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, February 12
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12pm Low-Latitude Arc-Continent Collision as a Driver for Global Cooling
12pm Using in-situ measurements of the water vapor isotopic ratio to understand convective transport in the Asian Summer Monsoon
12pm BetterMIT Innovation Week: Ideation & Design Thinking
12pm Imperfect Markets versus Imperfect Regulation in U.S. Electricity Generation
12:15pm The Stylized Facts of Inequality
12:30pm India's Coal Industry: History and Prospects
3pm Tech Talk for Educators: Social Media for Family Engagement
4:15pm The Epidemic of Poverty: The Government Imperative
5:30pm Energy for Development Talk by Rohini Pande
The Fierce Urgency of Now Speaker Series: Douglas Johnson - Trump's Human Rights Policy: Waiting for the Shoe to Drop
5:30pm Lesson on Mindfulness: Perspective from Zen Buddhist Priest in Kyoto
6pm #BUcityplanning Lecture: The Development of Boston’s Metropolitan Water System
6pm Examining the intersection between tradition and gender violence
6pm A Bid for Better Transit: Improving service with contracted operations
6pm New Discoveries at Wadi al-Jarf
6pm Eliminate the Muslim: Science, Religion, and the Future of Brown
6pm Rooted in Boston: An Oral History of Community Gardens
6pm Boston New Technology Startup Showcase #BNT86
7pm How to Think Globally & Act Locally
7pm Anatomy of a Genocide
7pm Taking Note: Connecting Citizen Science to Science Learning
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Tuesday, February 13
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9:30am MIPS SEMINAR: Nanoparticles and extracellular nanovesicles in the lungs- who talks to whom about what
12pm Torrents, turds & tilapia: ecosystem approaches to mitigate disaster risk, waterborne disease and aquatic biodiversity loss in Pacific Island watersheds
12pm Sr. Helen Prejean at the Harvard Law Forum
12pm THE FLU OUTBREAK: What You Need to Know
12pm How to use Life Cycle Assessment to Strengthen your Sustainability Program
12pm MIT SDM Systems Thinking Webinar Series: Using Systems Dynamics Models to Make Better Decisions
12pm Speaker Series: Garrett Graff
12pm Rising Extremism in the US: The Challenges it Presents and the Actions We Must Take with the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt
12pm Initiative on Cities Urban Seminar: Assessing and Planning for Neighborhood Based Resiliency
12:30pm Recovering Agency: The Politics of Reconstruction in Post-Tsunami Tohoku
2pm Lowering Multifamily Housing Costs Operating with Solar Water Heating
4pm BetterMIT Innovation Week: Social Change & Impact
5pm Urban Farming Institution Celebration at Flatbread
5:15pm Governor Francis W. Sargent: Fisheries Manager
5:30pm Seeing Text, Reading Maps
6pm Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: William Bonvillian on Advanced Manufacturing
6pm Boston FinTech: The Role of AI in Financial Services
6:30pm Not Built to Last: Disrupting planning outcomes through temporary placemaking
7pm Ecological and Psychological Perspectives on Climate Change: The Science for the Public 2018 Science Lectures at MIT
7pm With Passion: An Activist Lawyer’s Journey
7pm Himalaya Bound
7:30pm Film Screening - "Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey”
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Wednesday, February 14
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9:45am Mass Power Forward's Valentine's Lobby Day!
12pm BetterMIT Innovation Week: Skills for the Innovator
12pm How is political engagement changing in Europe? The rise of new political platforms
12pm Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, and Migration in Bangladesh
12pm The Activist Collector: Recovering the Story of an African American Woman in Pre-Apartheid South Africa
12pm The Double Game: The Demise of America's First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation
12:38pm Geoengineering with Control
4:15pm The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial in the Trump Era is Threatening our Planet, Politics, and the Public
5pm BetterMIT Innovation Week: Skills for the Innovator
6pm Waste Alliance Lecture: Alicia Veneziani - Challenges and Opportunities of the Waste-to-Energy Industry
6pm Climate & Sustainability Student Group Open House
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Thursday February 15
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11am Albedo, Climate, & Urban Heat Island
11:30am BetterMIT Innovation Week: Entrepreneurship & Innovation Resource Roundup
12pm The Living, Breathing, Hungry Soil: Modern Agriculture in the Age of Climate Change
12:30pm The Social Benefits of Renewable Energy: A Talk by Sebastian Helgenberger
1pm Financing Solar Projects for Public and Affordable Housing
4pm Form, Function, and Fossils: Modern Twists on Ancient Evolutionary Transitions
4pm 46th James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award Lecture
4pm Ecology, Extinction, and the End of the Second Pandemic: Plague in the Ottoman Empire
5pm From the Ashes: Film Screening with Producer Sidney Beaumont
5:30pm The Fierce Urgency of Now Speaker Series: Bill Rapp - Use of Military Force in the War on Terror in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan
5:30pm Dharma Gaze: Practices of Buddhism and Poetry—An Evening with Anne Waldman
6pm Microbial Life: A Universe at the Edge of Sight
6pm The Public Policy Challenges of Artificial Intelligence
6pm Kurt Forster | The Sites and Sounds of Shells: Modern Concert Halls
7pm The Pilgrim’s Sixth Birthday Party!
7pm Cambrige Forum: Romance in the Information Age
7:15pm The Islamic Jesus: A bridge between Islam, Christianity—and even Judaism. Featuring: Mustafa Akyol
7:15pm Darwin Day: Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong
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Friday, February 16, 2018 (All day) to Saturday, February 17, 2018 (All day)
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Timeless Portraits and Dreams: A Festival/Symposium in Honor of Geri Allen
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Friday, February 16
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8:30am BU Questrom TechConnect Conference 2018: The Future of Money
9am This Garden Is a Town
12pm BetterMIT Innovation Week: Innovation in the World
12:30pm Global Food+ 2018
2:30pm Seeds as deep-time technologies
3pm When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency
5pm BetterMIT Innovation Week: Innovation in the World (Speaker Series)
8pm Timeless Portraits and Dreams: Pianos for Geri
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Saturday, February 17
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BetterMIT Makeathon
2pm Sierra Club Climate Activist Training in JP
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Monday, February 19
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10am Feb Fest
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Tuesday, February 20
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12pm Advancing Justice in Global Trade: Lori Wallach at the Harvard Law Forum
12pm PAOC Colloquium: Kristen Corbosiero (U Albany)
12pm Speaker Series: Elizabeth Bruenig
12:30pm Geographies of Justice: Japan, Germany, and the Allied War Crimes Program
1pm Communicating Climate Change to People of Faith
4pm Industrial Agriculture and the Humble Strawberry
4pm Privacy Despite Mass Surveillance
4pm Mellon Seminar- Open Access and Research into History: Issues of Copyright
4:10pm Israel's Democratic Slippage and its Implications
4:30pm Emile Bustani Seminar: “Donald Trump's Generous Offer on Jerusalem”
6pm The Future of Humanity
6pm Belief, Skepticism, and Touch: Some Thoughts on Saint Thomas the Apostle in Italian Renaissance Art
6pm Big Data Justice
6:30pm Mayor Rahm Emanuel
7pm With Passion, an Activist Lawyer's Life
7pm Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
Everyday Solar
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Monday, February 12
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Low-Latitude Arc-Continent Collision as a Driver for Global Cooling
Monday, February 12
12:00PM *Lunch will be served at 11:45am *
Harvard, Haller Hall (102), Geo Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences hosts Oliver Jagoutz, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT
Speaker Bio: Jagoutz studied Chemistry and Geology at the University of Mainz. During his studies, he went as an Erasums student to ETH Zurich. After his graduation in Geology (2000) he continued as a grad student ETH Zurich doing a Ph.D. project with J.P. Burg. During his Ph.D., he had the opportunity to work for three months at the Tokyo Institute of Technology with Shige Maruyama. After finishing his Ph.D. in Dec 2004, he took on a postdoc position with Othmar Müntener at the University of Bern; Jagoutz has been at MIT since January 2008.
Research: Fieldwork is an important aspect of my research. I usually spend around 3-4 months a year in the field and have conducted fieldwork in Greece, Zimbabwe, Switzerland, Italy, Pakistan, India, Mongolia, Morocco, and the western US.
My principal research area is the origin and evolution of the Lithosphere. I address scientific questions by a multidisciplinary approach including field work, petrology, isotope geochemistry, structural geology, major & trace element geochemistry. For fieldwork, I generally use my feet and brain but I also incorporate more “modern” methods (remote sensing techniques using hyperspectral data, GIS etc.). In detail I am interested in field studies on magmatic processes, magmatic accretion of continental crust in subduction zone, oceanic crust evolution, formation and evolution of the ocean-continent transition zone and evolution of continental crust formation mechanism though earth history
EPS Colloquium
Contact Name: Summer Smith
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Using in-situ measurements of the water vapor isotopic ratio to understand convective transport in the Asian Summer Monsoon
Monday, February 12
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
PAOC Colloquium: Liz Moyer (University of Chicago)
My research interests fall in two main threads. The first includes the use of the isotopic composition of atmospheric water vapor as a tracer of convective processes, cirrus formation, and stratosphere-troposphere exchange; and the design of spectroscopic techniques for in-situ trace gas measurements. The second includes climate (and human) response to greenhouse-gas forcing; development of tools for impacts assessment; statistical emulation of climate model output; and climate and energy policy evaluation.
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars generally take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Lunch is provided to encourage students and post-docs to meet with the speaker. Besides the seminar and lunch, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged.
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Ideation & Design Thinking
Monday, February 12
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 3-442, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Ideation & Design Thinking
12-1PM: Talk by Tactile | 3-442
5-6:30PM: Workshop by Mia Siochi, NASA Langley Research Center | 4-145
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week@mit.edu
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Imperfect Markets versus Imperfect Regulation in U.S. Electricity Generation
Monday, February 12
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Steve Cicala, Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
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The Stylized Facts of Inequality
Monday, February 12
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Daniel Hirschman (Brown, Sociology)
STS Circle at Harvard
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India's Coal Industry: History and Prospects
Monday, February 12
12:30 pm - 1:45 pm
Tufts, Cabot 206, 170 Packard Avenue, Medford
Rohit Chandra is currently a sixth-year doctoral student at the Harvard Kennedy School focusing primarily on energy policy and economic history in India. His dissertation covers the economic and political history of the Indian coal industry from 1959-present. In particular, he looks at how the role of the Indian state, particularly through its state-owned enterprises (first NCDC and then Coal India), has adapted to various changes in the national political and economic environment. Other than his dissertation, he is also currently working with the Regulatory Assistance Project on electricity in Jharkhand and Brookings India on coal sector reforms. Prior to his doctoral work he worked at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and the Center for Advanced Study of India in Philadelphia.
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Tech Talk for Educators: Social Media for Family Engagement
WHEN Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Avenue, Allston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Education, Special Events
COST Free and open to the public
DETAILS By better understanding digital trends in social media, educators can open channels of communication with students and families. From likes to retweets and comments, social media provides endless opportunities for families to get involved. Yet these tools can also raise a number of questions. What platform is best for open discussions? What type of content is most interesting or useful to parents?
Join the Harvard Ed Portal for Tech Talk for Educators: Social Media for Family Engagement, a free workshop presented by Rhianon Gutierrez, Digital Learning Specialist at Boston Public Schools. Attendees will gain hands-on experience with select social media tools to help promote meaningful communication and digital citizenship practices with students and families. They will also hear from other educators about their experiences using these tools.
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Ideation & Design Thinking
Monday, February 12
4:00pm to 5:30pm
MIT, Building 4-145, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Workshop by Mia Siochi, NASA Langley Research Center
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week@mit.edu.
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The Epidemic of Poverty: The Government Imperative
WHEN Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Abdul El-Sayed, physician; former health director of the City of Detroit; candidate for the governor of Michigan
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS After Detroit’s bankruptcy, El-Sayed rebuilt the city’s health department to meet the needs of Detroit’s most vulnerable citizens. His achievements include providing vision care to children, forcing Marathon Petroleum to reduce its sulfur dioxide emissions in the state’s most polluted zip code, and screening every Detroit public school building for lead poisoning in the water. Now, he’s running for governor of Michigan. Register online.
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Energy for Development Talk by Rohini Pande
Monday, February 12
5.30 pm
MIT, Building E18-304, 50 Ames Street, Cambridge
Professor Rohini Pande, Harvard Kennedy School
Professor Pande is a renowned economist whose research examines the costs and benefits of informal and formal institutions in the developing world and the role of public policy in affecting change. Her work has been published in top journals and featured in media outlets such as The Guardian, Vox, The New York Times, Times of India, The Economist, and Quartz India.
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The Fierce Urgency of Now Speaker Series: Douglas Johnson - Trump's Human Rights Policy: Waiting for the Shoe to Drop
WHEN Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, 5:30 – 6:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Wexner 434 AB, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S) Douglas Johnson - February 12
TICKET WEB LINK https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/news/carr-center-speaker-series-fierce-urgency-now-human-rights-2018
TICKET INFO Free and Open to the public
DETAILS The Carr Center is excited to announce its 2018 Speaker Series: The Fierce Urgency of Now: Human Rights in 2018.
The series will be facilitated by Professor Mathias Risse.
At the 1963 March on Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr spoke of “the fierce urgency of now,” the need for immediate, “vigorous and positive action” on civil rights. This year, the Carr Center will host a series of talks that will examine the current state of human rights in the country, and worldwide. Please see our calendar for all upcoming dates and times.
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Lesson on Mindfulness: Perspective from Zen Buddhist Priest in Kyoto
Monday, February 12
5:30pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Rev. Takafumi Zenryu Kawakami, Deputy head priest, Shunkoin Temple, Myoshinji, Kyoto will lead us in a thoughtful discussion and practice of mindfulness.
Mindfulness has become a significant phenomenon in the West that is also becoming increasingly popular in Asia. Mindfulness is generally defined as non-religious meditation. As a secular practice supported by scientific evidence, mindfulness is now accepted as a valid medical and therapeutic method that has been broadly incorporated into workplace and school wellness programs.
This Western and de-contextualized perspective of mindfulness began in the late 1970s. The practice of mindfulness in Japan, however, has its roots in Buddhism and is not just about meditation. To fully appreciate the importance and meaning of mindfulness, it should be considered within the context of Buddhist philosophy, like the concept of no-self. Ultimately, mindfulness is about much more than achieving temporal happiness and relaxation, it is about changing one’s approach to actuality. This talk will highlight the importance of re-contextualizing mindfulness and present its holistic practice from the Zen Buddhist perspective.
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#BUcityplanning Lecture: The Development of Boston’s Metropolitan Water System
Monday, February 12
6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
BU, PSY B53, 64 Cummington Mall, Boston
City Planning and Urban Affairs’ course UA 510: Special Topics: The Planning and History of Metropolitan Boston will host guest speaker Stephen Estes-Smargiassi, Director of the Planning & Sustainability, Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA). Mr. Estes-Smargiassi’s lecture will focus on The Development of Boston’s Metropolitan Water System. All students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend.
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Examining the intersection between tradition and gender violence
Monday, February 12
6:00 pm
Lesley University, Sherrill Library 251, 89 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Join us for a screening of the short documentary "A Pinch of Skin," a film on female genital cutting in India.
Following the screening, speakers will share their perspectives on female genital cutting, drawing on multiple cross cultural and legal discourses to bring attention to this often silenced issue. Mariya Taher, who earned an MFA in Lesley's Creative Writing program, will moderate. There will be time for questions and discussion.
Mariya Taher, MSW, MFA (moderator) has worked in the anti-gender violence field in research, policy, program development, and direct service. She is the cofounder of Sahiyo, and organization that empowers Asian communities to end female genital cutting (FGC). She was been named one of the 6 experts to watch on FGC by NewsDeeply in 2017. Taher also holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. Her work has appeared in NPR, Ms. Magazine, Huffington Post, Brown Girl Magazine, Solstice Literary Magazine, the Express Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner, the Flexible Persona, Cecile’s Writer’s Magazine, among others. Read our article on Taher here.
Joanne Golden, JD, MBA is an Attorney at the Social Security Administration's Office of Hearing Operations (OHO) in Boston. Joanne graduated from Suffolk University Law School and her legal interests are in constitutional and criminal law, as well as civil and human rights issues. Joanne has worked actively with two human rights NGOs in Massachusetts regarding anti-human trafficking; and, since May 2013, is a member of a working group to research, draft, and advocate for state-level legislation to ban the practice of Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (FGM/FGC) in Massachusetts.
Abdirahman A. Yusuf, MPA was born in Hargeysa, Somaliland, and is a bilingual and bi-cultural public administrator and macro-social service practitioner with over 20 years of managerial experience in community health. He is the Co-founder & Executive Director of the Somali Development Center (SDC) and also currently serves as a Commissioner in the Massachusetts Governor’s Black Advisory Commission. Yusuf has served as a Chair for the Community Partnership Opening Doors Project for Youth with Disabilities and Special Health Care Needs Project, Massachusetts Mutual Assistance Associations Coalition, and the Refugee Health Advisory Committee.
