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, March 5
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Atomic Homefront Documentary
10am A Day of Hope and Resistance
12pm Causal Links Between the Arctic and the Midlatitude Jet-streams
12pm Leadership in Global Environmental Conflicts: A Conversation with Yolanda Kakabadse
12pm Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet
12:10pm Improving the drought tolerance of crop and timber species: physiological and evolutionary perspectives
12:15pm Governing the Future: Cancer Viruses and the Growth of American Biomedicine
12:30pm Tarzan to the Terminator: Western Water's Story through the Los Angeles River
5pm Bridging the US Political Divide Online: What we Learned from using big data, bots and volunteers to challenge polarization
5:30pm The Fierce Urgency of Now Speaker Series: Jacqueline Bhabha - The Human Rights of Non-Citizens under Trump
5:30pm Sustainability impact assessment for startups
6pm Wild Diagnosis: Human Health and the Animal Kingdom
6pm What Will It Take to Pass the Equal Rights Amendment?
6:30pm Building Radical Products: How you can pivot less and build more
7pm Public Program | Catalyst Conversations | Immersed: Video. Art. Technology
7pm The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
7pm Asteroid Futures: Decades, Centuries, Millennia
7:30pm A Path Forward for Governmentt: Relationship Building in a Time of Political Division
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Tuesday, March 6
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11am Artificial Intelligence and National Security Law: A Dangerous Nonchalance
12pm The Accuracy, Fairness, and Limits of Predicting Recidivism
12pm Investing in the Grassroots to Achieve Environmental and Social Justice
12pm Current Issues in Humanitarian Disarmament: Targeting, Toxicity, Technology, and Trade
3pm A New Paradigm in Engineering Education Using Two Disruptive Technologies: Simulations & Online Learning.
3:30pm Investigative Reporting: Making an Impact on Policy and Governance
5pm Innovating for the clean energy economy
5:15pm Panel Discussion: Common Spaces: Environmental History and the Study of Early America
5:30pm Gutman Library Distinguished Author Series Event: Research in Mind, Brain, and Education
5:30pm Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism—Author Discussion
5:30pm metaLAB + friends openLAB
5:30pm Launch Smart Clinic – Internet of Things (IoT)
6pm Goldsmith Awards Ceremony 2018 with Martha Raddatz of ABC News
6pm Beyond the Gates: The Past and Future of Prison Education at Harvard
6pm Greenovate Boston’s Second Climate Ready South Boston Open House
6pm Brownfields: Rewriting Industrial Legacy from Brown to Green
7pm There Is More Than Enough Renewable Energy
7pm Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
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Wednesday, March 7 - Friday, March 9
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Dissolve Music @ MIT, March 7-9
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Wednesday, March 7
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9am Massachusetts Clean Energy Center - Consuls General Welcome Reception
12pm Mothers Out Front Health Impacts Support Team Discussions
12pm The latitudinal dependence of geostrophic turbulence in the atmosphere and ocean
12pm Paul Butler Book Talk on Chokehold: Policing Black Men
12pm The Revolutionary Power of Cooperatives: Nathan Schneider & Jason Wiener at The Harvard Law Forum
12pm SLS Seminar: Rei Chemke (Columbia University)
12pm Upper Tropospheric Ice Sensitivity to Solar Geoengineering
12pm The Race for Votes: How Candidates Use Negative Racial Appeals About Blacks to Win White Votes
12pm Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
4pm Total History: Time, Empire, and Resistance from Alexander the Great to the End of the World
4pm The Science Behind Understanding Attributes That Make A Community Disaster-Resilient
4pm Digital Transformation Summit 2018
4:15pm Why Prices or Quantities Dominate Banking and Borrowing
5pm This Land is Our Land: The Antiquities Act and the Battle for Public Lands
6pm Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: Making in America
6pm Book Talk: Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir
6pm Tour of John Hancock Tower
6pm Tech + Humanitarian Action: Accelerating Global Crisis Response
6pm Boston New Technology Startup Showcase #BNT87 21+
7pm Harvard Extension School Lowell Lecture 2018 - Ambassador Swanee Hunt
7pm Media, Activism & Social Justice Panel
7pm We're In This Together: Battling for Clean Energy and Fighting Fracking from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts
7pm Dragonfly Eyes: Film Screening + Artist Talk
7pm Lessons Learned when Field Botany Meets Design
8pm A.R.T. of Human Rights: Resistance Mic!
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Thursday, March 8
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8:30am Red, White and New Tour: Solectria 1000 Inverter Roadshow
12pm The Ancient West and America’s Westward Expansion
12pm Empowering Girls, Transforming Communities: The Power of Grassroots Leadership
2pm The Trichodesmium Microbiome and Its Role in the Marine Nitrogen and Phosphorus Cycles
2pm DSL Speaker Series: Professor Daniel Jackson, Portraits of Resilience
4pm Evolution of Bacteria within Individual Human Microbiomes
4pm OEB Seminar Series - "Genomic Conflicts and The Origins of Species”
4:15pm Probing the Limits of Speculation: Counterfactualism and the Holocaust
5pm Microbes as sentinels of changing ecosystems
5pm Alaskan Palms, Antarctic Dinosaurs and Arctic Crocodiles: The Implications of Past Warm Worlds
5pm Resource Anxieties
5pm The Tip of the Iceberg: Sound Studies and the Future of Afrofuturism
5:30pm AI, Machine Learning and the Future of the Digital Experience
6pm SCIENCE with/in/sight: 2018 Koch Institute Image Awards
6:30pm Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
7:30pm Boston Area Solar Energy Association Monthly Forum: The Utility Business Model IS the Problem
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Friday, March 9
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8am MIT Sustainability Summit: Good Jobs for a Thriving Economy
8:30am My Bionic Hand
9am Boston Data Portal Training
11:45am Materials Design for Applications in Solar and Thermal Energy: Prof. Jeffrey Grossman
12pm Jerusalem after Trump: Consequences and Implications
12pm EXTREME HURRICANES: The Challenges for Puerto Rico and Beyond
2pm MLTalks: Neal Stephenson
2pm 2018 MacVicar Day Symposium: Inclusive Pedagogies: Building a Vibrant Community of Learners at MIT
3pm The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution
7pm Undocumented: A Dominican Boy's Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League
7pm Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America
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Saturday, March 10
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8am Beyond the Cradle: Envisioning a New Space Age
8:30am Sustainable House of Worship Workshop
10am Maple Syrup Community Boil Down!
8pm Documentary screening “Sustainable"
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Sunday, March 11
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8am MIT New Space Age Conference
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Monday, March 12
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11:45am Sustainable Careers: Catie Lee, Manager at Land O'Lakes SUSTAIN, on Sustainability in Food and Agribusiness
12pm PAOC Colloquium: Brent Minchew (MIT)
12:30pm Bridging Privacy Definitions: Differential Privacy and Privacy Concepts from Law and Policy
1pm NULab: Geometries of Thought: What the history of network visualizations reveals about how we think
4pm MIT STS Program presents the 2018 Morison Prize & Lecture with guest speaker, Sheri Fink, PhD, MD
5:30pm MIT Screening of THE NEW FIRE
6:30pm Science by the Pint: Small Stars with Small Planets
7pm Blockchain For Good - Boston
8pm JANE Premier Watch Party
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Tuesday, March 13
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8:30am Emerging Trends Series: Solar + Storage
12pm Brown Bag Lunch: Ari Daniel
2pm Nexus of Global Jihad: Understanding Cooperation Among Terrorist Actors
5pm Countering Fake News with Jakub Janda, Deputy Director, European Values Think-Tank
6pm Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: The 21st Century’s Technology Story: The Convergence of Biology and Engineering
6pm Projecting Climate Change into the Future: What We Know and How Well We Know It
The Science for the Public 2018 Science Lectures at MIT
6:15pm Racism: An Ongoing Dilemma
6:30pm NeuroTech and Artificial Intelligence
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
Geometry Links - February 26, 2018
City Agriculture - March 4, 218
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Monday, March 5
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Atomic Homefront Documentary
FREE ONLINE TIL MARCH 8th at https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/atomic-homefront
Putting residents' health at very dire risk. An underground fire, smoldering for years in an immediately adjacent municipal garbage dump, is now burning within hundreds of feet of the radioactive wastes, and has dramatically exacerbated
"Atomic Homefront" premieres on HBO Feb. 12, as EPA orders inadequate cleanup at leaking nuclear weapons waste dump (free access online viewing available from Feb.. 13 till early March, compliments of HBO!)
The powerful documentary film "Atomic Homefront" is about the oldest nuclear weapons wastes of the Atomic Age, from the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s, and the St. Louis, Missouri community's response to living amidst such risks. The Belgian Congo uranium ore radioactive wastes were illegally dumped at West Lake Landfill in the early 1970s (and Cold Water Creek, and other locations in the St. Louis area, decades earlier than that). Located in the Mississippi River floodplain, radioactive contaminants have leaked out of West Lake Landfill for decades, flowing with wind and water into surrounding neighborhoods, putting residents' health at very dire risk. An underground fire, smoldering for years in an immediately adjacent municipal garbage dump, is now burning within hundreds of feet of the radioactive wastes, and has dramatically exacerbated concerns.
The moving film provides valuable insights for similar grassroots struggles of resistance against numerous other radioactive waste dumps and contaminated sites, from one side of the continent to the other.
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A Day of Hope and Resistance
WHEN Monday, Mar. 5, 2018, 10 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Memorial Church, 1 Harvard Yard, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Classes/Workshops, Concerts, Conferences, Dance, Education, Ethics, Exhibitions, Humanities, Lecture, Music, Poetry/Prose, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard DACA Seminar (Co-sponsored by Harvard Graduate School of Education, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Inequality in America Initiative, Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, and Act On A Dream)
SPEAKER(S) Rebel Diaz
Audry Funk with Dj Loup and Bestia bx
Vijay Iyer
Quetzal Flores and Martha Gonzalez of Quetzal
Esperanza Spalding
Yosimar Reyes
Julio Salgado
Sonia Guiñansaca
Claire Chase
...and more!
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO rmcdowell@g.harvard.edu
DETAILS A day-long celebration of community and solidarity, featuring workshops, musical performances, artwork, and spoken word.
Free and Open to the Public. No registration required.
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Causal Links Between the Arctic and the Midlatitude Jet-streams
Monday, March 5
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
PAOC Colloquium: Elizabeth Barnes (Colorado State)
The Arctic has been warming rapidly over the past few decades, raising the question of how polar warming may impact the weather in lower latitudes. Here, we apply causal discovery techniques (e.g. Granger causality) to quantify the sensitivity of the jet-streams to variations in Arctic temperatures on subseasonal timescales using 4800 years of CMIP5 model simulations. These causal discovery techniques allow us to quantify the jet-stream sensitivity in the presence of feedbacks, as well as assess seasonal and regional sensitivities. A further benefit of this approach is that we can make direct comparisons of the sensitivities between observations and models, as well as across many models, and here we demonstrate that model differences in the mean-state circulation can lead to differences in the jet-stream response to Arctic temperature variability.
While this talk is focused on the causal links between Arctic warming and the midlatitude atmospheric circulation, we hope it also highlights the relevance and utility of causal discovery techniques for atmospheric dynamics research.
About the Speaker
My primary research objective is to understand the variability of the atmosphere to better interpret and predict its behavior over a range of timescales and climates. My research focuses include large-scale atmospheric dynamics, subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction of extreme events, atmospheric mixing/transport, and the influence of atmospheric circulations on air quality and human health.
Editorial Comment: This lecture seems as if it will speak directly to what is happening in the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere this winter.
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Leadership in Global Environmental Conflicts: A Conversation with Yolanda Kakabadse
Monday, March 5
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, Allison Dining Room, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Join the Center for Public Leadership at HKS for a discussion with Ecuadorian conservationist and former President of WWF, Yolanda Kakabadse. Ms. Kakabadse will join CPL Louis Bacon Senior Fellow in Environmental Leadership Rand Wentworth in conversation about her expansive cross-sector career in environmental policy and conservation. Ms. Kakabadse will also discuss her experience leading in conflict, particularly in Latin America, where she served as Ecuador's Minister of the Environment from 1998-2000. This lunch discussion will be an excellent opportunity to hear about Ms. Kakabadse's experiences as an environmental entrepreneur, policy maker, and non-profit leader on the global stage.
Registration required.
Contact Name: cpl_events@hks.harvard.edu
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Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet
Monday, March 5
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Varun Sivaram, Philip D. Reed Fellow for Science and Technology, Counil on Foreign Relations. Lunch will be provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
617-495-8693
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Improving the drought tolerance of crop and timber species: physiological and evolutionary perspectives
Monday, March 5
12:10 pm
Arnold Arboretum, Weld Hill Lecture Hall, 1300 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain
Sean Gleason, Research Plant Physiologist, USDA-ARS Water Management Research Unit
More information at https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/research/research-talks/
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Governing the Future: Cancer Viruses and the Growth of American Biomedicine
Monday, March 5
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, 100F Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Robin Scheffler (MIT, HASTS)
STS Circle at Harvard
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Tarzan to the Terminator: Western Water's Story through the Los Angeles River
Monday, March 5
12:30PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Loeb Library, Gund Hall, GSD, 48 Quincy St., Cambridge
The Los Angeles River has been an iconic setting in many Hollywood movies, from Tarzan’s early twentieth century jungle to the post-apocalyptic motorcycle chase scene in Terminator 2. The roles the Los Angeles River has played in these movies serve as a lens through which to examine the past, present, and future of water law – from the romantic but wildly dangerous river of Tarzan to the tamed but still menacing concrete channel of the Terminator. Rhett Larson, Richard Morrison Fellow in Water Law; Associate Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, will evaluate the evolution of water law and its impacts on society through the history of the Los Angeles River, and offer a future for water law based on the martial arts philosophy of another iconic resident of Los Angeles: Bruce Lee.
Contact Name: designstudies@gsd.harvard.edu
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Bridging the US Political Divide Online: What we Learned from using big data, bots and volunteers to challenge polarization
Monday, March 5
5:00 - 7:00P
MIT, Building 9-255, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP: https://goo.gl/forms/NPsg7fiw3soSOjrb2 (dinner included)
Current political events in the USA reveal social cohesion is fragmented and increasingly polarized. This limits the opportunity and desire for people to engage across political lines. Well-established models of conflict escalation signal that these constitute warning flags for future violent confrontations.
Social media is both a vehicle for perpetuating political polarization and also, for challenging it. Over the last six months, Build Up ran a pilot to address polarization on social media. The Commons identifies polarising filter bubbles on Facebook and Twitter, then uses social media bots to engage with relevant people, and finally organises a network of trained volunteers to move identified users towards constructive engagement with each other and with the phenomenon of polarisation.
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The Fierce Urgency of Now Speaker Series: Jacqueline Bhabha - The Human Rights of Non-Citizens under Trump
Monday, March 5
5:30pm to 7:00pm
Harvard, Wexner 434AB, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
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Sustainability impact assessment for startups
Monday, March 5
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Measuring sustainability impact (social, environmental and economic value creation) is extremely difficult. Measuring it for startups with limited time and financial resources and fast changing business models makes this challenge even more difficult. But not measuring impact means taking decisions today, without a clear understanding what exactly their impact will be in future. And this during a time, when the biggest (business model) decisions are being made. Not at last, more and more (impact) investors and donors ask you to provide information about the impact you have.
In this workshop you will:
Learn how to measure your startups/projects sustainability impact
Pitch your sustainability impact (theory of change) to peers
Understand what difference your startup/project makes, i.e. "what is your added value"?
Learn how to identify ways to increase your sustainability impact
Learn to use an excel based tool that helps you to measure, communicate, report and improve your impact
The workshop consists of:
Explanation of the impact measurement method and tools: 20%
Applying the tools and methods learned to your own venture/project: 40%
Presenting your impact to peers & providing and receiving feedback from peers: 20%
Group discussion and reflections: 20%
Who should attend?
Startups/projects from idea to growth and acceleration stage.
Anyone interested in the topic is welcome. Please note: Participants will apply the methods and tools to their own startups/projects. Participants without a clear idea of an own project/startup or those with a very early stage idea may find some parts of the workshop more difficult/less valuable.
What exactly is the measurement method?
The method applied in the workshop has been developed as part of a larger research project on impact measurement for startups. The approach has won a research conference award and receives continuous positive feedback from startups and relevant stakeholders. The approach is not yet published and thus not yet scientifically validated in a peer reviewed, academic journal. Further information about the workshop format and the measurement approach can be found here: https://youtu.be/b4Ajto-bLY8
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Wild Diagnosis: Human Health and the Animal Kingdom
Monday, March 5
6:00pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, and Co-Director, Evolutionary Medicine Program, UCLA; Visiting Professor, Department of Human and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
Sudden cardiac death in kangaroos. Breast cancer in jaguars. Compulsive disorder in polar bears. All animals, including humans, are subject to a wide range of physical and psychological illnesses. Using pathological specimens from Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, Barbara Natterson-Horowitz will discuss disorders in both living and extinct species. She will also examine the importance of comparative and evolutionary perspectives in deepening scientific understanding of disease and increasing our compassion toward affected patients—both human and non-human animals.
Livestreaming
This event will be livestreamed on the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/harvardmuseumsofscienceandculture
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What Will It Take to Pass the Equal Rights Amendment?
