each revolving around the discussion of a precirculated paper. 
Registration for the series is required.
Registered participants may access the papers online at the Massachusetts Historical Society website.
For more information, please call 617-495-8647 or e-mail seminars@masshist.org

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Special Screening of "Ocean Frontiers III - Leaders in Ocean Stewardship & the New Blue Economy"
Tuesday, January 23
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
New England Aquarium, IMAX Theatre, 1 Central Wharf, Boston

Our ocean use is growing rapidly, with massive new ships, soaring demand for offshore sand mining, and proposed wind energy development offshore. Our busy waters are also home to endangered whales and sea turtles, and support thriving fishing and recreation industries. It’s more important than ever that we plan ahead for responsible ocean growth.

Join us for a special screening of Ocean Frontiers III. This hopeful film explores the challenges at the heart of ocean conservation and development, presenting solutions from a range of people who are leading the way to a healthy and sustainable ocean future. Participate in the post-film conversation and learn how you can get involved.
FREE and open to the public!

This special film screening is in partnership with Boston Harbor Now, Green Fire Productions and the New England Aquarium and is part of Boston Harbor Now's "Working Port": A 21st-century Harbor: A two-day idea exchange on Boston’s working port.

TIMELINE
6:00pm – Light reception
6:30pm – Introduction & Ocean Frontiers III film
7:30pm – Panel discussion and audience Q&A on the new Northeast Ocean Plan

PANELISTS
The interactive panel discussion with regional experts includes:
Mark Cutter – Asst. Branch Chief, Waterways Management, U.S. Coast Guard Sector Boston
Bruce Carlisle – Director, Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management
Emily Shumchenia, PhD – Marine Scientist, Northeast Ocean Data Portal Working Group
Randall Lyons, CMM – Executive Director, Massachusetts Marine Trades Association
Moderated by:
Bud Ris - Senior Advisor, Green Ribbon Commission, former CEO New England Aquarium 

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Cities of the Future (Brought to you by Alley powered by Verizon)
Tuesday, January 23
6:30 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Alley Cambridge, 10 Ware Street, Cambridge

We’re excited to announce that we are hosting an exclusive event in our Cambridge location, powered by Verizon. This is a special opportunity to hear from both top industry leaders and prominent Verizon directors on how they're building the smart cities and smart vehicles of tomorrow. 

Meet The Speakers:
Ian Goh, Strategy and Operations Manager at nuTonomy
About nuTonomy: Our mission is to radically improve the safety, efficiency, and accessibility of transportation in cities worldwide. To fulfill this mission we’ve assembled a team of engineers and scientists who are committed to developing the world’s premier driverless vehicle technology. We envision a future where fleets of nuTonomy-powered driverless vehicles are available where you need them, when you need them, in cities from Singapore to San Francisco.
Sid Misra, CEO of Perceptive Automotive
About Perceptive Automata: Perceptive Automata is a fast-growing machine learning and computer vision company started by Harvard and MIT scientists. They are developing critical technology for the safe large-scale rollout of highly automated and autonomous vehicles into densely populated cities.
Nancy Li, Product Manager of Traffic Safety at Verizon
About Verizon's Traffic Safety Department: We help keep customers connected across America with the largest and most reliable 4G LTE network. We help cities, communities, businesses and other organizations get smart with intelligent traffic systems that promote safe, easy access to communities and enterprises where people live, work, learn and play.
George Clernon, Director of Product Management at CIMCON Lighting
About CIMCON Lighting: CIMCON Lighting is the leading provider of intelligent and fault-tolerant wireless outdoor lighting controllers for traditional, LED and solar-based street lights.

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Libertarians on the Prairie
Tuesday, January 23
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge

Christine Woodside,
Generations of children have fallen in love with the pioneer saga of the Ingalls family, of Pa and Ma, Laura and her sisters, and their loyal dog, Jack. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books have taught millions of Americans about frontier life, giving inspiration to many and in the process becoming icons of our national identity. Yet few realize that this cherished bestselling series wandered far from the actual history of the Ingalls family and from what Laura herself understood to be central truths about pioneer life.

In this groundbreaking narrative of literary detection, Christine Woodside reveals the full extent of the collaboration between Laura and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, who shared the political values of Ayn Rand and became a mentor to Roger Lea MacBride, the second Libertarian presidential candidate. Drawing on original manuscripts and letters, Woodside shows how Rose reshaped her mother's story into a series of heroic tales that rebutted the policies of the New Deal. Their secret collaboration would lead in time to their estrangement. A fascinating look at the relationship between two strong-willed, trail-blazing women, Libertarians on the Prairie is also the deconstruction of an American myth.

Christine Woodside is a writer and the editor of the journal Appalachia. She writes about the history of ordinary Americans and their clashes with nature. She has nourished a fascination with the Little House books since she was a girl. As a teenager, she applied for a summer job at the Laura Ingalls Wilder farmhouse in Mansfield, Missouri--but, residing in New Jersey, failed to impress the curator. She now lives in Deep River, Connecticut, with her husband.

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Wednesday, January 24
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You've Invented Something Cool! Now What?
Wednesday, January 24
10:00am to 11:30am
MIT, Building 3-370, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Chris Noble (MIT ESI Director of Corporate Engagement) and Tod Woolf (MIT Technology Licensing Officer) will give you the inside scoop on getting a patent (and if you need to) and how to negotiate with the TLO and with your investors to spin out your startup. 

This session is part of the Intellectual Property Lunch and Learn Series co-sponsored by the MIT Libraries and the Technology Licensing Office. 

To register for this event please contact Katrina Khalil via email: kmkhalil@mit.edu

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Gonson Daytime Lecture Series: Winter 2018:  PRACTICAL ECOLOGICAL ETHICS IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
Wednesday, January 24
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EST
Cambridge Center for Adult Education, 56 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost:  $5

Enliven your Wednesday mornings with stimulating presentations at the Cambridge Center in Harvard Square! Presenters will focus on a wide range of topics, from the environment, to personal finance, to wellness.

Claire O’Neill | President, Earthwise Aware
We have an ecological impact on the environment. In the case of our species, the sheer number of us and how we relate to our environment –our worldviews – define that impact. Come explore with us main environmental worldviews and ethics. And help develop a human ecological narrative that is aware and inclusive so that we become better and thriving actors of changes.

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A Conversation on the Opioid Epidemic with Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams
WHEN  Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard School of Public Health, Leadership Studio - 10th Floor, Kresge Building, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston , or online at http://hsph.me/Adams
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Voices in Leadership webcast program, HSPH
SPEAKER(S)  Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams, Surgeon General for the United States
COST  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Alison Barron - abarron@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS  Join us for the first “Voices in Leadership” event of the Spring semester, featuring Jerome Adams, 20th Surgeon General for the United States. Dr. Adams’ motto as Surgeon General is “better health through better partnerships.” As Surgeon General, Dr. Adams is committed to maintaining strong relationships with the public health community and forging new partnerships with non-traditional partners, including business and law enforcement.
He will be interviewed by HSPH Senior Associate Dean, Dr. Robert Blendon. Please join us online or in-person for this dynamic event! For lottery and live webcast details, please visit www.hsph.me/Adams.

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[A] tone of voice peculiar to New-England”: Fugitive Slave Advertisements and the Heterogeneity of Enslaved Blacks in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Quebec
WHEN  Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research
SPEAKER(S)  Charmaine Nelson, Professor of Art History, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University; William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies, Harvard University
COST  Free & open to the public
DETAILS  A Q+A session will follow the talk.

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The State of the Union: Social Policy, Financial Regulation, and Populism in the Trump Era 
Wednesday, January 24
12:50 pm - 6:30 pm
MIT, Building 26-100, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge

A Symposium Presented by the MIT Department of Economics

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From Living Cells to Artificial Cells and Back Again
Wednesday, January 24
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Wyss Institute, 3 Blackfan Circle, CLS 5th Floor, Room 52, Boston, MA 

Speaker:  Cheemeng Tan, Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Davis 
The advent of synthetic biology has led to elegantly designed cells that perform logical calculation, pattern formation, oscillations, and bistable decision making. Please join Dr. Cheemeng Tan as he discusses the process of leveraging the foundational technology in synthetic biology, to engineer artificial cells from the bottom-up to mimic key features of living cells, including membranes, molecular transport, gene expression, and cell-cell communication. These artificial cells are dynamic, bio-mimetic materials that operate autonomously by sensing and adapting to their surrounding environment. Due to the minimality of the artificial cells, they behave more predictably in varying environmental conditions and have less risk for biocontamination in the biosphere than engineered living cells.

Dr. Tan will discuss his team’s efforts to understand, create, and assemble parts that compose the artificial cells. In addition, he will illustrate recent applications of artificial cells as biosensors and therapeutic devices. Dr. Tan’s work establishes the foundation towards broad applications of artificial cells in molecular engineering and therapeutic treatment, and expands the capacity of artificial systems to mimic living ones in basic biological studies.

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Reading and Writing DNA, organs and ecosystems
MIT, Building 32-123, Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Wednesday, January 24
1:30pm - 2:30pm

George M. Church, Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School

Biology at Transformative Frontiers

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Commercializing Research, Creating Change: MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation
Wednesday, January 24
2:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT, Building 3-370, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Since 2002, the Deshpande Center has helped spur the creation of 32 spinout companies. These firms, which have raised over $600 million in capital, are developing and delivering ground-breaking products and services that not only change people’s lives today but have the long-term potential to transform key markets including energy and lighting, health care, medical research, and information technology.

Karen Golmer (Innovator in Residence) will be here to tell you what the Deshpande Center can offer you, and to help you learn more about other resources that exist on the MIT campus. Karen will also tell us how one goes about commercializing university research. 

If you're an MIT researcher, you need to be here to know what options are available to you.   

This session is part of the Intellectual Property Lunch and Learn series co-sponsored by the MIT Libraries and the Technology Licensing Office.

To register for this event please contact Katrina Khalil via email: kmkhalil@mit.edu

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Creating the Next Wave of Precision Biotherapeutics
WHEN  Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE  Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Lecture, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S)  Nicola L. B. Pohl, 2017-2018 Edward, Frances, and Shirley B. Daniels Fellow, Radcliffe Institute; Joan and Marvin Carmack Chair, Bioorganic Chemistry, Indiana University
COST  Free
DETAILS  In this lecture, Pohl will talk about her current project of designing methods to integrate her chemistry for automated sugar synthesis into state-of-the-art methods for automated peptide synthesis to facilitate the study of relevant glycoproteins and glycosylated peptides. Her work includes collaborators from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s department of chemistry.

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Pass-Through of Input Cost Shocks Under Imperfect Competition: Evidence from the US Fracking Boom
Wednesday, January 24
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy

Erich Muehlegger, University of California, Davis, and Richard Sweeney, Boston College

Support from Enel Endowment for Environmental Economics and the Department of Economics is gratefully acknowledged.

Contact Name:  Casey Billings

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Unleashing Alternative Futures: Constructing New Worlds through Imagination, Narrative, and Radical Hope
Wednesday, January 24
6:00pm to 9:00pm
More dates through January 31, 2018
MIT, Building 9-217, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Lawrence Barriner II, Program Director, Community Media, Grant Tank Williams
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions

“I learned in school how to deconstruct—but how do we move beyond our beautiful deconstruction? Who teaches us to reconstruct? How do we cultivate the muscle of radical imagination needed to dream together beyond fear?” – Adrienne Maree Brown

It’s 2018 and something isn’t right. Or maybe more accurately, almost everything is wrong. The joint powers of imagination and fear have established a seemingly untouchable demagogue as the elected leader of the world’s most powerful empire. He carries out the wishes of the elite while destroying the dreams, realities, and futures of everyone and everything else, including the planet herself.

Standard tactics are proving ineffective. Fact-checking has been rendered useless. Reason, unreasonable. Imagination, myth-making, and stories reign (see alternative facts). The future of America, and perhaps the world, is in the hands of the best storytellers.

The Resistance is evolving to meet the challenge. How do we build past, even through fear, to something more powerful? To… radical hope? We are one faction of many fighting for the futurewe are writers, thinkers, and artists using our powers to fight imagination with imagination. In this 3-day workshop in January, 2018 we will: learn from the rich ancestry of speculative fiction, exercise collaborative ideation and world-building, and create stories and art that may unleash new futures to topple the hegemonic order. Come, join our schemes.


Sponsor(s): Urban Studies and Planning, Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Contact: Lawrence Barriner II, lqb@mit.edu

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"You Can't Fire the Bad Ones!":  And 18 Other Myths about Teachers, Teachers' Unions, and Public Education
Wednesday, January 24
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Harvard Book Store welcomes educator and author WILLIAM AYERS for a discussion of his book, "You Can't Fire the Bad Ones!": And 18 Other Myths about Teachers, Teachers' Unions, and Public Education.

About "You Can't Fire the Bad Ones!"
"You Can't Fire the Bad Ones!" overturns common misconceptions about charter schools, school "choice," standardized tests, common core curriculum, and teacher evaluations.
Three distinguished educators, scholars, and activists flip the script on many enduring and popular myths about teachers, teachers' unions, and education that permeate our culture. By unpacking these myths, and underscoring the necessity of strong and vital public schools as a common good, the authors challenge readers—whether parents, community members, policymakers, union activists, or educators themselves—to rethink their assumptions.

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Thursday, January 25
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The Need to Rethink the Corporate Approach to Public Policy in an Age of Upheaval
WHEN  Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018, 11:45 a.m. – 1 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Fainsod Room (3rd Floor Littauer), 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Business, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at the Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S)  Ben Heineman, Lecturer, Harvard Law School
CONTACT INFO Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to mrcbg@hks.harvard.edu

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From Spider Webs to Food Webs: How Species Interactions Shape the Causes and Consequences of Plant Invasions
Thursday, January 25
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvrd, BioLabs Lecture Hall 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
OEB Special Seminar 

Lauren Smith-Ramesh, University of Tennessee. 
Abstract: A core goal of invasion ecology is to identify the factors that drive species invasions. A few dominant hypotheses have surfaced to explain why invaders succeed, including the 'enemy escape hypothesis,' which purports that invaders suffer reduced damage from natural enemies relative to natives. However, empirical support for enemy escape is mixed. Placing our study of invasion in a more complete food web context (beyond two trophic levels) may help to explain why this hypothesis often fails. Through theoretical and empirical case studies of invasive plants in Eastern deciduous forests of the United States, I consider how food web context can inform our understanding of species invasions. Then, I present a global synthesis that examines how food web complexity interacts with invasion success across habitats. By considering invasion in the context of broader food-web interactions, we can explain why common hypotheses such as enemy escape often fail, while gaining new power to explain global patterns of species invasions.