Melody Eckardt, MD, MPH is an obstetrician and gynecologist. She is currently the Senior Advisor for Maternal Health Projects in the Division of Global Health and Human Rights, Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to her current position, she was the Director of Women’s Refugee Health and the Director of Global Health in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Boston Medical Center. There she cared for many immigrant women with FGM. Melody has a masters degree in public health with a concentration in global health and has been involved with reproductive health issues and projects in many countries in Africa and Asia.
This event is free and open to the public!
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A Bid for Better Transit: Improving service with contracted operations
Monday, February 12
6:00pm
MIT, City Arena, Building 9-255, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Kindly RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Y_i7oljp-YmTW7pm2N4IGITNZTvpwO4e0UBs0AEoIfU/viewform?ts=5a70b04c&edit_requested=true
Debates about the quality and cost of transit in Massachusetts have recently featured controversy about the MBTA’s use of private contractors. The T’s oversight of its regional rail services – operated by a private company – has come under new scrutiny, and proposals to expand the use of contractors for late night bus service or overall maintenance has sparked conflict.
Elsewhere, progressive cities routinely use private contractors to provide high-quality service to transit riders, while safeguarding transit workers’ rights to collective bargaining and good working conditions.
Some of the best transit agencies in Europe, including London and Stockholm, effectively use competitive bidding to contract transit operations to private companies. In the U.S., Austin and Los Angeles are two progressive cities that show how contracting can harness the profit motive to serve the public interest by effectively providing bus service.
Join MIT, TransitCenter and a panel of practitioners for a candid examination of the benefits and pitfalls of competitive contracting for transit service.
Panelists:
Christian Löf, Business Strategist, Storsstockholms Lokaltrafik (SL), the public transit agency in the region of Stockholm, Sweden.
Michael McCall-Delgado, Strategic Researcher, Amalgamated Transit Union national headquarters.
Corinne Ralph, Chief of Transit Programs, Los Angeles Department of Transportation.
Frederick Salvucci, Senior Lecturer, Center for Transportation and Logistics, MIT.
Neil Smith, Chair, Tower Transit Group, London, England; and Director, Transit Systems, a contract provider in Perth, Darwin, Adelaide and Sydney, Australia.
Dottie Watkins, Vice President, Operations for Capital Metro, the transit agency in Austin, Texas.
Introduced & Moderated by:
David Bragdon, Executive Director, TransitCenter
Jinhua Zhao, Associate Professor, Department of Urban Studies & Planning, MIT
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New Discoveries at Wadi al-Jarf
WHEN Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Museum of Natural History, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Semitic Museum
SPEAKER(S) Gregory Marouard, Research Associate in Egyptian Archaeology, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
COST Free and open to the public.
CONTACT INFO semiticm@fas.harvard.edu, (617) 495-4631
DETAILS Located along the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, Wadi al-Jarf is considered the oldest known harbor in the world. This exceptional 4,600-year-old site dates to the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty, the “golden age” of ancient Egypt. In this free and public lecture presented by the Harvard Semitic Museum, Gregory Marouard, Research Associate in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Chicago, will discuss recent archaeological excavations at Wadi al-Jarf, including the discovery of hundreds of papyrus fragments that provide important details about the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza and insights into the complex organization and well-structured logistics of royal Egyptian projects.
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Eliminate the Muslim: Science, Religion, and the Future of Brown
WHEN Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
SPONSOR Science, Religion, and Culture Program
CONTACT Amanda Heffner-Wong
DETAILS In a present punctuated by bans, walls, registries, violence, and deportations, what is the future of black, brown, and queer? The B/B/Q person is stuck in a timeplay where the future is only a repetition of the present, and affirmation of the past. Thinking through science (fiction), religion and culture, we discuss what the future means, what time entails and what implications a timeplay has on present and future identities. The talk/talk-back will be followed by a Science, Religion, and Culture Program Open House Reception.
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Rooted in Boston: An Oral History of Community Gardens
Monday, February 12
6-8PM
The KITCHEN at the Boston Public Market, 100 Hanover Street, Boston
Did you know that Boston has more than 180 community gardens? This Monday, come meet some of the amazing people that built the community garden movement in our city. Hear their stories, mingle, and enjoy light refreshments.
Join us for a celebration of the history of community gardening in Boston, hosted by The Trustees Boston Community Gardens. Gardeners and leaders in the movement will share their stories from across Boston’s neighborhoods, with time to mingle and eat together. We’ll do a brief food demo and provide some light local fare and beverages from the Boston Public Market beginning at 6:00; feel free to bring your own dinner or purchase it in the market. No registration needed. We look forward to seeing you there!
More information at https://www.facebook.com/events/183532392252969/
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Boston New Technology Startup Showcase #BNT86
Monday, February 12
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
10 Ware Street, Cambridge
Upon Arrival: Look for BNT signs and be ready to present your Photo ID at our check-in desk to receive your name tag.
Cost: $12.00 /per person
Join Boston New Technology at Alley Cambridge on February 12th to:
See 7 innovative and exciting local technology product demos, presented by startup founders
Network with 150 attendees from the Boston-area startup/tech community
Get your free professional headshot photo from Kubica & Nguyen
Enjoy dinner with beer, wine, other beverages and more!
Please click here to share/tweet this event. (https://ctt.ec/422gQ)
Each presenter gets 5 minutes for a product overview & demonstration and 5 minutes for Q&A. Please follow @BostonNewTech (http://twitter.com/BostonNewTech/) and support our startups by posting on social media using our #BNT86 hashtag. We'll retweet you!
To save on tickets and enjoy exclusive benefits, purchase a BNT VIP Membership. Learn more: http://bit.ly/bNtvip
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How to Think Globally & Act Locally
Monday, February 12
7:00 PM
Belmont Library (Assembly Room), 336 Concord Avenue, Belmont
Note: Dr. Cziczo's appearance is by special request.
Dan Cziczo, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Secondary Appointment: Civil and Environmental Engineering Cziczo Research Group
A discussion: how to be effective global citizens:
the most important things to know about climate change
the most effective ways to shape climate policy
the most effective actions to take individually
Selected awards
The Citizen Literacy Series: science-media-civic literacy for an informed, engaged public
Science for the Public, Belmont Media Center, and Belmont Public Library
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Anatomy of a Genocide
Monday, February 12
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
Omer Bartov
A fascinating and cautionary examination of how genocide can take root at the local level—turning neighbors, friends, and even family members against one another—as seen through the eastern European border town of Buczacz during World War II.
For more than four hundred years, the Eastern European border town of Buczacz—today part of Ukraine—was home to a highly diverse citizenry. It was here that Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In truth, though, this genocide didn’t happen so quickly.
In Anatomy of a Genocide Omer Bartov explains that ethnic cleansing doesn’t occur as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren’t just sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbors and friends and family. They are human beings, proud and angry and scared. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder: an island of normality floating on an ocean of blood.
About the Author: Omer Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University. He is the author of Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz, along with several other well-respected scholarly works on the Holocaust and genocide, including Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories and Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine. He has written for The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and The New York Times Book Review. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Taking Note: Connecting Citizen Science to Science Learning
Monday, February 12
7:00–8:30pm
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain
Colleen Hitchcock, PhD, Assistant Professor of Ecology, Department of Biology and
Colleen Hitchcock will speak about the value of taking note of natural phenomena and the contributions such actions can make to science, society, and one’s own scientific and bio-literacy. She will share how citizen science is used in courses and on campus to educate and engage students. Finally, Colleen will introduce the 2018 City Nature Challenge on iNaturalist, a citizen science project coordinated by Environmental Studies at Brandeis University, UMass Boston, Zoo New England, New England Ocean Science Education Collaborative, Mass Audubon, Encyclopedia of Life at Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, MIT Senseable lab, and Earthwatch Institute. Following Colleen’s presentation, Danny Schissler, Research Assistant in the Friedman Lab, will introduce TreeVersity, an online citizen science initiative at the Arnold Arboretum to classify over 25,000 historic and contemporary plant images.
Fee Free, but registration requested
Register at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.
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Tuesday, February 13
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MIPS SEMINAR: Nanoparticles and extracellular nanovesicles in the lungs- who talks to whom about what
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 9:30 – 10:30 a.m.
WHERE Harvard, HSPH Building I, Room 1302, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Research study, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR MIPS/HSPH
SPEAKER(S) Nagarjun V. Konduru, PhD, Research Associate, MIPS, HSPH
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Torrents, turds & tilapia: ecosystem approaches to mitigate disaster risk, waterborne disease and aquatic biodiversity loss in Pacific Island watersheds
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, 26 Oxford Street, Room 429, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Research study, Science, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Planetary Health Alliance
SPEAKER(S) Dr Aaron Jenkins, inaugural Research Fellow in Planetary Health at University of Sydney and Edith Cowan University
COST Free, lunch provided
CONTACT INFO Planetary Health Alliance, pha@harvard.edu
DETAILS The health and well being of inhabitants in small Pacific Island watersheds are highly influenced by the interacting processes of climate (e.g. tropical cyclones and flooding) and land cover (e.g. deforestation and road building) change. A breadth of research conducted over the past decade has shown that prolonged rainfall and flooding in heavily altered watersheds is associated with loss of downstream biodiversity and increased incidence of waterborne bacterial disease. Environment, public health, and disaster agency interventions have been mostly piecemeal, with few attempts at watershed-scale preventative actions or joint assessment of downstream impacts on ecosystem services such as disease regulation or food provision. This talk will bring together existing and newly initiated research on watershed landscape condition, aquatic biodiversity, socio-cultural aspects of resource use, bacterial pathogens in aquatic environments, and incidence of waterborne diseases in Pacific Islands to explore some of the complex connections between waterborne diseases and aquatic biodiversity loss. This stream of research is helping to provide clearer guidance for cross-sectoral coordination of watershed management to improve both environmental provision services and public health outcomes.
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Sr. Helen Prejean at the Harvard Law Forum
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Law School, Langdell Hall North, Vorenberg Classroom, Room 225, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Law Forum
SPEAKER(S) Sr. Helen Prejean
CONTACT INFO Pete Davis, PeDavis@jd18.law.harvard.edu, 347-453-3135
DETAILS Sr. Helen Prejean is the nation's leading death penalty abolitionist. She is the author of the bestselling book Dead Man Walking, which was made into an Oscar-winning movie with Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.
She is coming to Harvard Law School to share her experience and wisdom from a life of fighting abolish the death penalty.
The event is open to the public and pizza will be provided. Contact PeDavis@jd18.law.harvard.edu for more information.
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THE FLU OUTBREAK: What You Need to Know
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 12- 1 p.m.
WHERE Leadership Studio, Harvard Chan School, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Forum at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
SPEAKER(S) EXPERT PARTICIPANTS
Alfred DeMaria, Medical Director for the Bureau of Infectious Disease of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health
Yonatan Grad, Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Marc Lipsitch, Professor of Epidemiology and Director, Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Tim Uyeki, Chief Medical Officer, Influenza Division, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, CDC
MODERATOR
Peter Thomson, Environment Editor, PRI’s The World
COST Free webcast!
TICKET INFO RSVP to attend studio audience, theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
CONTACT INFO theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS More than a half million deaths each year around the world result from flu-related respiratory illnesses. This year, flu has grabbed particular headlines, driven by an early start to flu season and the dominance of a particularly severe flu strain, H3N2. The flu is most dangerous to people with underlying health problems, as well as individuals over age 65 and young children. However, each year flu cases involving young, otherwise apparently healthy people raise flags. In this Forum, experts in epidemiology, immunology, and health policy will place this year’s flu season in context. They will explore vaccine development, prevention and treatment and address growing concerns globally as this particularly virulent outbreak gains the potential to spread further — ultimately asking is there a better way to stop the flu?
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How to use Life Cycle Assessment to Strengthen your Sustainability Program
Tuesday, February 13
12- 1pm ET
Webinar
With presentations from Kohler Co. and Hypertherm
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) when implemented into your sustainability program, can constructively influence business decisions and mitigate risks within product material and supplier selections. It can also enhance product efficacy and brand integrity.
Case in point...
Hear from Jeff Zeman, Principal Environmental Engineer at Kohler Co., a company committed to sustainability as critical to its mission of gracious living for those touched by its products and services , and Robin Tindall, Environmental Stewardship Manager at Hypertherm, a world-class manufacturer and recent Environmental Merit Award recipient from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, about how LCA has greatly and positively influenced their sustainability programs.
Two uniquely different companies with two uniquely different successful approaches to sustainability, both grounded in life cycle assessment.
Kohler uses life cycle assessment to inform its Design for Environment (DfE) program, and to provide environmental impact transparency through Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).
Certified EPDs are offered through in-house experts in product sustainability, with ever-growing transparency capability for hundreds of individual product models on demand. EPDs allow informed decision-making for both Kohler designers as part of the product development process and customers, by disclosing a product's cradle-to-grave environmental impacts and product certifications. Many of Kohler Co.'s clients seek products with EPDs for credits towards LEED-certified building projects.
Hypertherm has conducted screening LCAs across all product families.
And to bring LCA to the drawing table, Hypertherm created their own custom Design for Sustainability Scorecard, which is being used for new products in the design phase, as well as in the research and development phases. This allows designers to ask questions, such as which material has fewer environmental impacts, while design revisions can still be easily made.
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MIT SDM Systems Thinking Webinar Series: Using Systems Dynamics Models to Make Better Decisions
Tuesday, February 13
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Virtual
Models are often used to analyze the long-term behavior of complex systems. Many professionals find that models based on system dynamics can be particularly useful when employed in conjunction with—or even instead of—fact-based briefings.
In this webinar, SDM alumna Dr. Ellen Czaika, head of R&D at Gamaya, will discuss her doctoral research into whether decision-makers who use a model reach better outcomes than those who hear only fact-based briefings. Drawing on her work on the advantages of using system dynamics models in sustainability negotiations and decisions—specifically regarding the “3Es” (environment, economy, and social equity)—she will:
explain how system dynamics models are designed to address complex challenges;
outline the benefits of such models, including how using them can highlight win-win elements to aid decision-making; and
provide thoughts on lessons learned that can be applied in a wide range of industries.
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Speaker Series: Garrett Graff
Tuesday, February 13
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Garrett M. Graff, a distinguished magazine journalist and historian, has spent more than a dozen years covering politics, technology, and national security. Today, he serves as the director of the Aspen Institute’s cybersecurity and technology program, and is a contributor to WIRED, Longreads, and CNN. He’s written for publications from Esquire to the New York Times, and served as the editor of two of Washington’s most prestigious magazines, Washingtonian and POLITICO Magazine, which he helped lead to its first National Magazine Award, the industry’s highest honor. Graff is the author of multiple books, including The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House, which examined the role of technology in the 2008 presidential race, and The Threat Matrix: The FBI At War, which traces the history of the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts. His most recent book, Raven Rock, about the government’s Cold War Doomsday plans, was published in May 2017. He also is the chair of the board of the National Conference on Citizenship, a congressionally-charted civic engagement group founded by Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
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Rising Extremism in the US: The Challenges it Presents and the Actions We Must Take with the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 12 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Ash Center Foyer, 124 Mount Auburn Street, Suite 200-North, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S) Jonathan Greenblatt
CONTACT INFO info@ash.harvard.edu
DETAILS The Ash Center invites you to join Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), for a discussion about rising extremism from across the spectrum in the US and how it affects our politics and our society. This conversation will be moderated Sarah Wald, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy and Chief of Staff and Senior Adviser to the Dean at HKS.
Lunch will be provided.
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Initiative on Cities Urban Seminar: Assessing and Planning for Neighborhood Based Resiliency
Tuesday, February 13
12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
BU, Initiative on Cities, 75 Bay State Road, Boston
Join us for an urban seminar Assessing and Planning for Neighborhood-Based Resiliency organized by the Initiative on Cities.Resilient is a word used in many contexts and with varied meaning. This seminar explores what it means for a neighborhood to be resilient, able to withstand both unexpected shocks and ongoing stresses through social connections, adequate resources and planning, showcasing the work of the Cambridge Mayor's Special Committee on Neighborhood-Based Resilience.This talk will be moderated by Boston University Associate Professor and Director of City Planning Madhu Dutta-Koehler and feature a presentation by Cambridge City Councilor Craig Kelley.Lunch will be provided.
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Recovering Agency: The Politics of Reconstruction in Post-Tsunami Tohoku
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
SPEAKER(S) Andrew Littlejohn, Postdoctoral Fellow, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Moderator: Susan Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and Director, WCFIA Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University
Discussant: Daniel Aldrich, Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Director, Masters Program in Security and Resilience, Northeastern University
COST Free and open to the public
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Lowering Multifamily Housing Costs Operating with Solar Water Heating
Tuesday, February 13
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Webinar
Multifamily housing is widely considered one of the best applications for solar water heating due to the fairly consistent load. Whether you heat water at your multifamily property with gas, oil, propane or electricity, solar thermal can integrate with your existing central system. This workshop provides an introduction to solar thermal, outlining options, design and maintenance considerations, available federal rebates and Massachusetts state incentives. Solar thermal contractors will be on hand to share their experiences and answer your questions.