WHEN Monday, Mar. 5, 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) Katie Packer Beeson, Lina Esco, Jane Mansbridge, Johanna Maska, Victoria A. Budson
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office, 617-495-1380
DETAILS Katie Packer Beeson, Founding Partner, Burning Glass Consulting, Deputy Campaign Manager, Romney for President Campaign (2012)
Lina Esco, Activist and Actress, S.W.A.T., Cane
Jane Mansbridge, Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, Harvard Kennedy School, Author, Why We Lost the ERA
Johanna Maska, CEO, Global Situation Room, Director of Press Advance, President Barack Obama Administration (2009-2017)
Victoria A. Budson (Moderator), Founder & Executive Director, Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP), Harvard Kennedy School, Chairperson, Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women (2011-2016)
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Building Radical Products: How you can pivot less and build more
Monday, March 5
6:30 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Hubspot HQ, 2 Canal Park, Cambridge
As a startup you pivot till you can find product-market fit, right? The reality is that very few startups survive a series of pivots. Both Agile and Lean Startup are great for smart, feedback-driven execution — but they can't replace the foundation of product vision and strategy. How do you reduce the number of iterations and increase your runway by building your product in a more capital efficient way? Join the creators of the Radical Product Toolkit to learn how to create a powerful, far-reaching vision for your product, develop a clear product strategy, and prioritize product decision making. You’ll also learn how to balance long-term strategic considerations with the day-to-day needs of your company. Join us for this event hosted by HubSpot and Founder Institute.
Bios of speakers:
Kim Walsh
Kim Walsh serves as Vice President of HubSpot for Startups, a program designed to help startups grow and scale. She was formally the Head of Enterprise Sales, where she launched the GTM strategy, built the operating model and expanded the team from 3 to 28 employees and increased revenue by 200%. Prior to joining HubSpot, Kim led global sales for a technology-based footwear company, SpringBoost. Kim has an MBA from Babson College and was a finalist in the MIT 100K business challenge.
Nidhi Aggarwal
Nidhi is an entrepreneur who co-founded cloud configuration management startup qwikLABS (acquired by Google and used by AWS worldwide). Previously, Nidhi led Product, Strategy, Marketing and Finance at Tamr and worked at McKinsey & Company on Big Data and Cloud Strategy. Nidhi holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin- Madison and holds 6 US patents. Follow Nidhi on the Medium publication, Radical Product and on Twitter @aggarwalnidhi.
Radhika Dutt
Radhika has started companies and built products in several different industries. Her first startup, Lobby7 (acquired by Scansoft/Nuance), created an early version of Siri in 2000, while Likelii (acquired by Drync), offered consumers “Pandora for wine”. Previously she worked at Avid, growing their broadcast product suite and led strategy at the telecom startup, Starent Networks (acquired by Cisco). Recently she led Product Management at Allant to build a SaaS product for TV advertising (acquired by Acxiom). Radhika holds an SB and M.Eng in EE, and speaks 9 languages. You can follow her on the Medium publication, Radical Product and on Twitter @radhikadutt.
Geordie Kaytes
Geordie is a digital product design leader who has designed 15 SaaS products across verticals including healthcare, IT, education, and finance. After receiving his BA from Yale in Political Science, he did his obligatory tour of duty in management consulting before joining Boston-area UI/UX studio Fresh Tilled Soil in 2012. He is now a partner at Heroic, a design leadership coaching firm that helps growing companies scale their digital product capabilities. Follow Geordie on the Medium publication, Radical Product and on Twitter @didgeoridoo.
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Public Program | Catalyst Conversations | Immersed: Video. Art. Technology
Monday, March 5
7:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building E15, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
New media, multi-faceted artist Judith Barry and Cyberarts founder George Fifield will look at how the arc of new media changed the visual landscape from the 1960s forward. Their conversation will mirror the exhibit Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974 – 1995 which is presented as part of a citywide partnership of arts and educational institutions organized to recognize the outsized role greater Boston has played in the history and development of technology.
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston initiated this partnership to link concurrent exhibitions and programs related to the themes of the ICA exhibition Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today. Visit aiai.icaboston.org for more information on the partnership and all of the area exhibitions and programs being offered.
To learn more and to attend this event RSVP at http://www.catalystconversations.org/upcoming-events/
For more information, contact:
Emily Garner
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The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
Monday, March 5
7:00 PM (Doors at 6:00)
Alley Cambridge, 10 Ware Street, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome Harvard University Lecturer and New America Senior Fellow YASCHA MOUNK for a discussion of his latest book, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It.
About The People vs. Democracy
The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result, Yascha Mounk shows, democracy itself may now be at risk.
Two core components of liberal democracy―individual rights and the popular will―are increasingly at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of “rights without democracy” took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice, they create something just as bad: a system of “democracy without rights.”
The consequence, Mounk shows in The People vs. Democracy, is that trust in politics is dwindling. Citizens are falling out of love with their political system. Democracy is wilting away. Drawing on vivid stories and original research, Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters’ discontent: stagnating living standards, fears of multiethnic democracy, and the rise of social media. To reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms that benefit the many, not the few.
The People vs. Democracy is the first book to go beyond a mere description of the rise of populism. In plain language, it describes both how we got here and where we need to go. For those unwilling to give up on either individual rights or the popular will, Mounk shows, there is little time to waste: this may be our last chance to save democracy.
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Asteroid Futures: Decades, Centuries, Millennia
Monday, March 5
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Café ArtScience, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/asteroid-futures-decades-centuries-millennia-tickets-43059607445
Cost: $15 in advance // $20 at the door. Students w/ID admitted free.
Doors open @ 6pm -- Come early and meet other Long Now thinkers -- Presentations start @ 7pm
Presenter: Dr. Martin Elvis, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Summary:
Space exploration in the 21st century has begun a transition towards commercial exploration and development. What factors will be critical to the success of these efforts in the long term? According to Dr. Martin Elvis, asteroids are the key that will unlock a future extraterrestrial economy. Asteroids are plentiful, accessible and resource rich. They will serve as convenient platforms for deep space exploration, industrial fabrication and solar system expeditions.
For example, the resources contained in asteroids are huge. The accessible iron in asteroids is estimated to be a million times greater than proven iron reserves in the Earth’s crust. Technologies being researched and tested today are likely to make asteroid mining a practical industry within two decades. The industry will require new professional labor categories: applied astronomers and extraterrestrial engineers.
Looking one century out, this industry will be able to bring huge amounts - a million tons or more - of iron and other industrial materials from their native orbits to an orbit high above Earth. This will enable massive-scale industrial development using economical space-based solar power and space cities constructed according to designs such as the O’Neill cylinders on the drawing boards today. Enormous telescopes will be built, probing the universe for life as well as insights on the origins of the universe. Sufficient industrial capacity will also be in place to redirect potential killer asteroids, such as the one that caused the massive Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event 66 million years ago.
As we approach a millennium in the future history of the space economy, we may begin to reach the limits of solar system resources. Will depletion of solar system resources trigger existential questions for humanity, in the same way the depletion of terrestrial eco-system resources is challenging us today? Should we begin now to ask ourselves: how much of the solar system should we leave as wilderness?
Dr. Martin Elvis is an Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In addition to his significant contributions to the science of deep space objects, Dr. Elvis has a passion for near earth objects and the opportunities they offer for future space exploration and development. He is convinced that the commercial potential of asteroids will transform our space endeavors to a truly large-scale, and will, in the process, make access to space cheap and routine. Dr. Elvis has published over 400 journal papers and is one of the 250 most highly cited researchers in astronomy and space physics, with more than 28,000 citations.
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A Path Forward for Governmentt: Relationship Building in a Time of Political Division
Monday, March 5
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Beacon Hill Friends House, 8 Chestnut Street, Boston
How do we shape public narratives about issues like climate change at a time of extreme political division? What is transformational about relationship building for policy change? Why is persistent citizen lobbying from a place of faith so important, and how is it shaping the discourse in Congress?
Through sustained engagement on a local and national level, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) - the Quaker lobby in Washington - seeks to shape national policy and dialogue to better reflect the values of Friends around the country. Join FCNL's lead lobbyist on sustainable energy and environmental work, Emily Wirzba, for a discussion of how faith-led advocacy is leading to hopeful outcomes on climate change and other issues.
This presentation is part of the Beacon Hill Friends House's Spring 2018 speaker series, "Living Our Values" - exploring what it means to truly live in alignment with the values we hold. All are welcome.
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Tuesday, March 6
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Artificial Intelligence and National Security Law: A Dangerous Nonchalance
Tuesday, March 6
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EST
MIT, Building E25-401, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge
A conversation with James E Baker, former chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and a national security law expert. Judge Baker is currently in residence at the MIT Center for International Studies as a Robert E Wilhelm Fellow. Judge Baker retired from the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces after fifteen years of service, the last four as chief judge. He currently chairs the American Bar Association (ABA) Standing Committee on Law and National Security and is a presidential appointee to the Public Interest Declassification Board.
Free & open to the public | Refreshments served
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The Accuracy, Fairness, and Limits of Predicting Recidivism
Tuesday, March 6
12:00 pm
Harvard, Pound Hall, Ballantine Classroom, Room 101
RSVP required to attend in person at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/luncheon/03/Dressel#RSVP
Event will be live webcast at 12:00 pm at https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/luncheon/03/Dressel
featuring Julia Dressel
Algorithms for predicting recidivism are commonly used to assess a criminal defendant’s likelihood of committing a crime. Proponents of these systems argue that big data and advanced machine learning make these analyses more accurate and less biased than humans. However, our study shows that the widely used commercial risk assessment software COMPAS is no more accurate or fair than predictions made by people with little or no criminal justice expertise.
This event is supported by the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. In conjunction with the MIT Media Lab, the Initiative is developing activities, research, and tools to ensure that fast-advancing AI serves the public good. Learn more at https://cyber.harvard.edu/research/ai.
About Julia
Julia Dressel recently graduated from Dartmouth College, where she majored in both Computer Science and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. She is currently a software engineer in Silicon Valley. Her interests are in the intersection of technology and bias.
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Investing in the Grassroots to Achieve Environmental and Social Justice
Tuesday, March 6
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Foley & Lardner LLP, 111 Huntington Ave Suite 2600, Boston
Guest Speaker: Mariella Puerto, Co-Director of Climate, Barr Foundation
Featured Innovator: GreenRoots
Track Partner: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
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Current Issues in Humanitarian Disarmament: Targeting, Toxicity, Technology, and Trade
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 6, 2018, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Austin Hall North, 1515 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences, Law, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection Initiative at Harvard Law School; the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative; and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School.
SPEAKER(S) Laura Boillot, International Network on Explosive Weapons; Doug Weir, Toxic Remnants of War Network; Mary Wareham, Campaign to Stop Killer Robots; Anna Macdonald, Control Arms; and moderator Jasmin Nario-Galace, Center for Peace Education.
CONTACT INFO bdocherty@law.harvard.edu
DETAILS The directors of four civil society campaigns will examine how the humanitarian approach to disarmament has influenced their work and how they have adapted it to respond to contemporary challenges. They will discuss efforts to curb the urban use of certain explosive weapons, reduce the environmental impacts of armed conflict, preempt new technology that could autonomously make life-and-death decisions, and control the unlawful trade in arms.
This conversation is the second public event of a conference, Humanitarian Disarmament: The Way Ahead, which will launch the Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection Initiative, housed in Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC). The conference is co-organized by the IHRC, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.
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A New Paradigm in Engineering Education Using Two Disruptive Technologies: Simulations & Online Learning.
Tuesday, March 6
3:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT, Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
xTalk with Rajesh Bhaskaran
Commercial simulation tools enable engineers to solve complex mathematical models that arise in practical applications while also building physical intuition through visualization. This presentation will discuss my edX MOOC that seamlessly integrates the hands-on use of a commercial simulation tool (ANSYS®) with the fundamental math/physics and industry know-how. This has helped thousands of learners around the world to move beyond mere button pushing and start thinking like an expert.
The MOOC draws case studies from five engineering courses at Cornell University and presents a common approach across solid mechanics, fluid dynamics and heat transfer. It also uses a common approach to finite-element analysis and computational fluid dynamics. A unifying framework is employed to keep the discussion coherent while moving across traditional course boundaries. The online lectures step through complex mathematics to get the learner to a point where the tasks in the simulation tool made sense. This is done by using a just-in-time approach that focuses on the big ideas that the tool user needs to know while omitting nitty-gritty details that are automated by the tool. The MOOC uses proven principles from the science of learning to combine two disruptive technologies and create a new paradigm that not only strengthens students’ understanding of fundamental physics and math but also provides them with a practical skill sought by employers.
Biography
Dr. Rajesh Bhaskaran leads the Swanson Engineering Simulation Program in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. This program supports the incorporation of simulation tools into engineering courses to better prepare students for the modern workplace. Dr. Bhaskaran has helped introduce ANSYS® simulation tools into Cornell courses covering fluid dynamics, heat transfer, solid mechanics and numerical analysis. He has led the development of simcafe.org as an online portal for learning and teaching finite-element analysis and computational fluid dynamics simulations. His educational videos have garnered close to 3 million views on YouTube. Over 70,000 people have enrolled in his MOOC on engineering simulations at edx.org. He was selected to take part in National Academy of Engineering's prestigious Frontiers of Engineering Education symposium in 2011. He was the lead organizer of two university-industry workshops on the Integration of Simulation Technology into Engineering Curricula (ISTEC) in 2008 and 2011.
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Investigative Reporting: Making an Impact on Policy and Governance
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 6, 2018, 3:30 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Malkin Penthouse, Littauer Building, 4th Floor, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Award Ceremonies, Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy
SPEAKER(S) Shannon Mullen, Staff Writer, Asbury Park Press; Melissa Segura, Investigative Reporter, BuzzFeed News; Carol Marbin Miller, Investigative Reporter, Miami Herald; Emily Steel, Reporter, The New York Times; Nina Martin, Reporter, ProPublica; David Armstrong, Senior Writer, STAT; Rosalind Helderman, Staff Writer, The Washington Post
COST Free
DETAILS A panel discussion with the finalists and special citation awardees for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Panelists will discuss the making of their stories, which include coverage of the Russia investigation, injustice in the Chicago legal system, opioid addiction, sexual harassment and assault, and other pressing issues. Open to the public.
Panelists:
Shannon Mullen, Staff Writer, Asbury Park Press
Melissa Segura, Investigative Reporter, BuzzFeed News
Carol Marbin Miller, Investigative Reporter, Miami Herald
Emily Steel, Reporter, The New York Times
Nina Martin, Reporter, ProPublica
David Armstrong, Senior Writer, STAT
Rosalind Helderman, Staff Writer, The Washington Post
The winner will be announced at the Goldsmith Awards Ceremony on March 6, 6pm, in JFK Jr. Forum.
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Innovating for the clean energy economy
Tuesday, March 6
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM EST
MIT, Building 66-110, 25 Ames Street, Cambridge
Professor Daniel Kammen, University of California, Berkeley
This talk will examine the current state of clean energy innovation and implementation. Through explorations of household, city, and regional clean energy innovations and implementation efforts, Kammen will both analyze successful innovation processes and identify the areas that need urgent action and targeted programs. A mixture of analytic and empirical studies will be used to explore what steps have worked and where dramatic new approaches are needed.
Speaker Bio:
Daniel Kammen is a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources Group (which he chairs), the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. Kammen is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory and former director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center. His research focuses on energy supply; transmission; the smart grid and low-carbon energy systems; the life-cycle impacts of transportation options; and energy for community development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has published extensively on these topics and testified numerous times in U.S. state and federal congressional briefings. In 2010, Kammen was appointed the first energy fellow of the Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas; he has also served the state of California and the U.S. federal government in several other expert and advisory capacities.
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Panel Discussion: Common Spaces: Environmental History and the Study of Early America
Tuesday, March 6
5:15PM - 7:30PM
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston
RSVP required at seminars@masshist.org or (617) 646-0579
Christopher Pastore, State University of New York at Albany; Nancy Shoemaker, University of Connecticut at Storrs; Conevery Valencius, Boston College
Moderator: Matthew McKenzie, University of Connecticut at Avery Point
This panel takes the opportunity to bring the fields of environmental and early American history into closer conversation. Environmental historians are concerned with concepts such as ecological imperialism and non-anthropocentric empires, built and natural environments, controlling and organizing space, and the relationship between borders and frontiers. How does or might this influence scholarship on early America? How can work on early American history enrich environmental historians’ understanding of empire, metropoles and borderlands, movement and colonization?
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
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Gutman Library Distinguished Author Series Event: Research in Mind, Brain, and Education
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 6, 2018, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Askwith Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Gutman Library, Alumni Relations, and MBE
SPEAKER(S) Marc S. Schwartz, Ed.D.'00 Professor and Director, SW Center for Mind, Brain and Education, University of Texas at Arlington
E. Juliana Paré-Blagoev, Ed.D.'06 Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins
Michael W. Connell, M.Ed.'98, Ed.D.'05 CEO, Native Brain, Inc.
DETAILS This event will be followed up by a reception in Eliot Lyman Room from 7-8 p.m.
Please register here: https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_85GtFsKSYYjTfH7
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Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism—Author Discussion
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 6, 2018, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CSWR Common Room, 42 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Religion
SPONSOR Center for the Study of World Religions
CONTACT CSWR: 617.495.4495
DETAILS Please join us as Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinity (HDS), discusses his recent publication, Eco-Alchemy: Anthroposophy and the History and Future of Environmentalism.
Terry Tempest Williams (HDS) and Rebecca Kneale Gould (Middlebury College) will serve as respondents.
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metaLAB + friends openLAB
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 6, 2018, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Arts @ 29 Garden, 29 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Exhibitions, Research study
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR metaLAB @ Harvard
DETAILS Please join us for metaLAB's 2018 openLAB, showcasing work by metaLAB and friends.
metaLAB explores the digital arts and humanities through research, experimentation, tool building, teaching, through publications in print and online, and via exhibition, performance, and social practice. Our projects infuse traditional modes of academic inquiry with an enterprising spirit of hacking, making, and creative research. At openLAB, we'll share some of this work, along with projects by collaborators working in the Graduate School of Design, MIT's Media Lab, and beyond.
openLAB happens March 6, 5:30pm-7:30pm at Arts @ 29 Garden, 29 Garden St. in Cambridge. Refreshments will be served! We look forward to seeing you there! And feel free the word with students and friends.
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Launch Smart Clinic – Internet of Things (IoT)
Tuesday, March 6
5:30pm to 8:30pm
MIT Tang Center, Building E51-145, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Cost: $10 - $30
At the Internet of Things (IoT) Themed Launch Smart Clinic, startups present a 20-minute pitch for feedback from our panel of experts + the audience.