Contact Name:   Wendy Heywood

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Adapting to Climate Change in the Gulf of Maine
Thursday, January 25
12:00-1:00pm 
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford

Nicholas Record, Senior Research Scientist, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

Recent warming in the Gulf of Maine has been faster than 99.9% of the world's oceans. This rapid warming rate has affected everything from the microbiome, to whales and fisheries. We’ll discuss these changes in a historical context, what they portent for the future, and what adaptation tools and technologies are being developed to help cope with the changes. We will also provide information for students interested in being involved in this research through undergraduate research opportunities at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.

Dr. Record is a computational ocean ecologist at Colby College. He uses computational ocean models and mathematical ecology to understand and predict ocean biogeography, biogeochemistry, and climate. Models typically combine ocean physics with biological and ecological processes, as well as machine learning and artificial intelligence. He has worked on short-range forecasting, such as predicting the migration patterns of whales, as well as long-range forecasting, such as investigating the way ecosystems will respond to climate change.

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Conceptions of International Order during the Cold War: Russia, China, and the United States
Thursday, January 25
12:15pm - 2:00pm
Harvard, 1 Brattle Square - Room 350, Cambridge

Speaker: Paul Fraioli, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Security Program

This seminar will present Chinese and Russian ideas about global order and international law that emerged during the Cold War, trace their historical antecedents, and present contemporaneous reactions to these views from policymakers in the U.S. government. It will also discuss how these ideas illuminate current topics, including “new form of great power relations” between the United States and China, and debates over several maritime and landed territorial disputes.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

International Security Brown Bag Seminar

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Follow-Up Discussion: Using Federal Low-Income Energy Assistance Programs for Solar
Thursday, January 25
1-2pm ET
Webinar

This interactive webinar discussion is a follow-up to two webinars: CESA's 1/11 webinar, "Using Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) Funds for Low-Income Solar” and CESA’s 1/16 webinar, “Using Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) Funds for Low-Income Solar.” Guest speakers from both webinars will participate in this follow-up discussion. Participants will be invited to respond to the earlier webinars, share their ideas and experiences, and ask questions. This webinar is open to state and municipal officials only. Participants are strongly encouraged to either have attended the earlier webinars or watched the webinar recording before attending this follow-up discussion.

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Species Divergence Shaped by the Intersects of Ecology and Climate Change
WHEN  Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall (1080), 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
SPEAKER(S)  Dr. Lacey Knowles, University of Michigan
TICKET INFO  Free and Open to the Public

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US Foreign Policy from the Inside Out: A Lecture with Samantha Power
WHEN  Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018, 4 – 5:15 p.m.
WHERE  Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S)  Samantha Power, 2017-2018 Perrin Moorhead Grayson and Bruns Grayson Fellow, Radcliffe Institute; professor of practice, Harvard Law School; Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
COST  Free
DETAILS  In this public lecture, Power will provide a comprehensive picture of US foreign policy.
Register online.
Prior to serving as US permanent representative to the United Nations, Power served as special assistant to President Obama and senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights on the National Security Council at the White House. In this role, she focused on issues including UN reform; LGBT and women’s rights; the promotion of religious freedom and the protection of religious minorities; human trafficking; and democracy and human rights.

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Iran in 2018: Between Regional Hegemony and Domestic Unrest
WHEN  Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar
SPEAKER(S) Payam Mohseni, Iran Project Director, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
DETAILS  Unless otherwise noted in the event description, CMES events are open to the public (no registration required), and off the record. Please note that events may be filmed and photographed by CMES for record-keeping and for use on the CMES website and publications.

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The Future of Climate Policy: Experts Discuss Carbon Pricing
Thursday, January 25
4:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Massachusetts is at the forefront of climate policy, with an opportunity to lead the nation in implementing carbon pricing legislation.

Experts across the political spectrum agree that putting a fee on carbon pollution is the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, incentivizing a flexible shift toward clean energy. Right now, two bills moving through the Massachusetts state legislature could bring carbon pricing to our state.

Come join MIT Climate Action for a panel discussion on climate policy and carbon pricing in Massachusetts, featuring leading voices on the issue from politics and academia. Bertucci's pizza will be served at a reception following the talk. Our panelists are:
Sen. Michael Barrett, author of MA carbon pricing bill
Rep. Jennifer Benson, author of MA carbon pricing bill
Prof. John Reilly, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
Prof. Christopher Knittel, MIT Sloan economics
Dr. Marc Breslow, research and policy director for Climate XChange
Prof. Janelle Knox-Hayes, MIT urban studies and planning

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Our Current State of Anxiety
Thursday, January 25
4:30pm to 6:00pm
Northeastern, Renaissance Park 909,1135 Tremont Street, Boston

Dr. John A. Hall, McGill University, Montreal, Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology
The title of Dr. Hall’s lecture is ‘Our Current State of Anxiety’.  He will share his analysis of the social bases of the liberal postwar order, followed by claims that the secure world known to the OECD is imperiled by the erosion of those bases—more specifically by rising inequality, a change in the base of nationalism and the manipulation of news sources.

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Boston Batteries & Brews #3
Thursday, January 25
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Greentown Labs Global Center for Cleantech Innovation, 444 Somerville Avenue, Somerville

Welcome to Boston Batteries & Brews networking event for New England based energy storage professionals. We think the Energy Storage industry has great potential and are looking for people who feel the same.

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Massachusetts State of Solar
Thursday, January 25
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Prince Lobel Tye LLP, 1 International Place, #3700, Boston
Cost:  $0 - $20

Join the Climate Action Business Association for our Third Annual Massachusetts State of Solar, which explores current trends and future outlooks for our solar industry. Since 2010, we have seen our state’s clean energy economy expand exponentially. As we continue transitioning to a distributive electric grid, where energy is generated and utilized by interconnected customers, it is critical for policy experts, industry professionals, and community advocates to collaborate on our collective vision for its future in our state. What does the future electric grid look like? Where do utilities and solar companies fit into that vision? Ultimately, a successful approach to the future of our solar industry requires coordination among all stakeholders.
The evening will feature a networking reception followed by a panel discussion on the political climate, accomplishments, and challenges for solar energy in Massachusetts.

AGENDA
6:00PM Networking
6:30PM Program Introduction
6:35PM Opening statements from panelists
6:50PM Moderator-led questions
7:15PM Audience questions
7:45PM Conclude panel, open the room to networking
8:00PM End of event

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RPP Colloquium with Canon Sarah Snyder: The Church as a Reconciling Presence in a World of Conflict: The Role of Religion in International Conflict Transformation
WHEN  Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018, 6 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Religion
SPONSOR Religions and the Practice of Peace
CONTACT Andreea Florescu D'Abramo
DETAILS  Space is limited. RSVP is required at https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bBhoxzCx2pK31ch
Is religion a cause of violent conflict or a catalyst for its transformation? Do faith leaders have a role at the international peacebuilding tables? Current international affairs highlight the power of religious ideologies—and their misappropriation—as a catalyst for social action. They have also prompted unprecedented interest in the role of religious leaders and ideologies to transform conflict and violence.
The keynote session of the fourth annual RPP Colloquium dinner series will feature Canon Sarah Snyder, PhD, Archbishop of Canterbury's Director of Reconciliation. She will be joined by colleagues in the field, who will share their experience of working in conflict zones and reflect on vital lessons for the contemporary world.
Canon Sarah Snyder, PhD is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Advisor for Reconciliation. This role has a particular emphasis on supporting the Anglican Church in contexts of violent conflict or post-conflict and helping the Church to be an agent of reconciliation and conflict-transformation.
A theologian who specializes in Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, Canon Snyder brings wide-ranging international experience of peacebuilding and dialogue. She has worked for many years to promote faith-based reconciliation, most recently as Director of Partnerships with Religions for Peace International, an organization affiliated to the United Nations. Canon Snyder has also directed the Cambridge International Summer Schools for faith leaders from conflict zones. A trained mediator, she has experience both of working with communities and with senior religious leaders.
Canon Snyder is Founding Director of the Rose Castle Foundation, an international center of reconciliation, based in the north of England, offering safe space in which to address misunderstanding of the "other", particularly those of different religious traditions. Located in Cumbria, it is a peaceful haven in which to transform conflict within and between faith communities, and to train up a generation of leaders equipped as faith-based mediators.
The event will be moderated by David N. Hempton, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Alonzo L. McDonald Family Professor of Evangelical Theological Studies, John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity.

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Advancing Cannabis Research in Massachusetts: First of Six Cannabis Science, Education, and Networking Events
Thursday, January 25
6:00 PM to 9:30 PM (EST)
Canopy City, 14 Tyler Street, Floor 2, Somerville
Cost:  $60/Adult, $39/Student and Nonprofit

How can we advance cannabis research in Massachusetts?
Opportunities for cannabis cultivation, laboratory, clinical, social, and public health research in Massachusetts

Event Schedule
6:00 – 6:45 Registration and Networking 
6:45 – 8:00 Panel Discussion
8:00 – 9:30 Networking and Vendor Walk   

Panel Presentations
Dr. Staci Gruber – Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Director, Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core  and Director, Marijuana Investigations for  Neuroscientific Discovery  (MIND)  
State of medical cannabis research from the clinical and academic perspectives: barriers, opportunities, and areas for future investigation.
Nichole Snow - President, Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance (MPAA)
State of the medical cannabis program, new regulatory recommendations to expand medical care and education in Massachusetts.
Michael Kahn - President and Founder, MCR Labs
State of laboratory cannabis science, standards, and opportunities for future research.
Meghan Miller – Vice President of Global Partnerships, Phylos Bioscience
Cannabis genetics mapping, open data sharing in the cannabis industry, and the potential for advancing medical cannabis research
Moderator - Dr. Marion McNabb - CEO, Cannabis Community Care and Research Network (C3RN)
Opportunities to collaboratively develop a virtual Cannabis Center of Excellence.

What can you expect?
Expert panel discussions
Networking with clinical, research, and cannabis industry leaders
Interactive vendor learning opportunities that drive science and research
Cannabis product and services raffle and prizes 
Event report summary emailed post event
Hors d'oeuvres and bar

Who will be there?
Local cannabis industry, clinical, public health, academic, policy, advocacy, patient, consumer, and community leaders

Virtual Cannabis Center of Excellence (CoE), powered by C3RN
Cannabis Science, Education, and Networking Series

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Learn about and support the Bears Ears National Monument
Thursday, January 25
6:30-7:30pm
MA Sierra Club Offices, 50 Federal St, 3rd Floor, Boston
IT IS REQUIRED

Join us to support the Bears Ears National Monument! Trump's plan to significantly reduce the size of Bears Ears in Utah for oil and coal mining purposes can not go unprotested. More than 85% of Bears Ears National Monument would be eliminated. This action is part of a larger effort from the Trump Administration to sell out America's public lands and waters to fossil fuel development.

Join the Massachusetts Chapter for a presentation by Sierra Club member Harvey Halpern about the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments in Utah.

About the presenter:
Harvey Halpern been hiking in the most remote parts of Utah's canyon country for nearly 40 years. He specializes in off-trail long trips, upwards to 33 days. He has been part of numerous first descents of technical canyons, has named canyons and even has a canyon named after him (Hard Day Harvey).

Join the effort:
President Trump does not have the legal authority to eliminate sections of Bears Ears. HOWEVER, only congress can establish a National Conservation Area, meaning that protection for Bears Ears is far from certain.

Bears Ears is only the first of many National Monuments that are under threat by the Trump Administration. Two monuments in Maine and Massachusetts are under revision as well.

We Sierra Club love our national monuments both Bears Ears and others and we stand with the overwhelming majority of Americans in opposing these attacks on our history, favorite outdoor pastimes and cultural and natural treasures.

Editorial Comment:  Harvey Halpern is someone I’ve known for over 40 years.  His photographs of Bear Ears were used as part of the package that convinced President Obama to declare it a National Monument.  He knows and loves this area deeply and his photographs shows that love.

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Lecture with Rosa Sheng: “Why Equity Matters for Everyone: A new value proposition for Design”
WHEN  Thursday, Jan. 25, 2018, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard Graduate School of Design, Piper Auditorium, Room 105, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Graduate School of Design and co-sponsored by the Office of Career Services and the Office of Communications.
SPEAKER(S)  Rosa Sheng
COST  Free and open to the public.
TICKET INFO  Free and open to the public.
CONTACT INFO Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.
DETAILS  Fueled by the persistent and striking inequity of representation in architectural practice, where women compose only 12–18 percent of AIA members, licensed architects, and senior firm leadership, Rosa Sheng founded Equity by Design, a committee of AIASF, in 2013.
It has grown into a national call to action for both women and men to help realize the goal of equitable practice in order to retain talent, advance the profession and communicate the value of design to society. The 2016 Equity in Architecture Survey and EQxD Hackathon Workshops have sparked much needed dialogue that has resulted in 5 sold-out symposia, wide spread media coverage and requests for EQxD presentations nationally and beyond.
In her presentation, Rosa Sheng, AIA LEED AP BD+C, a Principal at SmithGroupJJR and AIASF President 2018 will introduce a provocation on “Why Equity Matters for Everyone: A new value proposition for Design”, with key anecdotes and survey findings from the 2016 Equity in Architecture Survey that will frame the discussion on how Architecture and professional practice can create new relevance, and provide meaningful engagement and better design outcomes for the communities that designers serve.