Event Contact
(858) 244-1177
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Social Change & Impact
Tuesday, February 13
4:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 2-131, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Workshop by Lean On Me and PKG Public Service Center
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week@mit.edu
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Urban Farming Institute Celebration at Flatbread
Tuesday, February 13
5pm - 7pm
Sacco's Bowl Haven, 45 Day Street, Somerville
Join the Urban Farming Institute at Flatbread in Davis Square for a night of amazing (responsibly-sourced + ridiculously-delicious) wood-fired pizza! Great food, great drinks, great company!
From 5pm to closing, UFI will get a portion of the sales of every pizza ordered (dine-in or takeout). All proceeds will support our critical job training and land transformation work across Boston.
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Governor Francis W. Sargent: Fisheries Manager
Tuesday, February 13
5:15PM
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston
The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts Benjamin Kochan, Boston University with comment by Brian Payne, Bridgewater State University. Free and open to the public. Light sandwich supper will follow.
Boston Environmental History Seminar
Contact Name: seminars@masshist.org
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Seeing Text, Reading Maps
Tuesday, February 13
5.30 pm: Lecture, Lamont Library, Forum Room
6.30 pm: Viewing of the exhibition "Landmarks: Maps as Literary Illustration," and reception, Houghton Library, Edison and Newman Room
Harvard, Lamont Library, 11 Quincy Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdtkMPTdN_UxcheqSJhxvuUQPcNNLmp5wcZXvcBGqAkRotKEA/viewform
Houghton library presents a lecture to celebrate its latest major exhibition "Landmarks: Maps as Literary Illustration."
"Seeing Text, Reading Maps"
Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
Specializing in the relations of space and writing in literature, cartography, and cinema, Professor Conley will discuss his lifelong fascination with literary maps. Conley’s most recent essay on the subject appears in the newly published "Literature and Cartography : Theories, Histories, Genres," ed. By Anders Engberg-Pedersen (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2017).
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Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: William Bonvillian on Advanced Manufacturing
Tuesday, February 13
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building E51-335, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
This lecture series, which includes imminent researchers and innovators from a wide variety of fields across MIT, will showcase the numerous forms that innovation takes and the pathways it can take from ideation to implementation.
Topic Summary
In 2016 the political system experienced significant disruption in part due to an angry voting block suffering from a long decline in American manufacturing, which became particularly acute in the decade of the 2000s. Manufacturing employment fell by one third in this period, 64,000 factories closed, manufacturing capital investment and output suffered, and the productivity rate dropped. The U.S. had been systematically shifting production abroad, and experts began to realize as the next decade began that the decline in its production capability was starting to affect its innovation capacity – which had long been viewed as its core economic strength.
The talk reviews the origins of the policy response to this dilemma, which came to be called “advanced manufacturing.” It will trace the way the foundational concepts were developed in a series of reports from in and out of government. It will explore how, for the first time, an innovation system response was considered and developed to strengthen the U.S. production system. It will examine the key new policy mechanism created by the Administration and supported by Congress, the manufacturing innovation institutes, a complex public-private collaborative model to develop new production technologies and processes, with supporting workforce education. It will review how the new institutes are working, lessons learned as they have started up and possible enhancements that could expand their policy reach. The talk draws on the new book by Bonvillian (with Peter Singer), Advanced Manufacturing - The New American Innovation Policies just released in January by MIT Press.
About the Speaker
William B. Bonvillian is a Lecturer at MIT, and an advisor on research projects at MIT’s Office of Digital Learning and its Industrial Policy Center. From 2006 until 2017, he was director of MIT’s Washington Office, supporting MIT’s historic role in science policy. He teaches courses on innovation systems at MIT and on energy technology policy at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and is coauthor of three books on innovation, Advanced Manufacturing – The New American Innovation Policies (MIT Press 2018), Technological Innovation in Legacy Sectors (Oxford University Press 2015) and Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution (MIT Press 2009). Previously, he worked for over 15 years on innovation issues as a senior advisor in the U.S. Senate, and earlier was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Transportation. He serves on the National Academies of Science standing committee for its Innovation Policy Forum, chairs the Committee on Science and Engineering Policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and serves on the board of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was awarded IEEE’s public service award, and has written and spoken extensively about science and technology and innovation policy issues.
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Boston FinTech: The Role of AI in Financial Services
Tuesday, February 13
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
ImpactHub Boston, 50 Milk Street, Boston
Artificial Intelligence (AI), once the domain of science fiction books and films, is now increasingly commonplace. From Amazon's recommendation engine to driverless vehicles to virtual assistants, AI is increasingly part of our everyday life. AI is also having a significant impact on financial services – from algorithmic stock trading applications, to credit card fraud detection and “robo-advisors” providing investment advice. We are convening a panel of hands-on FinTech experts to discuss the use of AI, its future and the ethical implications of its use in influencing what is arguably some of our most important decisions.
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Not Built to Last: Disrupting planning outcomes through temporary placemaking
Tuesday, February 13
6:30pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, Long Lounge, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Panelists:
Zofia Basista, Plateau Urbain
Aurore Rapin, Yes We Camp
Dan Campo, The Accidental Playground
Rahul Mehrotra, Ephemeral Urbanism
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Ecological and Psychological Perspectives on Climate Change: The Science for the Public 2018 Science Lectures at MIT
Tuesday, February 13
7:00 PM
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge
Brian Helmuth, Ph.D., Professor, Marine and Environmental Sciences, Marine Science Center, College of Social Sciences & Humanities; and School for Public Policy/Urban Affairs, Northeastern University Helmuth Lab
John Coley, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Psychology, Northeastern University
The impact of climate change on marine ecological systems and the problem of psychological resistance to the facts
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With Passion: An Activist Lawyer’s Journey
Tuesday February 13
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Michael Meltsner
Growing up in a Depression-battered family, one tangled by a mortal secret, With Passion tells the improbable story of an unsung hero of the civil rights movement who thought of himself as a “miscast” lawyer but ended up defending peaceful protesters, representing Muhammad Ali, suing Robert Moses, counseling Lenny Bruce, bringing the case that integrated hundreds of Southern hospitals, and being named “the principal architect of the death penalty abolition movement in the United States.”
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Himalaya Bound
Tuesday, February 13
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Michael Benanav
Intimate and gripping, Himalaya Bound offers a fascinating account of a seldom-seen way of life and reveals their arduous quest to save their buffaloes. Benavav reveals the hopes, fears, hardships, and joys of a people who wonder if there is still a place for them on this planet. Culminating in a daring rescue―Benanav explores larger truths about the murkier sides of conservationism, asking vital questions: Can humans be natural, native parts of environmental ecosystems, or are they by definition invasive species? Does removing native tribes from an ecosystem pull one thread of a natural tapestry, pulling others along with it in a dangerous chain reaction?
About the Author
Michael Benanav writes and photographs for the travel section of The New York Times and other national publications, including Sierra and Lonely Planet. He has also worked as a mountain and desert guide in the American West. He lives in northern New Mexico.
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Film Screening - "Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey"
Tuesday, February 13
7:30pm to 9:30pm
MIT, Building 26-100, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Hailed as one of the most influential climbers of all time, Fred Beckey is the original American “Dirtbag"–one who abandons societal norms and material comforts in pursuit of a nomadic mountaineering lifestyle.
This rebel athlete’s lifetime of accomplishments set the bar for the entire sport. He shattered records with an unparalleled string of superhuman first ascents, bushwhacking trails and pioneering direct routes thought previously impassable.
Beckey burned bridges, eschewed fame and stayed unencumbered so his only obligation would remain conquering the next summit. He kept meticulous personal journals where he mused on everything from arcane geology to his romantic life, to the myriad sunrises he witnessed from vantages not seen by anyone else on Earth. An environmentalist before there was such a term, Beckey’s legacy includes 13 essential books that act as blueprints for new generations. He defiantly continued climbing until passing away in October 2017 at age 94.
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Wednesday, February 14
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Mass Power Forward's Valentine's Lobby Day!
Wednesday, February 14
9:45am - 3pm
Room 438 in the MA Statehouse, Boston
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdoBhg3o2MEnLvxtQbEvTBkgR1RiLysnI6IoyCL8tPlcMRiRA/viewform
On February 14th, hundreds of members of the Mass Power Forward coalition will descend on Beacon Hill to demand that our legislators do everything they can to promote a clean energy future.
The stakes have never been higher. With climate deniers running the show in Washington, DC, we NEED Massachusetts to step up and lead.
Massachusetts residents from every part of the state will meet with their representatives and senators to make the case for clean energy.
SCHEDULE FOR THE DAY:
9:45 am: Arrive
10 - 11:00 am: Speakers on Mass Power Forward, our vision for the coming session, and our legislative priorities
11:00-11:30: Prepare for meetings. MPF leaders available to answer questions.
11:45 STAND IN A GOVERNOR's Office
11:30-3:00 pm: Meetings with state senators and representatives!
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Skills for the Innovator
Wednesday, February 14
12-1PM
The Engine, MIT Building 6-120, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Talk by Katie Rae
5-6:30PM: Workshop by Gordon Engineering Leadership Program | 4-145
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week@mit.edu
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How is political engagement changing in Europe? The rise of new political platforms
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018, 12 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Ash Center Foyer, 124 Mount Auburn St., Suite 200-North, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S) Francesco Galtieri MC/MPA '17
Muriel Rouyer
CONTACT INFO info@ash.harvard.edu
DETAILS You are invited to join a conversation on how political engagement is changing Europe with Ash Center faculty affiliate Muriel Rouyer and Francesco Galtieri MC/MPA ’17, political candidate with the Italian political party +Europe. Lunch will be provided.
The recent elections across Western Europe have been under watch from the international public opinion, due to the rise of populist movements and the appearance of a number of new political platforms outside of the traditional parties’ landscape. Something seems to be changing in the way people engage in politics and traditional parties seem to suffer of an identity crisis in many countries. Ciudadanos, Podemos, Siriza, La République en Marche, AfD, the 5 Star Movement - all these parties were nonexistent only a few years ago. In addition, political polarization seems to be growing between pro-European and anti-European parties, putting the European integration process back at the centre of the public debate and the old continent political agenda, after many decades during which Europe was a matter of "the people in Brussels”. No doubt BREXIT has shown that the process could indeed be reversible, creating a new sense of engagement that is reflected also in the discussion about strengthening the European parliamentary representation through the failed attempt to establish transnational lists for the next European Parliamentary elections.
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Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, and Migration in Bangladesh
Wednesday, February 14
12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
BU, Pardee Center, 67 Bay State Road, Boston
Faculty Research Fellow Prof. Bruce Anderson (BU Department of Earth & Environment) will set the stage with an overview of the physical climate change impacts in Bangladesh. Sabbatical Scholar Prof. Pallab Mozumder (Florida International University) will discuss the policy options for responding to the threat of climate change in the country’s coastal regions. Finally, 2017 Graduate Summer Fellow Calynn Dowler (PhD candidate, BU Department of Anthropology) will talk about on-the-ground implications and how local people are coping with the challenges of natural disasters, resource scarcity, and migration.
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The Activist Collector: Recovering the Story of an African American Woman in Pre-Apartheid South Africa
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 14, 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) Christa Clarke, Senior Curator, Arts of Global Africa at the Newark Museum
COST Free & open to the public
CONTACT INFO hutchinscenter@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS A Q+A session will follow the talk.
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The Double Game: The Demise of America's First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation
Wednesday, February 14
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496 (Pye Room), 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Summary
How did the United States move from a position of nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1960s to one of nuclear parity under conditions of mutual assured destruction in 1972? Drawing on declassified records of conversations, James Cameron argues that John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon struggled to reconcile their personal convictions about the nuclear arms race with the views of the public and Congress. In doing so they engaged in a double game, hiding their true beliefs behind a façade of strategic language while grappling in private with the complex realities of the nuclear age.
Short Bio
James Cameron is an assistant professor of international relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo, Brazil. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at International Security Studies, Yale University and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. He defended his PhD in history at the University of Cambridge in 2013.
SSP Wednesday Seminar
All welcome.
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Geoengineering with Control
Wednesday, February 14
12:28PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 440, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Zhen Dai, PhD Candidate, SEAS
Solar Geoengineering Research Reading Group
A weekly reading group, interspersed with more formal seminars, to deepen members' understanding of solar geoengineering research.
Lunch provided. RSVP to contact listed.
Contact Name: Lizzie Burns
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The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial in the Trump Era is Threatening our Planet, Politics, and the Public
Wednesday, February 14
4:15PM TO 5:45PM
Harvard, Starr Auditorium, Belfer Building, 2nd Floor, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Join the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Shorenstein Center for a forum discussion with award-winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles.
Mr. Mann and Mr. Toles' collaborative book, The Madhouse Effect, discusses how climate change deniers maintain their stance despite the overwhelming scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change. Both Mr. Mann and Mr. Toles have dedicated much of their careers to understanding motivations and biases behind climate change denial, and their book provides readers with strategies for combatting arguments that refuse to accept scientific evidence.
More information at https://www.belfercenter.org/event/madhouse-effect-how-climate-change-denial-trump-era-threatening-our-planet-politics-public
Contact Name: belfer_events@hks.harvard.edu
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Skills for the Innovator
Wednesday, February 14
5-6:30PM
MIT, Building 4-145, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Workshop by Gordon Engineering Leadership Program
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week@mit.edu
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Waste Alliance Lecture: Alicia Veneziani - Challenges and Opportunities of the Waste-to-Energy Industry
Wednesday, February 14
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 8-205, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Renewable natural gas (RNG), or biomethane, is a pipeline-quality gas that is fully interchangeable with conventional natural gas. RNG comes from the purification of biogas, which is obtained through the degradation of organic matter in landfills, or in a digester.
Logistics companies and retailers, are increasingly turning to RNG to fuel their captive fleets. For instance, UPS recently announced an agreement with Big Ox Energy to purchase 10 million gallon equivalents of renewable natural gas (RNG) per year. The RNG agreements will help UPS reach its sustainability goal of sourcing 40% of its ground transportation fleet fuel from sources other than conventional gasoline and diesel by 2025. Using RNG can indeed reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% when compared to conventional diesel.
Alicia will introduce the basics of RNG production, and highlight the challenges and opportunities of developing RNG projects.
Contact trashiscash@mit.edu with questions.
This event is brought to you by the MIT Waste Alliance, with sponsorship from the GSC Funding Board.
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Climate & Sustainability Student Group Open House
Wednesday, February 14
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Building 9-255, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Do you lie awake at night worrying about melting permafrost, microplastics, mass extinction, and the climate-change-denier-in-chief?
Do you think MIT should be doing more to stop climate change and operate sustainably?
Are you excited about joining other MIT students to take action in your community?
If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, then we’re excited to invite you to the:
Climate & Sustainability Student Group Open House
Free dinner! | Stop in any time!
Featuring:
Fossil Free MIT
Undergraduate Energy Club Climate Action Team
GSC Sustainability
UA Sustain
Whether you’ve just heard of us or came to all of our events last semester, now is the best time to get plugged in for the spring! We’ll bring you up to date on our campaigns and discuss ways to get involved in our work this semester. Bring your friends (or your valentine), and we hope to see you there!
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Thursday February 15
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Albedo, Climate, & Urban Heat Island
Thursday, February 15
11 AM EST
Webinar at http://cshub.mit.edu/news/public-webinars
The United Nations predicts that nearly 70 percent of the global population will live in urban environments by the year 2050. This rapid urbanization is changing the surface of the planet, which has an impact on climate regionally and globally. CSHub researchers are studying the effects of albedo, which is the measure of the fraction of solar energy reflected by the Earth’s surface, on climate and the urban heat island effect (defined as a temperature difference between urban areas and their rural surroundings where the city temperature is higher). Lighter color surfaces have a high albedo and reflect light, while darker surfaces have low albedo and absorb light. CSHub researchers have developed an approach to quantify the impacts of changing pavement albedo on the climate and building energy demand and then translate both of those into global warming potential. This webinar will describe the approach and results from recent studies.
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Entrepreneurship & Innovation Resource Roundup
Thursday, February 15
11:30am to 1:30pm
MIT Stata Center, Student Street, First Floor, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
As part of BetterMIT Innovation Week, the MIT Innovation Initiative will be hosting an in-person version of the resource guide on Thursday, February 15, 2018 from 11:30 am–1:30 pm on Stata Student Street.
Come by to learn about the many entrepreneurship and innovation resources available on campus this spring and summer: classes, sources of funding, mentoring programs, makerspaces, prize competitions, and more.
The Innovation Initiative will also be on hand to help answer questions about the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Minor.
As an added bonus, free pizza will be provided for participants!
While normally spread across campus, all of spring’s sources of entrepreneurship and innovation resources will be in one location:
MIT Innovation Initiative
Arts at MIT: Creative Arts Competition
Boston University School of Law Clinics at MIT
Flux
Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program (GEL)
HackMIT
Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship
Lemelson-MIT Program
Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
MISTI: MIT Global Startup Labs
MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition
MIT D-Lab
MIT Hacking Medicine
MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node: MEMSI
MIT I-Corps
MIT Machine Intelligence Community
MIT Sloan Entrepreneurship & Innovation (E&I) Club
MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS)
Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center: IDEAS Global Challenge
Project Manus
ProjX
Sandbox Innovation Fund Program
StartLabs
Thursday, February 15, 2018
11:30 am–1:30 pm
Free pizza will be provided to participants!