Presenting Companies
Steam IQ, Peter Owens, CEO
Steam is an awesome source of energy, it’s used to power cities like Paris and New York, run refineries, brew beer, sterilize instruments and heat colleges. Testing steam traps that regulate the flow of steam is a labor-intensive process, done manually once per year. There are millions of steam traps in the United States and very few are monitored due to cost. SteamIQ provides an IoT based ultrasonic steam trap monitor that installs easily for a fraction of the cost, addressing an underserved $500MM market.
Vata Verks, Alex Cheimets, CEO
Vata Verks has developed a cheap and simple non-invasive water usage Smart Sensor for buildings which leverages the fluctuating magnetic fields inside a building’s utility meters. The sensor installs without skill, tools or plumbers and without cutting pipes or dripping a drop. Simply straps on, detects anomalies and leaks, tracks usage and costs, and analyzes and optimizes building performance. Vata Verks is targeting an aggregate North American market valued at $2B and made up of 3rd party building service providers such as security, building automation, building analytics & optimization all in support of building owners, as well as other niche sectors.
Expert Panelists
Scott Miller, CEO / Co-Founder, Dragon Innovation
Chris Rezendes, Executive Staff, Context Labs BV
Mitch Tyson, Principal at Tyson Associates
Moderator
Nadia Shalaby, CEO, ITE Fund
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Goldsmith Awards Ceremony 2018 with Martha Raddatz of ABC News
Tuesday, March 6
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Harvard, JFK Jr. Forum, Littauer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambrid
The winner of the 2018 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting will be announced, followed by a keynote speech by Goldsmith Career Award winner Martha Raddatz. This event is open to the public, and will also be streamed online. The ceremony will be preceded by a panel discussion, from 3:30-5:00 p.m., in which finalists and special citation awardees will discuss the reporting behind the stories.
Martha Raddatz is ABC News chief global affairs correspondent and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. She has covered national security, foreign policy, and politics for decades – reporting from the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, and conflict zones around the world, including Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, and numerous countries in Africa and Asia. In 2012, Raddatz moderated the Vice Presidential debate, and received the Walter Cronkite Award for excellence in political journalism with a special commendation for debate moderation. During the 2016 election, Raddatz co-moderated the Democratic and Republican primary presidential debates on ABC, as well a presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. From 1993-1998, Raddatz was the Pentagon correspondent for NPR. Prior to joining NPR, she was the chief correspondent at the ABC News Boston affiliate WCVB-TV. Raddatz has received four Emmys and numerous other awards. She is the author of The Long Road Home—A Story of War and Family, which made both The New York Times and The Washington Post bestseller lists and was made into a mini-series for TV.
The six finalists for the 2018 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting are:
Asbury Park Press
Shannon Mullen and Payton Guion
Renter Hell
This investigation exposed the hazardous living conditions of thousands of tenants in New Jersey’s government-supported housing. As a result, the state issued more than 1,800 violations, and two state senators introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at fixing many of the issues brought to light in the series.
BuzzFeed News
Melissa Segura
Broken Justice In Chicago
BuzzFeed News investigated a Chicago detective accused by the community of framing more than 50 people for murder. The findings from the series led to the freeing of an innocent man from prison after 23 years, and authorities reviewed the cases of other prisoners.
Miami Herald
Carol Marbin Miller, Audra D.S. Burch, Emily Michot, and the Miami Herald digital team
Fight Club: An Investigation into Florida Juvenile Justice
This investigation found widespread beatings and brutality, sexual exploitation, and medical neglect in Florida’s juvenile detention centers. As a result, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice overhauled its hiring practices and created an Office of Youth and Family Advocacy to investigate complaints.
NPR and ProPublica
Nina Martin and Renee Montagne
Lost Mothers
The United States has the highest rate of maternal deaths in the developed world; NPR and ProPublica found at least half could be prevented with better care. This series tracked maternal deaths, saved lives by raising public awareness of complications, and prompted legislation in New Jersey and Texas.
STAT and The Boston Globe
David Armstrong and Evan Allen
The Addiction Trade
STAT and The Boston Globe exposed treatment centers, middlemen, and consultants that exploited people seeking addiction treatment, and has led to criminal and congressional probes. Stories ranged from insurance fraud schemes, to poor care at Recovery Centers of America, to patient health put at risk on the TV program Dr. Phil.
The Washington Post
The Washington Post staff
Russia
The Washington Post examined Russian interference in the 2016 election, possible links between the Trump campaign and Kremlin agents, and the United States’ response throughout 2017. The Post’s reporting contributed to the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Special citation:
The New York Times
Emily Steel, Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, Michael S. Schmidt, and New York Times staff
The Harassment Files: Enough Is Enough
By revealing secret settlements, persuading victims to speak, and bringing powerful men across industries to account, such as Bill O’Reilly, Harvey Weinstein, and Louis C.K, New York Times reporters spurred a worldwide reckoning about sexual harassment and abuse.
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Beyond the Gates: The Past and Future of Prison Education at Harvard
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 6, 2018, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History
COST dmission is free. Tickets required. Limit of 4 tickets per person. Tickets valid until 5:45PM. Tickets available by phone and online (for a fee) and in person at the Harvard Box Office – Farkas Hall, 10 Holyoke St., Cambridge.
TICKET WEB LINK http://www.boxoffice.harvard.edu
TICKET INFO The Harvard Box Office 617-496-2222
DETAILS This capstone event will bring together representatives from the most innovative and dynamic programs in the country to testify to the range, scope, and depth of prison education. It will also consider the work that has been done at Harvard, what we can draw inspiration from, and where we can go from here.
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Greenovate Boston’s Second Climate Ready South Boston Open House
Tuesday, March 6
6 pm - 8 pm
5th Floor Conference Room, Boston Children's Museum, 308 Congress Street, Boston
Climate Ready Boston is the Mayor's ongoing initiative to help the City grow and prosper in the face of climate change. Protecting South Boston from sea level rise and coastal flooding is a priority. On March 6th, join us for a community open house, where we will update you on our work and discuss options for ensuring a Climate Ready South Boston.
We are working to better understand current and future flood risks in South Boston and develop strategies that protect Boston’s neighborhoods. Your input is an important part of the process.
The event will have a presentation at 6:15 pm. We recommend you plan to attend the presentation, and spend about 30 minutes afterwards for the open house.
Climate resiliency planning is happening in Boston’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. Whether you are a resident of South Boston or not, your participation will help inform our ongoing efforts to develop climate resilient solutions that improve our neighborhoods.
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Brownfields: Rewriting Industrial Legacy from Brown to Green
Tuesday, March 6
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Cambridge Innovation Center - Venture Cafe, 1 Broadway, 5th Floor, Cambridge
Cost: $8 – $12
New England has an important industrial legacy, but one that has left behind the bad with the good. Many former bustling commercial centers bear a burden of manufacturing pollution and contaminated land parcels and water resources, or brownfields, that impede their ability to grow and prosper as healthy communities.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a brownfield is a property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. It is estimated that there are more than 450,000 brownfields in the U.S. In Massachusetts alone there are more than 1,000 registered brownfield sites and over 40,000 reported releases of oil or hazardous material.
The successful clean up and reinvestment in a brownfield site promises to increase the local tax base, spur economic growth, reactivate existing infrastructure, remove pressure from undeveloped, open land, and both improve and protect the environment.
Through presentation and conversation with guest subject matter experts, we will explore:
The current state of brownfields in Massachusetts and beyond
How communities can get educated about brownfields
Where to find funding and technical assistance to support redevelopment initiatives
The correlation between brownfields and racial inequity
The public health, environmental and economic benefits of brownfields revitalization
Lessons learned and success stories from community brownfield projects
OUR GUEST SPEAKERS
Kate O’Brien, Director of Capacity Building, Groundwork USA
Kate leads Groundwork USA's EPA-funded brownfields and equitable development technical assistance program as well as efforts to strengthen the organizational sustainability of Groundwork Trusts.
Kate has been part of the Groundwork USA network for over 15 years, starting as a program coordinator for Groundwork Lawrence in Massachusetts before transitioning to deputy director in 2004, and then executive director in 2007. Under her leadership, the organization leveraged $1.5 million to support design and construction of two riverfront brownfield-to-park projects and pre-development of the now complete $2.6 million Spicket River Greenway. More recently in her own community, Kate secured grant funds for a citywide open space planning process she then designed and led in partnership with a coalition of nonprofits, local government leaders, and stakeholders.
Kate holds an MA in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts University and a BA from Kalamazoo College. She lives and works in Portland, Maine with her husband and two young sons.
André Leroux, Executive Director, Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance
André has been the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance since 2007, where he established the Great Neighborhoods program to help local residents transform their communities through smart growth projects. He helped found Transportation for Massachusetts, which is a statewide coalition that advocates for increasing funding for walking, biking, and public transportation.
Prior to that, André was the Director of Planning and Policy at Lawrence CommunityWorks, where he coordinated the Reviviendo Gateway Initiative (RGI), an award-winning community revitalization effort in Lawrence, MA. He also led the creation of two smart growth zoning districts in the city, helped to found a cultural economic development initiative, and coordinated a community-university partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called MIT@Lawrence.
A graduate of Dartmouth College, Andre completed two years of graduate studies at El Colegio de México in Mexico City studying urban development and environmental impact assessment. He has worked at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University and the Massachusetts State Senate. André co-authored a PolicyLink report in 2007 with MIT Professor Lorlene Hoyt called Voices from Forgotten Cities: Innovative Revitalization Coalitions in America’s Older Small Cities. He is fluent in Spanish.
Paul Locke, Assistant Commissioner, MassDEP Bureau of Waste Site Cleanup
Paul directs the MassDEP site cleanup programs, including emergency response activities, marine oil spills, natural resource damage assessment & restoration and the Brownfields Program.
Paul started working as a risk assessor with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Research and Standards in 1987, where he participated in environmental policy development, review of site-specific reports, and provided technical assistance to DEP staff and the regulated community. In 1993 he helped develop the state’s semi-privatized cleanup program – including the rules that determine “how clean is clean enough?” – that facilitates the redevelopment of Brownfields sites.
Since 2004, Paul has worked in the Waste Site Cleanup Program as Director of Policy Development, Director of Response & Remediation and as Assistant Commissioner. Recent initiatives include the development of a comprehensive soil management strategy, updating and streamlining the cleanup regulations, and the implementation of DEP’s vapor intrusion initiatives.
A former chemist (Harvard College) and fairly civil engineer (Tufts University), Paul has also taught (West Africa), developed photos (Cambridge), cross-matched blood (Boston) and scooped ice cream (Brighams).
We hope you’ll join us in learning more about our shared industrial legacy and efforts to turn brown to green. – Carol, Holly & Tilly
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There Is More Than Enough Renewable Energy
Tuesday, March 6
7:00 PM
Belmont Library (Assembly Room), 336 Concord Avenue, Belmont
Mara Prentiss, Ph.D., Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics, Harvard University. Prentiss Research Lab Dr. Prentiss is author of Energy Revolution: The Physics and the Promise of Efficient Technology
On average renewable energy can supply more than 100% total current and future US energy consumption, but at each moment we need the actual supply to meet the actual demand. Moving toward an all electrical energy economy can make this dream a reality.
The Citizen Literacy Series: science-media-civic literacy for an informed, engaged public
Science for the Public, Belmont Media Center, and Belmont Public Library
More information at http://www.scienceforthepublic.org/coming-events/mar-06-there-is-more-than-enough-renewable-energy
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Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
Tuesday March 6
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmithm 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Ryan Walsh in conversation with Carly Carioli
Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks is an iconic rock album shrouded in legend, a masterpiece that has touched generations of listeners and influenced everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Martin Scorsese. In his first book, acclaimed musician and journalist Ryan H. Walsh unearths the album’s fascinating backstory–along with the untold secrets of the time and place that birthed it: Boston 1968.
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Wednesday, March 7 - Friday, March 9
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Dissolve Music @ MIT, March 7-9
Warehouse XI, 11 Sanborn Court, Somerville
Before you can solve, you have to dissolve...
Join us for a music / sound conference and festival near MIT, featuring scholars, musicians, activists and organizers. Dissolve the structures of power that produce inequality. Explore alternative approaches to listening, dialogue and mix.
More information at https://mitdissolve.com
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Wednesday, March 7
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Massachusetts Clean Energy Center - Consuls General Welcome Reception
Wednesday, March 7
9:00 AM – 10:30 AM EST
Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, 63 Franklin Street, 3rd Floor, Boston
Please join the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) at our offices for light refreshments, a meet and greet gathering of Boston's consuls general and a preview of an upcoming international clean economy event.
MassCEC CEO Steve Pike will offer welcome remarks and will be joined by Northeast Clean Energy Council President Peter Rothstein and Jens Nielsen of World Climate Ltd., lead partners of the 2018 Horizon summit. MassCEC is also a founding partner supporting this international conference, which will involve MIT, GE, and a growing community of leading companies, investors and customers.
Please RSVP by Monday, March 5. We hope you will join us.
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Mothers Out Front Health Impacts Support Team Discussions
Wednesday, March 7
12 noon ET (9am PT)
Mothers Out Front plans to start a series of discussions to better understand the needs and goals of our local teams, to ensure that the information and training we provide meet your needs. The Health Information Support Team will be the first to initiate these conversations.
One of the most important impacts of climate change is on our health. Our health is harmed by climate change and the forces driving it in ways that are rarely reported in the news.
As an organization, we want to better support our volunteers to communicate how climate change is affecting our health. It is an effective way to communicate our concerns to families and policy makers. In fact, polling data shows that discussing health impacts can change people’s minds about climate change, even across political partisan lines.
Mothers Out Front envisions the Health Information Support team as a group of volunteers with a variety of backgrounds to serve as a resource to local teams needing up-to-date, accurate, and peer-reviewed health information for their advocacy efforts. Local teams will be able to request assistance in gathering health information from the national team. For example, if a team is working on limiting new pipelines, the team could ask for a summary of known health impacts of natural gas or compressor stations. Should local teams identify topics which require local data collection for evaluation or research purposes, the national team would serve as a conduit between researchers and communities to help facilitate a local plan.
The purpose of these conversations is to find out what health information your team needs to advance your work and how we can adapt the Health Information Support team to meet those needs.
If you are unable to participate in the discussion groups, we still want to hear from you. Please take 10-15 minutes to fill out this short survey at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwZl93uurzulGT9YgsBp2uUIR9a0ao9eNQLGocb-HMQXbSCQ/viewform
Please do not fill out the survey if you are planning to join a discussion group.
Other discussions on
Wednesday March 14th, 8pm ET (5pm PT)
Monday March 19th, 12 noon ET (9am PT)
Wednesday, March 28th, 8pm ET (5pm PT)
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The latitudinal dependence of geostrophic turbulence in the atmosphere and ocean
Wednesday, March 7
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
SLS Seminar: Rei Chemke (Columbia University)
The study of atmospheric and oceanic eddies is important for understanding the dynamics of the general circulation in the atmosphere and ocean and the governing scales within. Extant theories for the behavior of these eddies, such as geostrophic turbulence, rely on the theoretical work of two-dimensional turbulence. The latitudinal variations of the mean state (e.g., sphericity, temperature, winds, etc.) adds an additional complexity to geostrophic turbulence theory. Here the behavior of the eddies' energy cycle in both atmosphere and ocean is studied as a function of latitude using both idealized GCM simulations and atmospheric and oceanic reanalysis data. The energy fluxes (i.e., eddy-mean and eddy-eddy interactions) and macroturbulent scales are found to show different behavior poleward and equatorward of a ‘‘supercriticality latitude’’. Poleward of this latitude, where the quasi-geostrophic flow is supercritical to baroclinic instability, a classic geostrophic turbulence picture appears with a barotropization of the flow together with an inverse energy cascade up to the Rhines scale. Equatorward of this latitude the eddy-mean flow interactions play a major role in the balance. The effect of the nonlinear eddy-eddy interactions on the mean flow is further studied by comparing a set of full and quasi-linear idealized simulations. These interactions are found to have a minor effect on the jet scale, which thus coincides with the Rhines scale even when these interactions are absent. The eddy-eddy interactions are not a prerequisite for jet formation in the atmosphere, and even suppress their formation at high latitudes. Under global warming the eddy flow is found be dominated by eddy-mean flow interactions and have a more baroclinic nature.
About the Speaker
I am a NOAA Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University, working with Lorenzo Polvani on the response of the Hadley circulation to global warming, using hierarchy of configurations of the Community Earth System Model
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Paul Butler Book Talk on Chokehold: Policing Black Men
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 7, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Pound Hall 102, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Criminal Justice Policy Program, Harvard Law School
SPEAKER(S) Paul Butler
COST Free and open to the public
DETAILS Paul Butler, author of Chokehold: Policing Black Men, is the Bennett Boskey Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the Albert Brick Professor in Law at Georgetown Law.
Co-sponsored by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice and the Criminal Justice Institute.
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The Revolutionary Power of Cooperatives: Nathan Schneider & Jason Wiener at The Harvard Law Forum
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 7, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Wasserstein Campus Center, Room 1019, 1585 Mass. Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Social Sciences, Sustainability, Working@Harvard
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Law School
SPEAKER(S) Nathan Schneider, America's leading writer on the revolutionary potential of worker-owned web platforms.
Jason Wiener, America's leading worker cooperative lawyer.
DIRECTED BY Pete Davis
CONTACT INFO Pete Davis, PeDavis@jd18.law.harvard.edu, 347-453-3135
DETAILS Nathan Schneider is America's leading writer on the revolutionary potential of worker-owned web platforms.
Jason Wiener is America's leading worker cooperative lawyer.
They are coming to Harvard Law School to share their insights and experience in building a revolutionary economic alternative.
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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SLS Seminar: Rei Chemke (Columbia University)
Wednesday, March 7
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
I am a NOAA Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University, working with Lorenzo Polvani on the response of the Hadley circulation to global warming, using hierarchy of configurations of the Community Earth System Model
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Upper Tropospheric Ice Sensitivity to Solar Geoengineering
Wednesday, March 7
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 429, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Pete Irvine, Postdoctoral Fellow, SEAS.