Sheng states: “Equity is the ethos of our work. It is the ability to recognize difference and provide fair and just access to opportunities. Equity also speaks to collective ownership, vested interest and knowledge of our worth. Equitable practice promotes the recruitment and retention of the most diverse talent while building stronger, successful, sustainable practices.”

The 2016 Equity in Architecture Survey was designed to generate a comprehensive national dataset detailing current positions and career experiences of architecture school graduates. With the assistance of architecture’s national collateral organizations, AIA component chapters, firms, and academic institutions, survey invitations were sent out to a broad cross-section of the profession. The resulting dataset — the largest ever collected on equity within the profession — documents the experiences of 8,664 individuals representing all 50 states and nations on six continents.

Rosa T. Sheng, AIA is a Principal at SmithGroupJJR, AIA SF President 2018, and Founding Chair for Equity by Design. She has led a variety of award-winning and internationally acclaimed projects throughout her career. Equity by Design has launched a national movement for achieving equitable practice and design in Architecture since 2013. The group’s survey and outreach for equity in architecture has received national press including Architect Magazine, Architectural Record, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, TEDxPhiladelphia and KQED/NPR.

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Republican Like Me:  How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right
Thursday, January 25
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge

Former NPR CEO Ken Stern watched the increasing polarization of our country with growing concern. As a longtime partisan Democrat himself, he felt forced to acknowledge that his own views were too parochial, too absent of any exposure to the "other side." In fact, his urban neighborhood is so liberal, he couldn't find a single Republican--even by asking around.

So for one year, he crossed the aisle to spend time listening, talking, and praying with Republicans of all stripes. With his mind open and his dial tuned to the right, he went to evangelical churches, shot a hog in Texas, stood in pit row at a NASCAR race, hung out at Tea Party meetings and sat in on Steve Bannon's radio show. He also read up on conservative wonkery and consulted with the smartest people the right has to offer.

What happens when a liberal sets out to look at issues from a conservative perspective? Some of his dearly cherished assumptions about the right slipped away. Republican Like Me reveals what lead him to change his mind, and his view of an increasingly polarized America. 

Ken Stern is the president of Palisades Media Ventures and the author of With Charity for All: Why Charities Are Failing and a Better Way to Give. He was formerly the CEO of NPR. He lives in Washington, DC.

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Uneasy Peace:  The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence
Thursday, January 25
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome NYU professor and scientific director of Crime Lab New York PATRICK SHARKEY for a discussion of his latest book, Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence. He will be joined in conversation by sociologist and Harvard University professor WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON.

About Uneasy Peace
Over the past two decades, American cities have experienced an astonishing drop in violent crime, dramatically changing urban life. In many cases, places once characterized by decay and abandonment are now thriving, the fear of death by gunshot wound replaced by concern about skyrocketing rents.

In 2014, most U.S. cities were safer than they had ever been in the history of recorded statistics on crime. Patrick Sharkey reveals the striking consequences: improved school test scores, since children are better able to learn when not traumatized by nearby violence; better chances that poor children will rise into the middle class; and a striking increase in the life expectancy of African American men.
Sharkey also delineates the combination of forces, some positive and some negative, that brought about safer streets, from aggressive policing and mass incarceration to the intensive efforts made by local organizations to confront violence in their own communities.

From New York’s Harlem neighborhood to South Los Angeles, Sharkey draws on original data and textured accounts of neighborhoods across the country to document the most successful proven strategies for combatting violent crime and to lay out innovative and necessary approaches to the problem of violence. At a time when crime is rising again and powerful political forces seek to disinvest in cities, the insights in this book are indispensable.

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Film: Chasing Coral
Thursday, January 25
7:00pm
MIT, Building 35-225, 127 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

What lies below, reveals what lies ahead.
Join a screening of the Netflix original documentary Chasing Coral: http://www.chasingcoral.com/

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Backpacks Full of Cash:  Free Screening & Discussion
Thursday, January 25
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM EST
Northeastern, Curry Student Center, 360 Huntington Avenue, 3rd Floor, Boston

Roosevelt Institute | Boston and Roosevelt @ Northeastern University are pleased to present a screening of Backpack Full of Cash. This event is free and open to the public. Following a screening of the film, a community discussion will be held. Panelists for the community discussion will be announced in upcoming days.

About the Film
Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the appointment of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, filmmakers Sarah Mondale and Vera Aronow couldn’t have known that the national education debate would dramatically shift to the very issues at the heart of their film: charter schools, vouchers and privatization. Now, this timely new documentary takes viewers into the world of market-based education “reform”.

BACKPACK FULL OF CASH is a cautionary tale about how, in cities like Philadelphia, privatization and funding cuts have had a devastating impact on public schools, and the most vulnerable children who rely on them. The film also showcases a model for improving schools – a well-resourced public school system in Union City, New Jersey, where poor kids are getting a high quality education without charters or vouchers.

BACKPACK features genuine heroes like the principals, teachers, activists, parents and most hearteningly, students who are fighting for their education. Education writer David Kirp, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch, and policy expert Linda Darling Hammond are among the national thought leaders who provide analysis in the film. BACKPACK builds a case for public education as a basic civil right.

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Friday, January 25, 8PM - Sunday, January 28, 2PM
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She Hacks: #MAKING THE NEW NORMAL
Friday, January 25, 8PM - Sunday, January 28, 2PM
BU

What is SheHacks Boston?
SheHacks Boston is a 36-hour, student-run hackathon open to all female and non-binary individuals. 
Led by women from across Boston's universities, SheHacks is set to be the largest all-female and non-binary hackathon in the world!

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Friday, January 26
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ILAR/Harvard Animal Law Meeting:  Future Directions for Laboratory Animal Law in the United States
Friday, January 26
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM EST
Harvard, Cambridge

Please join the ILAR Roundtable, The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, and the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard University for a one-day meeting on January 26 to discuss the future of animal law.

This meeting will be held at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. We invite all interested parties who can arrange their own travel to Boston to register to attend. If you cannot attend in person, the workshop will also be webcast and will be accessible to all who are interested.

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EARTH HACK 2018: Save Spaceship Earth
Friday, January 26
9:00am to 5:00pm
MIT,  Building 33-116, 125 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Can technology and design transform environmental information into action? 
Can we give earth a voice to engage billions of people to care about and take action for the oceans and environment?
What personal technology can empower our revolution to have everyone help heal the planet?

If you're interested in these questions, we'd love you to join our hack-a-thon! We're rethinking the ways people engage with the overwhelming amount of climate and environmental information and you can help.

At EarthHack, you'll collaborate with students, faculty & professionals: spending the day brainstorming and designing. You can continue working with our team to use these solutions to transform environmental engagement. Top ideas will receive support to turn them into reality!

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The cosmic origin of the chemical elements
Friday, January 26
11:00am
MIT, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, NW17-218, 175 Albany Street, Cambridge

A talk by Anna Frebel, MIT
We are made from star stuff -- but how exactly? I will describe how elements up to and including iron are made in fusion processes within the hot cores of stars, and how all the heavier elements are synthesized in neutron-capture processes. There are a several astrophysical sites where neutron-capture can take place, including neutron star mergers. The LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories recently detected the signal of a neutron star merger. The subsequent "kilonova" afterglow was detected across the electromagnetic spectrum. It was the result of an enormous production of heavy elements during the merger.

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Ken Yeang, “Ecoarchitecture and Ecomasterplanning: The Work of Ken Yeang”
WHEN  Friday, Jan. 26, 2018, 12 – 2 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Stubbins Room 112, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Graduate School of Design
SPEAKER(S)  Ken Yeang
COST  Free and open to the public.
TICKET INFO  Free and open to the public.
CONTACT INFO Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.
DETAILS  Please join us for a lecture by Ken Yeang. Yeang will discuss an approach to green and sustainable design based on the science of ecology. He will show how ecology and the ecosystem influence the design and planning of the built environment while offering a theoretical descriptive (non-stochastic) model for ecological design. Yeang's work will illustrate the ideas and principles that he presents.

Ken Yeang is an architect, planner and ecologist who is best known for green architecture and masterplans that are driven by an ecology based approach and design work with a distinctive green aesthetic that performances beyond conventional rating systems. He trained at the AA School (Architectural Association) and received his doctorate from Cambridge University on ‘ecological design and planning’. His key buildings include the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital Extension (UK), Solaris (Singapore), National Library (Singapore), Mesiniaga Tower (Malaysia), Spire Edge Tower (India), Genome Research Building (Hong Kong), Suasana Putrajaya (Malaysia). He is principal of T. R. Hamzah & Yeang Sdn. Bhd. (Malaysia) with offices in the UK and China. He was awarded the Malaysian Institute of Architects Gold Medal, the Government of Malaysia Merdeka Award, the Architectural Society of China Liangsicheng Award 2016 and others. He holds the chair of the Distinguished Plym Professor at the University of Illinois. The UK Guardian newspaper named him as one of 50 individuals who could save the planet (2008).

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True Enough
Friday, January 26
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Harvard Book Store and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics welcome CATHERINE Z. ELGIN—Professor of the Philosophy of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education—for a discussion of her latest book, True Enough.

About True Enough
Philosophy valorizes truth, holding that there can never be epistemically good reasons to accept a known falsehood, or to accept modes of justification that are not truth-conducive. How can this stance account for the epistemic standing of science, which unabashedly relies on models, idealizations, and thought experiments that are known not to be true? In True Enough, Catherine Elgin argues that we should not assume that the inaccuracy of models and idealizations constitutes an inadequacy. To the contrary, their divergence from truth or representational accuracy fosters their epistemic functioning. When effective, models and idealizations are, Elgin contends, felicitous falsehoods that exemplify features of the phenomena they bear on. Because works of art deploy the same sorts of felicitous falsehoods, she argues, they also advance understanding.

Elgin develops a holistic epistemology that focuses on the understanding of broad ranges of phenomena rather than knowledge of individual facts. Epistemic acceptability, she maintains, is a matter not of truth-conduciveness, but of what would be reflectively endorsed by the members of an idealized epistemic community—a quasi-Kantian realm of epistemic ends.

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Real American:  A Memoir
Friday, January 26
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Harvard Book Store, 826 Boston, the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, and Mass Humanities welcome bestselling author, TED speaker, and former Stanford dean JULIE LYTHCOTT-HAIMS for a discussion of her latest book, Real American: A Memoir. The evening will begin with a reading from 8th grader Tiffany from the Boston Teachers Union School.

About Real American
A fearless debut memoir by beloved and bestselling How to Raise an Adult author Julie Lythcott-Haims, Real American pulls no punches in her recollections of growing up a biracial black woman in America.

Bringing a poetic sensibility to her prose to stunning effect, Lythcott-Haims briskly and stirringly evokes her personal battle with the low self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color. The only child of a marriage between an African-American father and a white British mother, she shows indelibly how so-called "micro"-aggressions in addition to blunt force insults can puncture a person's inner life with a thousand sharp cuts. Real American expresses also, through Lythcott-Haims’s path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered "the other."

The author of the New York Times bestselling anti-helicopter parenting manifesto How to Raise an Adult, Lythcott-Haims has written a different sort of book this time out, but one that will nevertheless resonate with the legions of students, educators and parents to whom she is now well known, by whom she is beloved, and to whom she has always provided wise and necessary counsel about how to embrace and nurture their best selves. Real American is an affecting memoir, an unforgettable cri de coeur, and a clarion call to all of us to live more wisely, generously and fully.

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Saturday, January 27
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Mothers Out Front Massachusetts Assembly 2018:  Celebrating Connection
Saturday, January 27
8:45 am - 5 pm
First Church in Belmont, Unitarian Universalist, 404 Concord Avenue, Belmont

Free Program, Lunch, and Child Care 

Our Massachusetts Mothers Out Front Assembly 2018 is about Celebrating Connection.

Come to celebrate. It's been an amazing year for Massachusetts Mothers Out Front! We have spoken out as mothers again and again. We have rallied and protested and testified. We have reached out to form new alliances. We have made real change in our local communities. We have shown up. And don't forget that we did this over and above our primary commitments as mothers, grandmothers, and caregivers. For all this, we will celebrate together.

Come to connect. The heart of our movement is our relationships with each other. The day will include many chances for meaningful connection, including small group workshops, a display area for teams, lunch topic tables, and time to meet and mingle.

Come to learn organizing skills. During morning and afternoon breakout sessions, our own talented local leaders will offer core Mothers Out Front skill building for people at all levels of engagement from seasoned leaders to new volunteers. This is a great opportunity to learn from the amazing collective wisdom we hold together.

Come to build connection by ending the effects of oppression. We are excited to welcome guest leaders from Sustaining All Life/United to End Racism, a grassroots organization working to end climate change within the context of building a unified climate justice movement by ending all divisions among people. They will lead us in an interactive keynote on how we can work together to end the effects of oppression on our lives, relationships and our community teams. They will focus on how to strengthen our efforts to end the effects of racism and classism within the environmental movement and Mothers Out Front.

Come to learn about Mothers Out Front. If you are newer to Mothers out Front, you may join an introductory session.  Throughout the day, we will provide background on who we are, what we do, and how we are organized.

Come. Don't miss this once-a-year chance to celebrate connection with incredible mothers from all over Massachusetts.

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Human Rights: Adapting to the Challenges of Our Times
WHEN  Saturday, Jan. 27, 2018, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Starr Auditorium, Belfer Building, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Symposium is organized with the support of the Carr Center for Human Rights, the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, the Department for African and African American Studies, the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, HKS Office for Student Diversity and Inclusion, the Human Rights Professional Interest Council and the Muslim Caucus (student organizations at Harvard Kennedy School), the Kennedy School Student Government, and the South Asia Institute.
DETAILS  Human Rights: Adapting to the Challenges of Our Times is a student-led Symposium aiming to rethink the effective implementation of human rights in an age of increasing populism and nationalism.
This event is free and open to the public. RSVP is required. Seating is limited.