Questions? Contact us at innovation@mit.edu
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The Living, Breathing, Hungry Soil: Modern Agriculture in the Age of Climate Change
Thursday, February 15
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Kelsey Sakimoto, Departments of Chemistry and Systems Biology, Harvard University
It comes as no surprise that climate change has already triggered and will continue to present dramatic challenges to modern agriculture. Forward-looking solutions must leverage deeper insight into not only how soil chemistry affects agriculture, but how soil (micro)biology presents both sustainable solutions and challenges. This living collection of soil microorganisms - the soil microbiome - holds untapped potential to not only resist the antagonism of a changing world, but surpass the performance of conventional farming. This talk will focus on our current global practices as well as examine new technologies to feed the world of 2050 and beyond.
Dr. Kelsey K. Sakimoto is a Harvard University Center for the Environment Fellow working on technologies to connect renewable energy with sustainable agriculture. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Yale University, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley. His current postdoctoral work is centered in the laboratories of Daniel Nocera (Chemistry) and Pamela Silver (Systems Biology) at Harvard University/Harvard Medical School.
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The Social Benefits of Renewable Energy: A Talk by Sebastian Helgenberger
Thursday, February 15
12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
BU, Pardee School of Global Studies, 121 Bay State Road (1st floor), Boston
Join us for a talk by Sebastian Helgenberger from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), Potsdam, where he leads the “Multiple Benefits of Renewables” project. Building on experiences with Germany’s Energiewende (transition towards renewable energies), Sebastian and his team in their research activities and international science-policy dialogues are putting particular emphasis on the social and economic benefits of renewable energies as drivers of accelerated transitions towards sustainable energy for all.
Abstract: Boosted by impressive technological innovation and cost reductions, renewable energy in a growing number of countries is now primarily considered for its social and economic benefits. Among these benefits are opportunities for local value creation, energy independence and for reducing conflicts over scarce water, which are aggravated by fossil power generation. Allowing for distributed electricity generation, the rapidly expanding renewable energy world is opening up business models for many, including local communities, citizens and citizens’ cooperatives. Experiences from Germany as well as other countries show how domestic energy policy can shape the enabling environment to seizing the social benefits of renewable energy.
Moderator: Cathie Jo Martin, Director, Boston University Center for the Study of Europe and Professor of Political Science. Discussant: Anthony Janetos, Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Professor of Earth and Environment. Lunch available. RSVP to edamrien@bu.edu.
This program was made possible by a generous grant through the European Recovery Program – Transatlantic Encounters to the American Council on Germany. Co-sponsored by the American Council on Germany and the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.
Contact Name Elizabeth Amrien
Phone 617-358-0919
Contact Organization Center for the Study of Europe
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Financing Solar Projects for Public and Affordable Housing
Thursday, February 15
1-2pm ET
Webinar
This webinar will discuss ownership and finance pathways for solar projects for public and affordable housing.
Bracken Hendricks, President and CEO of Urban Ingenuity, and Wayne Waite, current principal at Waite & Associates and former Regional Energy Manager for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, will present solar financing structures for public and affordable housing, including models using low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC), tax equity investment, power purchase agreements and ownership flips, blocker corporations, and Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE).
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Form, Function, and Fossils: Modern Twists on Ancient Evolutionary Transitions
Thursday, February 15
4:00pm
Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Stephanie E. PierceStephanie Pierce, Harvard University, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
OEB Seminar
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46th James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award Lecture
Thursday, February 15
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 10-250, Huntington Hall, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Lecture title: Adventures in Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis
Richard Schrock, a chemist renowned for his pioneering work in organometallic chemistry, has been named the recipient of the 2017-2018 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award.
Schrock's accomplishments include the development of a reaction known as olefin metathesis, now used for the efficient and more environmentally friendly production of important pharmaceuticals, fuels, and other products. For that work, he was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Professor Schrock's pioneering research efforts in inorganic and organometallic chemistry have defined the direction of the field,according to the award committee's citation, which was read at the May 17 faculty meeting by Joseph Paradiso, chair of the Killian Award selection committee and the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Professor in Media Arts and Sciences.
Established in 1971 to honor MIT's 10th president, James Killian, the Killian Award recognizes extraordinary professional achievements by an MIT faculty member.
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Ecology, Extinction, and the End of the Second Pandemic: Plague in the Ottoman Empire
Thursday, February 15
4:00PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 429, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Nükhet Varlık, Associate Professor, Rutgers University.
The Environmental History Working Group at Harvard University convenes once or twice a month to discuss the many ways in which humans have shared their history with non-human entities and forces. We welcome participants studying all regions and time periods at any stage of their career and from any relevant branch of history or allied fields.
Environmental History Working Group
Contact Name: Daniel Zizzamia
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From the Ashes: Film Screening with Producer Sidney Beaumont
Thursday, February 15
5:00pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Building E15-070, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Join a screening of "From the Ashes" followed by a discussion featuring the film’s producer, Sidney Beaumont
From Appalachia to the West’s Powder River Basin, the film goes beyond the rhetoric of the “war on coal” to present compelling and often heartbreaking stories about what’s at stake for our economy, health, and climate. From the Ashes invites audiences to learn more about an industry on the edge and what it means for their lives.
Doors open at 5PM
Dinner will be served
Hosted by:
Environmental Solutions Initiative, Sustainability Initiative, and Fossil Free MIT
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The Fierce Urgency of Now Speaker Series: Bill Rapp - Use of Military Force in the War on Terror in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan
Thursday, February 15
5:30pm to 6:45pm
Harvard, Taubman T-520 (Allison Dining Room), 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
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Dharma Gaze: Practices of Buddhism and Poetry—An Evening with Anne Waldman
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Religion
SPONSOR Center for the Study of World Religions
CONTACT CSWR, 617.495.4476
DETAILS “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” —from the Heart Sutra
Based on personal study and experience, this talk will touch on the refuge and Bodhisattva vows, the Six Realms of Existence, “co-emergent wisdom” as well as a parallel vow to poetry, and the joys and contradictions therein. It will also reference Giorgio Agamben’s notion of being contemporary with one’s time as “looking into the darkness.” The presentation will be supplemented by reference to particular writers associated with the Beat Literary Movement as well as the presenter’s own poetry.
Anne Waldman is a poet, teacher, performer, and cultural activist who has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism since 1970. Waldman was one of the founders and directors of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery in NYC and went on to co-found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado with Allen Ginsberg in 1974. Waldman has taught poetics and performed her texts all over the world and has been an active collaborator with composer/vocalist Meredith Monk, choreographer Douglas Dunn, and painter Pat Steir. She was recently the keynote speaker at the Jaipur Festival in India in 2017 and performed at The Casa del Lago Voz Alta festival in Mexico City. With her son Ambrose Bye, and nephew, Devin Brahja Waldman, she is part of the Fast Speaking Music collective and recording label. She is the author of more than 40 books, including her newest title, Trickster Feminism, a book of protest, which is forthcoming from Penguin in 2018.
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Microbial Life: A Universe at the Edge of Sight
Thursday, February 15
6:00PM
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall (100), 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Harvard Natural History Museum invites you to an exhibition opening lecture by Roberto Kolter, Professor Emeritus, Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology, Harvard Medical School; Director, Microbial Sciences Initiative, Harvard University; and Scott Chimileski, Microbiologist and Photographer, Harvard Medical School.
Although largely invisible, microbes are ubiquitous and have a profound influence on daily life. Using the familiar environment of our homes as a basis for their talk, Roberto Kolter and Scott Chimileski will guide the audience through a tour of the remarkable microbial universe, from “invisible chefs” instrumental in preparing many of our favorite foods, to microbes that inhabit our bodies and help keep us healthy. In considering the role microbes play in shaping both human life and the natural history of the planet, this lecture will introduce the new Microbial Life exhibition opening to the public Saturday, February 17. Program attendees are welcome to visit the museum galleries after the lecture for a sneak preview of the exhibit.
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The Public Policy Challenges of Artificial Intelligence
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 15, 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
SPEAKER(S) Dr. Jason Matheny, Director, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)
Eric Rosenbach (Moderator), Co-Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, HKS, Director, Defending Digital Democracy Project, Chief of Staff, United States Department of Defense (2015-2017), Assistant Secretary of Defense, United States Department of Defense (2014-2015)
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office 617-495-1380
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Kurt Forster | The Sites and Sounds of Shells: Modern Concert Halls
Thursday, February 15
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Building 7- 429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
How could an elitist institution acquire a virtually unique standing around the world? Because it reconciles the conflicting experiences of immersion and engagement in a place of sustained silence while the world has become too lonely for the individual and too loud for our ears. After yesterday’s Museums, today’s Concert Halls extend the quest for a collective experience of intelligence at play. The challenge of designing Concert Halls as urban landmarks has solicited some of the most imaginative architectural ideas.
Kurt Forster is a Visiting Professor at MIT in Spring 2018. He will teach a graduate seminar titled "How the History of the Earth Infringes on Architecture."
Mr. Forster has taught at Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, and Bauhaus University at Weimar and founded and directed research institutes at the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. He has organized major exhibitions on Schinkel in Chicago, Carlo Scarpa in Vicenza, Italy, Herzog & de Meuron in Montreal, and for the 2004 Venice Biennale. Mr. Forster has published widely on the history of art and architecture. He is a member of the Research Council of the Palladio Center in Vicenza, Italy; the Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau, Germany; and the Accademia di San Lucca in Rome. Mr. Forster attended the universities of Berlin, Munich, and Florence and received a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich.
MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
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The Pilgrim’s Sixth Birthday Party!
Thursday February 15
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Join us to celebrate the sixth birthday of The Pilgrim, a ten-times-a-year literary magazine from the homeless community of downtown Boston.
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Cambrige Forum: Romance in the Information Age
Thursday, February 15
7 pm
First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Does electronic intimacy work?
A discussion with Christine Rose, “the New Atlantis”; Curt DiCamillo, art historian; & Johnny Lee Davenport, classical actor
More information at http://www.cambridgeforum.org
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The Islamic Jesus: A bridge between Islam, Christianity—and even Judaism. Featuring: Mustafa Akyol
Thursday, February 15
7:15pm
MIT, Building W11- Main Dining Room, 40 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Religious tensions between Islam, Christianity and Judaism are some of the most complex, consequential and ominous challenges in today’s global community. Mustafa Akyol, a prominent Turkish journalist and Muslim intellectual, offers an unexpected possibility for building bridges between the three Abrahamic faiths: the Islamic Jesus—that is Jesus as he shows up in the Qur’an. Come hear and discuss the “provocative,” “timely and important” insights from Akyol’s new book The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims.
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Darwin Day: Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong
Thursday, February 15
7:15pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Building 4-270, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Why does sex exist? What are males for? Is the gender binary real? And why does a microbe have the swingingest sex life of all?
Darwin Day is a celebration of the FEB/12 birthday of naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin, a pivotal figure in the development of the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection. This year, we at the Secular Society of MIT mark it with a presentation by Abby Hafer, a zoologist and speaker who teaches at Curry College and authored Amazon theism-category bestseller "The Not-So-Intelligent Designer".
In this talk, subtitled "Part I -- The Gender Binary" (preemptively, because the misconceptions are too many to cover in a single talk), Dr Hafer will discuss the biological evolution of sex, sex and gender in the animal kingdom, and religious notions of sex and sexuality.
Cake and tea served before talk, audience Q&A after.
One lucky attendee will go home with a Darwin art poster we will randomize out at the end of the event.
Free entry and refreshments. The event will be photographed and recorded.
Facebook event: https://goo.gl/bBHe4U
Please also join us for a nature walk on the following Saturday morning ( event page at https://goo.gl/MSjP5m )
More about Darwin Day: http://darwinday.org
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Friday, February 16, 2018 (All day) to Saturday, February 17, 2018 (All day)
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Timeless Portraits and Dreams: A Festival/Symposium in Honor of Geri Allen
Paine Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA
Friday, February 16, 2018 (All day) to Saturday, February 17, 2018 (All day)
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Friday, February 16, 2018, 12pm
Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Keynote Address
Delivered by Farah Griffin of Columbia University.
Friday, February 16, 2018, 8pm
Paine Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Pianos for Geri
A performance curated by Vijay Iyer and featuring composer-pianists Kris Davis, Craig Taborn, Jason Moran, and Iyer in solo and duo configurations.
Saturday, February 17, 2018, 8pm
Paine Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Geri: Genius, Grace and Fire
A performance curated by Terri Lyne Carrington and features Carmen Lundy, Oliver Lake, Don Byron, Kris Davis, Tia Fuller, and Yosvany Terry.
Tickets are free and will be available from the Harvard Box Office on February 7, 2018
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Friday, February 16
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BU Questrom TechConnect Conference 2018: The Future of Money
Friday, February 16
8:30 AM – 3:00 PM EST
BU, Questrom School of Business, 595 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Cost: $20 – $25
Please join us on February 16th for the annual TechConnect conference where we will gather experts across FinTech to discuss how a new generation of start-ups and established enterprises are improving financial services, cutting costs, and transforming the business world through technology.
Website: https://www.butechconnect.com
For questions please email earthur@bu.edu
Sample Speakers Include
Susan Pandy Ph.D.( Director of Payment Strategies, Federal Reserve of Boston)
Dan Temkin (Co-Founder Legal, First Blood)
Navroop K. Sahdev ( Research Fellow, UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies)
Havell Rodrigues ( CEO, Adjoint)
Alin Tomescu ( PhD Candidate, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory)
Jamie Goldstein ( Founder and Managing Partner, Pillar.Vc)
Michael Sullivan (Co-Founder/CEO - Real Estate Chain)
+ State Street lunch and learn
Why FinTech ?
FinTech is redrawing the lines in the financial sector. Over 80% of financial institutions believe business is at risk to innovators and 77% expect to adopt blockchain as part of an in production system or process by 2020. Even more so, funding for FinTech projects is shifting from VC direct funding to mainstream investments.
The goal of this year’s conference is to provide attendees an introduction to this emerging sector. Key questions that will be answered include.
Where mobile payment adoption has occurred and the technologies supporting it
What is the process of introducing new cryptocurrencies into the market?
How will assets be transferred between single, centralized traditional and Blockchain-enabled ledgers?
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This Garden Is a Town
Friday, February 16 through March 3
9:00am to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 7-408, Anne Whiston Spirn Keller Gallery, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Innovation in the World
Friday, February 16
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 3-310, Margaret Cheney Room, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Women in Innovation Talk by Linda Foster
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week@mit.edu
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Global Food+ 2018
Friday, February 16
12:30 PM – 4:30 PM EST
Jaharis Family Center for Biomedical and Nutritional Sciences, 150 Harrison Avenue, Boston
The Global Food+ symposium brings together leading faculty from Boston University, Harvard, MIT and Tufts to share their most important new work towards healthier and more sustainable food systems. Our speed talk format allows participants to make new connections across Boston-area schools and types of research spanning a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, from archaeology to theology.
Talks will run continuously from 12:30 to 4:30, followed by a reception. For more information, please visit https://sites.tufts.edu/globalfoodplus2018.
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Seeds as deep-time technologies
Friday, February 16
2:30pm to 4:30pm
MIT, Building E51-095, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Presented by: Courtney Fullilove, Associate Professor, Wesleyan University
Courtney Fullilove will discuss her recent book, The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture, to argue that histories of agricultural development require engagement with multiple timescales, from the Neolithic to the modern. Drawing on her fieldwork in the Caucasus and Central Asia collecting cereals and crop wild relatives for international gene banks, she will discuss the recent sequencing of the wheat genome as an opportunity to think about how historians use genetic records, and the kind of history produced by genomic analysis.
Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History Series
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When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency
Friday, February 16
3:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and Harvard Book Store are pleased to welcome Bernardo Zacka, junior research fellow at Christ's College Cambridge and imminent MIT assistant professor, for a discussion of his debut book, When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency.
When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government’s human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion and make decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives. Combining insights from political theory with his own ethnographic fieldwork as a receptionist in an urban antipoverty agency, Zacka shows us firsthand the predicament in which these public servants are entangled.
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Innovation in the World (Speaker Series)
Friday, February 16
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 10-250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week@mit.edu
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Timeless Portraits and Dreams: Pianos for Geri
WHEN Friday, Feb. 16, 2018, 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Paine Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Concerts, Conferences, Music
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Cosponsors of the Festival/Symposium include the Jazz Research Initiative of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Music Department, Office of the Provost, the Dean of Arts and Humanities, the Associate Provost for the Arts, and the Office for the Arts
COST Event is free. Tickets Required. Limit of 2 tickets per person . Tickets valid until 7:45PM. Available by phone and internet for a fee. Call 617-496-2222 or reserve on line at www.boxoffice.harvard.edu
TICKET WEB LINK http://www.boxoffice.harvard.edu
TICKET INFO The Harvard Box Office 617-496-2222
DETAILS "Timeless Portraits and Dreams: A Festival/Symposium in Honor of Geri Allen" is organized by Vijay Iyer, Ingrid Monson, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Esperanza Spalding. Cosponsors of the Festival/Symposium include the Jazz Research Initiative of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Music Department, Provostial Fund for Arts and Humanities, Harvard University Committee on the Arts, the Dean of Arts and Humanities, and the Office for the Arts, all units at Harvard University.