Lunch provided. RSVP to contact listed.
Solar Geoengineering Research Reading Group
A weekly reading group, interspersed with more formal seminars, to deepen members' understanding of solar geoengineering research.
Contact Name: Lizzie Burns
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The Race for Votes: How Candidates Use Negative Racial Appeals About Blacks to Win White Votes
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 7, 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) Lafleur Stephens-Dougan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University
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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Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
Wednesday, March 7
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT Building E400496 (Pye Room), 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Summary
Today, an irresistible rising China is on course to collide with an immovable America. The likely result of this competition was identified by the great historian Thucydides, who wrote: "It was the rise of Athens and the fearthat this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable." But the point of Destined for War is not to predict the future but to prevent it. Escaping Thucydides' Trap is not just a theoretical possibility. In four of the 16 cases, including three from the 20th century, imaginative statecraft averted war. Can Washington and Beijing steer their ships of state through today's treacherous shoals? Only if they learn and apply the lessons of history.
Short Bio
Graham Allison was Director of Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs from 1995 until July 2017. Allison is a leading analyst of U.S. national security and defense policy with a special interest in nuclear weapons, terrorism, and decision-making. As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, Dr. Allison received the Defense Department's highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for "reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal." This resulted in the safe return of more than 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics and the complete elimination of more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads previously targeted at the United States and left in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus when the Soviet Union disappeared. Allison was educated at Davidson College, Harvard College, and Oxford University before receiving a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard University.
SSP Wednesday Seminar
All Welcome
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Total History: Time, Empire, and Resistance from Alexander the Great to the End of the World
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 7, 2018, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Paul J. Kosmin, 2017–2018 Joy Foundation Fellow, Radcliffe Institute; John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS During his fellowship year at the Radcliffe Institute, Paul J. Kosmin is completing his second book, “Time and Resistance in the Seleucid Empire.” It explores the relationship between the kingdom’s invention and institutionalization of continuous, irreversible, and accumulating year numbers—the very chronological system we use today—and the emergence among the empire’s subject communities of apocalyptic eschatology.
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The Science Behind Understanding Attributes That Make A Community Disaster-Resilient
Wednesday, March 7
4:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 1-131, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Henry L. Pierce Laboratory Seminar - Prof. Bruce R. Ellingwood
Abstract: Community resilience depends on the performance of the built
environment and on supporting social, economic and public institutions which, individually and collectively, are essential for immediate response and long-term recovery within the community following a disaster. A community’s social needs and objectives (including postdisaster recovery) are not reflected in the codes, standards and other regulatory documents applied to design of individual facilities.
Furthermore, science-based measurement tools to evaluate performance and resilience at community scales, fully integrated
supporting databases, and risk-informed decision frameworks to support optimal life-cycle technical and social policies aimed at enhancing community resilience are in a rudimentary state of development.
A new approach is required, one that reflects the complex inter-dependencies among the physical, social and economic systems on which a healthy and vibrant community depends and involves engineering, social sciences, and information sciences.
The Center of Excellence for Risk-Based Community Resilience planning,headquartered at Colorado State University, was established by The National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2015 to advance the measurement science for understanding the factors that make a community resilient, to assess the likely impact of natural hazards on communities, and to develop risk-informed decision strategies that optimize planning for and recovery from disasters. This presentation summarizes the approach taken by the Center management and research teams to advance the science underlying community resilience assessment and provides an illustration of how physical, social and infrastructure models can be integrated in a risk-informed decision context.
Bio: Dr. Ellingwood is Co-Director of the NIST-sponsored Center of Excellence for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning at Colorado State University. His teaching, research and professional interests center on the application of methods of probability and statistics to structural engineering. He is internationally recognized as a leading authority on structural load modeling, reliability and risk analysis of engineered facilities and as the seminal figure in the technical development of probability based codified standards for design of structures. He has authored more than 400 research papers and reports, is Editor of Structural Safety, and serves on five other editorial boards. He is recipient of numerous prizes and recognitions, is a Distinguished Member of ASCE and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
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Digital Transformation Summit 2018
Wednesday, March 7
4:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
Harvard, Spangler Auditorium, 117 Western Avenue, Boston
At the Digital Transformation Summit, we expose and explore the newest and greatest challenges related to the application of emerging technologies today. The Summit will include:
Keynote speeches from leaders like:
Hanna Halaburda; Senior Economist, Bank of Canada: blockchain
Bill Ruh; Chief Executive Officer, GE Digital and SVP & Chief Digital Officer, GE: Industrial Internet
Rikard Steiber; President, Viveport & SVP of Product, HTC: AR/VR
Amy Yu; Senior Director, Product Strategy & Data Science at Viacom: AI
A panel on platform investments, featuring: Kavita Gupta, founding managing partner of ConsenSys; Walter Delph, partner and managing director at BCG Digital Ventures; and Professor Chiara Farronato.
A diverse crowd of over 400 engineers, scholars, entrepreneurs, and students from Harvard and beyond.
The Digital Transformation Summit is organized by the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative and Professors Karim Lakhani and Feng Zhu. For questions, contact digitalinitiative@hbs.edu.
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Why Prices or Quantities Dominate Banking and Borrowing
Wednesday, March 7
4:15PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, Littauer-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Martin Weitzman, Harvard Kennedy School
HKS Environmental Economics and Policy Seminar
Support from Enel Endowment for Environmental Economics and the Department of Economics is gratefully acknowledged.
Contact Name: Casey Billings
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This Land is Our Land: The Antiquities Act and the Battle for Public Lands
Wednesday, March 7
5:00PM
Harvard, Northwest B103, 52 Oxford Street, Cambridge
HUCE presents "This Land is Our Land: The Antiquities Act and the Battle for Public Lands" with John Leshy, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of California, Hastings College of the Law; former Solicitor, U.S. Department of the Interior (Clinton Administration); and four-time visiting professor at HLS. With comment by Richard Lazarus, Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law, HLS, and Terry Tempest Williams, Writer-in-Residence, HDS. Reception to follow.
John Leshy is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. He was Solicitor (General Counsel) of the Interior Department throughout the Clinton Administration, and earlier was special counsel to the House Natural Resources Committee, a law professor at Arizona State, Associate Interior Solicitor in the Carter Administration, a litigator in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and helped found the western office of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). He led the Interior Department transition team for Clinton-Gore in 1992 and co-led for Obama-Biden in 2008.
Leshy has been a visiting professor four times at Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1969, after earning an A.B. at Harvard College. His publications include books on the Mining Law of 1872 and the Arizona Constitution, and he is co-author of the standard federal public land and resources law casebook.
Contact Name: Laura Hanrahan
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Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: Making in America
Wednesday, March 7
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building E51-372, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Topic Summary
My talk will focus on two MIT initiatives on production and innovation: Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge (1989) and Making in America: From Innovation to Market (2013). Over the thirty years that separate the two projects, globalization, the rise of new rival economies, and transformative technological changes have created huge new opportunities and painful challenges of adjustment for society. On each of the two projects researchers fanned out into companies across the United States and to Japan, China, Germany, and France to try to understand from the bottom up how innovation moves into production and into the market; how and where new good jobs are created; how and where new industries come to life. Even after thirty years of profound technological, political, and social change, some of the problems we identified in the first study still remain basically unresolved—how, for example, to educate people for a lifetime of changes in the workplace; how to move innovation from the lab into society more rapidly. At MIT where we have a track record of carrying out research that brings together faculty and students from departments across the Institute to study complex problems that spill over disciplinary boundaries, we have the resources to make headway on these big questions.
About the Speaker
Suzanne Berger is Raphael Dorman-Helen Starbuck Professor of Political Science. Her current research focuses on politics and globalization. She recently co-chaired the MIT Production in the Innovation Economy project, and in September 2013 published Making in America: From Innovation to Market. She created the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative, and participated in the 1989 Made in America project at MIT. She wrote Made By Hong Kong and Global Taiwan (with Richard K. Lester). She is the author of Notre Première Mondialisation and How We Compete. Her earlier work focused on political development (Peasants Against Politics) and the organization of interests (Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies and Organizing Interests in Western Europe.)
Suzanne Berger served as Head of the MIT Department of Political Science, founding chair of the SSRC Committee on West Europe, and Vice President of the American Political Science Association. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The French government has awarded her the Palmes Academiques, Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Merite and the Légion d’Honneur.
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.
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Book Talk: Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir
Wednesday, March 7
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT Museum, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Get a glimpse into a complex story never before told from a NASA insider. Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir is a complex insider's story about the development of the onboard software for the Apollo spacecraft, as told by a junior engineer just getting his feet wet in the new field of flight software. Meet author and MIT alumnus, Don Eyles, and enjoy an evening of space exploration.
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Tour of John Hancock Tower
Wednesday, March 7
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
120 St James Avenue, Boston
Cost: $15
Jacobs Engineering is hosting the USGBC for a tour of their office at 120 St. James Ave, Boston (John Hancock Tower). The office is pursuing certification for WELL, FitWel and LEED ID+C. Jacobs engineers will lead us on the tour and give us a presentation about the specific features of the design.
Following the tour and presentation, join us for a networking session with food and drinks provided by Jacobs in their Café.
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Tech + Humanitarian Action: Accelerating Global Crisis Response
Wednesday, March 7
6.00pm - 9.00pm
swissnex Boston, 420 Broadway, Cambridge
Join the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Director General Yves Daccord and the ICRC Collaborative Platform at swissnex Boston to explore how new tech is transforming humanitarian action in unprecedented ways.
Smartphones and mobile payment systems, social media and e-learning, satellite imagery and aerial robotics - these are just some of the emerging fields presenting important questions and exciting opportunities for those tackling humanitarian crises and supporting refugee populations.
In addition to Yves Daccord, ICRC Director General, panelists are Nathaniel Raymond, Director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and more to be announced.
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Boston New Technology Startup Showcase #BNT87 21+
Wednesday, March 7
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Foley Hoag, 155 Seaport Boulevard, Boston
Cost: $12.00 /per person
21+. Join Boston New Technology at law firm Foley Hoag on March 7th 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 and other beverages & more!
Please click here to share/tweet this event. (https://ctt.ec/la2dT)
Each startup presents an overview & demonstration of their product within 5 minutes and spends another 5 minutes on questions and answers with the audience. Please follow @BostonNewTech (http://twitter.com/BostonNewTech/) and support our startups by posting on social media using our #BNT87 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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Harvard Extension School Lowell Lecture 2018 - Ambassador Swanee Hunt
Wednesday, March 7
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Harvard, Emerson Hall 105, 25 Quincy Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/harvard-extension-school-lowell-lecture-2018-tickets-42801417191
Every spring we invite a world-renowned speaker to deliver the annual Lowell Lecture. We are excited to announce that this year’s lecture will be presented by Ambassador Swanee Hunt, and we encourage everyone to come hear her on Wednesday, March 7th, at 7 pm in Emerson Hall. Dean Lambert will be introducing Ambassador Hunt, who will be discussing her work with refugees and survivors of catastrophic world events. Her work in this area began when, as the US Ambassador to Austria from 1993 to 1997, she hosted negotiations and international symposia focused on stabilizing the neighboring Balkan states.
As part of her Lowell Lecture presentation, Women Rising, Here and Abroad, Ambassador Hunt has invited Chantal Kayitesi to participate in the discussion. Chantal is a survivor of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. She lost her husband, both her parents, two siblings, and many members of her extended family. In 1999, Ms. Kayitesi immigrated to the US with her son, and in 2006 she co-founded a New England-based organization, FORGES-Inshuti, that raises awareness and educates the public about genocide.
Ambassador Hunt and Ms. Kayitesi will be sharing the powerful and positive message of how Rwandan women came together to help rescue their country after the genocide, and created a model for sustainable peace and security for the rest of the world. Rwanda today ranks highest in the world in terms of women parliamentarians (more than 60 percent); almost half the judges and president’s cabinet are female. In a mere two-decade span, Rwanda has forged progressive health, education, gender equity, and environmental policies along an extraordinary path. Along with survivor and women’s organization leader Kayitesi, Ambassador Hunt will discuss Rwanda’s lessons for other nations—including the US.
Please join us for what promises to be a profound and engaging Lowell Lecture!
The Lowell Lecture is free and open to the public – please feel free to invite friends and colleagues as well as coming yourself.
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Media, Activism & Social Justice Panel
Wednesday, March 7
7:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building W31-110, SPXCE Intercultural Center, 120 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join us for a panel on media, activism and social justice, a collaboration between WMBR Radio and MIT SPXCE (Social Justice Programming & Cross-Cultural Engagement). MIT affiliates can attend in person at W31-110. Non-affiliates can tune in to a live broadcast on the radio at wmbr.org or 88.1FM.
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We're In This Together: Battling for Clean Energy and Fighting Fracking from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts
Wednesday, March 7
7pm - 9pm
First Church-Unitarian Universalist, 6 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain
Join in a conversation with community leaders from the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania, at the other end of the fracked gas pipelines that connect to Massachusetts. Families, landowners, and whole communities there have been deeply impacted by intensive development of fracking wells and facilities, and their struggle connects directly with our use of fossil fuels in the Northeast.
This event is free and open to the public. Donations are encouraged to offset expenses.
Sponsored by Clean Water Action, Mothers Out Front, Mass Power Forward Coalition, Resist the Pipeline and Jamaica Plain Forum. RSVP here.
Together we can do this!
The MA Leadership Team
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Dragonfly Eyes: Film Screening + Artist Talk
Wednesday, March 7
7PM
MIT, Building E15-070, Bartos Theatre, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Dragonfly Eyes is an 81-minute fictional movie, made entirely out of surveillance footage. It tells a story deeply rooted in today’s reality, revealing the “invisible” crises hidden in our mundane lives, and the inexplicable turns of events that lie beyond our grasp. The film reflects fragile sensibilities in our private emotions, and it mirrors how anxiety and insecurity fog our own perspective on modern live.
Director’s Statement:
“I’ve wanted to make a film from surveillance footage since 2013, but I had no access to the necessary resources. Since 2015, surveillance cameras in China have been linked to the cloud database: countless surveillance recordings have been streamed online. So I took up the project again. Our team collected a huge amount of footage and tried to use these fragments of reality to tell a story.”
Following the screening, there will be a discussion with artist Xu Bing, his translator Mengna Da, and respondent Eugenie Brinkema, Associate Professor of Literature at MIT.
Xu Bing was born in Chongqing, China, in 1955. He graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (CAFA) in 1981 and became a teacher. He moved to the United States in 1990, and moved back to China in 2007. He currently lives and works in Beijing and New York.
Xu Bing’s work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the British Museum, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina SofÃa, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and National Gallery of Prague, Czech Republic. Additionally, Xu Bing has participated in the 45th, 51st, and 56th Venice Biennales, the Biennale of Sydney, and the Johannesburg Biennale, among other international exhibitions.
In 1999, Xu Bing was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in recognition of his “capacity to contribute importantly to society, particularly in printmaking and calligraphy.” In 2003, he was conferred the 14th Fukuoka Asian Culture Award for his “contribution to the development of Asian culture”. In 2004, he won the first Artes Mundi Prize in Wales. In 2006, the Southern Graphics Council conferred on Xu Bing its lifetime achievement award in recognition of the fact that his “use of text, language and books has impacted the dialogue of the print and art worlds in significant ways.” In 2015, he was awarded the 2014 Department of State-Medal of Arts for his efforts to promote cultural understanding through his artworks.
This event is part of the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS).
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Lessons Learned when Field Botany Meets Design
Wednesday, March 7
7:00 — 8:30 pm
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
Uli Lorimer, Curator of the Native Flora Garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Ecologically attuned designers are increasingly looking to nature for inspiration in the design of managed landscapes. But connecting field botany to horticulture is complex, and insights gained from observations in the wild don’t always translate directly into a cultivated garden. Uli will use the recently expanded native flora garden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a cultivated pine barrens and coastal plain grassland, as a case study— sharing lessons learned along the way as the project evolved from a concept into a dynamic, living landscape. Good design allows for change and succession to occur, and flexibility in design intent is a valuable strategy because things do not always work out as planned.
Uli Lorimer has been the Curator of Native Flora at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Garden for over a decade. He was instrumental in the expansion of the Garden’s native plant collection, using only material sourced from the wild and grown from seed. As Field Chair at BBG, he coordinates fieldwork with regional botanists and leads botanical expeditions for naturalists and horticulturists.
This lecture co-sponsored by Mount Auburn Cemetery
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A.R.T. of Human Rights: Resistance Mic!
WHEN Wednesday, Mar. 7, 2018, 8 – 9:30 p.m.
WHERE Oberon, 2 Arrow St., Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Comedy, Concerts, Ethics, Theater
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR American Repertory Theater, Carr Center for Human Rights
SPEAKER(S) Co-Hosts:
Sarah Sweeney (@LooseGringa) is the author of Tell Me If You're Lying (Barrelhouse Books, 2016). Her poems and essays have appeared widely, including Washington Post, Salon, Catapult, Oxford American, and other venues. She works as a writer in Boston. Find her at www.sarah-sweeney.com.
Timothy Patrick McCarthy (@DrTPM) is an award-winning scholar, educator, and activist who teaches at Harvard University. He is author or editor of five books from the New Press, including Stonewall’s Children: Living Queer History in the Age of Liberation, Loss, and Love, forthcoming in 2018. He is also the host and director of the A.R.T. of Human Rights series. Find him at www.hks.harvard.edu….
DIRECTED BY Timothy Patrick McCarthy
COST 5-20$
TICKET WEB LINK https://americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/resistance-mic
CONTACT INFO Sarah Peck
DETAILS The 2016 election inspired a broad-based Resistance not seen in the United States in decades. People from all walks of life have been protesting, marching, mobilizing, and organizing in an effort to take back our country and create a more compassionate and just world. Artists are vital to this work. This fall, the American Repertory Theater and Carr Center for Human Rights Policy – in collaboration with Pangyrus and other literary and arts initiatives – are launching a new series of intimate performances on the theme of “Resistance.” Each of these five evenings will feature a diverse group of artist-activists telling powerful stories and performing politically engaged works that read, move, sing, and speak truth to power in these troubled times.