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Creativity + 7 Intelligences = Your Superpower
Saturday, January 27
10:00AM-12:30PM
MIT, Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge

Presented by Creativity Integrators: Cherylle Garnes, and Janet Johnson, 
with Guest speaker: Ruth Levitsky

A workshop that correlates creativity to the 7 Intelligences (first presented in Dr. Howard Gardner’s book Frames of Mind.) You will discover which intelligence your superpower fits. We will provide creative exercises and examples that involve all 7 intelligences. 

Come prepared to speak, think, interact with others, move, learn and have fun as you discover you own personal creativity mindset. Revised information will be provided. Come a little early for a bonus.

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Public Interested Conference
WHEN  Saturday, Jan. 27, 2018, 12 – 5 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Science Center, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Award Ceremonies, Conferences, Volunteer Opportunities, Wellness/Work Life
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Phillips Brooks House Center for Public Service & Engaged Scholarship
SPEAKER(S)  Kristen Clarke, President & CEO, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
DETAILS  The 7th annual Public Interested Conference is happening on Saturday, January 27th in the Science Center at Harvard College will provide students with a unique opportunity to explore public interest opportunities with the help of alumni serving in the public interest sector.
It is designed for students to explore varied public interest careers and network with alumni in those fields. Students have the opportunity to hear from inspiring speakers, interact with incredible alumni, participate in engaging activities & meet peers who share a passion for public service.

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A New Vision for Carl Barron Plaza
Saturday, January 27
12:30 PM – 3:30 PM EST
Workbar - Central Square, 45 Prospect Street, Cambridge

The City of Cambridge Department of Public Works (DPW) has plans to make renovations to Carl Barron Plaza in Fiscal Year 2020. The Central Square Business Association (CBSA) working alongside members of the Planners Network Greater Boston (PNGB) in leading an effort to gather feedback from local stakeholders, constituents and the public to provide recommendations for the plaza to DPW. Join us in a design charrette and provide your input on how the plaza can be better activated and imagined! (lunch to be provided)
Meeting Objectives
To generate ideas for recommendations to Cambridge City Council and Department of Public Works for infrastructure and amenity improvements as part of the 2020 redesign.
To generate ideas for small-scale “tactical” interventions to test new ideas and provide proof of concepts. 
To strengthen a working partnership between key stakeholders in Central Square around issues of quality of life, vulnerable populations, and economic development. 
To identify a key working group that can review, refine, and endorse recommendations.

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CivilServant Community Research Summit
Saturday, January 27
1:00 PM – 6:00 PM EST
MIT Media Lab, Building E14-674, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge

How can the public work together and discover ideas for a fairer, safer, more understanding internet? 
Join the CivilServant Community Research Summit for a half-day to celebrate the best of the web and imagine the role of everyday internet users to support and protect each other online. In this public summit, we'll share ideas and inspiration with community moderators and other leaders online. You will also hear from researchers and advocates who lead a growing movement to develop public-interest internet research, independently of the powerful companies that shape today's social worlds.
The live event will be followed by a reception with light snacks.
Featured speakers will include:
J. Nathan Matias, founder of CivilServant and post-doc at Princeton University
Ethan Zuckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media
Latanya Sweeney, director of Harvard's Data Privacy Lab
Tarleton Gillespie, Principal Research Scientist at Microsoft Research and author of the upcoming book Custodians of the Internet
Karrie Karahalios, a pioneer of data-driven conversation moderation and algorithm auditing
We will also feature project highlights from:
Nathan Allen and Piper Below, from r/science on reddit, who tested the effects of posting the rules on newcomer behavior, with CivilServant
Jonathan Ian Deans, from r/worldnews on reddit, who tested the effects of fact-checking nudges with CivilServant
Mason English, from r/politics on reddit, who tested the effects of hiding the downvote button on commenting behavior, with CivilServant
Merry Mou, civic tech designer, software engineer, and co-creator of the CivilServant software
Ellery Biddle, director of Advocacy at Global Voices and co-editor of an independent, international analysis of Facebook's Free Basics across six countries
Jon Penney, a legal scholar and behavioral scientist who does large-scale research on surveillance, censorship, privacy, and AI law enforcement
T.L. Taylor, a professor at MIT and director of research at AnyKey, which works for fair and inclusive spaces in gaming
Christo Wilson, who leads the Auditing Algorithms group at Northeastern University
Jonathan Zong, who's designing ethics procedures for citizen behavioral science
Amy Zhang, PhD student at MIT and creator of Squadbox, which organizes trusted friends, volunteers, or paid moderators to filter messages for harassment.
Jeffrey Warren, co-founder and research director of Public Lab, a community and non-profit democratizing science to address environmental issues that affect people
Lindsay Blackwell, a PhD student at the University of Michigan and researcher with HeartMob, who organize community support to end online harassment

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Sunday, January 28
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Cambridge Solar Access: A Celebration of Light
Sunday, January 28
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST
Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge

Join us Sunday for a celebration of a first-of-its-kind rooftop solar installation at Congregation Eitz Chayim in Cambridge! Over the past year, Congregation Eitz Chayim has been working to find a solar financing solution with Resonant Energy for its roof. Out of this work came the Solar Access Program -- a no-cost financing solution designed for homeowners in low-and-middle income communities, nonprofits, and small businesses.
All of these individuals and organizations share one thing in common: they have great roofs for solar. What they often lack are the financial means to take out a loan or enter a long-term contract. The Solar Access Program is the first successful program to be rolled out in MA that has zero income or credit score requirements, and guaranteed savings for all participants. Join us to learn more about how this tool for energy democracy came together here in Boston and Cambridge -- and how its part of a national Dept. of Energy funded effort to expand access to solar.
This project is a powerful example of faith-based leadership on climate change and the importance of community in leading the way to a more just and sustainable future. At the event, you'll hear from the following folks:
Eric Grunebaum, Eitz Action Committee/Env'l Justice Working Group at Congregation Eitz Chayim
Jim Nail, President of MA Interfaith Power & Light
Isaac Baker, Co-Founder of Resonant Energy
A huge thank you to the Eitz Chayim project partners (below) who helped to make this a success! 
Sunwealth (Financing, Somerville)
United Solar Associates (Installation, Malden)
Bagels and beverages will be provided by Resonant Energy for all attendees. Please RSVP to help us ensure that we provide enough food for everyone!

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Be the Change: Daring Democracy
Sunday, January 28
3:00pm to 5:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge

Americans are distraught as tightly held economic and political power drowns out their voices and values. Intergenerational duo Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen offer a fresh, surprising response to this core crisis: That even in this divisive time, Americans are uniting across causes and ideologies to create a “canopy of hope” the authors call the Democracy Movement. In this invigorating “movement of movements” millions of Americans are leaving despair behind as they push for and achieve historic change. The Movement and democracy itself are vital to us as citizens and fulfill human needs—for power, meaning, and connection—essential to our thriving. In this timely and necessary book, Lappé and Eichen offer proof that courage is contagious in the daring fight for democracy.

Frances Moore Lappé is the author or coauthor of eighteen books about the environment, world hunger, and democracy, including Diet for a Small Planet, which has sold three million copies. Articles featuring or written by Lappé have also appeared in O: The Oprah Magazine, Harper’s, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Nation, People, and elsewhere. A recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (often called the “Alternative Nobel”) and eighteen honorary doctorates, Lappé is the cofounder of the organizations Food First and the Small Planet Institute.

Adam Eichen is a writer, researcher, and political organizer working to build a democracy that represents and empowers all voices in society. In 2015, Adam was elected to the board of directors of Democracy Matters and has since helped guide the organization’s communication program. In 2016, he was appointed deputy communications director for Democracy Spring, a historic national mobilization comprising more than a hundred organizations working for campaign-finance and voting rights reform.

From 3PM-5PM 20% of all sales will be donated to The Democracy Initiative.

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Monday, January 29
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Arts and Culture Discussion Series #2: Art and Green Infrastructure
Monday, January 29
9:30 AM – 11:30AM 
Breakfast and Registration start at 9 AM.
NEFA, 145 Tremont Street, 7th Floor, Boston

A collaboration between the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC)
Spiral Wetlands | Stacy Levy
You are invited to a discussion about Art and Green Infrastructure, featuring a presentation by EcoArtist Stacy Levy. This is the second in a three-part series of discussions that explore how public art can address a range of planning goals and objectives related to green infrastructure, community building, economic development, and public health. Designed to build more cohesion among artists, arts administrators, and municipal planners, this series is co-hosted by the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) in partnership with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC).

We are thrilled to host Stacy Levy, a Pennsylvania-based environmental sculptor who uses art as a vehicle for translating the patterns and processes of the natural world. In this discussion, Levy will explore her projects in which she harnesses natural forces including rainwater, plants, and microbes to help create sculptural solutions for storm-water and water pollution issues. Levy’s collaborative and multi-disciplined approach to solving environmental problems leads her to engage with architects, landscape architects, civil engineers, the Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, city and state municipalities, scientists, hydrologists, fluid dynamic engineers, geologists, zoologists, and ecologists. Levy will discuss this intersectionality of civic engagement, science, art, and design, and how she finds ways to express and improve the workings of natural systems along waterways, in streets, parking lots, airports and nature centers. More info at www.stacylevy.com.

COST: Free admission; registration required.
CONTACT: Carolyn Lewenberg, clewenberg@mapc.org

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FESTIVAL OF LEARNING
Monday, January 29
9:30am to 5:00pm
MIT, LOBBIES 10 & 13, AND CONFERENCE ROOMS TBD

...a day of learning: national thought-leaders, MIT innovators, cutting-edge entrepreneurs, food, fun, and more. Experience the catalyzing power behind initiatives which transform the way we look at education and revolutionize how we teach and learn.

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Operations Research for Social Good
Monday, January 29
9:30am-4:30pm 
MIT, Building 34-101, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Description: The applied nature of operations research makes it an important force for good in alleviating poverty; promoting accessible housing; improving health outcomes; and other endeavors that benefit large groups outside academia and industry. In this seminar, we will engage with a wide range of researchers and practitioners tacking these and other topics via data science, optimization, and other contemporary OR methods. 

Schedule:
9:00am-9:30am
COFFEE AND REFRESHMENTS
9:30am-10:15am
Michael Johnson, Professor and Chair, Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, UMass Boston 
“Community-engaged operations research: Localized interventions, appropriate methods, social impact”
10:30am-11:15am
Sebastien Martin and Arthur Delarue, PhD Students, MIT, Operations Research Center
“8 months on a school bus”
11:30am-12:15pm
Andrew Therriault, Chief Data Officer, City of Boston 
“Saving the world with data - The case for civic data science”
12:30pm-1:30pm
LUNCH BREAK (NOT PROVIDED)
1:45pm-2:30pm
Edoardo Airoldi, Associate Professor of Statistics, Harvard 
2:45pm-3:30pm
Hamsa Bastani, Goldstine Postdoctoral Fellow, IBM Research
“Mechanism design for social good: Analysis of medicare pay-for-performance contracts”
3:45pm-4:30pm
Marta C. Gonzalez, UC Berkeley, Environmental Design 
“Data science to tackle urban mobility challenges”


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Innovation Day 2018: Megatrends & the Future of #TechinMA
Monday January 29
10:30am-12:00pm
Hall of Flags, Massachusetts State House, Boston

The TechHUB Caucus, co-chaired by Senator Spilka and Representative Ferrante, will host the 4th marquee "Innovation Day" event on January 29th, 2018 at the Massachusetts State House to showcase the tech sector in the Commonwealth. This event aims to educate and excite policymakers and the public about what the local tech sector is building.

Meet leaders from the local tech and startup community and learn about Massachusetts-based companies and organizations leading the digital revolution and future of technology.

The agenda will feature live technology demonstrations running throughout from local tech firms and home-grown startups and a "NextGEN" awards ceremony recognizing key tech companies and organizations contributing to the Massachusetts innovation community and economy.

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Leadership – Lessons academics could learn from business schools
Monday, January 29
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building 68-181, 31 Ames Street, Cambridge

Teresa M. Amabile – Professor of Business Administration – Harvard Business School
Carl M. Cohen – President – Science Management Associates
Ann Herrmann-Nehdi – CEO – Herrmann Solutions
Charles E. Leiserson – Professor of Computer Science and Engineering – MIT
John Olson – Director, Genetic Validation – Pfizer

Do you aim to lead a creative, scientific or engineering team in the near future but do not quite know where to start? Come to hear the advice from leadership and mentoring experts on DO and DON’Ts for successful team leadership.

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Sibling cooperation and interparental conflict in a seed: how plant mothers, fathers, and siblings
behave during the act of reproduction in flowering plants
Monday, January 29
12:10 pm
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain

William (Ned) Friedman, Arnold Professor, Harvard University and Arnold Arboretum Faculty Fellow


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Who Pays to Save the Planet? A Sectoral Political Economy of Climate Change Mitigation
Monday, January 29
12:30 pm - 1:45 pm
Tufts, Cabot 702, 170 Packard Avenue, Medford

Alexander Gard-Murray is a doctoral candidate in Politics at the University of Oxford, and a research affiliate with the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Tufts University's Fletcher School. He works on the comparative political economy, of climate change mitigation.

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Passive House Affordable Housing Forum
Monday, January 29
1:00 PM to 3:00 PM 
MassHousing Boardroom, 1 Beacon Street, Boston

Hear from industry leaders about Passive House, a smart, durable standard that can cost-effectively realize long-term savings for the multifamily affordable housing sector. 

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Conserving Ecosystems and Their Services in a Changing and Uncertain World
Monday, January 29
4:00pm
Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge

Laura Dee, University of Minnesota
Abstract:  Halting the decline of both biodiversity and the benefits ecosystems provide to society (i.e., ecosystem services) is a major challenge for scientists and managers. Meeting both objectives requires an understanding of 1) how global change drivers (e.g., climate, biodiversity, and socioeconomic change) influence each goal, and 2) how pursuing one objective will impact the other. This talk will address these two questions in turn. First, I will present my past and ongoing work on how climate change is impacting ecosystem services, including global fisheries yields, regional timber production in Minnesota, and a broader range of services across systems and scales. Second, I will share my research examining alignment between the objectives of providing ecosystem services and conserving biodiversity. I quantify how alignment depends on uncertainty over links between biodiversity and services, non-random changes in biodiversity, and complex patterns of species interactions. I analyze the two questions from both a theoretical and empirical perspective, leveraging dynamic programming, network theory, and statistics for observational data. This work provides new insights into how global change impacts ecosystem services and when managing for these services can provide the strongest incentives for conservation.