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Saturday, February 17
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BetterMIT Makeathon
Saturday, February 17
MIT, Building E51, Wong Auditorium, 2 Ames Street, Cambridge
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Run by students, for students, the BetterMIT Student Life Makeathon is a weekend in which students collaborate with administrators, faculty members, internal MIT organizations, and student organizations to improve student life at MIT as part of BetterMIT Innovation Week.
The makeathon will have 3 main categories:
Live: Want to revamp study spaces, facilities, or have other ideas to improve living conditions for students? Come meet the Dean of Student Life and be heard!
Learn: Polish the MIT learning experience and help students find their passions amidst MIT’s overwhelming academic resources!
Connect: Together we are strong. If you’re passionate about social justice, fighting depression, or bringing us together as a community, this is the category for you!
We know our needs better than anyone else. Now’s the time to act! Come learn more about the community and how to realize your own initiatives with administrators and faculty representatives from internal MIT organizations, and experienced student innovators such as the creators of firehose and LeanOnMe.
For more information and to register, visit the registration page at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe775jaB_xCurZ1zLTcby92pNDPf9deqBhlq69iRZnMra60tw/viewform by Sunday, February 11th at 11:59pm!
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Sierra Club Climate Activist Training in JP
Saturday, February 17
2pm
St. John's Episcopal Church, 1 Roanoke Avenue, Jamaica Plain (6 minutes walk from Green Street Orange Line stop)
RSVP: https://goo.gl/nofdNt (Free and open to the public)
In this training Joel Wool of Clean Water Action will bring you up to speed on key energy bills under consideration at the State House and Emily Norton, Sierra Club MA Chapter Director,will give you the tools you need to effectively advocate to your elected officials. There will also be a short presentation from Andy Bean of Boston Climate Action Network on what is already being done to engage locally on energy and climate issues in Boston.
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Monday, February 19
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Feb Fest
Monday, February 19
10:00am to 5:00pm
MIT Museum, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join us for Feb Fest, our annual celebration of National Engineers Week, during February school vacation, with daily hands-on activities, workshops, and more. Check back for more information, including how to register for our fabulous Feb Fest workshops!
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Tuesday, February 20
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Advancing Justice in Global Trade: Lori Wallach at the Harvard Law Forum
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Campus Center, Room 1015, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Harvard Law Forum
SPEAKER(S) Lori Wallach, Founder of Global Trade Watch
COST Free, open to the public
CONTACT INFO Pete Davis, PeDavis@jd18.law.harvard.edu, 347-453-3135
DETAILS Lori Wallach (HLS Class of 1990) is the founder of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. She is a 25-year veteran of congressional trade battles, from the 1990s NAFTA fight to the TPP fight this past year. Named a “Politico 50” thinker, doer and visionary, she is one of the nation’s leading advocates of the public interest within the global trade regime.
She is coming to Harvard Law to share with students how they can advance justice and the public interest within the all-too-corporatized global trade system.
Free and open to the public, with pizza served.
Contact Pete Davis at PeDavis@jd18.law.harvard.edu for more information.
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PAOC Colloquium: Kristen Corbosiero (U Albany)
Tuesday, February 20
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
My research focuses on the interaction between tropical cyclones and the environments in which they are embedded, with an emphasis on storm structure, the intensity and duration of convection, and the properties of clouds that comprise the storm.
I have tackled these problems using both observational data and numerical modeling, and my work has documented the critical role of storm asymmetries on both intensity and track.
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Speaker Series: Elizabeth Bruenig
Tuesday, February 20
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Wexner 434, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Elizabeth Bruenig is a columnist at The Washington Post, where she writes about ethics, politics, theology, and economics from a progressive point of view. She lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and daughter.
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Geographies of Justice: Japan, Germany, and the Allied War Crimes Program
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
SPEAKER(S) Franziska Seraphim, Associate Professor of History and Director of Asian Studies, Boston College
Moderator: Susan Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and Director, WCFIA Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University
COST Free and open to the public
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Communicating Climate Change to People of Faith
Tuesday, February 20
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST
Webinar
Join us on Feb. 20th at 1:00 pm (Eastern) for a one-hour webinar featuring renowned atmospheric scientist and Christian leader, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe and Dr. Dan DiLeo, Catholic Climate Covenant consultant and Assistant Professor at Creighton University.
In this webinar Dr. Hayhoe and Dr. DiLeo will explore:
1) How to communicate successfully about climate change within our own faith
communities.
2) Key narratives/messaging strategies that work.
3) The unique challenges and strengths within the Catholic community for successful climate change communication.
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Industrial Agriculture and the Humble Strawberry
Tuesday, February 20
4PM (note time)
Belmont Media Center, 9 Lexington Street, Belmont
Julie Guthman, Ph.D. and UCSC), Professor of Social Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz; Radcliffe Fellow 2017-2018. Dr. Guthman is also a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow.
Dr. Guthman discusses the worrisome features of Big Agriculture in the U.S., with the example of one of America's favorite fruits, the strawberry. Industrialized agriculture produces massive crops, but this process requires plant breeding that sacrifices flavor and nutritional quality. Big Ag also depends on extensive use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that destroy the soil and cause serious environmental pollution. Dr. Guthman's forthcoming book will examine how efforts to manage a single soil pathogen ( Verticillium dahliae) gave rise to the modern strawberry industry --and the impact in California.
Dr. Guthman will also discuss her other studies of Big Agriculture in America and its impact on both the environment and human health. She is the author of the widely praised Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism, a book that is a must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between public health and modern food production.
Contemporary Science Issues and Innovations
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Privacy Despite Mass Surveillance
Tuesday, February 20
4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Refreshments: 3:45 PM
MIT, Building 32-D463 Star, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Sebastian Angel
Abstract: In the past decade there has been a significant increase in the collection of personal information and communication metadata (with whom users communicate, when, how often) by governments, Internet providers, companies, and universities. While there are many ongoing efforts to secure users' communications, namely end-to-end encryption messaging apps and E-mail services, safeguarding metadata remains elusive.
I will present a system called Pung that makes progress on this front. Pung lets users exchange messages over the Internet without revealing any information in the process. Perhaps surprisingly, Pung achieves this strong privacy property even when all providers (ISPs, companies, etc.) are arbitrarily malicious.
I will also present several improvements to a general cryptographic building block called private information retrieval (PIR) that underlies many privacy preserving systems including Pung. Among these improvements, I will discuss SealPIR, a new PIR library that achieves orders of magnitude more network efficiency than the state-of-the-art. Finally, I will briefly touch on some of my work on verifiable computation and interfacing with malicious USB devices.
Bio: Sebastian Angel is a Ph.D. candidate at The University of Texas at Austin and a visiting academic at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. His research interests are in systems, security, and networking.
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Mellon Seminar- Open Access and Research into History: Issues of Copyright
Tuesday, February 20
4:00 pm to 6:30 pm
BU, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Casey Westerman, Chief Librarian, Institute for Advanced Studies on the Gödel MaxPhil Notebooks, joined by Peter Suber (Harvard Library and Berkman Klein Center).
More information at http://www.bu.edu/calendar/?day=2018-2-20&category=lectures&uid=201676@17.calendar.bu.edu
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Israel's Democratic Slippage and its Implications
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018, 4:10 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Allison Dining Room, Taubman Building, Fifth Floor, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Naomi Chazan, Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; former Member of Israeli Knesset (1992-2003)
DETAILS A public address by Naomi Chazan, Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; former Member of Israeli Knesset (1992-2003).
Moderated by Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Affairs, HKS.
For close to a decade, Israel has been undergoing a process of democratic recession which is transforming it into a country which is divesting itself of many of its democratic trappings. This lecture will address the causes for this transition, its dynamics, its most recent manifestations and, on this basis, its key implications both domestically and internationally.
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Emile Bustani Seminar: “Donald Trump's Generous Offer on Jerusalem”
Tuesday, February 20
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building E51-325, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Salim Tamari, Director, Institute of Palestine Studies, Adjunct Prof., Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, Prof. of Sociology, Birzeit University
As Israel celebrates, and the rest of the world condemns, Donald Trump’s declaration of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it is pertinent to recall on this issue Arthur Koestler’s famous quip, made a century ago in reference to the Balfour Declaration, that “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.”
The new U.S. position has clearly placed the United States outside of the international consensus with regard to any future peace process over the status of the city, or indeed within the Arab-Israeli conflict. This has opened the door to other global and regional actors, particularly Europe, Russia, and Turkey, as future mediators.
Underlying the objections of the majority of countries, including the United States until Trump’s election, to Israel’s control of Jerusalem has been UN General Assembly resolution 181, which affirmed the partition plan for Palestine and the creation of an international zone in Jerusalem known as the corpus separatum. That notion established in the city a special international regime in which both Palestinians and Israelis would have a dual national identity in the city. Given the slow death of the peace process and the de facto withdrawal of the United States from a mediating role, is it time – seventy years later – to revive this plan for Jerusalem?
Salim Tamari is IPS senior fellow and the former director of the IPS-affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Studies. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat al Quds. He is professor of sociology at Birzeit University and an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He has authored several works on urban culture, political sociology, biography and social history, and the social history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent publications include: Year of the Locust: Palestine and Syria during WWI(UC Press, 2010) Ihsan's War: The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Soldier (IPS, Beirut, 2008); The Mountain Against the Sea (University of California Press, 2008); Biography and Social History of Bilad al Sham (edited with I. Nassar,2007, Beirut IPS); Pilgrims, Lepers, and Stuffed Cabbage: Essays on Jerusalem's Cultural History (edited, with I. Nassar, IJS, 2005) and Essays on the Cultural History of Ottoman and Mandate Jerusalem (editor, IJS, 2005).
The Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar is organized under the auspices of the MIT Center for International Studies, which conducts research on contemporary international issues and provides an opportunity for faculty and students to share perspectives and exchange views. Each year the Bustani Seminar invites scholars, journalists, consultants, and other experts from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States to MIT to present recent research findings on contemporary politics, society and culture, and economic and technological development in the Middle East.
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The Future of Humanity
Tuesday, February 20
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline
Cost: $29.95
Michio Kaku
The #1 bestselling author of The Future of the Mind traverses the frontiers of astrophysics, artificial intelligence, and technology to offer a stunning vision of man’s future in space, from settling Mars to traveling to distant galaxies.
Formerly the domain of fiction, moving human civilization to the stars is increasingly becoming a scientific possibility—and a necessity. Whether in the near future due to climate change and the depletion of finite resources, or in the distant future due to catastrophic cosmological events, we must face the reality that humans will one day need to leave planet Earth to survive as a species.
World-renowned physicist and futurist Michio Kaku explores in rich, intimate detail the process by which humanity may gradually move away from the planet and develop a sustainable civilization in outer space. He reveals how cutting-edge developments in robotics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology may allow us to terraform and build habitable cities on Mars. He then takes us beyond the solar system to nearby stars, which may soon be reached by nanoships traveling on laser beams at near the speed of light. Finally, he brings us beyond our galaxy, and even beyond our universe, to the possibility of immortality, showing us how humans may someday be able to leave our bodies entirely and laser port to new havens in space. With irrepressible enthusiasm and wonder, Dr. Kaku takes readers on a fascinating journey to a future in which humanity may finally fulfill its long-awaited destiny among the stars.
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Belief, Skepticism, and Touch: Some Thoughts on Saint Thomas the Apostle in Italian Renaissance Art
Tuesday, February 20
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Adrian Randolph
Few of us can ignore contemporary discourses on truth and falsity. How are we to verify information about some of the most pressing issues of the day? With this presentation, I open up discussion about a subject in art—the “incredulity” of St. Thomas—that thematized such matters in pre-modern Europe. Focusing on late medieval and Renaissance paintings and sculptures, I explore the ways in which visual artists pointed to the tactile as a way of enhancing the truth-value of their works. Along the way, I hope to raise some questions about key works of art, including Andrea del Verrocchio’s extraordinary Christ and St. Thomas, produced for the oratory of Orsanmichele in Florence.
Adrian Randolph is dean of the Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Art History. He joined Northwestern University on July 1, 2015.
Prior to joining Northwestern, Randolph served as the associate dean of the faculty for the Arts and Humanities at Dartmouth College. He also served as chair of the Department of Art History at Dartmouth, as well as director of the college’s Leslie Center for the Humanities.
Randolph’s research focuses on the art and architecture of medieval and Renaissance Italy. His scholarship emphasizes the blending of visual analysis with other contextual information, from fields as varied as science, literature, social history and gender studies. Throughout his career, he has successfully forged connections across disciplinary boundaries to build programming, lectures and conferences on topics as diverse as humor and race, Native American art, and science and visualization.
Randolph has authored, co-authored or edited eight books and numerous articles, essays and reviews. He also has served on the international advisory board of the journal Art History as well as the University Press of New England. Randolph completed his B.A. at Princeton University, his M.A. at the University of London and his Ph.D. in fine arts and the history of art and architecture at Harvard University.
MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art (HTC) Forum, organized by PhD students Caroline Murphy and Sarah Rifky
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Big Data Justice
Tuesday, February 20
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT Museum, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Numbers can be overwhelming, powerful, manipulative, intriguing ... and what about Big Data? Join a conversation between Jose Luis de Vicente of Sonar+D, curator of the Big Bang Data exhibition; Catherine D’Ignazio, data literacy researcher and artist; and Joy Buolamwini, poet of code and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League.
Explore how data is a powerful tool that should be carefully considered as it can be biased, manipulated, and used for good or other purposes.
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, Room 105, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Graduate School of Design, Co-presented by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Office of Communications.
SPEAKER(S) Mayor Rahm Emanuel
COST 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 conversation between Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design.
Rahm Emanuel is the 55th Mayor of the City of Chicago and has served since 2011. During that time he has made the tough choices necessary to secure Chicago’s future as a global capital. The Mayor lengthened the school day and added more than 200 hours to the school year, taking Chicago from having the least educational time of any large school district in the country to being on par with its peers. He implemented full-day kindergarten for every Chicago child, and fought for and won new accountability measures to ensure that every teacher and principal had the necessary resources to succeed. The Mayor’s comprehensive public safety strategy is focused on expanded prevention programs for at-risk youth, smarter policing strategies, and empowering parents and communities to reduce violence in their neighborhoods. He attracted numerous companies to Chicago and helped to build the next generation of start-ups, while investing in the infrastructure, public transportation, open space and cultural attractions that make Chicago a great place to live, work, and play. And he has worked to make our government more effective, to deliver better services at a more competitive price, and to open government to the public.
Prior to becoming Mayor, Emanuel served as the White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama and served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Chicago’s 5th District. He previously served as a key member of the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998, rising to serve as Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy.
Mayor Emanuel graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981 and received a Master's Degree in Speech and Communication from Northwestern University in 1985. He is married to Amy Rule, and they have three children.
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With Passion, an Activist Lawyer's Life
Tuesday, February 20
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
Growing up in a Depression-battered family, one tangled by a mortal secret, With Passion tells the improbable story of an unsung hero of the civil rights movement who thought of himself as a “miscast” lawyer but ended up defending peaceful protesters, representing Mohammad Ali, suing Robert Moses, counseling Lenny Bruce, bringing the case that integrated hundreds of southern hospitals, and named “the principal architect of the death penalty abolition movement in the United States.”
More than a meditation on frustrating legal efforts to fight inequality and racism, Michael Meltsner—also a novelist and playwright—vividly recounts the life of a New York kid, struggling to make sense of coming of age amid the tumult of vast demographic and cultural changes in the city.
Hired by Thurgood Marshall, Michael Meltsner argued major civil rights cases for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and authored Cruel and Unusual, the widely praised history of the attack on the death penalty. Winner of many awards, including a Guggenheim and an American Academy of Berlin Prize Fellowship, he teaches constitutional law at Northeastern University School of Law.
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Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Tuesday, February 20
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed journalist, New Yorker staff writer, and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism dean STEVE COLL—author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ghost Wars—for a discussion of his latest book, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
About Directorate S
Prior to 9/11, the United States had been carrying out small-scale covert operations in Afghanistan, ostensibly in cooperation, although often in direct opposition, with I.S.I., the Pakistani intelligence agency. While the US was trying to quell extremists, a highly secretive and compartmentalized wing of I.S.I., known as "Directorate S," was covertly training, arming, and seeking to legitimize the Taliban, in order to enlarge Pakistan's sphere of influence. After 9/11, when fifty-nine countries, led by the U. S., deployed troops or provided aid to Afghanistan in an effort to flush out the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. was set on an invisible slow-motion collision course with Pakistan.
Today we know that the war in Afghanistan would falter badly because of military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the drain on resources and provocation in the Muslim world caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and corruption. But more than anything, as Coll makes painfully clear, the war in Afghanistan was doomed because of the failure of the United States to apprehend the motivations and intentions of I.S.I.'s "Directorate S". This was a swirling and shadowy struggle of historic proportions, which endured over a decade and across both the Bush and Obama administrations, involving multiple secret intelligence agencies, a litany of incongruous strategies and tactics, and dozens of players, including some of the most prominent military and political figures. A sprawling American tragedy, the war was an open clash of arms but also a covert melee of ideas, secrets, and subterranean violence.