Resistance Mic! is part of the A.R.T. of Human Rights series, an ongoing collaboration between the American Repertory Theater and Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Resistance Mic! will take place on Wednesdays @ 8pm @ OBERON, A.R.T.’s second stage theater, and will be co-hosted by Timothy Patrick McCarthy and Sarah Sweeney.
Resistance Mic! continues this spring with performances February 7, March 7, April 4, and May 16.
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Co-Hosts:
Sarah Sweeney (@LooseGringa) is the author of Tell Me If You're Lying (Barrelhouse Books, 2016). Her poems and essays have appeared widely, including Washington Post, Salon, Catapult, Oxford American, and other venues. She works as a writer in Boston. Find her at www.sarah-sweeney.com.
Timothy Patrick McCarthy (@DrTPM) is an award-winning scholar, educator, and activist who teaches at Harvard University. He is author or editor of five books from the New Press, including Stonewall’s Children: Living Queer History in the Age of Liberation, Loss, and Love, forthcoming in 2018. He is also the host and director of the A.R.T. of Human Rights series. Find him at www.hks.harvard.edu….
Co-Sponsors:
American Repertory Theater (@americanrep) at Harvard University is a leading force in American theater, producing groundbreaking work in Cambridge and beyond. The A.R.T. was founded in 1980 by Robert Brustein, who served as Artistic Director until 2002, when he was succeeded by Robert Woodruff. Diane Paulus began her tenure as Artistic Director in 2008. Under her leadership, the A.R.T. seeks to expand the boundaries of theater
by programming events that immerse audiences in transformative theater experiences. Throughout its history, the A.R.T. has been honored with many distinguished awards, including consecutive Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical for Pippin and The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, as well as the Tony Award for Best Regional Theater. Under Paulus’s leadership, the A.R.T.’s club theater, OBERON, has become an incubator for local and emerging artists. Dedicated to making great theater accessible, the A.R.T. actively engages more than 5,000 community members and local students annually in project-based partnerships, workshops, conversations with artists, and other enrichment activities both at the theater and across the Greater Boston area.
by programming events that immerse audiences in transformative theater experiences. Throughout its history, the A.R.T. has been honored with many distinguished awards, including consecutive Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical for Pippin and The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, as well as the Tony Award for Best Regional Theater. Under Paulus’s leadership, the A.R.T.’s club theater, OBERON, has become an incubator for local and emerging artists. Dedicated to making great theater accessible, the A.R.T. actively engages more than 5,000 community members and local students annually in project-based partnerships, workshops, conversations with artists, and other enrichment activities both at the theater and across the Greater Boston area.
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (@carrcenter) at Harvard Kennedy School trains future leaders for global careers in public service and social justice. Its research, teaching, publications, and programming are guided by a commitment
to make human rights principles central to
the formulation of good public policy in the United States and throughout the world.
to make human rights principles central to
the formulation of good public policy in the United States and throughout the world.
Pangyrus LitMag (@Pangyrus) publishes stories, poems, essays and journalism that make artful and original connections, explore the unexpected, and break the constraints that keep people and ideas isolated. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we publish continuously online, and in print twice a year. Currently we are accepting submissions for our Spring 2018 issue and a special Resistance themed edition. You can find our latest publications and news at pangyrus.com.
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Thursday, March 8
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Red, White and New Tour: Solectria 1000 Inverter Roadshow
Thursday, March 8
8:30 AM – 1:30 PM EST
CivicSolar, Inc, 123 Lewis Wharf, Boston
Join Yaskawa Solectria Solar on the Red, White and New Tour and earn NABCEP credits!
We will be featuring the BAA (Buy American Act) compliant XGI 1000 string inverter for commercial design. Stay after lunch for additional CEUs by Ecolibrium Solar!
Special thank you to our partner CivicSolar for hosting us!
By attending this class you will receive 4 NABCEP CEUs.
Agenda:
8:30 am Registration and Breakfast
9:00 am - 11:30 am Solectria Presents: Commercial Design Considerations Featuring the XGI 1000
11:30 am - 12:00 pm Lunch
12:00 pm -1:30 pm Ecolibrium Presents: EcoX Rail-Less Mounting Course 201
Breakfast and Lunch to be provided.
Yaskawa Solectria Solar Course Description:
As the industry moves more towards string inverters for commercial applications, more and more manufacturers are supplying higher power inverters. This training will walk you through commercial design considerations when using high-power string inverters and the different applications for ground mount, rooftop and carport systems. This training will feature the XGI 1000 inverter and include installation details, string sizing, AC/DC connections, wiring needs, string combiners and monitoring.
Ecolibrium Course Description:
In this 1.5-hour course, learn the differences between rail-less and traditional racking systems and how to install the EcoX Rail-less Racking System, the No. 1 Universal Rail-less Racking System per GTM Research. Areas covered include speed, simplicity, elimination of rough inspections, integrated grounding, optimizing layout, wire management, steep pitch installations, and validation requirements. Participants earn 2 CE credit hours.
Following the NABCEP presentation, discover the benefits of industry-preferred EcoFoot Flat-Roof Racking Systems and how EcoMount Racking supports Yaskawa Solectria’s new 65kW XGI 1000. See the new EcoFoot5D, our new high-density racking for flat roofs.
For more information contact:
Danielle Kershner
Marketing Manager
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The Ancient West and America’s Westward Expansion
Thursday, March 8
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Daniel Zizzamia, Ziff Environmental Fellow, Harvard University’s Center for the Environment
Historians have long understood the American West as a region shaped by aridity. Yet, by analyzing the novel imaginaries that emerged from the scientific and commercial interaction with fossils and coal in the late nineteenth century, this talk reveals that the discovery of lush and lively paleo-environments from the Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods equally influenced the history of this region.
Dr. Daniel Zizzamia is an environmental historian and historian of science. He is interested in the intersection of history and the earth sciences in environmental politics and natural resource policy. In particular, he is fascinated by how restoration, reclamation, geoengineering, and terraforming projects are conceived and executed. His research, from which his talk is drawn, focuses on the settlement of the American West as it was influenced by the fossils and coal unearthed and used by scientists, settlers, capitalists, the railroads, and Native Americans. His book in progress is entitled Beneath the Frontier: Fossils, Coal and Remaking the American West, 1800-1920.
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Empowering Girls, Transforming Communities: The Power of Grassroots Leadership
WHEN Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard School of Public Health, Leadership Studio, 10th Floor, Kresge Building, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston or online at http://hsph.me/Ntaiya
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Voices in Leadership webcast program, HSPH
SPEAKER(S) Dr. Kakenya Ntaiya, Founder and President of the Kakenya Center for Excellence
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/voices/events/kakenya-ntaiya-founder-and-president-of-the-kakenya-center-for-excellence/
CONTACT INFO Alison Barron - abarron@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS Join us for the next "Voices in Leadership" event of the Spring semester, featuring Kakenya Ntaiya, Founder of the Kakenya Center for Excellence. Dr. Ntaiya's life was supposed to follow a traditional path. Engaged at age 5, the expectation was that she would then leave school and marry, but Kakenya had a different plan. She negotiated with the village elders to do what no girl had ever done: leave her Maasai village to go to college in the United States, promising to use her education to benefit the community. She went on to earn her PhD in education. Dr. Adams will be interviewed by Dr. Ana Langer. Please join us online or in-person for this dynamic event! For lottery and live webcast details, please visit www.hsph.me/Ntaiya.
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The Trichodesmium Microbiome and Its Role in the Marine Nitrogen and Phosphorus Cycles
Thursday, March 8
2:00PM
Narvard, Haller Hall (102), Geo Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Benjamin Van Mooy, Senior Scientist, Dept. of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Trichodesmium is a colonial cyanobacterium that plays a key role in the oligotrophic ocean because of its ability to fix nitrogen and thereby drive overall primary productivity. Trichodesmium have thus been the focus of intense study for decades, and yet our understanding of what controls their rates of nitrogen fixation is woefully incomplete. One reason for this is that colonies of Trichodesmium in the ocean contain a diverse community of heterotrophic bacteria that has largely been ignored by oceanographers. My colleagues and I are finding that members of the colonial microbiome facilitate Trichodesmium nitrogen fixation through their abilities to acquire of phosphorus and other nutrients.
Geobiology Seminar
Contact Name: Sabinna Cappo
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DSL Speaker Series: Professor Daniel Jackson, Portraits of Resilience
Thursday, March 8
2:00pm to 3:00pm
MIT, Building 26-100, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge
The Division of Student Life and Institute Community & Equity Office are hosting a talk by Prof. Daniel Jackson, who will discuss his recently published Portraits of Resilience. Prof. Jackson's work is a compilation of personal stories of MIT students, faculty, and staff who have grappled with daunting challenges, and found ways to overcome them and succeed, even in the fast-paced, demanding environment of MIT. There are some remarkable lessons for each of us in these stories, all of which have been published in the MIT newspaper The Tech over the past few years.
This event is free and open to the MIT Community and friends. Immediately after the talk, there will be an informal reception with Daniel, as well as an opportunity to purchase copies of the book from the MIT Press.
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Evolution of Bacteria within Individual Human Microbiomes
Thursday, March 8
4:00PM TO 5:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 440, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Tami Lieberman, MIT. Reception to follow.
MSI Seminar
Contact Name: Scott Chimileski
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OEB Seminar Series - "Genomic Conflicts and The Origins of Species”
WHEN Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018, 4 – 5 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
SPEAKER(S) Dr. Nitin Phadnis, The University of Utah
TICKET INFO Free and Open to the Public
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Probing the Limits of Speculation: Counterfactualism and the Holocaust
WHEN Thursday, Mar. 8, 2018, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Hoffmann Room, 27 Kirkland Street, Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies
SPEAKER(S) Gavriel Rosenfeld, Professor of History, Fairfield University
CONTACT INFO Derek Penslar
DETAILS While historians have traditionally dismissed the use of counterfactual reasoning in the writing of history, recent scholars have increasingly invoked “what if” scenarios in writing about the origins, course, and legacy of the Nazi genocide. This paper surveys the diverse ways in which counterfactuals have been employed in Holocaust historiography. It historicizes the evolution of this speculative mode of reasoning, tracing it back to the early scholarly debate about Hannah Arendt’s controversial book, Eichmann in Jerusalem.
It goes on to show how other topics have featured “what if” reasoning,including: the debate over Hitler’s role in the Holocaust; debates over whether the Western Allies could have done more to save the Jews; how a Nazi victory in World War II might have affected views of the Holocaust’s uniqueness; how the Holocaust might have been averted had the Allies stayed neutral in World War II; and, finally, whether the Holocaust’s non-occurrence would have prevented the creation of the State of Israel. In showing how scholars have been motivated by a range of analytical, moral, and political agendas, I conclude that the readiness to ask “what if” questions confirms Saul Friedlander’s hypotheses about the absence of limits for representing the Holocaust.
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Microbes as sentinels of changing ecosystems
Thursday, March 8
5:00pm to 5:30pm
MIT, Building 48-316, Parsons Laboratory, 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Prof. Dana Hunt , Duke University Marine Lab
Environmental Science Seminar Series
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Alaskan Palms, Antarctic Dinosaurs and Arctic Crocodiles: The Implications of Past Warm Worlds
Thursday, March 8
5:00 PM to 6:00 PM (EST)
MIT, Building 54-100, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Join us for the Fourth Annual Brace Lecture featuring Dr. Kirk Johnson, Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
With little more than picks and shovels, paleontologists can access ancient organisms, ecosystems, and biomes. This “time travel with a shovel” is a surprisingly effective tool to document and visualize ancient worlds. Forests first appeared on Earth around 380 million years ago and since then their distribution has responded to changing climates and continental configurations. The distribution of extant biomes is controlled by a steep latitudinal temperature gradient that ranges from frigid poles to a hot equatorial zone. One of the most surprising aspects of Earth’s history is the fact that the polar regions, which are the realm of ice and tundra today, have been extensively forested in the past. As today’s climate warms, these past polar ecosystems are becoming increasingly relevant as indicators of future conditions.
Reception to follow in the Ida Green Lounge, Room 54-923
About the Speaker
Dr. Kirk Johnson is the Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He oversees more than 440 employees and a collection of more than 145 million objects—the largest natural history collection in the world. The Museum hosts more than 7 million visitors annually and, in 2017, its scientists published over 760 scientific research papers and described more than 300 new species.
As a paleontologist who has led expeditions that have resulted in the discovery of more than 1,400 fossil sites, his research focuses on fossil plants and the extinction of the dinosaurs. He is known for his scientific articles, popular books, museum exhibitions, documentaries, and collaborations with artists. In 2010-11, he led the excavation of an ice age site near Snowmass Village, Colorado, that recovered more than 5,400 bones of mammoths, mastodons and other ice age animals. This dig was featured in the NOVA documentary, Ice Age Death Trap, and in Johnson’s book, Digging Snowmastodon, Discovering an Ice Age World in the Colorado Rockies. His recent documentaries include the three-part NOVA series Making North America, which aired on PBS networks in November 2015, and The Great Yellowstone Thaw which premiered on PBS in June 2017. His latest book, Ancient Wyoming, explores the prehistory and geology of the Bighorn Basin.
About the Series
The Brace Lecture is a free, annual event which honors the legacy of "legend in rock physics" and former EAPS Department Head Bill Brace, who passed away in 2012. The William F Brace Lecture is an annual all-department event at which a distinguished visitor from outside MIT is invited to speak on a subject of contemporary interest in earth, atmospheric or planetary science.
For more information please contact: Brandon Milardo, bmilardo@mit.edu.
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Resource Anxieties
Thursday, March 8
5:00PM TO 6:30PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 429, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
with Victor Seow, Assistant Professor, Harvard Department of the History of Science.
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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The Tip of the Iceberg: Sound Studies and the Future of Afrofuturism
Thursday, March 8
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 56-114, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Iconic developments in the artistic and intellectual ethos known as Afrofuturism are closely linked to music: Sun Ra’s experimental jazz, Parliament Funkadelic’s Mothership, John Akomfrah’s film Last Angel of History. What else is on the soundtrack to a livable future? How do we pursue further innovation in the human sensorium without reproducing an “audiovisual litany” that conflates rationality with the colonial gaze and isolates Black creativity to moments of sonic disruption? andré carrington’s present research on the cultural politics of race in science fiction radio drama aims to expand the repertoire of literary adaptation studies by reintegrating critical perspectives from marginal and popular sectors of the media landscape into the advancing agendas of Afrofuturism and decolonization.
andré carrington is a scholar of race, gender, and genre in Black and American cultural production. He is currently Assistant Professor of African American literature at Drexel University. His first book, Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction (Minnesota, 2016) interrogates the cultural politics of race in the fantastic genres through studies of science fiction fanzines, comics, film and television, and other speculative fiction texts.
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AI, Machine Learning and the Future of the Digital Experience
Thursday, March 8
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM EST
SessionM Office, 2 Seaport Lane, 11th Floor, Boston
If you are a software engineer, data scientist, solutions engineer or otherwise technically curious ‘Big Data’ professional looking for inspiration, you don’t want to miss this! Only 30 spots available!
Join SessionM's CTO Scott Weller and his team of engineers to learn how the organization is helping the world's biggest brands deliver real-time customer interactions by developing machine learning and AI-backed systems using Golang, Spark and Scala.
Drinks and food will be provided.
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SCIENCE with/in/sight: 2018 Koch Institute Image Awards
Thursday, March 8
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, 500 Main Street, Cambridge
Join us on Thursday, March 8 for the opening of the eighth annual Image Awards exhibition in the Koch Institute Public Galleries. This year's visuals combine art and science to make visible the processes and progress of biomedical research at MIT. From origami to organoids, diabetes to dendrites, ten dynamic images reveal how MIT researchers fight cancer, advance human health, and uncover truth in the biological world. The evening's festivities will include a networking reception and lightning talks by the images' creators. Do not miss this opportunity to celebrate the stories and innovation behind the 2018 winning images!
Reception at 6:00 p.m., Presentations at 7:00 p.m., Coffee and dessert follow.
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Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
Thursday, March 8
6:30 PM
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store and the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research welcome acclaimed writer, Rutgers University professor, and co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective BRITTNEY COOPER for a discussion of her latest book, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. She will be joined in conversation by award-winning broadcast journalist CALLIE CROSSLEY.
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Boston Area Solar Energy Association Monthly Forum: The Utility Business Model IS the Problem
Thursday, March 8
Doors open at 7:00 p.m.; Presentation begins at 7:30 p.m
First Parish in Cambridge Unitarian Universalist; 3 Church Street, Harvard Square
with Mark Durrenberger of New England Clean Energy
Why are incentives changing and going down in a solar-friendly state like Massachusetts?
At the March BASEA Forum, Mark Durrenberger will explain the basics of the investor-owned
utility business model and why & how it potently resists the growth of solar energy.
Understanding the underlying motivations of utility companies, which are multi-national
[http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=u7jqpq7ab.0.0.a4t4lee6.0&id=preview&r=3&p=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FNational_Grid_plc] and Fortune 500 [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=u7jqpq7ab.0.0.a4t4lee6.0&id=preview&r=3&p=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FEversource_Energy] businesses, is important for those who would advocate for renewable energy. Utilities
market themselves [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=u7jqpq7ab.0.0.a4t4lee6.0&id=preview&r=3&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eversource.com%2Fcontent%2Fwma%2Fresidential]
as progressive and green-friendly, but their real actions align with the profit
motive and guaranteed return-on-equity for building more infrastructure that keeps solar growth in check.
Can their business model be reformed to coexist with a renewable energy future?