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EAPS IAP 2018: Origin of Life Seminar Series:  "What is “I”: The Role of Compartmentalisation in the Origins of Life"
Monday, January 29
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 54- 915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge

Anna Wang | Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University  
The only examples of life (as we know it) have cell membranes. Not only does the membrane delineate individual entities, it also provides a means to sustain a chemical gradient, concentrate small molecules, and provide protection from parasitic genetic polymers that could compromise fitness. Here we’ll look at efforts towards understanding how prebiotically plausible membranes could have formed, what their properties are, and touch on what roles other types of compartmentalisation could have played in life’s origins. We’ll end with a discussion of current efforts to make a protocell - a minimal system comprised of just membrane and RNA - that is capable of growth, division, replication, and evolution.

Our Origin of Life Seminars are a series of hosted lectures from leaders in the Origin of Life community, focusing on various dimensions of one of the most challenging problems in the biological and planetary sciences. Topics include the origin of cells, metabolism, replication and proteins, as well as the geochemical conditions on the Early Earth that led to prebiotic and early biotic systems. Enrolled students will attend 4 seminars during IAP, actively engage in Q & A sessions with invited speakers in a panel format, and collaborate on creating an Origins of Life online blog resource highlighting the work of invited speakers. 

Instructor: Greg Fournier 

FEBRUARY 2 | ROOM E25-605 | 4PM
"The Planetary Battery for the Origins of Life: The Example of Mars"
Vlada Stamenkovic | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech

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Norton Lecture I, 'The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part I' by Frederick Wiseman
WHEN  Monday, Jan. 29, 2018, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Film, Humanities, Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR  The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
SPEAKER(S)  Frederick Wiseman
COST  Free
TICKET INFO  Tickets will be available starting at noon on the day of each lecture. Tickets will be available in person at Sanders Theatre or online (handling fees apply). Limit of two tickets per person. Tickets valid until 3:45pm.
CONTACT INFO  humcentr@fas.harvard.edu, 617-496-4955
DETAILS  Wide Angle: The Norton Lectures on Cinema
The Norton Professors in 2018 are Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, and Frederick Wiseman
Monday, Jan. 29 and Monday, Feb. 5: Frederick Wiseman
The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part I and Part II
Monday, Feb. 26 and Tuesday, Feb. 27: Agnès Varda
The 7th Art and Me and Crossing the Borders
Monday, April 2 and Monday, April 9: Wim Wenders
Poetry in Motion and The Visible and the Invisible

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Diversity and Doctors: The science of inclusive healthcare
Monday, January 29
6:30pm
The Burren, 247 Elm Street, Somerville

Scientists from the Fenway Institute

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Other Minds:  The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Monday, January 29
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

The Harvard Square Book Circle, our in-store book club, discusses PETER GODFREY-SMITH's Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, which will be featured in the bookstore's Select Seventy display for the month of January.

About Other Minds
Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter?

In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being―how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys.

But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves”? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?

By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind―and on our own.

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Tuesday, January 30
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Natural Gas Infrastructure and Public Health: From Local to Global
Tuesday, January 30
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM EST
BU, Photonics Center, 8 St Mary's Street, Boston

Please join us for a discussion regarding the health impacts of natural gas infrastructure (NGI) and the role of public health officials in this topic.
The event is co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards, Boston University School of Public Health, Massachusetts Medical Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, Health Care Without Harm, Mass Health Professionals for Clean Energy, and Physicians for Policy Action.

Speakers will include Drs. Ari Bernstein, Jonathan Buonocore, Elissa Wilker, and Drew Michanowicz of the Harvard School of Public Health; Drs. Jonathan Levy and Madeleine Scammel of the Boston University School of Public Health; Dr. Nathan Phillips of Boston University; and Dr. Mary Rice of Harvard Medical School.
Donations will be accepted at the door (suggested donation of $20). Thank you!

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MIT Green Labs Info Session
Tuesday, January 30
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, The David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Building 76-659, 500 Main Street, Cambridge

Informational session about MIT's Green Labs Program. Will include details on the assessment process for certification, participating in the LEAC energy assessment program and review information on lab recycling. Please register as food will be provided.

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Turkey and the Syrian Refugee Crisis: Responses and Perspectives
WHEN  Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Wasserstein 3019, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Islamic Legal Studies Program: Law and Social Change
SPEAKER(S)  Zulfukar Aytac Kisman
DETAILS  Since 2011, Turkey has received more than three million Syrian refugees, the largest community of Syrians displaced by the conflict. This has had significant economic, political, security, social, and foreign policy challenges for Turkey. This talk will focus on the Syrian refugee crisis from Turkey’s perspective and analyze the Turkish response to the crisis.

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Threatening Whiteness: Islam’s Challenge to American White Supremacy
Tuesday, January 30
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Northeastern, Holmes Hall, 270, 39-41 Leon Street, Boston

WGSS Visiting Scholar Megan Prince Goodwin 

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Legal Considerations for Blockchain Innovations and ICOs
Tuesday, January 30
12:00pm to 1:30pm
Cambridge Innovation Center, 5th Floor Havana Room One Broadway, Cambridge
Cost:  $5 - $20

Attendees at this event will learned about:

What are the IP strategies for protecting blockchain innovations?
What are the potential open source licensing issues for decentralized apps using the major blockchain platforms?
What alternative paths are possible for monetization of new blockchain developments?
How can a company benefit from an ICO or blockchain technology?
Is an ICO worthwhile to your company?
When does an ICO fall within SEC regulation?

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RNA as medicine
Tuesday, January 30
1pm -2pm
MIT, Building 76-156, KI Auditorium

Melissa Moore, Chief Scientific Officer, mRNA Research Platform at Moderna Therapeutics Inc.

Biology at Transformative Frontiers
2nd Talk in the Series


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Special Harvard Climate Seminar: Raymond Pierrehumbert
Tuesday, January 30
3:00pm
HUCE Seminar Room MCZ 440, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge


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Multi-Host Fungal Pathogens: Challenges and Opportunities in Conserving Global Amphibian Diversity
Tuesday, January 30
4:00pm
Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue

Ana Longo, University of Maryland
Abstract:  The rapid spread of infectious diseases in humans, wildlife and crops is posing novel challenges in the way and speed that we traditionally respond to biological threats. Recent die-offs of sea-stars, amphibians and bats demonstrate that the emergence of multi-host pathogens leaves a clear trace of disease-driven loss of biodiversity in natural habitats and impacts ecosystem function and stability. My research aims to identify and quantify the ecological factors and evolutionary processes involved in species persistence during and after disease outbreaks. In this talk, I discuss the impacts of two fungal pathogens: Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and B. salamandrivorans (Bsal). These skin fungi are causing mass mortality events and population declines of amphibians around the world. Bd currently infects more than 500 of amphibian species globally. In contrast, B. salamandrivorans is restricted to Europe and Asia and has not been found in the United States. However, it is predicted to emerge there given the presence of competent hosts, high volume import pathways, and the lack of effective biosecurity measures to control introductions of wildlife pathogens. I will examine host-pathogen interactions in different stages including disease emergence in a naïve amphibian community and during seasonal cycles of epidemic/endemic pathogen dynamics. I conclude by highlighting the opportunities to develop proactive measures to prevent Bsal from entering the United States and the New World.
See also: OEB Seminars

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Askwith Debates – Beyond “Free College”: Improving Opportunity and Success at Community Colleges
WHEN  Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
TYPE OF EVENT Forum, Question & Answer Session
PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT  Alumni, Askwith Forum
BUILDING/ROOM  Askwith Hall
CONTACT NAME  Roger Falcon
CONTACT PHONE  617-384-9968
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT Harvard Graduate School of Education
REGISTRATION REQUIRED No
ADMISSION FEE This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP REQUIRED No
FEATURED EVENT  Askwith Forums
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
DETAILS  Moderator: Bridget Terry Long, Saris Professor of Education and Economics
Speakers:
David Deming, professor of education and economics, HGSE 
Andrew Kelly, senior vice president, strategy and policy, University of North Carolina System 
Deborah Santiago, chief operating officer and vice president for policy, Excelencia in Education 
Josh Wyner, founder and executive director, College Excellence Program and vice president, The Aspen Institute 
It is a changing time for higher education – between tax legislation that may impact institutions’ financial futures, a potential reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, and a tumultuous labor market that calls for workers with greater skills. Amid these uncertainties is the ongoing debate: Should college be free? Some states, like New York and Tennessee, have implemented free tuition programs for community colleges. But some believe that simply making college free will not address issues of completion and success after college. Saris Professor Bridget Terry Long will moderate a debate with leading experts about the future of community colleges in our country – from the free college movement and how to improve community college opportunities and outcomes, to how to better support and help students with the challenges they face.

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The Revolution in American Trade Policy
WHEN  Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, 6 – 7:15 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics
Harvard Kennedy School of Government
SPEAKER(S) Michael B. Froman, United States Trade Representative (2013-2017), Klein Fellowship in Economic Diplomacy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Distinguished Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, HKS, Faculty Director, Future of Diplomacy Project; Faculty Chair, Middle East Initiative, HKS
Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor of Harvard University, Co-Director, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School
CONTACT INFO 617-495-1380

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Building Climate Resilient Communities
Tuesday, January 30
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EST
American Meteorological Society, 45 Beacon Street, Boston
Cost:  $10

Curious how climate change will impact Boston and Cambridge?
Join Charles River Watershed Association for a lecture on Climate Resiliency. CRWA Director of Blue Cities, Pallavi Kalia Mande, a leading authority on water centric urban design and planning, will showcase the Blue Cities approach and strategies for building resilience to extreme storms, increasing flooding and the resulting water quality impacts to the River. Focusing on parts of Boston and Cambridge that drain into the Charles, Pallavi will discuss her Blue Cities work that includes demonstration projects, planning, design, advocacy, public outreach, and collaboration around building resilient communities.

Drinks and light refreshments will be served.

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Boston Green Drinks - JANUARY 2018 Happy Hour
Tuesday, January 30
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
The Ginger Man, 148 State Street, Boston

Join the conversation with sustainability professionals and hobbyists. Enjoy a drink and build your connection with our green community!
New Location! Take note that this is being held at a different location (The Ginger Man) than we historically have held Green Drinks! We will be in the back room - walk past the bar and you'll be there. 

Boston Green Drinks builds a community of sustainably-minded Bostonians, provides a forum for exchange of sustainability career resources, and serves as a central point of information about emerging green issues. We support the exchange of ideas and resources about sustainable energy, environment, food, health, education.

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The MIT Forum: Andre Borschberg SM '83
Tuesday, January 30
6:00 PM to 8:30 PM (EST)
MIT, Samberg Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Cost: $10 per person (alumni and guests), includes appetizers and beer/wine. 

Join fellow MIT alumni for a special MIT Forum event featuring André Borschberg SM '83, CEO, co-founder and pilot of Solar Impulse and co-founder of H55. Borschberg will discuss the new Nova series chronicling his circumnavigation of the globe in a solar plane and his dreams and ambitions for a new project focused on the future of energy and aviation.

Borschberg's talk will be followed by a fireside chat with MIT Technology Review editor David Rotman,, audience Q&A, and reception with drinks and heavy hors d'oeuvres. 

MIT alumni and guests are welcome. Space is limited—register today. 

Event details:
6:00 p.m. Registration and networking
6:30 p.m. Program
7:30 p.m. Reception and networking
u8:30 p.m. Event ends

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To Fight Against This Age:  On Fascism and Humanism
Tuesday, January 30
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Harvard Book Store, WBUR, and Mass Humanities welcome writer and cultural philosopher ROB RIEMEN―founder of the Nexus Institute―for a discussion of his latest book, To Fight Against This Age: On Fascism and Humanism. He will be joined in conversation by CHRISTOPHER LYDON, host of WBUR's radio program Open Source.

About To Fight Against This Age
An international bestseller, To Fight Against This Age consists of two beautifully written, cogent, and urgent essays about the rise of fascism and the ways in which we can combat it.

In “The Eternal Return of Fascism,” Rob Riemen explores the theoretical weakness of fascism, which depends on a politics of resentment, the incitement of anger and fear, xenophobia, the need for scapegoats, and its hatred of the life of the mind. He draws on history and philosophy as well as the essays and novels of Thomas Mann and Albert Camus to explain the global resurgence of fascism, often disguised by its false promises of ushering in freedom and greatness.

Riemen’s own response to what he sees as the spiritual crisis of our age is articulated in “The Return of Europa,” a moving story about the meaning of European humanism with its universal values of truth, beauty, justice, and love for life―values that are the origin and basis of a democratic civilization.

To Fight Against This Age is as timely as it is timeless, to be read by those who want to understand and change the world in which they live.

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The Wizard and the Prophet
Tuesday, January 30
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge

Charles Mann
From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493--an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world.

In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups--Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose. The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win. Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces--food, water, energy, climate change--grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.

Charles C. Mann, a correspondent for The Atlantic, Science, and Wired, has also written for Fortune, the New York Times, Smithsonian, Technology Review, Vanity Fair, the Washington Post, as well as the TV network HBO and the series Law & Order. A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, he is the recipient of writing awards from the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Physics, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation.