Coll excavates this grand battle, which took place away from the gaze of the American public. With unsurpassed expertise, original research, and attention to detail, he brings to life a narrative at once vast and intricate, local and global, propulsive and painstaking.
This is the definitive explanation of how America came to be so badly ensnared in an elaborate, factional, and seemingly interminable conflict in South Asia. Nothing less than a forensic examination of the personal and political forces that shape world history, Directorate S is a complete masterpiece of both investigative and narrative journalism.
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, February 21
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Boston Sustainability Breakfast
Wednesday, February 21
7:30 AM – 9:00 AM EST
Pret A Manger, 101 Arch Street, Boston
Join us every month for Net Impact Boston's informal breakfast meetup of sustainability professionals for networking, discussion, and moral support. It's important to remind ourselves that we are not the only ones out there in the business world trying to do good! Feel free to drop by any time between 7:30 and 9:00 am.
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The Elite Taboo Against Using Nuclear Weapons: Evidence from Wargames
Wednesday, February 21
10:00am - 11:30am
Harvard, Littauer Building, Fainsod Room, Littauer-324, 79 Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Reid Pauly, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom
Is there a normative prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons? Recent scholarship has cast doubt on the existence of a norm of nuclear non-use among the American people. But the public does not make decisions about using nuclear weapons. In this presentation, Pauly investigates the willingness of American policymakers to use nuclear weapons through the history of political-military wargaming. He tests competing theories about the use and non-use of nuclear weapons by examining both whether strategic elites were willing to use nuclear weapons in different scenarios and how they explained those decisions.
More information at https://www.belfercenter.org/event/elite-taboo-against-using-nuclear-weapons-evidence-wargames
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Obama and Kenya: Contested Histories and Politics of Belonging
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 21, 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) Kate Luongo and Matt Carotenuto, authors of Obama and Kenya: Contested Histories and Politics of Belonging
COST Free & open to the public
CONTACT INFO hutchinscenter@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS A Q+A session will follow the talk.
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Origins of Life Initiative Forum: Mechanisms of Life-like Fine-tuning in Driven Matter
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Haller Hall, Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Origins of Life Initiative
SPEAKER(S) Professor Jeremy England (MIT)
CONTACT INFO Kelly Colbourn-Moreno, kelly.moreno@cfa.harvard.edu
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The End of White Christian America: A Conversation with E.J. Dionne and Robert P. Jones
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018, 5:15 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Religion
SPONSOR HDS Dean's Office
CONTACT Paul Massari
DETAILS America is no longer a majority-white-Christian nation. Join journalist, author, commentator, and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and Dr. Robert P. Jones, author of The End of White Christian America, for a conversation on this seismic change, its impact on the politics and social values of the United States, and its implications for the future.
E.J. Dionne is a distinguished journalist, author, political commentator, and longtime op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a government professor at Georgetown University, and a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio, ABC’s “This Week,” and MSNBC. His most recent book, co-authored with Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, is One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported.
Dr. Robert P. Jones is the founder and CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and public policy. Dr. Jones serves as the Co-Chair of the national steering committee for the Religion and Politics Section at the American Academy of Religion and is a member of the editorial boards for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and for Politics and Religion.
This event is free and open to the public and will stream live from the HDS website.
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Harvard Science Research Public Lecture: Marcus du Sautoy, "The Great Unknown”
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018, 5:30 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Science Center Lecture Hall D, One Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Science, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard FAS Division of Science
and Harvard Department of Physics
SPEAKER(S) Marcus du Sautoy (Oxford)
COST Free
CONTACT INFO werbeloff@fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Marcus du Sautoy, the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, will talk about his new book, "The Great Unknown." Book signing at Cabot Science Library at 7 p.m.
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Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction
Wednesday, February 21
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
Nothing "goes viral." If you think a popular movie, song, or app came out of nowhere to become a word-of-mouth success in today's crowded media environment, you're missing the real story. Each blockbuster has a secret history--of power, influence, dark broadcasters, and passionate cults that turn some new products into cultural phenomena. Even the most brilliant ideas wither in obscurity if they fail to connect with the right network, and the consumers that matter most aren't the early adopters, but rather their friends, followers, and imitators -- the audience of your audience.
In his groundbreaking investigation, Atlantic senior editor Derek Thompson uncovers the hidden psychology of why we like what we like and reveals the economics of cultural markets that invisibly shape our lives. Shattering the sentimental myths of hit-making that dominate pop culture and business, Thompson shows quality is insufficient for success, nobody has "good taste," and some of the most popular products in history were one bad break away from utter failure. It may be a new world, but there are some enduring truths to what audiences and consumers want. People love a familiar surprise: a product that is bold, yet sneakily recognizable.
Every business, every artist, every person looking to promote themselves and their work wants to know what makes some works so successful while others disappear. Hit Makers is a magical mystery tour through the last century of pop culture blockbusters and the most valuable currency of the twenty-first century--people's attention.
From the dawn of impressionist art to the future of Facebook, from small Etsy designers to the origin of Star Wars, Derek Thompson leaves no pet rock unturned to tell the fascinating story of how culture happens and why things become popular.
Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine, where he writes about economics and the media. He is a regular contributor to NPR's "Here and Now" and appears frequently on television, including CBS and MSNBC. He lives in New York City.
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Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs That Changed Our Minds
Wednesday, February 21
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes award-winning psychologist and writer LAUREN SLATER for a discussion of her latest book, Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds.
About Blue Dreams
Although one in five Americans now takes at least one psychotropic drug, the fact remains that nearly seventy years after doctors first began prescribing them, we still don't know exactly how or why these drugs work—or don't work—on what ails our brains. Blue Dreams offers the explosive story of the discovery, invention, people, and science behind our licensed narcotics, as told by a riveting writer and psychologist who shares her own intimate experience with the highs and lows of psychiatry's drugs.
Lauren Slater's account ranges from the earliest, Thorazine and lithium, up through Prozac and other antidepressants, as well as Ecstasy, "magic mushrooms," the most cutting-edge memory drugs, and even neural implants. Along the way, she narrates the history of psychiatry itself, illuminating the imprint its colorful little capsules have left on millions of brains worldwide, and demonstrating how these wonder drugs may heal us or hurt us.
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Wednesday, February 22
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Overcoming the Challenges of Expanding Advanced Therapy Medical Products to a Global Population
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018, 7:45 – 9:15 a.m.
WHERE Harvard Faculty Club, MA Room 225, 20 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Health Sciences, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard University Technology Assessment in Health Care Monthly Seminar Series
SPEAKER(S) Gary C. du Moulin, Ph.D., M.P.H., Adjunct Associate Professor of Drug Regulatory Affairs, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy Health Sciences University
CONTACT INFO Debra Milamed
Tel. 617-327-5612
DETAILS Harvard University Technology Assessment in Health Care Monthly Seminar Series. Continental breakfast served.
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Take it Like a Man
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Hauser Hall, Room 104, Harvard Law School Campus, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Law, Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
SPEAKER(S) Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Professor of Law, Marquette University Law School
COST Free
CONTACT INFO Julie Barrett, jbarrett@law.harvard.edu
DETAILS Much research has been done to show the gender differences in negotiation. Advice up to this point has primarily focused on women—how to be more assertive or how to be more like men. On the other hand, more recent research shows that, in fact, men are punished even more severely for aggressive or bullying behavior in negotiation. In addition, while research often celebrates the perceived advantage that women have in terms of empathy or trustworthiness, the same research has not yet been used to provide more specific advice for what men need to do better in negotiation. This talk will bring these strands of research together in order to show not only the general differences between behaviors labeled as masculine and feminine in negotiation but also to outline lessons for effectiveness.
Free and open to the public. Lunch will be provided.
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Urban Farming & Food Justice: Karen Washington at the Harvard Law Forum
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Campus Center, Room 1023, 1585 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Harvard Law Forum
SPEAKER(S) Karen Washington, co-founder of Black Urban Growers and co-creator of Rise & Root Farm
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Pete Davis, pedavis@jd18.law.harvard.edu, 347-453-3135
DETAILS Karen Washington is a New York City community activist, community gardener and board member of the New York Botanical Gardens. She has worked with Bronx neighborhoods to turn empty lots into community gardens, helped launched a City Farms Market, is a member of the La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, is a Just Food board member, is a board member and former president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition and is the co- founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS). She is also the co-creator of Rise & Root Farm, a cooperatively run farm in the black dirt region of Orange County, New York.
She is coming to Harvard Law School to share her insights and experience on what lawyers can do to promote urban farming and food justice.
Free and open to the public, with pizza served.
Contact Pete Davis at PeDavis@jd18.law.harvard.edu for more information.
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Bruno Verdini: Winning Together
Thursday, February 22
12:30pm to 12:00am
MIT, Building 9-450, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Join the Environmental Policy and Planning (EPP) Group for the first EPP lunch of the Spring 2018 term. The lunch will feature a talk by Bruno Verdini, Lecturer of Urban Planning and Negotiation and Executive Director of MIT-Harvard Mexico Negotiation Program.
Verdini will lead a discussion on his best selling new book, Winning Together: The Natural Resource Negotiation Playbook. Lunch will be served.
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Solar+Storage for Public and Affordable Housing
Thursday, February 22
1-2pm ET
Webinar
This webinar will provide an overview of the technology, value proposition, and financing options for projects that pair solar with battery storage (solar+storage) for public and affordable housing.
Clean Energy Group Vice President Seth Mullendore will present on how combining solar+storage can yield value for multifamily properties, including how it can reduce demand and cut energy expenses. Clean Energy Group Senior Finance Director Rob Sanders will discuss how solar+storage projects for public and affordable housing can be financed. Andy Mannle will discuss Promise Energy’s experience developing a solar+storage project for net zero energy affordable housing property in Los Angeles, California.
Why Flexibility is Critical in Residential Energy Storage
Thursday, February 22
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Webinar
IHI Energy Systems and Tucson Electric Power will present interim results from their joint research project, which investigates the efficacy and economic viability of solar + storage combined with advanced autonomous dispatch algorithms for controlling peak load on the distribution network. The project compares the performance of several dispatch algorithms and systems sizes using both engineering and economic metrics, while accounting for the constraints of this real-world use case (including live real-world data feeds and limited historical data).
Event Contact
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Re-engineering Photoprotection to Improve Crop Productivity
Thursday February 22
4:00 PM EST
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Kasia Glowacka (U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
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Focus On Russia: "Russia and Turkey: Strategic Alliance or Partnership of Convenience?"
Thursday, February 22
4:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building E40-496, Lucian Pye Conference Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Dimitar Bechev, research fellow at the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Sponsored by the Security Studies Program, Center for International Studies, and MIT Russia
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The Edge of the Petri Dish: Wizards and Prophets
Thursday, February 22
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building E51-095, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Presented by Charles C. Mann
In 2050, the world will have about ten billion people. How will we feed them all? Provide everyone with freshwater? Ensure that there is enough energy--and avoid the worst effects of climate change? For decades the discussion of these subjects has been dominated by two clashing schools: Wizards, who believe that science and technology, properly applied, can let us produce our way out of our dilemmas; and Prophets, who believe that the world has fundamental ecological limits that we transgress to our peril. Prophets look at the world as finite, and people as constrained by their environment. Wizards see possibilities as inexhaustible and humans as wily managers of the planet. Is growth the lot and blessings of our species; or should stability and preservation be our goal? If the history of the last century has been one of explosive growth, the history of this coming century will be the choice we make, as a species, between these two paths
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ICTs for Refugees and Displaced Persons
Thursday, February 22
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 56-114, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Carleen Maitland
Expanding use of information and communication technology (ICT) together with the humanitarian reform agenda are changing both the experience of being a refugee as well as humanitarian response. These forces are giving rise to the digital refugee and a new form of humanitarian operations, digital humanitarian brokerage. In this talk, Carleen Maitland presents these two concepts, evidence of their emergence and differences in the role information plays in each. The concepts emerge from a synthesis of scholarship from international law, information and organization science, GIS, computer and data science as presented in her upcoming edited volume Digital Lifeline? ICTs for Refugees and Displaced Persons. The talk culminates in an analysis of the implications of these trends for information policy as well as the research necessary to insure both technologies and policies evolve to mitigate potential harms and amplify potential benefits for refugees.
Carleen Maitland is co-Director of the Institute for Information Policy and Associate Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University. Her expertise includes analyses of ICT use in international organizations, particularly those involved in fostering economic and social development as well as humanitarian relief. Her work, reported in over 100 refereed journal articles, conference proceedings, and presentations, has influenced scholarship in the fields of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD), communications, information systems and human computer interaction fields. Her work is supported by the National Science Foundation, USAID, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and IBM, among others. She has held several leadership positions in both the ICTD and policy communities, currently serves as Associate Editor of the open access journal Information Technology & International Development (USC Annenberg Press). Also, from 2010-2012 she served as a Program Manager in the U.S. National Science Foundation, both in the Office of International Science and Engineering and the Office of Cyberinfrastructure.
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Preparing Our Grid for an E-Mobility Revolution: Can We Do it?
Thursday, February 22
5:30 PM to 8:30 PM (EST)
Greentown Labs, 444 Somerville Avenue, Somerville
What will the passenger experience be like in 2050? How will electric vehicle adoption change our transportation reality? What technology advances are shaping the future of electric mobility? Over the last 7 years, the number of zero emissions vehicle commitments from cities and states have skyrocketed, the price of batteries has dropped 80% and industry incumbents from automotive manufacturers to electric utilities have started blueprints for a whole new transportation reality.
Join us for an evening of discussion about the future of electric mobility and transportation from the vantage point of the corporate leaders, startups, and policy experts driving innovation in Massachusetts and around the globe.
Program Agenda:
5:30pm - 5:35pm: Welcome
5:35pm - 5:45pm: Opening Remarks
6:00pm - 7:00pm: E- Mobility Panel (see panelists below)
7:00pm - 8:30pm: Networking
Panelists Include:
Gerhard Walker: Director of Grid Evolution, Opus One Energy Corps
Francis O’Sullivan: Director of Research, MIT Energy Iniative
Alan White: Chief Business Officer, eMotorWerks
Hilary Flynn: Director of External Innovation, National Grid
Tod Hynes: CEO & Founder, XL Hybrids
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Ananya Roy | Plans for Freedom: Sanctuary, Abolition, and Reconstruction in the Age of Trumpism
Thursday, February 22
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The Trump presidency has brought to sharp light the enduring racial inequalities through which liberal democracy is constituted and lived. In this talk, I examine imaginations and practices of resistance, from sanctuary cities to professional refusal, against regimes of white nationalism. But I also place the present historical conjuncture in the broader history of racial capitalism and return to the “freedom dreams” of black reconstruction and the project of abolitionism. I argue that our disciplines and professions have a role to play in such plans of freedom.
Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography and founding Director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles where she holds the Renee and Meyer Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy. Previously she was on the faculty at the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. Ananya’s research and scholarship has a determined focus on poverty and inequality and lies in four domains: how the urban poor in cities from Kolkata to Chicago face and fight eviction, foreclosure, and displacement; how global financialization, working in varied realms from microfinance to real-estate speculation, creates new markets in debt and risk; how the efforts to manage and govern the problem of poverty reveal the contradictions and limits of liberal democracy; how new programs of welfare and human development are being demanded and made in the global South. Ananya is the author of several books including Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development (Routledge, 2010), which received the Paul Davidoff book award from ACSP. Her most recent book is Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World (UC Press, 2016). During the last year, Ananya’s public scholarship has challenged white supremacy and white power. From the short video, “3 Truths About Trumpism,” to the organization of a nationwide day of Teach.Organize.Resist, her work mobilizes the power of knowledge to divest from whiteness.
MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
Organized with MIT Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS)
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Branchfood Presents: The Future of Agriculture
Wednesday, February 22
6:00 – 8:30PM
CIC Boston, Lighthouse 20th Floor, 50 Milk Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/branchfood-presents-the-future-of-food-panel-series-tickets-39173251249
Cost: $20- $70
The Future of Food is a 4-part series exploring topics surrounding the Future of Food. The series is jointly hosted by Branchfood andCIC in Boston, Massachusetts. Tickets are available to purchase for individual events or an all-access series pass. Join the Branchfood mailing list to receive updates and learn more about this and future events!
Series Dates and Topics:
February 22nd – The Future of Agriculture
March 22nd – The Future of Food Products
April 26th – The Future of Nutrition
May 24th – The Future of Grocery
FUTURE OF FOOD SERIES: THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE
THE WORLD POPULATION IS PROJECTED TO REACH 9.8 BILLION BY 2050. HOW WILL WE FEED ALL THOSE PEOPLE!?
Local Boston startups have been developing new tools to advance current agriculture practices including seed innovation, hydroponics, satellite imagery and robotics. Join Branchfood and members of Boston’s agriculture technology sector to discuss the latest products on the market, how to launch and grow a successful business and how technology innovation is driving change in agriculture. At this event you’ll get to connect with commercial agriculture technology leaders, advisors, entrepreneurs, and get to check out the latest products and technologies at our showcase.