Boston Area Solar Energy Association at http://www.basea.org
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Friday, March 9
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MIT Sustainability Summit: Good Jobs for a Thriving Economy
Friday, March 9
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM EST
Four Seasons Hotel Boston, 200 Boylston Street, Boston
Cost: $45 – $170
Good Jobs for a Thriving Economy
Inspiring Business from the Inside; Mobilizing from the Outside
Mainstream discussions about the future of work, widening inequality, and the rise of contract labor have proliferated in recent years. Despite the uncertainty of the times, there are many rich examples of businesses rethinking the role of workers – and the nature of work – as a source of differentiation and an opportunity to outperform. The evidence is clear: when it comes to good jobs, businesses have a significant role to play; whether focusing on internal culture and operations, or partnering with external groups to advance a broader good jobs agenda.
Join the discussion! Learn more about how businesses and other stakeholders are working toward a new normal, reimagining standards of work, and collectively mobilizing to build a thriving economy.
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My Bionic Hand
Friday, March 9
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM EST
Optum, 1325 Boylston Street, Boston
Cost: $0 – $15
Design Museum Mornings with Mike Benning, Hanger Clinic , Inc.
At only 14 years old, Mike Benning had his left arm amputated below the elbow after a harrowing experience with an aggressive form of childhood cancer. Since then, Mike has worn a wide range of prosthetic devices. He used a body powered prosthesis with a hook and cable for most of his life until receiving an i-limb through Hanger Clinic in 2012. In 2015, he was the first person in the US be fitted with the most advanced technology of its time, the i-limb quantum.
Mike will share his prosthetic journey and explain how prosthetic design has not only improved his functionality, but also how public perception has changed with the evolution of his prosthetic devices. In addition to breakfast, March’s Design Museum Mornings will also include demonstrator devices, available for attendees to try.
Doors open at 8:30am; Presentation begins at 9:00am.
Please note: This event will be recorded. All audience members (or parents/ guardians of minors attending the event) agree to the possibility of appearing on these recordings by virtue of attending the event or participating in the event.
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Boston Data Portal Training
Friday, March 9
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST
Northeastern Crossing, 1175 Tremont Street, Boston
The Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) and Northeastern Crossing are partnering to offer a community-based training on the Boston Data Portal. The training will cover the Boston Data Portal, an online platform where visitors of all experience levels can browse, map, analyze, and download a variety of data describing the people, places, and neighborhoods of Boston.
This training will help participants:
Learn more about the communities you serve;
Support the goals of the communities you serve; and
Promote informed advocacy centered on your particular goals.
Breakfast will be served.
This training is intended for members of community-based organizations serving the Boston area. Please limit three people per organization.*
*Space is limited, so depending on RSVPs we will open it up to a wider audience. This training is one in a series that we will host throughout the year, so if you are unable to attend on March 9th, please stay tuned for future training announcements!
Please feel free to contact us at bari@northeastern.edu with any questions.
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Materials Design for Applications in Solar and Thermal Energy: Prof. Jeffrey Grossman
Friday, March 9,
11:45am to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 34-401B, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Prof. Jeffrey Grossman, MIT Materials Science and Engineering, gives a talk hosted by APhys.
Current renewable energy conversion and storage technologies are too expensive, too inefficient, or both, substantially limiting their use and global impact. At the core of these challenges is a materials choice: many of the key mechanisms are dominated by the intrinsic properties of the active materials involved. Our imperative is thus to predict, identify and manufacture new materials and designs as comprehensively and rapidly as possible. Toward that end, we use a combination of computational and experimental approaches that serve to elucidate fundamental mechanisms that govern the efficiency in these materials in order to design and demonstrate new concepts and solutions. Examples of our recent work in the areas of solar photovoltaics and solar thermal fuels will be presented.
Lunch will be provided.
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Jerusalem after Trump: Consequences and Implications
WHEN Friday, Mar. 9, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Wasserstein Hall 2012, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Religion, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law & The Islamic Legal Studies Program: Law and Social Change, and co-sponsored by the Human Rights Program.
SPEAKER(S) Aaron David Miller, Noura Erakat, Noah Feldman (moderator)
CONTACT INFO ilsplsc@law.harvard.edu
DETAILS President Trump’s Dec. 6 declaration of the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel sparked wide international condemnation and protest — and widespread approval in Israel. A highly sensitive issue with profound legal, geopolitical, spiritual, and humanitarian consequences, the status of Jerusalem has serious implications for the elusive goal of Middle East peace. Aaron David Miller and Noura Erakat will engage in a conversation on the consequences and implications of Trump’s decision from a number of different angles, taking into consideration questions of international law, regional stability and security, prospects for sustainable peace, and the status and rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Noah Feldman will moderate.
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EXTREME HURRICANES: The Challenges for Puerto Rico and Beyond
WHEN Friday, Mar. 9, 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
Kellie Bentz, Head of Global Disaster Response and Relief, Airbnb
Brad Kieserman, Red Cross Vice President of Disaster Operations and Logistics
Daniel Ramos, Health Programs Partnerships & Strategies Specialist, Primary Health Association of Puerto Rico
Jose E. Sanchez, Deputy Director of Research & Development, US Army Corps of Engineers, and Former Director of Puerto Rico Power Grid Restoration Program
Richard Serino, Former Deputy Administrator, FEMA, and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
MODERATOR
Carol Hills, Senior Producer and Reporter, PRI’s The World
TICKET WEB LINK https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7ZLj4rbYgWaQgHX
CONTACT INFO theforum@hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS
Six months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, a panel of experts will assess persistent public health challenges on the island and the outlook for long-term recovery. Power restoration, health care coordination, and medical services delivery on the island are just some of the pressing issues the panelists will explore. They also will discuss the potential threats of extreme hurricanes more broadly, noting that 2017 was one of the most destructive seasons on record. What can be done to better prepare and respond to killer storms, and to build resiliency to combat such disasters? How can the public and private sectors work together? And what have we learned generally from past hurricanes -- and specifically from ongoing efforts in Puerto Rico -- to meet the many challenges ahead?
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MLTalks: Neal Stephenson
Friday, March 9
2:00pm — 3:30pm
MIT Media Lab, Building E14, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Neal Stephenson is a novelist with a science background. He worked part-time at Blue Operations and its successor company Blue Origin from their inception in 1999 until 2006. Between 2007 and 2010 he worked at Intellectual Ventures Labs. Since 2014 he has been Chief Futurist at Magic Leap.
All talks at the Media Lab, unless otherwise noted, are open to the public.
This talk will be webcast. Join the conversation on Twitter: #MLTalks
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2018 MacVicar Day Symposium: Inclusive Pedagogies: Building a Vibrant Community of Learners at MIT
Friday, March 9
2:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT, Building 6-120, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
In addition to honoring the 2018 MacVicar Faculty Fellows, we will be hosting a public symposium.
The panel will be hosted by Vice Chancellor Ian Waitz and speakers will include Catherine Drennan, Eric Klopfer, Katrina LaCurts, Christine Ortiz, and Meredith Thompson.
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The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution
Friday, March 9
3:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Harvard Book Store welcomes Yale professor and award-winning author MARCI SHORE for a discussion of her latest book, The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution.
About The Ukrainian Night
What is worth dying for? While the world watched the uprising on the Maidan as an episode in geopolitics, those in Ukraine during the extraordinary winter of 2013–14 lived the revolution as an existential transformation: the blurring of night and day, the loss of a sense of time, the sudden disappearance of fear, the imperative to make choices.
In this lyrical and intimate book, Marci Shore evokes the human face of the Ukrainian Revolution. Grounded in the true stories of activists and soldiers, parents and children, Shore’s book blends a narrative of suspenseful choices with a historian’s reflections on what revolution is and what it means. She gently sets her portraits of individual revolutionaries against the past as they understand it—and the future as they hope to make it. In so doing, she provides a lesson about human solidarity in a world, our world, where the boundary between reality and fiction is ever more effaced.
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Undocumented: A Dominican Boy's Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League
Friday, March 9
7:00 PM
First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Cambridge Forum is pleased to present DAN-EL PADILLA PERALTA discussing his book Undocumented: A Dominican Boy's Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League.
About Undocumented
Dan-el Padilla Peralta has lived the American dream. As a boy, he arrived in the United States legally with his family. Together they had traveled from Santo Domingo to seek medical care for his mother. Soon the family’s visas lapsed, and Dan-el’s father eventually returned home. But Dan-el’s courageous mother decided to stay and make a better life for her bright sons in New York City.
Without papers, she faced tremendous obstacles. While Dan-el was only in grade school, the family joined the ranks of the city’s homeless. Dan-el, his mother, and brother lived in a downtown shelter where Dan-el’s only refuge was the meager library. At another shelter he met Jeff, a young volunteer from a wealthy family. Jeff was immediately struck by Dan-el’s passion for books and learning. With Jeff’s help, Dan-el was accepted on scholarship to Collegiate, the oldest private school in the country.
There, Dan-el thrived. Throughout his youth, Dan-el navigated two worlds: the rough streets of East Harlem, where he lived with his brother and his mother and tried to make friends, and the ultra-elite halls of a Manhattan private school, where he immersed himself in a world of books and rose to the top of his class.
From Collegiate, Dan-el went on to Princeton, where he made the momentous decision to come out as an undocumented student in a Wall Street Journal profile a few months before he gave the salutatorian’s traditional address in Latin at his commencement.
Undocumented is essential reading for the debate on immigration, but it is also an unforgettable tale of a passionate young scholar coming of age in two very different worlds.
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Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America
Friday, March 9
7:00 PM
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome Harvard Law School professor CASS R. SUNSTEIN—one of the most cited legal scholars in the United States and the world—for a discussion of his latest book, Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America.
About Can It Happen Here?
With the election of Donald J. Trump, many people on both the left and right feared that America’s 240-year-old grand experiment in democracy was coming to an end, and that Sinclair Lewis’ satirical novel, It Can’t Happen Here, written during the dark days of the 1930s, could finally be coming true. Is the democratic freedom that the United States symbolizes really secure? Can authoritarianism happen in America?
Acclaimed legal scholar, Harvard Professor, and New York Times bestselling author Cass R. Sunstein queried a number of the nation’s leading thinkers. In this thought-provoking collection of essays, these distinguished thinkers and theorists explore the lessons of history, how democracies crumble, how propaganda works, and the role of the media, courts, elections, and "fake news" in the modern political landscape—and what the future of the United States may hold.
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Saturday, March 10
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Beyond the Cradle: Envisioning a New Space Age
Saturday, March 10
8:00am — 6:00pm
More information at https://www.media.mit.edu/events/beyond-the-cradle-2018/
Livestream at http://legacyweb.media.mit.edu/events/medialabtalk/
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Sustainable House of Worship Workshop
Saturday, March 10
8:30 am-12:30 pm
St. Matthew's United Methodist Church, 435 Central Street, Acton
Register in advance at http://conta.cc/2jDc7a5
Leading by example can be a powerful part of our moral responsibility to care for creation. Reducing the carbon pollution at our houses of worship we also lower energy bills and free up funds needed for other important purposes. Participants will learn what to do about:
Electricity — How to recognize the major energy hogs — and what to do about them.
Solar Power — Is solar an option for your congregation?
Heat & Air Conditioning — Is it time for an upgrade?
Building Envelope — How to make your congregation more comfortable & save money.
Behavior — How simple actions can lower your energy bill – and carbon footprint – by 10% or more.
8:30 am: registration & refreshments.
9:00 am-12:30 pm: Workshop presentations.
For more information contact Vince Maraventano at vince@MIPandL.org or 617-244-0755.
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Maple Syrup Community Boil Down!
Saturday, March 10
10 AM - 1 PM
The Somerville Community Growing Center, 22 Vinal Avenue, Somerville
Did you know that every year, Groundwork Somerville makes maple syrup in a wood-fired boiler (made by Somerville High School students), and you can come watch?
Join us for our annual maple syrup boil down festival!
We will be boiling all the sap collected this year from sugar maples at Tufts and serving up pancakes from Cuisine en Locale. There will be live music, games, and Groundwork Somerville gear for sale!
Rain date: Saturday, March 17th.
The Maple Boil Down is the culminating public event for our annual Maple Syrup Project, in which we tap trees at Tufts, teach a series of lessons to Somerville 2nd graders with volunteer teachers from the community, and host field trips at the Somerville Growing Center.
Come by and bring friends, family, and other maple syrup enthusiasts! Share this event and help spread the word!
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Documentary screening "Sustainable"
Saturday, March 10
8:00pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Sidney pacific seminar room, 70 Pacific Street, Cambridge
This is a film about the land, the people who work it and what must be done to sustain it for the future
A vital investigation of the economic and environmental instability of America’s food system
Dinner will be served, bring your own utensils
Event limited to 30 attendees, RVSP here https://goo.gl/forms/ccN9UYpsrBqBfHGF3
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Sunday, March 11
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MIT New Space Age Conference
Sunday, March 11
8:00am to 6:00pm
MIT, Samberg Conference Center, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
RSVP at http://newspaceage.org
Cost: $30 - $100
The MIT New Space Age Conference brings together astronauts, CEOs, students, entrepreneurs, and other leaders of the emerging space industry to discuss its next directions. Registration open to the public.
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Monday, March 12
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Sustainable Careers: Catie Lee, Manager at Land O'Lakes SUSTAIN, on Sustainability in Food and Agribusiness
Monday, March 12
11:45am to 12:45pm
MIT, Building E51-361, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Catie Lee is a Manager at Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN, a business unit started in 2016 to empower farmers to make sustainable and productive decisions on-farm. She works to bring new ideas and innovation to the ag industry to drive new sources of profit to farmers. Recently she’s been doing a lot of thinking about conservation finance, manure management, and innovation in a company.
Prior to joining Land O’Lakes, Catie was a Consultant in Bain & Co.’s Boston office and worked for the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. She has an MBA from Chicago Booth and a BA from Williams College.
Catie will talk about her career path including career switching, the challenges of sustainability roles in corporations, and attempting to solve the two-body problem. She is happy to discuss specific issues facing agriculture during Q&A.
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PAOC Colloquium: Brent Minchew (MIT)
Monday, March 12
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Brent Minchew is a geophysicist working to understand the interactions between climate, the cryosphere, and the solid Earth. He uses a combination of geodetic observations—primarily interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR)—and physical models to study dynamical systems and their various responses to environmental forcing.
The bulk of Minchew’s research focuses on the dynamics of extant glaciers, with an emphasis on the mechanics of glacier beds, ice-ocean interactions, and ice rheology. By modulating ice flow and directly influencing glacier erosion rates, these factors play critical roles in glacier and ice sheet evolution, the dynamic response of glaciers to climate change, and the impact of glaciers on landform evolution and the global carbon cycle over human to geological timescales.
Minchew’s preferred approach to understanding complex systems is to focus on short-timescale (hourly to sub-decadal) variations in the dynamics of large-scale systems in response to known forcings. Examples of this work include spatiotemporal observations and models of the dynamic response of glaciers to surface meltwater flux, ocean tidal forcing, and ice shelf thinning.
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Bridging Privacy Definitions: Differential Privacy and Privacy Concepts from Law and Policy
Monday, March 12
12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
BU, BUild Lab IDG Capital Student Innovation Center, 730 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Please send your RSVP for this talk to tgabs@bu.edu
Interest in differential privacy is growing among policymakers and privacy practitioners as an approach to satisfying legal and policy requirements for privacy protection when using and sharing personal information. However, demonstrating that formal privacy models such as differential privacy satisfy legal requirements for privacy protection is a significant challenge due to conceptual gaps between the legal and technical definitions.
This presentation, given by Harvard Berkman Center fellow Alexandra Wood, will discuss how the use of differential privacy can be understood to be sufficient to satisfy a wide range of legal and policy requirements, despite these definitional gaps. It will draw from specific examples of privacy requirements from a selection of laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule, Title 13 of the U.S. Code (governing the US Census Bureau), and the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act (CIPSEA). Key concepts from these legal requirements that are found to be relevant to privacy in computation include personally identifiable information, de-identification, linkage, inference, identification risk, expert determination, consent and opting out, and purpose and access limitations.
While none of these legal and policy concepts refer directly to differential privacy, the differential privacy guarantee can be interpreted to address these concepts while accommodating differences in how they are defined and interpreted. A series of examples will be provided to show how policymakers and privacy practitioners can interpret the differential privacy guarantee as sufficient to satisfy legal and policy requirements that rely on these concepts. This approach can, in turn, guide practitioners in the future as they make decisions when analyzing and sharing statistical data about individuals, informing individuals about the privacy protection they will be afforded, and designing policies and regulations for robust privacy protection.
Refreshments provided.
More information at http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty-and-staff/colloquia-workshops/intellectual-property-speaker-series/
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NULab: Geometries of Thought: What the history of network visualizations reveals about how we think
Monday, March 12
1:00pm
Northeastern
RSVP at RSVP to Sarah Connell: sa.connell[at]northeastern[dot]edu
Title: Geometries of Thought: What the history of network visualizations reveals about how we thinkSpeaker: Scott Weingart, Program Director of Digital Humanities at Carnegie Mellon University LibrariesLocation: Curry Student Center, Room 346, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115Join us on March 12th for a talk by visiting speaker Scott Weingart, Carnegie Mellon University.“Everything is connected”, a generation of magazine covers shouted, proclaiming the dawn of an age of cybernetics, of information, of big data. The history of that connectivity reflects deep-seated philosophical positions which influence what and how we think. Trees and networks offer particularly compelling models through which to organize the world, and looking at their illustrations over the last thousand years provides a unique purchase into Western Europe’s changing philosophical landscape. Through these illustrations, we can trace everything from the changing role of God, to the underpinning of early gravitational theories, to the values implicit in force-directed network layouts.This event is free and open to the public, but guests from outside the Northeastern community should RSVP to Sarah Connell: sa.connell[at]northeastern[dot]edu.