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“What Should We Talk About When We Talk About Health?”
Tuesday, January 30
7:00pm to 8:00pm, Lecture - 7-7:30PM | Q&A - 7:30-8PM
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge

Speaker: Sandro Galea, M.D. | Robert A Knox Professor and Dean of School of Public Health | Boston University
Why do we care so much about health, spend so much money on it, and yet do worse at it than essentially any other peer country? Why have we been spending ever more on health and getting ever less healthy as a country? It is, at heart, because we are thinking about our health the wrong way. We keep thinking that to improve our health we can focus only on me, on the individual. And therefore, if only I took care of my lifestyle, and I invested enough money to make sure I have the right medicine when I need it, I am going to be healthier and life longer. And that is the wrong approach. If we want to make sure we promote health, we need to look beyond medicine, beyond how we can make ourselves better once we are already sick and think carefully about the forces around us that create a healthy world. We need to understand the aspects of the world that can genuinely get us on the path towards healthy living and keep us there. And to do so we need to talk about some very different things than we talk about right now when we talk about health. We need to talk about money, power, politics, pain and pleasure, what we value, how we live, and about where we live. We need to change our script on health. This presentation is a step in that direction.

About the Speaker
Dr. Galea is a physician and an epidemiologist. He is the Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean at the Boston University School of Public Health. Prior to his appointment at Boston University, Dr Galea served as the Gelman Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at the University of Michigan and at the New York Academy of Medicine. In his scholarship, Dr Galea is centrally interested in the social production of health of urban populations, with a focus on the causes of brain disorders, particularly common mood-anxiety disorders and substance abuse. 

He has long had a particular interest in the consequences of mass trauma and conflict worldwide, including as a result of the September 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa, and the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This work has been principally funded by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and several foundations. He has published over 650 scientific journal articles, 50 chapters, and 12 books and his research has been featured extensively in current periodicals and newspapers. His latest book, co-authored with Dr Katherine Keyes, is Population Health Science, was published by Oxford University Press in 2016. Dr Galea has a medical degree from the University of Toronto, and graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University; he has an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow. He was named one of TIME magazine’s epidemiology innovators and has been listed by Thomson Reuters as one of the “World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” for the Social Sciences. 

He is past-president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the American Epidemiological Society. Dr Galea has received several lifetime achievement awards for this research, including the Rema Lapouse Award from the American Public Health Association and the Robert S Laufer Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress. He is a regular contributor to Fortune magazine and has published widely in lay press including in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, the Boston Globe, and The New York Times. His research has been cited in these journals and in BBC, Slate, WBUR, and NPR, among others. Dr Galea serves frequently on advisory groups to national and international organizations. He currently serves on the Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities and has formerly served as chair of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Community Services Board and as member of its Health Board.

Science for the Public: Science Literacy Lecture Series
This series is hosted by Science for the Public - a grassroots nonprofit organization committed to improving public understanding of, and appreciation for, science. Visit the Science for the Public website for science info and for videos of other programs featuring outstanding scientists:  http://scienceforthepublic.org
For scientists interested in sharing their work, please contact Yvonne Stapp (yvonne@scienceforthepublic.org).

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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, January 31
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Together We Build, Together We Rise
Wednesday, January 31
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM EST
UMass Boston, 100 William Morrissey Boulevard, Campus Center, Dorchester

Please join us for networking and a dialogue with Professors Amy Cook, Counseling and School Psychology, Kenneth Reardon, Urban Planning and Community Development, and Paul Watanabe, Political Science and Director of the Institute for Asian American Studies who respectively obtained awards in 2017 for their commitment to community collaborations, as well as organizational leaders across Boston with whom the university partners.
Our featured partners include:
Beth Chandler, Interim President and CEO, YW Boston
Chuck Jones, President & Chief Executive Officer, Harbor Health Services
Lydia Lowe, Director, Chinatown Community Land Trust
Mark Culliton, Chief Executive Officer, College Bound Dorchester
Turahn Dorsey, Chief of Education for Mayor Martin Walsh, City of Boston
This fireside chat will be facilitated by national Campus Compact President Andrew Seligsohn and will be an opportunity for deeper dialogue about community based partnerships, the role of the university in the greater community and how we can engage in building “the beloved city” with integral partners.
Coffee and networking will open at 9:30am, the program will begin promptly at 10:00am.
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The oceans in a warming world
Wednesday, January 31
11:00am to 12:00pm
MIT, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, NW17-218, 175 Albany Street, Cambridge

A talk by John Marshall, MIT
In this lecture we will touch on some of the above questions and review how scientists observe patterns of warming propagating down in to the ocean's interior, how the ocean is responding to that warming and what we think the future holds and why.

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The Nexus of Green Building, Public Health and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals
Wednesday, January 31
1 pm
Harvard Global Health Institute, 42 Church Street, Cambridge

Join the Harvard Global Health Institute for their Climate Change and Global Health seminar series featuring Professor Joseph Allen.

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China's Top 1000 and 10,000 Energy-Consuming Enterprises Program: Effectiveness, Compliance, and Lessons
Wednesday, January 31
3:30PM TO 4:45PM
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge

CAO Jing, Visiting Scholar, Harvard-China Project; Associate Professor, Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University

China Project Seminar 

Contact Name:   Tiffany Chan

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Water Management for Future Climate Scenarios
Wednesday, January 31
3:30pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building E51-095, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge

Water quality and water supply reliability are challenged by climate change in ways that affect livelihoods and ecosystems alike.  In fact, climate’s influence on water can already be seen through declining groundwater recharge; increased sedimentation and water contamination; intensified droughts, as well as many other indicators.  While examples of these challenges manifest at an increasing rate across the globe, demand for water rises as well.  Given the short- and long-term uncertainty and the regional-differences in ways climate affects water systems, what is to be done?  Join MIT's Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS) for a panel that features research by MIT graduate students and postdocs that addresses this challenging water management issue. 

Presenters include:
Sarah Fletcher, PhD candidate, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, and 2017-2018 Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellow for Water Solutions
Julian Koelbel, Postdoc, Sloan School of Management
Christina Legg, MCP candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Cindy Noe, MPA/MBA candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Sloan School of Management
Tyler Swingle, M.Arch candidate in the Department of Architecture
Panel moderated by Janelle Heslop, dual degree SM/MBA candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Sloan School of Management

*Light refreshments will be provided

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Charles Murray and the Alt Right as History
WHEN  Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2018, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, CGIS South S020, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, A Research Cluster on Global Transformations and the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History
SPEAKER(S)  Janet Helms, Augustus Long Professor in the Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology and Director of the Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race and Culture, Boston College
Stuart Schrader, Postdoctoral Fellow in Global American Studies, Harvard University
Quinn Slobodian, ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Fellow, Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, Harvard University/Associate Professor of History, Wellesley College
Adam van Arsdale, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Wellesley College
Moderator: Kirsten Weld, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University
DETAILS  Scholars from four disciplines discuss the origins and consequences of the resurgence of scientific categories of race in right-wing thought.

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Applying Asset Pricing Theory to Calibrate the Price of Climate Risk
Wednesday, January 31
4:15pm
Harvard, Littauer-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge

Kent Daniel, Columbia University, Robert Litterman, Kepos Capital, and Gernot Wagner, Harvard University

Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy

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Opioids and the Masses: Early Lessons from the Epidemic
Wednesday, January 31
4:30 pm to 6:00 pm 
BU, 72 East Concord Street, Hiebert Lounge, Boston
Live streaming available

Sally Satel, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute and Consulting Psychiatrist, Partners in Drug Abuse Rehabilitation and Counseling Clinic
The opioid crisis is unprecedented in its lethality and demography. Fentanyl and other synthetics have turbo-charged the death rate. As federal, state, and local governments grapple with solutions, they have encountered both promising strategies and unexpected difficulties; among the latter are the challenges of engaging patients in treatment, the paradoxes of naloxone administration, the provision of quality care in office-based, medication-assisted treatment, and the rational use of opioid painkillers where needed while curtailing over-prescribing. This talk will focus on the policy and treatment implications of these clinical realities within the larger context of social and cultural drivers of addiction.

Contact Email eventsph@bu.edu

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CSAIL Wellness Colloquium: Nutrition Research is Confusing. How Much Does it Actually Matter What You Eat?
Speaker: Susan Roberts , Professor of Nutrition, Tufts University and founder of the iDiet weight loss program 
Wednesday, January 31
5:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Refreshments: 5:00 PM
MIT, Building 32-G449, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Nutrition has become one of the media’s most sensational topics, with widely divergent views about how much healthy food really matters, what is healthy, and when and how to eat. This talk will provide guidance on all these topics, and will also offer some simple ways to triage nutrition research information in the media. 

Roberts is an internationally-recognized nutrition and weight management researcher, and developed the online iDiet program which is proven to achieve high levels of weight loss with novel retrain-your-brain methodology. In her research lab at the USDA Nutrition Center at Tufts University she studies how to make weight loss easier and more sustainable. She has more than 250 research publications in scientific journals, three popular books, and has been a member of Institute of Medicine committees making national dietary recommendations

Contact: Victoria Palay, 617-253-8924, palay@csail.mit.edu

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How Democracies Die
Wednesday, January 31
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome Harvard University Professors of Government STEVEN LEVITSKY and DANIEL ZIBLATT for a discussion of their new book, How Democracies Die.

About How Democracies Die
Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one. 

Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved.

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Fossil Free Fast: The Climate Resistance
Wednesday, January 31
8pm EST
Livestream

On January 31st, the day after Trump’s first State of the Union, our movement will come together for Fossil Free Fast: The Climate Resistance.

Movement leaders including Senator Bernie Sanders, Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement, Rev. Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, Jessica Lorena Rangel of Houston Eyes of a Dreamer, Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, and many more will deliver the state of our climate movement. They will share stories on the urgency of the current political and climate crises, and light our path ahead: resist the Trump Administration’s ongoing attacks on our climate, build power towards the 2018 and 2020 elections, and secure the lasting change we need through local action.

Together, we will end the use of fossil fuels and usher in the fast and just transition to 100% renewable energy for all

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Thursday, February 1
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2018 Renewable Energy Conference
Thursday, February 1
8 AM to 6 PM
Newton Marriott Hotel, 2345 Commonwealth Avenue, Auburndale

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Redistributing Power:  Energy Democracy, Renewables & Community Resilience
Thursday, February 1
12:00-1:00pm 
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford

Jennie Stephens, Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science & Policy, Northeastern University
Energy democracy is an emergent social movement advancing renewable energy transitions by resisting the dominant fossil-fuel based energy agenda while reclaiming and democratically restructuring energy policy. By focusing on the potential for renewable-based energy systems to redistribute economic and political power as well as electric power, the energy democracy movement is shifting energy policy discourse and connecting it with social justice and community resilience.

Jennie C. Stephens is the Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science & Policy at Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs and the Associate Director of Strategic Research Collaborations at Northeastern’s Global Resilience Institute. Her research, teaching, and community engagement focus on social and political aspects of the renewable energy transition, energy democracy, reducing fossil fuel reliance, gender diversity, and strengthening societal resilience by integrating social justice with climate and energy policy. Before joining Northeastern University, she was on the faculty at the University of Vermont and Clark University. She earned her PhD and MS at Caltech in Environmental Science & Engineering and her BA at Harvard in Environmental Science & Public Policy.

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Self-Driving Cars: Pros and Cons for the Public's Health
WHEN  Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE  Leadership Studio, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
SPEAKER(S)  EXPERT PARTICIPANTS
Deborah Hersman, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Safety Council
John Leonard, Vice President for Driving Research, Toyota Research Institute
Peter Sweatman, Executive Advisor for the Connected and Automated Vehicle Business Unit, CAVita
Jay Winsten, Frank Stanton Director of the Center for Health Communication at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Associate Dean for Health Communication
MODERATOR  David Freeman, Editorial Director, NBC News MACH
TICKET INFO  Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO To attend the studio audience, please RSVP to theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS  No longer the stuff of science fiction, driverless cars already are being tested in numerous U.S. markets. These autonomous vehicles may revolutionize the automotive world, removing human error from driving, reshaping transportation systems and transforming the country’s roadway infrastructure. In fact, existing technology such as collision avoidance systems and vehicle backup cameras represent steps towards a more automated future. Yet such progress also raises questions regarding regulations, ethics and safety management. In this Forum, experts will review current technology, realistic long-term plans, and the risks and benefits of a driverless future to the public.

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Health and Safety Issues of Nanomaterials
Thursday, February 1
1:00pm to 2:30pm
MIT, EHS Office, BuildingN52-496 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge9

The exciting field of nanotechnology is creating the next industrial revolution in engineering. It is also creating the new field of nanotoxicology. Are nanoparticles more toxic than dust particles we normally work with? Could carbon nanotubes possibly be the next asbestos? Come find out what we know and don't know and how to work safely in your laboratory with nanomaterials. 

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Shifting Fire Regimes and Their Compounding Impact on Ecosystem Biogeochemistry
Thursday, February 1
4:00pm
Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge

Adam Pellegrini, Stanford University
Abstract: Each year, fires burn ~570 million hectares, producing carbon losses that are equivalent to ~20% of the emissions from anthropogenic fossil fuel consumption. After fire, the recovery of plants can offset these losses by sequestering carbon during regrowth. Long-term shifts in fire regimes may change the balance between losses and recovery, but multiple factors restrict our ability to forecast such changes. Here, I will present data that address the uncertainty in how soils respond to long-term changes in fire regimes, the potential link between soil and plant responses, and how plant traits may structure these fire-plant-soil interactions. My results demonstrate that more frequent burning leads to decadal alterations in soil carbon and nutrients, and that effects vary predictably based on ecosystem type, the amount of time fire regimes have been altered, and the physicochemical properties of elements. Further data illustrate the potential for fire-nutrient interactions to influence the ability of ecosystems to recover by regulating plant productivity and the trait composition of the plant community. I will conclude by discussing the utility of certain plant traits in predicting the resilience of ecosystems to fire in modelling contexts.