PRESENTERS
Vijay Somandepalli, Co-Founder and CTO at American Robotics
Vijay is the CTO and Co-Founder of American Robotics. Dr. Somandepalli has a keen interest in applying robotics and automation to enhance sustainability, efficiency and value across all sectors of technology and industry. At American Robotics, he oversees the development and application of their aerial robotics technology to agriculture.
Lawrence Wang, Digitalization and Analytics Strategy Lead Cargill
Lawrence Wang has over 21 years as a technology professional with experience across a variety of industries. He has held positions with Accenture, IBM, ING Group, Target, Medtronic, and is now with Cargill. Lawrence is a native of Minnesota, and loves Minnesota-ey things like hockey, camping, fishing and the State Fair.
Lauren Moores, VP Data Strategy and Data Sciences at Indigo Agriculture
Lauren Moores comes to Indigo as a self-described “digital data geek” with a passion for transforming data into products, insightful analytics, and relevant stories. She has over 25 years in interdisciplinary fields, from data and technology strategy to science and data creation. Lauren’s past executive roles have focused on the creation of big data platform solutions, competitive intelligence products, and emerging data usage. Most recently, she ran data analytics and data strategy at Tala, a global fintech startup that transforms mobile behavioral and transactional data to provide financial identities to the underserved in emerging economies.
Brett Brohl, Managing Director at Techstars Farm to Fork Accelerator
Brett is the Managing Director of the Techstars Farm to Fork Accelerator, partnered with Cargill and Ecolab. He is an experienced entrepreneur, investor, and mentor, driven by making a difference in the world through helping entrepreneurs succeed. Prior to the Techstars Farm to Fork Accelerator Brett served as Director of the inaugural Techstars Startup Next Food & Ag in Partnership with Land O’Lakes and as the Entrepreneur in Residence at Techstars Retail Accelerator in Partnership with Target.
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Bayesian Hierarchical Models and Voting Rights
Thursday, February 22
6:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Our February meeting will feature a talk by Dr. Karin Knudson, of Phillips Academy, about Bayesian hierarchical models applied to political science. Join us to learn more about this interesting topic and share your story with fellow Bayesians.
Abstract
We will discuss a hierarchical Bayesian approach to the problem of ecological inference in the context of its relevance to issues of voting rights and districting. Ecological inference methodology gained prominence since the United States Supreme Court deemed it an appropriate tool of analysis in certain cases related to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We will explore ecological inference by considering relevant hierarchical Bayesian model(s), an implementation using PyMC3, and examples and applications with voting data.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Karin Knudson is Instructor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. She earned her doctorate in Mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin, studying compressive sensing and Bayesian statistics in the context of computational neuroscience. This year she is teaching a course on the mathematics of gerrymandering.
Agenda:
6:30: Networking
7:00: Talk by Karin Knudson and Q&A
8:00: Networking
9:00 pm End of the event.
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John Adams’s Republic
Thursday, February 22
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
Richard Alan Ryerson
Scholars have examined John Adams’s writings and beliefs for generations, but no one has brought such impressive credentials to the task as Richard Alan Ryerson in John Adams’s Republic. The editor-in-chief of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Adams Papers project for nearly two decades, Ryerson offers readers of this magisterial book a fresh, firmly grounded account of Adams’s political thought and its development.
About the Author:
Richard Alan Ryerson, the former academic director and historian of the David Library of the American Revolution, was the editor-in-chief of the Adams Papers from 1983 to 2001.
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Friday, February 23
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Jane Kirk, Environment Canada
Friday, February 23
12:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Atmospheric & Environmental Chemistry Seminar
Contact Name: Kelvin Bates
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Raisin' Hell: Narrative Constructions of a Useful Enemy in Religious Right Fundraising Matters
Friday, February 23
1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
BU, 10 Lenox Street, Boston
CURA Colloquium with Chad Moore, Graduate Division of Religious Studies
Phone 353-9050
Contact Email cura@bu.edu
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The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment
Friday, February 23
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome Assistant Professor of History at Williams College ALEXANDER BEVILACQUA for a discussion of his new book, The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment.
About The Republic of Arabic Letters
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a pioneering community of Christian scholars laid the groundwork for the modern Western understanding of Islamic civilization. These men produced the first accurate translation of the Qur’an into a European language, mapped the branches of the Islamic arts and sciences, and wrote Muslim history using Arabic sources. The Republic of Arabic Letters reconstructs this process, revealing the influence of Catholic and Protestant intellectuals on the secular Enlightenment understanding of Islam and its written traditions.
Drawing on Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, and Latin sources, Alexander Bevilacqua’s rich intellectual history retraces the routes―both mental and physical―that Christian scholars traveled to acquire, study, and comprehend Arabic manuscripts. The knowledge they generated was deeply indebted to native Muslim traditions, especially Ottoman ones. Eventually, the translations, compilations, and histories they produced reached such luminaries as Voltaire and Edward Gibbon, who not only assimilated the factual content of these works but wove their interpretations into the fabric of Enlightenment thought.
The Republic of Arabic Letters shows that the Western effort to learn about Islam and its religious and intellectual traditions issued not from a secular agenda but from the scholarly commitments of a select group of Christians. These authors cast aside inherited views and bequeathed a new understanding of Islam to the modern West.
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I Am Not Your Negro
Friday, February 23
7:30PM
First Church in Jamaica Plain Unitarian Universalist, 6 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain
I Am Not Your Negro envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, a radical narration about race in America, using the writer’s original words, as read by actor Samuel L. Jackson. Alongside a flood of rich archival material, the film draws upon Baldwin’s notes on the lives and assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. to explore and bring a fresh and radical perspective to the current racial narrative in America.
Dismantling White Supremacy Film Series
As persons of faith living in 21st century America, we feel called to question how we might work, take action, do our part, to dismantle white supremacy. We seek to deepen our understanding of the role white supremacy has played in the development of our modern day society, take some inventory, and identify opportunities for collective action. We are inspired by the words of Rev. Mary Margaret Earl, Executive Director and Senior Minister of UU Urban Ministries in Roxbury:
“We must continue the work that many of us have been engaged with, to dig deeper into the ways that racism has infiltrated our subconscious, our hearts, and our educational, prison and government systems since our country was founded. The hate on display in Charlottesville, as grotesque as it was, is not disconnected from the rest of us. It is the most egregious, visible outgrowth of the racism we have all breathed in, like polluted air, our whole lives.”
We are all caught in that web. For those of us who identify as white, we work to become unstuck through listening and learning. Listening nondefensively to people of color who are willing to share their experiences and viewpoint. Learning about the history of racism in our nation.
Co-sponsored by
First Church Unitarian Universalist in Jamaica Plain, Social Justice Action Committee, and The Racial Justice Task Force of the Theodore Parker Church
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Saturday, February 24
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Urban Environmental Justice Conference
Saturday, February 24
ALL DAY
Kresge Building, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
The Urban Environmental Justice Conference at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with keynote address given by Mustafa Ali, former Senior Advisor for Environmental Justice and Community Revitalization at the EPA and current Senior Vice President of Climate, Environmental Justice, and Community Revitalization for the Hip Hop Caucus.
The conference will serve to bring awareness to the impact of environmental injustice, even in our local community, and to highlight the importance of collaborative works to bring forth solutions to complicated environmental injustice issues by learning different perspectives and initiatives from various stakeholders such as community organizations, policymakers, and researchers. Through this approach, we will focus on community-relevant issues surrounding environmental injustice and provide an example of how Harvard graduate students from all schools can work synergistically to foster communication and collaboration across disciplines that work directly or indirectly on areas related to urban environmental injustice.
The focus of the conference is on community-relevant issues surrounding the theme of urban environmental injustice, particularly the issue of public space. Topics that would be covered include access to space redevelopment and health impacts around physical activity, mental health, and safety of redeveloped space. With this conference we hope to create a platform for discussing solutions with interactions among students and different expertise and local community leaders from a multidisciplinary lens.
The intended audience includes students from all disciplines from Harvard as well as neighboring universities and members of the local community.
Hosted by the Harvard Chan Environmental Justice Student Organization, Healthy Places GSD, and Harvard GSAS Action Coalition, with help from HKS Health Policy PIC, the conference aims to promote collaborative work towards solving complicated environmental injustice issues by engaging different perspectives.
Detailed programing and registration will open in January.
More information at https://urbanenvironmentaljustice.fas.harvard.edu
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Careers in Conservation 2018
Saturday, February 24
10:00 AM – 3:30 PM
Careers in Conservation is HCCS's annual conference, aimed at equipping college students with a passion for conservation work to pursue a career in this field. Our conference features inspiring keynote speakers and panelists, engaging workshops on different aspects of conservation, and networking opportunities with local professionals, organizations, and other students. Come to learn more about the fascinating, multidisciplinary field of conservation work, network with other conservationists - both aspiring and professional - and get excited about this crucial work!
The preliminary schedule is as follows:
9:30 – Registration Opens
10:00 – Welcome and Keynote Address
11:00-11:45 – Workshops Session 1
11:50-12:35 – Workshops Session 2
12:30-1:30 – Networking Lunch (lunch will be provided for all attendees)
1:40-2:25 - Interdisciplinary Panel of Conservation Professionals: Preparing for a Conservation Career in a Challenging Political Environment
2:30-3:15 – Closing Address
Workshop options will include sessions on The Science of Conservation, Environmental Law, Engaging in Advocacy, Conservation Finance, and The Role of Government in Conservation. Representatives from various conservation-focused organizations, as well as some of our speakers, will be available to chat with attendees during the networking lunch. Stay tuned for a complete list of speakers and organizations coming soon!
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Citizen Science Fair
Saturday, February 24
1:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT Museum, 265 Maassachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Meet researchers from a number of local organizations, and discover how you can participate in “citizen science,” research projects that enlist the public’s participation in data collection, analysis, and reporting. This form of crowd-sourced science has the potential to lead to discoveries that would be nearly impossible to achieve alone.
Included with Museum Admission
Partners:
Arnold Arboretum
bloomWatch
Boston Harbor Islands
City Nature Challenge
CoCoRaHS
Exoplanet Explorers
EyeWire
Fathom
ISeeChange
Mass Audubon Society
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Sunday, February 25
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Be the Change Community Action: Immigration
Sunday, February 25
3:00pm to 5:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
Simmering underneath immigration policy debates today are deep moral questions about who “we” are and who gets to decide what is “just.” So too in health care policy debates. In her book Communities of Health Care Justice, Cambridge author Charlene Galarneau argues that communities - inclusive of all persons present, are critical moral actors in defining and creating just communities. Three justice standards: inclusive communities, whole person care, and participation as effective voice, are relevant to both health policy and immigration policy.
At this Be the Change Sunday, Charlene Galarneau and a representative of the Cambridge Interfaith Sanctuary Coalition will speak briefly to issues of current immigration policy, community, and justice leading to a discussion among attendees. Our one-hour event (3:00pm-4:00pm) ends with several opportunities for those present to take timely action related to immigration policy.
Twenty percent of all in-store sales from 3:00pm-5:00pm will be donated to The Cambridge Interfaith Sanctuary Coalition (CISC). Comprised of 11 Cambridge congregations, minyans, and interfaith groups, CISC is committed to community engagement with immigrant refugee communities, to advocacy at local, state, and federal levels for just immigration policies, and to support community members who are under threat of deportation. More information about CISC is available here.
Charlene Galarneau is Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College, and teaching faculty at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School. Her academic work on justice and health policy is informed by her earlier work with community and migrant health centers in rural Colorado.
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Monday, February 26
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PAOC Colloquium: Dan Chavas (Purdue University)
Monday, February 26
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Dr. Chavas' research areas include natural hazard physics, tropical cyclones, weather and climate variability, climate change, risk analysis, and societal impacts.
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Creating Markets for Wind Electricity in China: An Analysis of Grid and Institutional Causes of Curtailment
Monday, February 26
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Michael Davidson, Environment and Natural Resources Program Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, HKS. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Research
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
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Vaccine Criticism in France: Scientific Credibility and the Fragmentation of Social Movements
Monday, February 26
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, Pierce 100F, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Jeremy Ward (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Sociology)
STS Circle at Harvard
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Energy for Africa, Prioritizing Investments Under Climate Change
Monday, February 26
12:30 pm - 1:45 pm
Tufts, Cabot 702, 170 Packard Avenue, Medford
Dr. Richard Swanson (GLS Group) is a strategy consultant, focusing on energy sector assets and project development. He helps his clients prioritize their infrastructure investments, and with project design. His clients include private developers, multilateral agencies, and infrastructure investment banks. He has degrees from the Fletcher School (’08) and the University of Colorado (’88 and ’17), and he lives near Boston, MA.
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Machine Learning from Schools about Energy Efficiency
Monday, February 26
2:30pm to 4:00pm
Harvard, Littauer M-16, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
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Norton Lecture III, 'The 7th Art and Me' by Agnès Varda
WHEN Monday, Feb. 26, 2018, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, 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) Agnès Varda
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK www.boxoffice.harvard.edu…
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, 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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The Fierce Urgency of Now Speaker Series: Danielle Allen - The War on Drugs and Human Rights
Monday, February 26
5:30pm to 6:45pm
Location: Wexner 434AB, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
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F.E.W. Seminar: Unpacking Popular Trends in Food & Finance
Monday, February 26
5:30pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building NE48, MIT Federal Credit Union Branch, 700 Technology Square, Cambridge
Popular Food Trends - Are They Worth the Investment?
To kick off the 2018 Financially Empowered Women Series, we’re welcoming back Catherine Smart of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street to talk about the 5 most popular food trends we’re seeing now (think: meal service plans and the instant pot) and to discuss – is it worth the investment? What are the pros and cons?
Rachel and Tyler of Society of Grownups will also join us for a discussion on the personal finance side of these trends. We’ll talk about how to build them into your budget along with your other financial goals such as buying a home, planning for a major expense, or adding to your emergency fund. We'll also touch on some of the major financial trends to keep an eye on for 2018 such as budgeting apps, energy efficient loans and more.
As always, our events are open to all, members, non-members, men, women, and anyone else interested in joining the conversation!
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#BUcityplanning Lecture: The Development of Boston’s Metropolitan Park System
Monday, February 26
6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
BU, PSY B53, 64 Cummington Mall, Boston
City Planning and Urban Affairs’ course UA 510: Special Topics: The Planning and History of Metropolitan Boston will host guest speaker Karl Haglund, Planner, Massachusetts Department of Conversation & Recreation (DCR) and author of Inventing the Charles. Mr. Haglund lecture will focus on The Development of Boston’s Metropolitan Park System. All students, faculty, and staff are welcome to attend.
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Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi | Learning from Dadaab: An Architectural History of Forced Migration
Monday, February 26
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MITm Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
What do we see, when we see a refugee camp? States providing asylum are often unwilling to integrate refugees into the economy or social structure, and maintain them in remote camps in undeveloped areas, served by parallel systems or foreign aid. Refugees in camps inhabit edge conditions, surviving between competing entities and interests. The casual images of precarity that ensue form the dominant visual archive.
Yet, a narrative of refugees as superfluous humanity and theorization of camps as extraterritorial may be dispelled by an exercise in close looking at architecture and history. Thinking with the Somali refugees in the camp complex at Dadaab, Kenya, offers purchase on a set of questions: of the relationship between the camp and the city, of shared humanitarian, colonial, and territorial histories, and of architecture as spatial politics. As the largest ever field site administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in operation since 1991, Dadaab offers an anchor point for many histories—of Africa, Islam, migration, urbanism, humanitarianism, development, war, heritage—and also offers a historiographic model: for architectural history in a refugee camp.
Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi is an architectural historian and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University Mahindra Humanities Center, and joins Barnard College, Columbia University in 2018. Her research stems from two book projects, Architecture of Humanitarianism: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Emergency Urbanism in History and Vocal Instruments: Minnette De Silva and an Asian Modern Architecture, with articles in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, The Journal of Architecture, Architectural Theory Review, Grey Room, and the volume Spatial Violence (Routledge, 2016, special issue co-editor). She received a Ph.D. in the History of Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and practiced architecture in Bangalore and New York.
MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture
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Starr Forum: Is Democracy Dying? Panel discussion on the current state of democracy.
Monday, February 26
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
MIT Stata Center, Kirsch Auditorium 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speakers: Daron Acemoglu, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, MIT. His most recent book is Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Politics (Crown Business, 2012).
Maria Ramirez a 2018 Nieman Fellow, is a reporter and entrepreneur from Spain who covers U.S. politics for Univision. She is the co-founder of Politibot.
Yascha Mounk Lecturer on Political Theory at Harvard University's Government Department, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund, and a Nonresident Fellow at New America's Political Reform Program. Mounk’s most recent book - The People Versus Democracy: Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It (Harvard University Press, 2018) - will be available for purchase at the event.
Moderator: Melissa Nobles, Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Professor of Political Science, MIT
Nobles is the author of Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford University Press, 2000) and The Politics of Official Apologies (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Free & open to the public | Refreshments served
Can't attend in person? Watch it on Facebook live or on-demand on YouTube.