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MIT STS Program presents the 2018 Morison Prize & Lecture with guest speaker, Sheri Fink, PhD, MD
Monday, March 12
4:00pm to 5:30pm
MIT, Building E15, Bartos Theater, Lower Atrium 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Sheri Fink is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown, 2013) about choices made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She is a correspondent at the New York Times, where her and her colleagues’ stories on the West Africa Ebola crisis were recognized with the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, the George Polk Award for health reporting, and the Overseas Press Club Hal Boyle Award. Her story “The Deadly Choices at Memorial,” co-published by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine, received a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and a National Magazine Award for reporting. A former relief worker in disaster and conflict zones, Fink received her M.D. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her first book, War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival (PublicAffairs), is about medical professionals under siege during the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Five Days at Memorial was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for nonfiction, the Ridenhour Book Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Book Award, the American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, and the NASW Science in Society Journalism Book Award.
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MIT Screening of THE NEW FIRE
Monday, March 12
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
MIT, Ray and Maria Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Join us for this special, free screening of THE NEW FIRE and meet director David Schumacher and Kerry Emanuel! The screening will be held at the Stata Center in Kirsch Auditorium (32-123). A panel Q&A session will follow.
What can we do to mitigate climate change?
Nuclear power has been vilified in popular culture and among much of the environmental community. Yet the next-generation reactors currently in development may actually be key to avoiding global catastrophe. The young entrepreneurs heading this energy revolution realize they’re up against more than the climate clock – they need to convince all of us that the new nuclear is safe and achievable.
Filmed across four continents over the course of 22 months, Emmy-winning director David Schumacher’s film focuses on how the generation facing the most severe impact of climate change is fighting back with ingenuity and hope. THE NEW FIRE tells a provocative and startlingly positive story about a planet in crisis and the young heroes
who are trying to save it.
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Science by the Pint: Small Stars with Small Planets
Monday, March 12
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
The Burren, 247 Elm Street, Somerville
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/science-by-the-pint-small-stars-with-small-planets-tickets-43168564338
This Science by the Pint event features Dr. Phillip Muirhead. Dr. Muirhead is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Boston University. Check back later for a more detailed description of the topic covered!
Science by the Pint is a free science caf̩ in which we invite a Boston-area research lab out to a pub or brewery to chat science over a cold one. The events are geared toward a general audience Рall are welcome and no experience is necessary! To learn more about our Science by the Pint series, visit:
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Blockchain For Good - Boston
Monday, March 12
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
District Hall, 75 Northern Avenue, Boston
In 2009 Blockchain was born, a technology that has already changed the world and has the ability to help us solve some of the most prevalent problems of humanity. Blockchain is the technology that makes possible its most well-known use, bitcoin cryptocurrencies. But the underlying technology allows infinite possibilities far beyond the well-known virtual currency. Unfortunately, the Blockchain discussion is too often focused on very cryptic technological issues for the majority, which only alienates many potential users of the most powerful tool we have seen since the World Wide Web was invented. In this session, we will understand what Blockchain can do, leaving aside the technical jargon and we will know concrete examples of uses of this technology
About The Speaker
Concepción Galdón is IE University’s Social Innovation Director/Academic Lead. At IE she has the mandate to promote Social Innovation academic content across Schools and Programs, encourage more research in Social Innovation and reach out to organizations and partners interested in Social Innovation. IE focuses on three main drivers for Social Innovation, consistent with the identity and values of our University: Entrepreneurship (also Social Entrepreneurship but not exclusively), Technology applied to Social Innovation and Conscious Leadership. Concepción is a professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at IE. Concepción is also President of the social Venture Puentes Global, which she co-founded in 2009. She´s a member of Ashoka Spain’s Venture Board and of the board of Harvard Kennedy School Spain Alumni Network.
Concepción is an Economist by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She holds a Master in Public Administration and International Development by Harvard Kennedy School. Concepción holds a PhD in International Economy and Development by Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her PhD research focuses on the use of technology in social entrepreneurship. She has published papers in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in books. She writes contributions for mass media regularly and is a speaker at international conferences.
Her past professional experience includes the foundation of an NGO, UN’s Procurement Service, Santander Bank’s Latin America Division and Liberia’s Government under Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Nobel Peace Prize 2011.
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JANE Premier Watch Party
Monday, March 12
8:00 PM – 10:00 PM EDT
BU, George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Come watch the premier of JANE, a documentary about Jane Goodall's early work. This event is hosted by the Environmental Affairs department of student gov. There will be food too!
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Tuesday, March 13
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Emerging Trends Series: Solar + Storage
Tuesday, March 13
8:30 AM – 10:30 AM EDT
Foley Hoag, 155 Seaport Boulevard, Boston and 1540 Broadway 8th Floor, New York
The energy storage market has taken off in the Northeast. In late 2017, Massachusetts announced $20 million in grants for 26 projects through the Baker-Polito Administration’s Advancing Commonwealth Energy Storage program, while New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently commitment to deploy 1,500 megawatts of storage by 2025. With storage finally here, communities and consumers are looking to marry solar with storage as a solution to reducing electricity costs, increasing grid resiliency and better-utilizing energy resources. Numerous NECEC Members are leading in this space in Massachusetts, New York and other states that have jump-started their energy storage markets.
Join NECEC— the premier voice of businesses building a world-class clean energy hub in the Northeast—and Foley Hoag’s Energy and Cleantech practice for a not-to-be-missed discussion with developers and thought leaders at the cutting edge of the Northeast’s solar and storage markets.
This event will be co-located in Boston and New York City with panelists connected by video together for a lively discussion.
Boston speakers:
Mark Barnett, Co-Chair, Energy & Cleantech Group, Foley Hoag (moderator)
Ben Downing, Vice President of New Market Development, Nexamp
New York speakers:
Janet Gail BEsser, Executive Vice President, NECEC (moderator)
Dan Berwick, General Manager - Energy Storage Division, Borrego Solar
Gracie Walovich, Manager of Public Policy, Sunrun
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Brown Bag Lunch: Ari Daniel
Tuesday, March 13
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building 10-340, Emma Rogers Room, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Ari Daniel, PhD ’08, is dedicating his career to science communication. He is currently a digital producer on Nova, for PBS, and a freelance reporter for a host of beloved public radio shows such as NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. He will be joining the MIT Women’s League for a Brown Bag Lunch to talk about his work and the role of storytelling in the changing landscape of science communication. Please RSVP to attend, and feel free to bring your lunch!
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Nexus of Global Jihad: Understanding Cooperation Among Terrorist Actors
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 13, 2018, 2 – 3:45 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Allison Dining Room, Taubman 520, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR International Security Program
SPEAKER(S) Assaf Moghadam, Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel
CONTACT INFO susan_lynch@harvard.edu
DETAILS Assaf Moghadam will discuss his recent book.
Coffee, Tea, and Refreshments Provided.
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Countering Fake News with Jakub Janda, Deputy Director, European Values Think-Tank
Tuesday, March 13
5:00 pm to 6:30 pm
BU, Pardee School of Global Studies, 121 Bay State Road (1st floor), Boston
Join us for a panel discussion on countering fake news and Russian disinformation with Jakub Janda and Igor Lukes.
Jakub Janda is Head of the Kremlin Watch Program and Deputy Director at the European Values Think-Tank based in Prague. He specializes in the response of democratic states to hostile disinformation and influence operations. In 2016, he was tasked by Czech security and intelligence institutions to consult on an “Influence of Foreign Powers” chapter within an Audit of National Security conducted by the Czech government.
Igor Lukes is Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. He writes about Europe between the world wars and about
More information at http://www.bu.edu/european/files/2018/02/03.13.18.pdf
Contact Name Elizabeth Amrien
Phone 617-358-0919
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Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: The 21st Century’s Technology Story: The Convergence of Biology and Engineering
Tuesday, March 13
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building E51-335, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Topic Summary
With an anticipated world population of over 9.5 billion by 2050, we face an unprecedented challenge to sustainably provide sufficient food, water, energy and healthcare. Convergence, the merging of previously distinct disciplines, has emerged as a powerful model with untold potential to drive a new cycle of innovation-based economic growth. Bringing together insights and discoveries from the life, engineering, computation and physical sciences holds the promise of accelerating discovery and the development of new technologies to meet the 21st century’s needs. MIT has been a world leader in promoting Convergence approaches in education and research, paving the way to the discoveries and technologies that will transform our world
About the Speaker
Susan Hockfield served from 2004 to 2012 as the sixteenth president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first life scientist and first woman in that role. She is now President Emerita, Professor of Neuroscience and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. As president, Hockfield strengthened the foundations of MIT’s finances and campus planning while advancing Institute-wide programs in sustainable energy and the convergence of the life, physical and engineering sciences. She helped shape national policy for energy and next-generation manufacturing, appointed by President Obama in 2011 to co-chair the steering committee of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership and by serving as a member of a Congressional Commission evaluating the Department of Energy laboratories in 2015. As a biologist, she pioneered the use of monoclonal antibody technology in brain research, identifying proteins through which neural activity early in life affect brain development. She discovered a gene implicated in the spread of cancer in the brain, providing a link between her research and human health. Prior to MIT, she was the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1998-2002), and Provost (2003-2004) at Yale University. She studied at the University of Rochester and Georgetown University and carried out research at the NIH and UCSF before joining the faculty at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and then Yale. She has published extensively, in scientific and public media. She is chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and currently serves as a director of General Electric, Partners HealthCare System, and the Council on Foreign Relations, is a life member of the MIT Corporation, a trustee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and a board member of the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. She has received many academic and civic awards, as well as numerous honorary degrees from national and international universities.
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.
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Projecting Climate Change into the Future: What We Know and How Well We Know It
The Science for the Public 2018 Science Lectures at MIT
Tuesday, March 13
6:00 PM
MIT, Building 54-915, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Daniel Cziczo, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry; Secondary Appointment - Civil and Environmental Engineering
Since the early part of last century it has been known that greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, can lead to a warmer climate. Less well known was the effect that humans could have on clouds and how they might affect the Earth’s temperature. Historically, the study of the particles on which clouds form relied on the collection of precipitation (rain or snow). For example, particles at the center of snowflakes were assumed to have been responsible for the nucleation of ice. Studies showed the dominance of clay minerals with lesser abundances of combustion aerosols and micro-organisms. More recently, new inlets have allowed for more measurements from both ground sites and aircraft. The results have often been puzzling and at odds with previous work. We’ll discuss how measurement issues – such as technological limitations and artifacts – can impact that certainty with which we understand our climate and how it might change in the future. We will conclude with how this technology can be used to better understand climate and precipitation not only on Earth, but also for nearby and exoplanets.
It has been known for over a century that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane warm the planet by trapping heat. What is not as well known is that particles can cool the planet by reflecting sunlight into space and by acting as the seeds on which clouds form. Particles and clouds are also of contemporary interest because it has been suggested they might affect climate by interacting with cosmic rays or be used to manipulate the Earth’s temperature.
Cziczo's research group is interested in the interrelationship of particulate matter and cloud formation. His team utilizes laboratory and field studies to elucidate how small particles interact with water vapor to form droplets and ice crystals, which are important players in the Earth’s climate system. Experiments include using small cloud chambers in the laboratory to mimic atmospheric conditions that lead to cloud formation and observing clouds in situ from remote mountaintop sites or through the use of research aircraft.
Current specific research interests include chemical composition of atmospheric aerosols with an emphasis on their effect on cloud formation mechanisms, Earth's radiative budget, and meteoritic debris and launch vehicle emissions in the atmosphere.
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Racism: An Ongoing Dilemma
Tuesday, March 13
6:15 PM – 8:15 PM EDT
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, 138 Tremont Street, Boston (across from Park Street T station)
A Symposium with Journalists from The Boston GlobeSpotlight Team
A Faith That Does Justice is pleased to welcome journalists from The Boston Globe Spotlight Team as panelists at its March Community Meeting. In December 2017, in a 7-part series, the Spotlight Team took on the dilemma of Racism, looking into how much the city of Boston’s national reputation as a place that’s unwelcoming to blacks is based on current reality.
A Faith That Does Justice is joined by three key members of the Spotlight Team: Akilah Johnson, a significant contributor to the Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Lizbeth Kowalczyk, a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 and a finalist for the Scripps Howard award for investigative reporting in 2015; and, Patricia Wen, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and editor of the Spotlight Team since 2017. Reverend Dr. Gregory G. Groover, Sr., Pastor, the historic Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roxbury MA will moderate. Dr. Groover has served on numerous public panels for the City of Boston and has long had a leadership role in the Greater Boston community.
We look forward to having you with us for what promises to be an enriching program. Space is limited. Please register now for admission to the meeting. Your financial support makes these community meetings possible. Please donate when you register.
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NeuroTech and Artificial Intelligence
Tuesday, March 13
6:30 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
WeWork Mass Avenue, 625 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Agenda:
6:30-7pm: Networking and beer
7-7:20pm: Speaker #1
7:20-7:40pm: Speaker #2
7:40-8pm: Speaker #3
8-8:30pm: Networking and wrap-up
Description:
How does artificial intelligence help us understand the brain, and how are scientists using the brain to improve A.I.? How do you define criteria for good decision making in A.I.?
Increasingly, researchers are drawing from neuroscientific models of thought and perception to improve A.I. reasoning and create more accurate models of the world.
Speakers: Edmond Awad, PostDoc, Scalable Cooperation Group, MIT Media Lab
Title: The Moral Machine Experiment: 40 Million Decisions and the Path to Universal Machine Ethics
Description: Edmond’s work revolves around the Moral Machine, an internet-based serious game exploring the many-dimensional ethical dilemmas faced by autonomous vehicles. The game enabled him and his team to gather 40 million decisions from 2.5 million people in 230 countries/territories. Edmund reports the various preferences estimated from this data, and documents interpersonal differences in the strength of these preferences. He also reports cross-cultural ethical variation and uncovers major clusters of countries exhibiting substantial differences along key moral preferences. These differences correlate with modern institutions, but also with deep cultural traits. He’ll discuss how these three layers of preferences can help progress toward global, harmonious, and socially acceptable principles for machine ethics.
Kohitij Kar, PostDoc, DiCarlo Lab at MIT
Title: Efficient dialogues between computer and biological vision
Description: The deep learning revolution has launched a new era in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Kohitij will primarily discuss how current deep learning models in AI are helping us shape our understanding of the primate visual system. In addition, he will also discuss specific scenarios where primate vision vastly outperform the most advanced computer vision (CV) systems. A synergy between neuroscience and AI is thus beneficial to both communities.
Alex Kell, PhD student, McDermott Lab at MIT
Title: TBD
Description: Alex is interested in auditory computation, neuroscience, and behavior -- and making links between all three. The two main lines of his PhD work focus on building better models of auditory cortical computation, using recent advances in deep learning and understanding how we robustly encode sound sources of interest in the presence of real-world background noise.
What to bring
WeWork requires that guests check in with a photo ID to enter the building.
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, March 14
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George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia
Wednesday, March 14
12:00am to 1:30am
MIT, Building E40-496,(Pye Room), 1 AMmherst Street, Cambridge
Summary
The presentation will survey the "rise and fall" of Kennan's influence on US policy toward East Asia during the Cold War, and address how Kennan would apply his concept of "containment" to East Asia today. It draws on a forthcoming book that was completed during Heer's tenure (2015-2016) as Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow at MIT's Center for International Studies.
Short Bio
Dr. Paul Heer is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University. During 2007-15 he served as the National Intelligence Officer for East Aisa--the senior analyst of East Asian affairs in the US Intelligence Community--in the Office of Director of National Intelligence. A career officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, he began that career in 1983 as a political and foreign policy analysis on Southeast Asia before specializing on China as an analyst and analytic manager. He served on the staff of the President's Daily Brief, and as a member of the CIA's Senior Analytic Service and Senior Intelligence Service. He is a recipient of the CIA's Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal and the DNI's National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.
SSP Wednesday Seminar
All Welcome.
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The World Bank and NDC Partnership’s Support of the Paris Climate Agreement
Wednesday, March 14
12:30pm to 2:00pm
MIT, Building 9-450, 105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Join us for the third EPP Spring 2018 lunch, featuring Stephen Hammer, Manager of Climate Policy for the World Bank Group, and Professor David Hsu as they lead a discussion on the Bank and NDC partnership's support of the Paris Climate Agreement. Lunch will be served.
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Guiding principles for peptide-based, life-like nanotechnology
Wednesday, March 14
3:30pm to 4:45pm
MIT, Building 66-110 25 Ames Street, Cambridge
3:00 PM REFRESHMENTS
Prof. Rein Ulijn (CUNY Advanced Science Research Center)
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Whiplash: How to Survive a Faster Future?
Wednesday, March 14
5:00pm to 6:30pm
Northeastern, Renaissance_Park, 909, 1135 Tremont Street, Boston
Jeff Howe, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Founding Director of the Media Innovation Program at Northeastern University, will be speaking at the final event in the “Theorizing the Global Future” speaker series
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Trump and Privacy
Wednesday, March 14
5:30pm to 7:00pm
Northeastern, 250 Dockser Hall, 65 Forsyth Street, Boston
What is the Trump administration planning that will impact on privacy? Ranging across consumer protection, data aggregation, digital networks, high-tech devices and surveillance, this panel brings together top privacy and surveillance experts to discuss how the Trump administration has and will continue to shape our privacy in these and other areas.
Light refreshments will be served.
FEATURED SPEAKERS:
Elizabeth Joh, Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law
Ahmed Ghappour, Associate Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law
Andrea Matwyshyn, Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law
MODERATOR
Woodrow Hartzog, Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law
Co-sponsored Northeastern University School of Law’s Center for Law, Innovation and Creativity
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Designing for Resilience, Equity, and Democracy
Wednesday, March 14
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Boston Architectural College, 320 Newbury Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/designing-for-resilience-equity-and-democracy-tickets-42276806065
A lecture by Gina Ford, FASLA, Principal, Agency Landscape + Planning
With the onslaught of challenges (and opportunities) associated with climate change, significant demographic shifts and increased political activism, what is the role of the landscape architect in designing for such change? Gina will discuss a series of projects at a variety for scales where landscape is a medium and catalyst for addressing resilience, equity and democratic action.