OEB Special Seminar

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gents of Change' Film Screening and Discussion
WHEN  Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Wasserstein Hall – 1010 Classroom, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Film
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice
SPEAKER(S)  Filmmakers Frank Dawson and Abby Ginzberg
COST  Free and open to the public
DETAILS  From the well-publicized events at San Francisco State in 1968 to the image of black students with guns emerging from the takeover of the student union at Cornell University in April 1969, the struggle for a more relevant and meaningful education, including demands for black and ethnic studies programs, became a clarion call across the country in the late 1960s. Through the stories of these young men and women who were at the forefront of these efforts, "Agents of Change" examines the untold story of the racial conditions on college campuses and in the country that led to these protests. The film’s characters were caught at the crossroads of the civil rights, black power, and anti-Vietnam war movements at a pivotal time in America’s history. Today, over 45 years later, many of the same demands are surfacing in campus protests across the country, revealing how much work remains to be done.
"Agents of Change" links the past to the present and the present to the past–making it not just a movie but a movement.

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Combinatorics & Complexity Public Talk - Jacob Fox
WHEN  Thursday, February 1, 2018, 5 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Askwith Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications
SPEAKER(S)  Jacob Fox (Standford University)
DETAILS  Jacob Fox will give a public lecture as part of the Harvard University Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications' Combinatorics & Complexity program.
Combinatorics and Computational Complexity have enjoyed a rich history of interaction leading to many significant developments in the two fields, such as the theories of NP-completeness, expander graphs, pseudorandomness, and property testing. Lately these fields have seen many new points of intersection such as in the development of the polynomial method (used, for example, in recent advances on the cap-set problem as well as in development of optimal list-decodable codes), the method of interlacing families of polynomials (yielding Ramanujan graphs and the resolution of the Kadison-Singer problem), and the theory of randomness extractors (yielding explicit constructions of Ramsey graphs). This special program will bring together experts in the fields to collaborate, to learn about the latest advances in the area, and to forge new connections.

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A Conversation with Senator Dick Durbin
WHEN  Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, 6 – 7:15 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
SPEAKER(S)  Dick Durbin, United States Senator, Illinois
Bill Delahunt (moderator), Acting Director, Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, Former United States Representative, Massachusetts
CONTACT INFO 617-495-1380

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Gutman Library Distinguished Author Series: Addicted to Reform
WHEN  Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Gutman Conference Center - Area 3, 6 Appian Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Gutman Library
SPEAKER(S)  John Merrow, Ed.D.’73, author and former education correspondent for PBS NewsHour
DETAILS  In "Addicted to Reform," John Merrow argues that current school reform efforts are too focused on “symptoms” like graduation rates instead of the root cause of our problems: an antiquated approach to schooling that cannot fulfill the needs of the twenty-first century. Year after year, we rely on standards like Common Core that place unfair burdens on students and under-resourced public schools. We launch reforms that ask “heroic teachers” to compensate for societal problems like poverty and inequality. And just when modern technologies allow students to move at individual speeds and different levels, we reduce kids to test scores, producing graduates who never learn to ask questions, dig deep, or discover and follow their passions.

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Does Mindfulness Alter the Brain? The Impact Meditation has on Our Brains
Thursday, February 1
6:30pm
Aeronaut, 14 Tyler Street, Somerville
   
Sara Lazar


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"All the Queen's Horses" Film Screening and Panel Discussion
WHEN  Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Wiener Auditorium, Taubman Building, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Film
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR HKS Center for Public Leadership
SPEAKER(S)  Opening Remarks:  Professor Max Bazerman, HBS Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration
Panelists:
Moderator: Eugene Soltes, HBS Jakurski Family Associate Professor of Business Administration
Kelly Richmond Pope, Director and Producer, "All the Queen's Horses" and Associate Professor, School of Accountancy and MIS at DePaul University
Gordon Quinn, Executive Producer, "All the Queen's Horses" and Founder and Artistic Director, Kartemquin Films
DIRECTED BY  Kelly Richmond Pope
DETAILS  As city comptroller of Dixon, IL, Rita Crundwell stole $53 million of public funds across 20 years––making her the perpetrator of the largest case of municipal fraud in American history. She used the funds to build one of the nation's leading quarter horse breeding empires, all while forcing staff cuts, police budget slashing, and neglect of public infrastructure. "All the Queen's Horses" investigates her crime, her lavish lifestyle and the small town she left in her wake.
Join us for a screening of "All the Queen's Horses," followed by a panel discussion about the film and its themes. Refreshments will be served.

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Weathering the Storm:  Building Resilience to Extreme Precipitation
Thursday, February 1
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Museum of Science, Museum of Science Driveway, Boston

What should communities do to become more resilient to storms and extreme precipitation events like Sandy, Maria, and Irma? Consider the perspectives of diverse stakeholders and discuss the trade-offs of various strategies as you make recommendations for increasing a generalized community's future resilience.

Join us for an interactive program using visualizations to explore potential vulnerabilities to a community's infrastructures, social networks, and ecosystems from extreme precipitation events, then discuss potential strategies for addressing these threats, focusing on the priorities and needs of relevant stakeholders.

This event is for adult audiences (18+).

To reserve tickets for groups larger than four people, please email forumrsvp@mos.org.

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Friday & Saturday, February 2 & 3
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Tufts Energy Conference
Friday & Saturday, February 2 & 3
The Fletcher School at Tufts University, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
Cost:  $15 - $150

Calling all energy futurists! 

This year's conference will offer a forum for cross-sector discourse on the challenges and opportunities associated with meeting national and international energy and environmental demands in the short, medium, and long-term. 

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Friday, February 2
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MIT on Chaos and Climate:  Centenary Celebration of Jule Charney and Ed Lorenz
Friday, February 2
8:30AM – 5:30PM
MIT, Building E51-115, Wong Auditorium, 2 Ames Street, Cambridge

A scientific symposium presented by the Department of Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences, and co-sponsored by the Lorenz Center and the Houghton Fund, featuring presentations by colleagues from across MIT and the scientific community.


For more information: John Marshall | jmarsh@mit.edu -or- Faith Zhang | fhzhang@mit.edu

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Mapathon for Puerto Rico
Friday, February 2
1:00PM-4:00PM
MIT, Building 14N-132, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge

Building upon the recent success of a student-driven mapathon, the Libraries is hosting a third session for people to use the OpenStreetMap platform to help hurricane relief efforts. The Red Cross in Puerto Rico has requested two tasks we can help with for their relief efforts: (i) mapping buildings and (ii) pre-disaster imagery to give an operating picture of the island before the hurricane made landfall. If you're interested in participating, please bring your laptops!

Contact: Sofia Leung, sofial@mit.edu

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Origin of Life Seminar Series:  The Planetary Battery for the Origins of Life: The Example of Mars"
Friday, February 2
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building E25-605, 45 Carleton, Cambridge

Vlada Stamenkovic | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech
A rocky planet can act as a battery fueling the origins and the evolution of life by locally providing redox gradients that can drive simple metabolic activity. In this talk, I will use Mars as an example to show first results on two very different planetary processes that generate oxygen- and hydrogen-rich surface and subsurface aqueous environments in an evolving planet.

On one hand of the redox spectrum (reducing), I will show how novel and fast geodynamic interior evolution models can be used to compute the local production of hydrogen and methane through processes like serpentinization and radiolysis of water in the Martian lithosphere across the last 4.5 billion years. We will see that specific zones on Mars had and still have the capability to generate hydrogen fluxes likely large enough to support microbial communities — with the availability of subsurface water being the greatest uncertainty. On the other hand of the redox spectrum (oxidizing), I explore how atmosphere-brine interactions governed by climate and low-temperature surface chemistry suggest the existence of shallow oxygen-rich briny environments on Mars today and in its past. I will show that oxygen concentrations in such brines (especially in perchlorates) can be large enough to sustain aerobic metabolic activity and that the availability of such aerobic environments likely varied with obliquity cycles on timescales of thousands of years.

I will show time-dependent spatial maps of such hydrogen- and oxygen-rich oases on Mars, explain what controls their formation and temporal evolution, and discuss what our results imply for the origins of life on Mars and beyond — from a planetary and exploration-driven perspective.

About the Speaker
Vlada Stamenkovic is a postdoctoral Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life fellow at Caltech and JPL. He is a global geophysicist and theoretical physicist who explores the fundamental principles of geophysics and the co-evolution of planets and life on Earth and beyond - from their origins to modern time.

EAPS IAP 2018: Origin of Life Seminar Series
Our Origin of Life Seminars are a series of hosted lectures from leaders in the Origin of Life community, focusing on various dimensions of one of the most challenging problems in the biological and planetary sciences. Topics include the origin of cells, metabolism, replication and proteins, as well as the geochemical conditions on the Early Earth that led to prebiotic and early biotic systems. Enrolled students will attend 4 seminars during IAP, actively engage in Q & A sessions with invited speakers in a panel format, and collaborate on creating an Origins of Life online blog resource highlighting the work of invited speakers. 

Instructor: Greg Fournier 

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A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter 
Friday February 2
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline

Nikki Giovanni 
One of America’s most celebrated poets looks inward in this powerful collection, a rumination on her life and the people who have shaped her.

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Saturday, February 3
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Mass Green Network Third Annual Summit
Saturday, February 3
9:30am to 4:00pm
Emerson College, Boston

Regen Milani presents on marine debris at our first summit. Photo by Sylvia Broude.
Since we started in October 2015, the members of the Mass Green Network have passed over 60 local laws to reduce plastic waste.  When we started in October 2015, there were 23 bylaws and ordinances on plastic bags and polystyrene in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Now there are 87.

At our 2018 summit we will reflect on the lessons of the past year, share our stories, and learn about new resources and best practices -- both for passing new regulations, and for implementing those that have been adopted.
The 2018 summit will feature expert briefings on passing local laws to reduce plastic bags, polystyrene, bottled water, and pesticides. There will also be a panel on the Fair Share Amendment, which equalizes the tax code to secure more funds for education and transportation. And there will be workshops on effective advocacy through campaign planning, lobbying, and messaging.

If you want to pass a new law to help your community live more sustainably, or if you're saddled with the task of implementing a new local regulation about plastic bags or polystyrene, then please come.

Admission is free!  (Your donations will be appreciated.)

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Monday, February 5
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Glacial Tropical Climate Revisited
Monday, February 5
12:00PM
Harvard, Haller Hall (102), Geo Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge

The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences welcomes, Jessica Tierney, Professor, Arizona University

EPS Colloquium

Contact Name:  Milena Perez

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Making, breaking and linking memories
Monday, February 5
12:00PM – 1:00 PM
BU,  Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering, Room 101, Auditorium, 610 Commonwealth, Boston

Professor Sheena Josselyn, University of Toronto


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Norton Lecture II, 'The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part II' by Frederick Wiseman
WHEN  Monday, Feb. 5, 2018, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE  Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Film, Humanities, Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
SPEAKER(S)  Frederick Wiseman
COST  Free
TICKET INFO  Tickets will be available starting at noon on the day of each lecture. Tickets will be available in person at Sanders Theatre or online (handling fees apply). Limit of two tickets per person. Tickets valid until 3:45pm.
CONTACT INFO humcentr@fas.harvard.edu, 617-495-0738
DETAILS  Wide Angle: The Norton Lectures on Cinema
The Norton Professors in 2018 are Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, and Frederick Wiseman
Monday, Jan. 29 and Monday, Feb. 5: Frederick Wiseman
The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part I and Part II
Monday, Feb. 26 and Tuesday, Feb. 27: Agnès Varda
The 7th Art and Me and Crossing the Borders
Monday, April 2 and Monday, April 9: Wim Wenders
Poetry in Motion and The Visible and the Invisible

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Askwith Forums – Realizing Human Potential through Education
WHEN  Monday, Feb. 5, 2018, 5 – 6:30 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
TYPE OF EVENT Forum, Question & Answer Session
PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT  Alumni, Askwith Forum
BUILDING/ROOM  Askwith Hall
CONTACT NAME  Roger Falcon
CONTACT PHONE  617-384-9968
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT Harvard Graduate School of Education
REGISTRATION REQUIRED  No
ADMISSION FEE This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP REQUIRED No
FEATURED EVENT Askwith Forums
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
DETAILS
Inaugural 2017 Yidan Prize Laureates: 
Vicky Colbert, Yidan Prize for Education Development; founder and director, Fundación Escuela Nueva, Colombia
Carol Dweck, Yidan Prize for Education Research; Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology, Stanford University 
Moderator: Nonie Lesaux, Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society and Academic Dean, HGSE
Founded in 2016, the Yidan Prize Foundation has a mission to create a better world through education. The Yidan Prize consists of two awards, the Yidan Prize for Education Research and the Yidan Prize for Education Development, that include a cash prize and a project fund. Join Professor Lesaux in a conversation with the inaugural Prize laureates about their work.

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When:  The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
Monday, February 5
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost:  $5 -$28.75 (online only, book included)

Harvard Book Store welcomes DANIEL H. PINK—author of #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human—for a discussion of his latest book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

About When
Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don't know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of "when" decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork.

Timing, it's often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science.

Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. How can we use the hidden patterns of the day to build the ideal schedule? Why do certain breaks dramatically improve student test scores? How can we turn a stumbling beginning into a fresh start? Why should we avoid going to the hospital in the afternoon? Why is singing in time with other people as good for you as exercise? And what is the ideal time to quit a job, switch careers, or get married?

In When, Pink distills cutting-edge research and data on timing and synthesizes them into a fascinating, readable narrative packed with irresistible stories and practical takeaways that give readers compelling insights into how we can live richer, more engaged lives.

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Tuesday, February 6
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Speaker Series: Margaret Sullivan
Tuesday, February 6
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Rubenstein 414, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge

Margaret Sullivan is the media columnist for The Washington Post, writing on journalism ethics, free speech, and the intersection of politics and the news media. Before joining The Post in 2016, she was The New York Times public editor, and previously, the chief editor of The Buffalo News, her hometown paper where she started as a summer intern. She was the first woman to serve as managing editor and editor in chief of The News, as well as the first female public editor of the New York Times. A graduate of Georgetown University and Northwestern University’s Medill School, she is a former member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and was twice elected as a director of the American Society of News Editors, where she led the First Amendment committee. Sullivan taught in the graduate schools of journalism at Columbia University and City University of New York. In 2017, she won the Stephen Hamblett First Amendment Award from the New England First Amendment Coalition, recognizing her columns at The Times and The Post that championed free speech and press rights.