For more information or accessibility accommodations please contact starrforum@mit.edu.
Email: starrforum@mit.edu
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Solutions to Address Race and Economic Inequality in the Commonwealth
Monday, February 26
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Federal Reserve Bank Building, 600 Atlantic Avenue, Boston
In December 2017, the Boston Globe ran a weeklong series describing the racial and economic climate in the city. The facts showed what many in communities of color already knew to be true: that Boston has not yet shrugged off its racist treatment and policies towards Black Americans.
As a response to the series, BECMA is hosting an event that will include several interactive presentations from groups who are working to solve these age-old problems, followed by a robust question and answer period with audience members where all will learn how they can address the racial and economic inequality issues facing communities of color in their own fields of work.
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Fifty Years Since MLK
Monday, February 26
6:30 PM (Doors at 6:00)
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store, Boston Review, Mass Humanities, and the Cambridge Public Library welcome acclaimed educators BRANDON M. TERRY, TOMMIE SHELBY, ELIZABETH HINTON, and CORNEL WEST for a panel discussion on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
This discussion will feature Fifty Years Since MLK, the latest Boston Review issue, edited by Brandon M. Terry; and To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. from Harvard University Press, edited by Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry.
Please Note:
Seating is limited and will be available on a first come, first served basis. Seating will begin at 6pm.
About Fifty Years Since MLK
Martin Luther King's legacy for today's activists, fifty years after his death.
Since his death on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King's legacy has influenced generations of activism. Edited and with a lead essay by Brandon Terry, this volume explores what this legacy can and cannot do for activism in the present.
King spent the months leading up to his death organizing demonstrations against the Vietnam War and planning the Poor People's Campaign, a "multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington in pursuit of economic justice. Thus the spring of 1968 represented a hopeful albeit chaotic set of possibilities; King, along with countless other activists, offered both ethical and strategic solutions to the multifaceted problems of war, racism, and economic inequality. With a critical eye on both the past and present, this collection of essays explores that moment of promise, and how, in the fifty years since King's death, historical forces have shaped what we claim as a usable past in fighting the injustices of our time.
About To Shape a New World
Martin Luther King, Jr., may be America’s most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the fiftieth anniversary of King’s assassination, the man and his activism are as close to public consciousness as ever. But despite his stature, the significance of King’s writings and political thought remains underappreciated.
In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry write that the marginalization of King’s ideas reflects a romantic, consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative―an effort not at radical reform but at “living up to” enduring ideals laid down by the nation’s founders. On this view, King marshaled lofty rhetoric to help redeem the ideas of universal (white) heroes but produced little original thought. This failure to engage deeply and honestly with King’s writings allows him to be conscripted into political projects he would not endorse, including the pernicious form of “color blindness” that insists, amid glaring race-based injustice, that racism has been overcome.
Cornel West, Danielle Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Gooding-Williams, and other authors join Shelby and Terry in careful, critical engagement with King’s understudied writings on labor and welfare rights, voting rights, racism, civil disobedience, nonviolence, economic inequality, poverty, love, just-war theory, virtue ethics, political theology, imperialism, nationalism, reparations, and social justice. In King’s exciting and learned work, the authors find an array of compelling challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our present and rethink the legacy of this towering figure.
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#metoo: Truths and Consequences
WHEN Monday, Feb. 26, 2018, 7 – 8:15 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Jeannie Suk Gersen, John H. Watson, Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Evelynn Hammonds, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science, professor of African and African American studies, and chair of the department of the history of science, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
David Laibson, Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics and chairman of the department of economics, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Harvard College Professor, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and staff writer, the “New Yorker”
Moderated by Ann Marie Lipinski, curator, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS Is #metoo radical or reactionary, a watershed or merely a flood? How can employers, campuses, and courts fully and fairly respond to the court of public opinion?
Coined in 2007 by the activist Tarana Burke, the hashtag #metoo became a global media tsunami in late 2017. As what some scholars are calling the “first wave” of the #metoo movement crests, Harvard faculty experts will explore the movement’s causes and project its consequences—intended and unintended. Reflecting from vantage points of history, African American studies, economics, and law, this event will deepen difficult interdisciplinary and intergenerational conversation around a topic that often generates more heat than light. Register online.
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Tuesday, February 27
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Speaker Series: Tom Wheeler
Tuesday, February 27
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Tom Wheeler served as the Chairman of the FCC from 2013 to 2017 under President Obama. For more than three decades, Wheeler has been involved with new telecommunications networks and services, experiencing the revolution in telecommunications as a policy expert, advocate, and businessman. As an entrepreneur, he started or helped start multiple companies offering cable, wireless, and video communications services. He is currently the Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow for the 2017-18 academic year. While at the Shorenstein Center, Wheeler will conduct research and teach study groups on the intersection of public policy and transformational technology.
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Negotiating with New Technology: Shaping the Third Digital Revolution
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Pound Hall, Room 102, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Law, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
SPEAKER(S) Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Professor, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University
Editor, Negotiation Journal
Neil Gershenfeld, Professor and Director, Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT
COST Free
CONTACT INFO Julie Barrett, jbarrett@law.harvard.edu
DETAILS The first two digital revolutions — in communication and computation — began a half-century ago and have transformed markets and society. The third digital revolution — in fabrication — is still in its early stages, when things are still negotiable. The technology road map points to individuals and communities being increasingly self-sufficient and generative in new ways — literally owning the means of production.
This talk builds on the newly published book, "Designing Reality: How to Survive and Thrive in the Third Digital Revolution" (Basic Books, 2017), co-authored by Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Neil Gershenfeld and Alan Gershenfeld.
Realizing the full potential of the technology depends on choices we make now — tacit and explicit negotiations at the individual, community, and societal levels. Come learn about the technology and join the conversation as we shape our shared future.
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Pardee Center Special Lecture: “Why Forests? Why Now?” Featuring Frances Seymour
Tuesday, February 27
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm
BU Hillel House, 4th Floor, 213 Bay State Road, Boston
Special lecture featuring Frances Seymour, lead author of "Why Forests? Why Now? The Science, Economics and Politics of Tropical Forests and Climate Change."
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The Future of Everything
Tuesday, February 27
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
BUild Lab IDG Capital Student Innovation Center, 730 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-future-of-everything-lightning-talks-showcases-tickets-41437357251
Tech? Healthcare? Arts? At this speaking event, get inspired by insights on the future of everything.
Contact Name Ahlea Isabella
Phone 66173538702
Contact Email aisabel@bu.edu
Contact Organization Innovate@BU
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Norton Lecture IV, 'Crossing the Borders' by Agnès Varda
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, 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) Agnès Varda
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.boxoffice.harvard.edu/Online/default.asp
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, 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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Housing in Boston - Civic Innovation Conversation Series
Tuesday, February 27
5:30 PM to 8:30 PM
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston
In Boston, we are experiencing tremendous growth in our economy. Whether it is big companies like GE and Reebok moving to Boston, or startups emerging from our entrepreneurial ecosystem, all of these businesses are creating jobs. This growth also results in secondary businesses and jobs that support industry like delivery and food services. But where do all of these people live?
As a relatively small city, housing is limited. Many people commute great distances to work in Boston. There is a growing need for diverse housing options in Boston. Please join us for a discussion about Housing in Boston where we will explore:
How is Boston doing on the MA housing report card?
When does the cost of commute outweigh the benefit of lower cost housing?
Can we use data and technology to inform and plan?
What housing innovations could be relevant for Boston?
How do we begin to address equity in housing in Boston?
Speakers
Jen Corcoran, Corcoran Jennison, One Charlestown
Anda French, Principal of French 2D
Karina Milchman, Chief Housing Planner, Metropolitan Area Planning Council
Marcy Ostberg, Director, Mayor's Housing Innovation Lab, City of Boston
Moderator: Bianca Sigh Ward, ACLU
More speakers to be announced shortly. #civictechbos
Schedule:
5:30 – 6 PM – Registration and networking
6:00 – 7:00 – Panel Discussion
7:00 - 7:30 – Q&A
7:30 – 8:30 – Post event networking
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As the Seas Rise, Can We Restore Our Coastal Habitats?
Tuesday February 27
6 pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
As sea levels rise, the potential loss of coastal habitats is a threat across the globe. This is of particular concern in the eastern United States, where coastlines are largely developed and offer few open spaces for habitats to move inland if present natural lands are lost. Considering the current conditions of coastlines, as well as future development scenarios, Steven Handel will discuss strategies to help maintain our coastal character and the ecological services of coastal habitats that are critical to the social, cultural, and environmental well-being of our region.
Steven Handel, Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolution, Rutgers University Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
Lecture. Free and open to the public.
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Silas Peirce Lecture: Black Liberation & White Supremacy
Tuesday, February 27
6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
BU, Photonics 206, 8 St. Mary's Street, Boston
Since the 1980s, Southern localities have erected increasing numbers of monuments that commemorate the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the longer black freedom struggle more generally. However, the forms, locations, and sometimes even the existence of these memorials have been affected and deflected by assumptions about the nature of civic space and public commemoration. As a result Southern civic spaces often present an odd juxtaposition of monuments celebrating opposite sides of the black freedom struggle. Periodic incidents such as those in Charleston in 2015 and in Charlottesville in 2017 provoke public debate about the appropriate fate of monuments celebrating the Confederacy and the longer white supremacist tradition more generally. This talk will explore some of these constraints and paradoxes of the Southern civic landscape. Presenter: Dell Upton, Professor of Architectural History & Chair, Department of Art History, UCLA
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Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: Phillip Sharp on Convergence in Biomedicine
Tuesday, February 27
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building E51-335, 2 Amherst Street, Cambridge
This lecture series, which includes imminent researchers and innovators from a wide variety of fields across MIT, will showcase the numerous forms that innovation takes and the pathways it can take from ideation to implementation.
Title: Convergence in Biomedicine
Summary
Recent professionalization and expansion of the sciences has isolated investigators in different fields such as physics, mathematics, biology and engineering. There is no longer a set of renaissance individuals who have mastered the important frontiers of these diverse fields and can creatively find connections—the heart of new transformative breakthroughs. Our societal structures, such as departments of science and engineering, and our governmental agencies, such as National Institute of Health and the Departments of Energy and Defense, each have specific sciences they nurture and different scientific cultures that re-inforce the silo nature of science in the United States. Introduction of the term “Convergence” over ten years ago highlighted this fragmentation and the benefits for society of more integration of different sciences into biomedical research. Convergence arises when multi-disciplinary teams are supported, collaborations rewarded, and environments made available for training.
Modern biological sciences originated with the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953. This discovery was a convergent event as Crick as a physicist and Watson a biologist. From this discovery, molecular biology arose leading to the amazing development of genetic engineering in the mid 70s and the sequencing of the human genome around the end of the century. These revolutions in biological sciences gave rise to the biotechnology industry, a re-design of medical education, and advances in healthcare. However, these successes in effect isolated much of biomedical science from other areas of sciences such as computational mathematics, engineering, and physical sciences. In 2010, conversations with faculty and officials at MIT led to a public policy initiative to increase the visibility of the promise of an increased convergence of biomedical sciences with computational, physical, and engineering sciences, for meeting society’s challenges. This began with a report from the National Academy of Science, “A New Biology for the 21st Century” in 2010; a MIT White Paper on Convergence in 2011, and an article in Science in 2011 authored with Robert Langer “Promoting Convergence in Biomedical Science” Science 333:527. MIT’s leadership encouraged this public policy initiative and embraced convergence, with the most obvious example being the founding of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Convergence in biomedical science is reality at MIT and becoming a reality across the country, but more slowly than many had hoped. One of its major promises is the integration of large data with other technologies and advances, thereby creating new opportunities for increasing the quality of healthcare at a sustainable cost.
About the Speaker
Phillip A. Sharp is an Institute Professor (highest academic rank) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the Department of Biology and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. He joined the Center for Cancer Research (now the Koch Institute) in 1974 and served as its director for six years, from 1985 to 1991, before taking over as head of the Department of Biology, a position he held for the next eight years. He was founding director of the McGovern Institute, a position he held from 2000 to 2004. His research interests have centered on the molecular biology of gene expression relevant to cancer and the mechanisms of RNA splicing. His landmark work in 1977 provided the first indications of “discontinuous genes” in mammalian cells. The discovery fundamentally changed scientists’ understanding of gene structure and earned Dr. Sharp the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Sharp has authored over 410 papers. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Society, UK. Among his many awards are the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, and the National Medal of Science. His long list of service includes the presidency of the AAAS (2013) and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the SU2C Project, AACR. A native of Kentucky, Dr. Sharp earned a B.A. degree from Union College, Barbourville, KY, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Dr. Sharp is a co-founder of Biogen and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc.
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authors@MIT: Marie Hicks, Programmed Inequality
Tuesday, February 27
6:00pm
The MIT Press Bookstore, MIT Building N50, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join us as we welcome Marie Hicks to the MIT Press Bookstore to discuss and sign copies of Programmed Inequality. Books will be on sale at the event for 20% off, or you can purchase an event ticket that includes a discounted book.
About Programmed Inequality:
In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age.
In Programmed Inequality, Marie Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole.
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Cristina Goberna Pesudo | Epic Architecture: The Book of Sins
Tuesday, February 27
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Masschusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cristina Goberna Pesudo is a practitioner architect, educator and critic. She is founder partner of Fake Industries, Architectural Agonism (FKAA), an architectural practice of horizontal structure and colaborative nature based in Barcelona, New York and Sydney. Cristina completed a 7 years Bachelor Degree in Architecture at the University of Seville, Spain. As a Fulbright Fellow she was awarded an MS. in Advance Architectural Design (AAD) and an Advance Architectural Research (AAR) certificate by GSAPP in Columbia University. In 2010 she was a visiting scholar at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts thanks to a Caja Madrid Fellowship. She is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture of Barcelona where she develops her dissertation about the construction of the EU Urban Imaginary though the PAN and Europan competitions. After five years being an Adjunct Professor in GSAPP at Columbia University in New York, she is currently also a Senior Lecturer Professor at Sydney UTS and recent juror in EUROPAN 13 Norway. Cristina’s work has been exhibited internationally and her projects and writings have been published widely.
Fake Industries Architectural Agonism was awarded with the 2009 Young Architects Forum Prize by the Architectural League of New York and the 2014-15 American Institute of Architects New Practices Prize. FKAA won the EUROPAN competition in 2003, 2005, 2009, 2012 and the international competition to build the New Velodrome for Medellin, currently under construction. In 2014 they were finalist in the Design Basel/Miami Pavilion contest and in MOMA PS1 Young Architects Program. FKAA was one of the 6 shortlisted teams in the Guggenheim Helsinky Museum competition. In 2015 the Chicago Art Institute acquired models and images from FKAA+MAIO’s PS1 Young Architects Program finalist entry for its Architecture permanent collection and The Pompidou Center in Paris acquired models and drawings of the Velodrome for the City of Medellin for its permanent collection. In 2015 FKAA was invited to participate in the Chicago Architecture Art Biennial and in 2016 it was invited to particiateat the Spanish pavilion in the Venice Biennial (recipient of the Golden Lion Prize), in the Oslo Architectural Triennial and the Istanbul design Biennial.
MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
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Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats
Tuesday, February 27
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store welcomes acclaimed health and food policy journalist and Brandeis University Senior Fellow MARYN MCKENNA for a discussion of her latest book, Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats. She will be joined in conversation by UMass Lowell philosophy professor NICHOLAS EVANS.
About Big Chicken
This eye-opening exposé documents how antibiotics transformed chicken from local delicacy to industrial commodity—and human health threat—uncovering the ways we can make America's favorite meat safer again.
What you eat matters—for your health, for the environment, and for future generations. In this riveting investigative narrative, McKenna dives deep into the world of modern agriculture by way of chicken: from the farm where it's raised directly to your dinner table. Consumed more than any other meat in the United States, chicken is emblematic of today's mass food-processing practices and their profound influence on our lives and health. Tracing its meteoric rise from scarce treat to ubiquitous global commodity, McKenna reveals the astounding role of antibiotics in industrial farming, documenting how and why "wonder drugs" revolutionized the way the world eats—and not necessarily for the better. Rich with scientific, historical, and cultural insights, this spellbinding cautionary tale shines a light on one of America's favorite foods—and shows us the way to safer, healthier eating for ourselves and our children.
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Lost Kingdom
Tuesday, February 27
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
Serhii Plokhy
In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine. While the world watched in outrage, this blatant violation of national sovereignty was only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian nation.
In Lost Kingdom, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues that we can only understand the confluence of Russian imperialism and nationalism today by delving into the nation's history. Spanning over 500 years, from the end of the Mongol rule to the present day, Plokhy shows how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin exploited existing forms of identity, warfare, and territorial expansion to achieve imperial supremacy.
About the Author
Serhii Plokhy is the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. An award-winning author, Plokhy lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
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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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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 Events: http://calendar.mit.edu
MIT Energy Club: http://mitenergyclub.org/
Harvard Events: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/
Harvard Environment: http://environment.harvard.edu/events/calendar/
Sustainability at Harvard: http://green.harvard.edu/events
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/
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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