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Governing and Mental Health Policy: Addiction, Poverty, Guns and Prisons
WHEN  Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE  Leadership Studio - 10th Floor, Kresge Building, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Voices in Leadership webcast program, HSPH
SPEAKER(S)  Ted Strickland, former Governor of Ohio
COST  free
CONTACT INFO Alison Barron - abarron@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS  Join us for the next “Voices in Leadership” event of the Spring semester, featuring Ted Strickland, former Governor of Ohio. He became Ohio’s governor as the nation teetered on the brink of economic collapse and tackled the crisis with a plan to ensure that Ohio emerged from the recession stronger than ever by laying a foundation for economic progress and a thriving middle class. He made strategic investments in job creation, improved Ohio’s business climate, reformed education, proposed and signed into law an energy bill with strong renewable and efficiency standards and worked with the legislature to prepare Ohio for the post-recession economy.
Gov. Strickland will be interviewed by Dr. John McDonough. Please join us online or in-person for this dynamic event! For lottery and live webcast details, please visit www.hsph.me/Strickland.

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Three transportation revolutions: Steering sharing, automation, and electrification toward the public interest
Tuesday, February 6,
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building E51-315, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge

Dan Sperling’s research examines the potential benefits, impacts, and synergies of the three transportation “revolutions:” electrification, automation, and pooling. In this seminar, Sperling will describe what needs to happen for this new transportation paradigm to truly benefit the public interest. Sperling will provide insight into the forces—from effective government policies to partnerships between transit operators, mobility service companies, automakers, and others—that will be instrumental in enhancing social equity, environmental sustainability, and urban livability.

These ideas are discussed in depth in the book Three Revolutions: Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a Better Future, co-authored by Sperling along with other leaders in the field. The first fifty pre-registered individuals to arrive at this seminar will receive free copies of the book.  

Examining the potential benefits, impacts, and synergies of the three “transportation” revolutions 
Reviewing innovative ideas and partnerships within the transportation sector 
Exploring the necessity of effective government policy in shifting the new transportation paradigm toward the public interest

Speaker Bio:
Daniel Sperling is a distinguished professor of civil engineering and environmental science and policy, and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis (ITS-Davis). He was appointed to the transportation seat on the California Air Resources Board by Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown and served as chair of the Transportation Research Board in 2015-16. He won the 2013 Blue Planet Prize from the Asahi Glass Foundation for being “a pioneer in opening up new fields of study to create more efficient, low-carbon, and environmentally beneficial transportation systems.”

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Deciphering the human microbiota using chemistry
Tuesday, February 6
4pm
MIt, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge

Emily Balskus, Harvard University


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The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
WHEN  Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, 27 Kirkland Street, Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way, Lower Level Conference Room, Cambridge 
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
SPEAKER(S)  Yascha Mounk, Lecturer in the Government Department, Harvard University; Local Affiliate, CES, Harvard University
CONTACT INFO  Jessica Barnard
DETAILS  Two core components of liberal democracy—individual rights and the popular will—are increasingly at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of “rights without democracy” took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create something just as bad: a system of “democracy without rights.”
The consequence, Mounk shows in The People vs. Democracy, is that trust in politics is dwindling. Drawing on vivid stories and original research, Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters’ discontent: stagnating living standards, fears of multi-ethnic democracy, and the rise of social media. To reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms that benefit the many, not the few.
The People vs. Democracy goes beyond a mere description of the rise of populism. In plain language, it describes both how we got here and where we need to go.

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Askwith Forums – Immigration, Activism, and DACA: An Evening with Jose Antonio Vargas and Joy Reid
WHEN  Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE  Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
TYPE OF EVENT Forum, Question & Answer Session
PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT  Alumni, Askwith Forum
BUILDING/ROOM  Askwith Hall
CONTACT NAME  Roger Falcon
CONTACT PHONE  617-384-9968
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT Harvard Graduate School of Education
REGISTRATION REQUIRED  No
ADMISSION FEE This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP REQUIRED No
FEATURED EVENT  Askwith Forums
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
DETAILS  Speaker:Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist; founder and CEO, Define American
Moderator: Joy Reid, political analyst and host of “AM Joy,” MSNBC
Introduction: Roberto G. Gonzales, professor of education, HGSE
On September 5, 2017, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Obama policy that shielded nearly 800,000 young people from deportation. In light of DACA’s termination and new concerns over immigration policy, Professor Gonzales will kick off a multi-week series on DACA, immigration reform, and community responses to restrictionist policies. Reid will interview Vargas about the politics and policies of immigration, the termination of DACA, and the meaning of American in this current political moment.

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Emerging Professionals for the Environment: Building a Sustainable Business
Tuesday, February 6
5:30PM-7:30PM
50 Milk Street Boston

Come hear from Nathan Rothstein, Co-founder and President of Project Repat, about his experience as a young entrepreneur making a sustainable idea into one of the fastest growing consumer goods businesses in the country. Stick around afterwards to grab some free food and drinks while you mingle with other young professionals interested in business and sustainability.

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Ubiquitous Autonomous Vehicles: Upending Industries – Unlocking Entrepreneurial Opportunities
Tuesday, February 6 
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
MIT, Building 32-123, Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Cost: $30; Members: $20; Students: $10; Student members: $5

By 2040, we estimate that 95% of new vehicles sold, or 96.3 million cars, will be fully autonomous
—a $3.6 trillion opportunity. Fortune 2017

You cannot go one day without hearing about how the large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles will impact our lives and the numerous benefits to society.

But what about the new industries that it will create and the entrepreneurial impact of AV deployment?  How about the implications for the industry, the built environment, data security, safety and energy?  Our panel will delve into these and other entrepreneurial opportunities unlocked with the adoption of autonomous transportation.

To start, how about advanced mapping, data and analytics, networking/privacy, intelligent infrastructure, location-based services, mobility transactions, new mobility and ownership models and logistics. Perhaps the reallocation of parking and redistribution of traffic flow? Saving significant levels of energy? Providing transportation for seniors and the disabled to get to work? How about the communication necessary for connected vehicles and eliminating the need for military drivers to be in dangerous areas?

The impact is extremely broad – and the entrepreneurial opportunities seemingly endless.

Please join our expert panel to learn:

How true are the adoption predictions?
What are the impacts of a 90% reduction in traffic accidents?
What are the implications of smart technology for vehicles and road systems?
How will autonomous vehicles be impacted by AI, data and data analytics?
Who will provide the financial backing?

Moderator
Dylan Martin, Staff Writer: BostInno

Speakers
Dr. Christopher Borroni-Bird, Founder of Afreecar LLC; Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab
Chris Cheever, Founder and Partner, Fontinalis Partners (Boston office)
Chris Thomas,  Founder and Partner of Fontinalis Partners (Detroit office); board member of nuTonomy till acquisition by Delphi in October 2017
Augustin Wegscheider, Principal, Boston Consulting Group; Project Manager of Future of Urban & Autonomous Mobility, World Economic Forum

Agenda
5:30-6:00: Registration
6:00-7:30: Panel and Q&A
7:30-8:30: Networking with refreshments

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Opening Conversation "Where is Cambridge From?" & Annual Meeting
Tuesday, February 6
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge

Join us at this Opening Conversation, launching our 2018 theme, "Where is Cambridge From?" 
Opening Conversation speakers Alexandra Sedlovskaya and Dr. Kerri Greenidge, guided by Diana Lempel; will be setting the table for this year's programs which will explore the ways Cantabrigians define where they're "from" and why it matters. What makes someone feel they're from Cambridge or not, and how has this changed over time?

Event is open to the public and free. Please register!
Light Refreshments

The Opening Conversation will be followed by the Annual Meeting of the Members. All are welcome.
Inclement Weather Date: 2/8/18
Speakers:
Alexandra Sedlovskaya, Assistant Director, C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard Business School
Dr. Kerri Greenidge, Department of History, Tufts University; Co-Director Tufts / African American Freedom Trail Project, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy
Moderator:  Diana Lempel, Doing History Curator at Cambridge Historical Society and Co-Founder, Practice Space


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Film screening and discussion: Albatross 
Tuesday, February 6
6–8:30 pm
Menschel Hall, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge

Join the Planetary Health Alliance, Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions for a special film screening of "Albatross" – a stunning visual journey exploring the consequences of global plastics pollution in the ocean through the eyes of the Albatross population on Midway Island. Following the screening we will hold a discussion with filmmaker Chris Jordan, Robin Kelsey, Matthew Potts, and Jim McCarthy. Terry Tempest Williams and Sam Myers will moderate the discussion.

The discussion will explore territory we sometimes avoid: in witnessing environmental degradation and its consequences, what is the role of grief? What does it mean to “bear witness”? As scientists and scholars, is our emotional reaction to the degradation of Nature relevant to our work? How do we acknowledge emotional ties to Nature, even reverence for Nature, while retaining scientific objectivity in our work? Is it even possible to activate the change we need without acknowledging the moral and emotional dimensions of what we are witnessing?

Registration is required. Space is limited. Free and open to the public.

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Designing Reality: Authors' Talk
Tuesday, February 6
6:30-8 p.m.
MIT Museum, Building N51, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge

Join MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld and co-authors Alan, and Joel Gershenfeld as they discuss their latest book Designing Reality, an exploration of the dawning of the third digital revolution where anyone can fabricate (almost) anything.

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This Narrow Space:  A Pedriatic Oncologist, His Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Patients, and a Hospital in Jerusalem
Tuesday February 6
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline

Elisha Waldman 
A memoir both bittersweet and inspiring by an American pediatric oncologist who spent seven years in Jerusalem treating children—Israeli Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza—who had all been diagnosed with cancer.

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Opportunity
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Where is the best yogurt on the planet made? Somerville, of course!
Join the Somerville Yogurt Making Cooperative and get a weekly quart of the most thick, creamy, rich and tart yogurt in the world. Members share the responsibility for making yogurt in our kitchen located just outside of Davis Sq. in FirstChurch.  No previous yogurt making experience is necessary.

For more information checkout.

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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents

Solar map of Cambridge, MA

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Sunny Cambridge has just launched! Sunny Cambridge is the city-wide initiative that makes it easy for all types of residents to get solar power for their homes. Cambridge has lined up local solar installers through the EnergySage Solar Marketplace, which helps you request, receive, and compare solar quotes 100% online with support available every step of the way.

The City of Cambridge is working on many levels to reduce energy use and GHG emissions to make the city more sustainable. As a semifinalist in the nationwide competition for the $5 million Georgetown University Energy Prize, Cambridge Energy Alliance is encouraging residents to take actions to save energy, save money, and protect the environment. Get involved by signing up for a no-cost home energy assessment at the Cambridge Energy Alliance home page (www.cambridgeenergyalliance.org/winit)
and going solar at http://www.sunnycambridge.org 

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Resource
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Sustainable Business Network Local Green Guide
SBN is excited to announce the soft launch of its new Local Green Guide, Massachusetts' premier Green Business Directory!
To view the directory please visit: http://www.localgreenguide.org
To find out how how your business can be listed on the website or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Adritha at adritha@sbnboston.org

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Boston Food System
"The Boston Food System [listserv] provides a forum to post announcements of events, employment opportunities, internships, programs, lectures, and other activities as well as related articles or other publications of a non-commercial nature covering the area's food system - food, nutrition, farming, education, etc. - that take place or focus on or around Greater Boston (broadly delineated)."
The Boston area is one of the most active nationwide in terms of food system activities - projects, services, and events connected to food, farming, nutrition - and often connected to education, public health, environment, arts, social services and other arenas.   Hundreds of organizations and enterprises cover our area, but what is going on week-to-week is not always well publicized.
Hence, the new Boston Food System listserv, as the place to let everyone know about these activities.  Specifically:
Use of the BFS list will begin soon, once we get a decent base of subscribers.  Clarification of what is appropriate to announce and other posting guidelines will be provided as well.
It's easy to subscribe right now at https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/subscribe/bfs

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The Boston Network for International Development (BNID) maintains a website (BNID.org) that serves as a clearing-house for information on organizations, events, and jobs related to international development in the Boston area. BNID has played an important auxiliary role in fostering international development activities in the Boston area, as witnessed by the expanding content of the site and a significant growth in the number of users.
The website contains:
A calendar of Boston area events and volunteer opportunities related to International Development - http://www.bnid.org/events
A jobs board that includes both internships and full time positions related to International Development that is updated daily - http://www.bnid.org/jobs
A directory and descriptions of more than 250 Boston-area organizations - http://www.bnid.org/organizations
Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter (we promise only one email per week) to get the most up-to-date information on new job and internship opportunities -www.bnid.org/sign-up
The website is completely free for students and our goal is to help connect students who are interested in international development with many of the worthwhile organizations in the area.
Please feel free to email our organization at info@bnid.org if you have any questions!

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Boston Maker Spaces - 41 (up from 27 in 2016) and counting:  https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zGHnt9r2pQx8.kfw9evrHsKjA&hl=en
Solidarity Network Economy:  https://ussolidarityeconomy.wordpress.com
Bostonsmart.com's Guide to Boston:  http://www.bostonsmarts.com/BostonGuide/

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Links to events at over 50 colleges and universities at Hubevents:  http://hubevents.blogspot.com

Thanks to
Fred Hapgood's Selected Lectures on Science and Engineering in the Boston Area:  http://www.BostonScienceLectures.com
MIT Energy Club:  http://mitenergyclub.org/
Sustainability at Harvard:  http://green.harvard.edu/events
Microsoft NERD Center:  http://microsoftcambridge.com/Events/
Startup and Entrepreneurial Events:  http://www.greenhornconnect.com/events/
Cambridge Civic Journal:  http://www.rwinters.com
Cambridge Happenings:   http://cambridgehappenings.org
Cambridge Community Calendar:  https://www.cctvcambridge.org/calendar


If you have an event you would like to see here, the submission deadline is 11 AM on Sundays, as Energy (and Other) Events is sent out Sunday afternoons.
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