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Great Decisions 2018 - U.S. Global Engagement and the Military
Wednesday, March 14
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street, Boston
The global power balance is rapidly evolving, leaving the United States at a turning point with respect to its level of engagement and the role of its military. Some argue for an “America First” paradigm, with a large military to ensure security, while others call for a more assertive posture overseas. Some advocate for a restoration of American multilateral leadership and a strengthened role for diplomacy. Still others envision a restrained U.S. role, involving a more limited military. How does the military function in today’s international order, and how might it be balanced with diplomatic and foreign assistance capabilities?
Major General (Ret) William E. Rapp is a Lecturer in Military Affairs in the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School, the Faculty Chair of the Senior Executive program in National and International Security, and the Faculty Chair for the National Security Fellows program. Major General (Ret) Rapp served more than 33 years as an active duty Army officer before retiring as a Major General. During his career as the Army's senior liaison to the U.S. Congress, Rapp has served in Germany, Japan, Iraq, and Afghanistan. His research interests include civil-military relations and organizational leadership. A graduate of West Point in 1984, he holds a Masters in Strategic Studies from the US Army War College and a Masters and PhD in Political Science from Stanford University.
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The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Wednesday, March 14
8:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EDT)
Tufts, Cabot ASEAN Auditorium, Tufts University, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford
Come to The Fourth Industrial Revolution to hear Michael Granoff, Tufts alumnus and founder of Maniv Investments, speak about clean energy, autonomous vehicles, and the venture capital world! His work with Maniv has helped startups deliver safer, cleaner, energy-secure transportation. TAMID at Tufts will be hosting this event on Wednesday, March 14th at 8 PM in the Cabot ASEAN Auditorium (160 Packard Ave, Medford, MA 02155). Come with questions!
Granoff founded Maniv Investments in 1997. He is also a founding board member of Securing America’s Future Energy, a Washington, DC-based group that brings together corporate and military leaders to craft and advocate for energy security policy. He has been active in several presidential campaigns and political organizations as well as a number of non-profit organizations.
In 2010, Granoff was awarded the Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship by the International School of Business at Brandeis University. He holds a BA from Tufts University, an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, as well as a JD from Northwestern School of Law.
There is no assigned seating in the auditorium. If you are a guest of a TAMID Group member, please choose a seat at their table for attendance purposes. Otherwise, choose the open section for a ticket.
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Thursday, March 15
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Social Issue Talk: Inclusion for Youth with Disabilities
Building an Inclusive Society for Young People with Disabilities
Thursday, March 15
8:30 am
Fidelity Investments Boston, 245 Summer Street, Boston
Toni Wolf, Commissioner of Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission
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Streamlined Building Life Cycle Assessment
Thursday, March 15
11AM EST
Webinar at http://cshub.mit.edu/news/public-webinars
Life cycle assessment (LCA) seeks to quantify the environmental impacts of infrastructure over a life time by identifying and accounting for impacts resulting from each phase of the life cycle. LCA can be used to obtain credits in certification systems like LEED, but traditional LCA methods can be time, resource, and data intensive. For complex systems like residential buildings, these demands can lead to delayed assessments with evaluations carried out after important design decisions have already been made, reducing their effectiveness. CSHub researchers have developed a streamlined approach to LCA that requires significantly less time and data, which can reduce expense as well as uncertainty and allow assessments to be conducted earlier in the building design process when decisions can have the greatest impact. This webinar will present an overview of the CSHub’s streamlined tool, known as the Building Attribute to Impact Algorithm, and a discussion of recent work on the topic.
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#UniteAgainstSeismic: Inuit strategies to protect the Arctic marine environment
Thursday, March 15
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Noor Johnson, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,Tufts University
Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic routinely travel, hunt, and fish on the sea ice and seasonally open waters of Baffin Bay. Climate change is bringing new interests and actors to the region, including mining, shipping, and tourism companies and conservation organizations. This talk will explore the contemporary politics of the Arctic marine environment, focusing on the example of Inuit resistance to a seismic testing project that proposed to map the offshore oil and gas resources in Baffin Bay. The case involved an unlikely collaboration between Inuit and Greenpeace, and ultimately made its way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the Inuit hamlet of Clyde River has broad implications for how First Nations, Inuit, and Metis communities in Canada will be consulted about energy projects in the future.
Dr. Noor Johnson is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the politics and practices of environmental knowledge, indigeneity, and governance in the Arctic. She holds a joint research appointment at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. From 2015 – 2016, she was an inaugural Fulbright Arctic Initiative Scholar researching offshore and renewable energy. In addition to her scholarship, Noor has worked with a variety of non-profit organizations on science policy and program development, including the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and City Year. Noor has a Ph.D. from McGill University (Cultural Anthropology), where she was a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar, an M.A. from American University (Public Anthropology), and a B.A. from Brown University (Development Studies).
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Environment – Sustainability Lunch Seminar: Achieving Water Affordability in America’s Shrinking Cities
Thursday, March 15
12PM-1PM
MIT, Building 34-401 A, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
The Flint water crisis has radically questioned the current status of drinking water safety in the United States. Besides exposing instances of environmental injustice, the crisis has unveiled the massive infrastructure challenges that the country must address in the near future. The aim of this research seed grant is to develop financially sustainable and socially equitable solutions that will help make drinking water affordable for all urban residents, regardless of income, class and race. Join us for a presentation on this topic, and read more here: https://americanwatershutoffs.mit.edu/
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Tree Architecture
Thursday, March 15
1:00-2:30pm
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain
Andrew Gapinski, Manager of Horticulture
"Now is the best season for arborists. Leaves and flowers? That's just a distraction!" Join Andrew Gapinski, the Arnold Arboretum's Manager of Horticulture, as he proves his point, by illustrating, in this pared down season, how overall tree form is influenced by three facts: genetics, site conditions, and environmental events. Visit actual plant specimens in the Arboretum's collections to learn why a tree is leaning, why it has "knees," or how its shape may be influenced by internal stimuli.
In case of inclement weather, please call 617 384-5209.
Free, registration is requested at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu
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How Inkjet Printing Technology Can Defeat Multidrug- Resistant Superbugs
WHEN Thursday, Mar. 15, 2018, 2 – 3 p.m.
WHERE Wyss Institute at Harvard University, 3 Blackfan Circle, Room 521, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Wyss Institute
SPEAKER(S) James E. Kirby, M.D. D(ABMM), Principal Investigator, Experimental Pathology Division, BIDMC; Director, Clinical Microbiology Laboratory, BIDMC;
Associate Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School
DETAILS This lecture will discuss a novel platform called MAST (Microscopy-based Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing) which combines use of inkjet printing technology, advanced microscopy, and machine learning to provide antimicrobial testing results for any antimicrobial at will in hours rather than days.
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Towards Personalized Medicine Using Gut Microbiome and Clinical Data
Thursday, March 15
4:00 PM EDT
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Eran Segal (Weizmann Institute)
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The Uncounted: Civilian victims of America’s wars
Thursday, March 15
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 3-270, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Discussion with Azmat Khan centered around the US air war and civilian casualties in Mosul and her feature in the NY Times on the subject.
Azmat Khan is an award-winning investigative journalist, a New York Times Magazine Contributing Writer, and a Future of War Fellow at New America and Arizona State University.
Her reporting for the PBS series FRONTLINE, The New York Times Magazine, America Tonight, and BuzzFeed's Investigations team has brought her to Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other conflict zones. Her work has been awarded the Deadline Club Award for Independent Digital Reporting; the South Asian Journalist Association's Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Reporting on South Asia; a Livingston Award finalist in International Reporting; and shared the Online News Association award for “General Excellence in Online Journalism” (small); the Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism; and an Emmy nomination in New Approaches to Documentary Film.
Co-sponsors: MIT Center for International Studies
Free & open to the public | Refreshments served
Can't attend in person? Watch it in real-time on Facebook live at https://www.facebook.com/MITCenterForInternationalStudies/ or later at your convenience on our YouTube channel event archive at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo3E2h2KZsZD3S8ThEn_UxA
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Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Thursday, March 15
5:00:00 PM EDT - 6:00:00 PM EDT
Webinar
Elsa Ronningstam, PhD, Psychologist, Gunderson Outpatient Program, Adult Outpatient Services, McLean Hospital, Associate Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Part-time
Narcissistic personality disorder is a grossly misunderstood mental condition. This webinar will focus on clarifying the condition of disordered narcissism, the internal and external functioning in people who struggle with this disorder, and treatment options.
Editorial Comment: Might be very useful given the personality now inhabiting the White House.
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Visual Representations of Race and Gender: Analyzing “Me” in #IfTheyGunnedMeDown on Tumblr
Thursday, March 15
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 56-114, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
On August, 9, 2014, unarmed Black 18-year-old teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by 28-year-old White police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. As media outlets began to cover the story, some news accounts chose an image of Brown that featured him as a high school graduate, in the traditional cap and gown, holding a diploma cover. Other news sources picked a different photo of Brown in a basketball jersey, holding his fingers up in what some termed as a “gang sign.” As a response to the media bias, Mississippi attorney C.J. Lawrence used Tumblr for online social media activism, starting the blog #IfTheyGunnedMeDown with the subtitle “Which picture would they use?” In this talk, Jenny Korn examines the answers of the Tumblr’s participants to the question: If “they” gunned “me” down, which picture would “they” use to represent “me?”
Jenny Korn is a feminist activist of color for social justice and scholar of race and gender in mass media and online communication. Korn is a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Korn has been published in Feminist Media Studies; Hashtag Publics; The International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies; The Intersectional Internet; The Journal of Communication Inquiry; Multicultural America; Popular Communication; Harvard University’s Transition; and more. Her publications have won the Outstanding Book Chapter Award from the African American Communication and Culture Division of the National Communication Association and the Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award. Drawing on critical race theories and intersectional feminist theories, Korn explores how the Internet environment resonates user assemblages of race and gender and how online producers-consumers have constructed inventive digital representations and computer-mediated communications of identity.
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Conversations on the Edge: Inequality and Wealth Redistribution
Thursday, March 15
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM (EDT)
Cambridge Center for Adult Eduction, Spiegel Auditorium, 56 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost: $5 - $20
Join us for a welcome reception with refreshments and light snacks at 5:30pm.
PANELISTS: Jeff Booth: Jeff Booth is a founding member of Socialist Alternative, a democratic socialist organization. Jeff serves on Socialist Alternative’s National Committee. He currently helps to organize Socialist Alternative groups and activity in Worcester, MA andProvidence, RI. Jeff is also a union activist, previously on the Executive Board of a United Electrical Workers union local, a member of the Bakery workers union, and a founding member of AFSCME Local 3650/Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers at Harvard University. Jeff hosts “Socialist Alternative Radio”, where issues of inequality and wealth distribution are frequently discussed (“Socialist Alternative Radio, talk and music from a working class, democratic socialist perspective” on WMFO 91.5 FM/WMFO.org, “Tufts Educational Radio”).
Christine Desan: Christine Desan teaches about the international monetary system, the constitutional law of money, constitutional history, political economy, and legal theory. She is the co-founder of Harvard’s Program on the Study of Capitalism, an interdisciplinary project that brings together classes, resources, research funds, and advising aimed at exploring that topic. With its co-director, Prof. Sven Beckert (History), she has taught the Program’s anchoring research seminar, the Workshop on the Political Economy of Modern Capitalism, since 2005.
Eric Kriss: Eric Kriss served as Secretary of Administration and Finance in Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's cabinet and helped launch Bain Capital, which now manages over $65 billion in assets. He is currently the Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Miami, where he lectures on the future of work, universal basic income, and more.
MODERATOR: Geeta Pradhan: Geeta Pradhan is the President & CEO of Cambridge Community Foundation, and is an organizational leader with a deep background in philanthropy, urban planning and economic development. Geeta serves on the Family Policy Council for Cambridge. She has also led the effort to organize the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network, co-founded the Boston Indicators Project and directed New Economy Initiative to leverage the power of technology and data to drive social change
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"Work Report”: Arthur H. Schein Memorial Lecture
Thursday, March 15
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building 10-250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Francis Kéré
Francis Kéré argues for a new approach in architecture that combines traditional ressources and modern building techniques through innovative construction strategies. The use of local, natural materials, and the integration of the community in the building process drives the architectural concepts for projects spread across the African, European and American continents.
Francis Kéré is a German-trained architect from the small West African town of Gando in Burkina Faso. As the first son of the head of his village, his father allowed him to attend school. He was awarded a scholarship to apprentice in Germany, where he went on to earn a university degree in architecture and engineering. Parallel to his studies, he founded the Kéré Foundation to fund the construction of the Gando Primary School which earned the prestigious Aga Khan Award in 2001.
Kéré continues to reinvest knowledge back into Burkina Faso and sites across four different continents. He has developed innovative construction strategies that combine traditional materials and building techniques with modern engineering methods. Since founding Kéré Architecture in 2005, his work has earned numerous prestigious awards such as the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, BSI Swiss Architectural Award, Marcus Prize, Global Holcim Gold Award, and Schelling Architecture Award.
Kéré was granted the honor of chartered membership of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2009, and honorary fellowship of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) in 2012. He has held professorships at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Swiss Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio.
MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
Arthur H. Schein Memorial Lecture
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Climate Action Business Alliance All Member Reception
Thursday, March 15
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
The NonProfit Center, 89 South Street, East Conference Room, Boston
It's that time of year again! Join Climate Action Business Association for our fifth annual All Member Reception. The evening will be full of new connections and ideas. Please join us as we continue to build and foster our community of shared values.
Interested in attending but not a member of CABA? Sign up at https://cabaus.org/join/for-businesses/
Schedule
6:00PM Reception
6:45PM Words from CABA Executive Director, Michael Green, and Staff
7:00PM Keynote Speakers
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Women Take the Reel film: Birthright: A War Story
Thursday, March 15
6:30pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Building E15, Bartos Theatre, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
This documentary tells the story of women who have become collateral damage in the aggressive campaign to take control of reproductive health care and to allow states, courts and religious doctrine to govern whether, when and how women will bear children.
6:30pm Pizza
7:00pm film start time
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Friday, March 16 and Saturday. March 17
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6th Annual Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference
Friday March 16 and Saturday March 17
8am - 6pm
Bunker Hill Community College
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/6th-annual-massachusetts-urban-farming-conference-tickets-38915811239
Cost: $50 - $150
The Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference (UFC) will convene local and regional experts, advocates, and innovators to support and promote urban farming enterprises across Massachusetts. Our local urban farming community, along with cross-sector partners, will again convene to address challenges, highlight successes and share resources at one of the best educational and networking events for this thriving sector.
Weekend Featured Speakers:
Friday Lunchtime Keynote: Emmanuel Pratt, Executive Director, Sweetwater Foundation, Chicago Il.
Saturday Morning Keynote: Isis Salcines, Havana, Cuba; Isis is the Outreach Director of the Largest Urban Cooperative Farm in Cuba, Organopónico Vivero Alamar
Saturday Closing Panel: Urban Farming in Massachusetts: Where Are We and What’s Next?, Facilitated by Greg Watson, Director For Policy and Systems Design, Schumacher Center for a New Economics
For student and group discount codes and general information please contact Rose: rose.arruda@state.ma.us
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Friday, March 16
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NULab Spring Conference: Fake News/Real Knowledge: Histories, Structures, Futures
Friday, March 16
9:30am - 5pm
Northeastern, Raytheon Ampitheater, 120 Forsyth Street, Boston
RSVP by emailing Sarah Connell (sa.connell[at]northeastern[dot]edu)
On March 16, 2018, the NULab will be hosting its second annual conference, showcasing the work of faculty, fellows, alumni, and research collaborators.
More details coming soon!
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Please RSVP by emailing Sarah Connell (sa.connell[at]northeastern[dot]edu)
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Violence Exposure and Ethnic Identification: Evidence from Kashmir
Friday, March 16
2:00pm to 4:00pm
MIT, Building E40-496, Pye Conference Room, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
A lecture by Nicholas Sambanis of the University of Pennsylvania as part of the South Asian Politics Seminar Series.
This seminar series is co-sponsored by the Watson Institute at Brown University, the MIT Center for International Studies, the Harvard South Asia Institute and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.
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From Material Expressivity to Emotional Interaction
Friday, March 16
5:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
What if our environment could detect our physical movement and emotional states, and respond accordingly? This presentation addresses interactive material interfaces that respond to the behavior of the human body and its emotions through the implementation of emerging technologies. It is illustrated by a series of projects that cover a range of different scales from an intimate scale and the world of fashion and wearable computing, through to an architectural scale and the world of interactive architecture. The presentation explores the use of digital technologies to develop responsive materials whose morphological behavior is inspired by natural systems. The aim is to develop novel interactive systems to foster an empathetic relationship between human beings and their environment.
Behnaz Farahi is a designer and creative technologist based in Los Angeles working at the intersection of fashion, architecture and interaction design. Trained as an architect and specializing in 3D printing and physical computing, her ultimate goal is to enhance the relationship between human beings and their environment by following morphological and behavioral principles inspired by natural systems. Behnaz is a recipient of a number of prestigious awards including the 2016 World Technology Design Award and the 2016 Innovation By Design Fast Company Design Award. Her work has been featured on various television channels, including the BBC and CNN, and in leading journals and newspapers, such as Wired and The Guardian. She is currently an Annenberg Fellow and is completing her PhD in Interdisciplinary Media Arts and Practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
Design & Computation Series Affective Bodies and Sentient Matter organized by PhD student Athina Papadopoulou with Prof. Terry Knight
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Saturday, March 17
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Boston Socialist Unity Project Annual Conference 2018
Saturday, March 17
9-5 pm
MIT, Building 34-101, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
We invite you to join our third annual conference on the theme "Building Socialist Power: social movements and the Left in an election year." The conference will feature speakers on important issues facing the Left and socialists, as well as a full range of workshops.*
Saturday, March 17 **registration opens 9:00 a.m. / program begins 10:00
a.m.
Featured speakers
Savina Martin, eastern Massachusetts coordinator of the new Poor
Peoples Campaign*
Monica Poole, associate professor at Bunker Hill Community College, on
a radical take on #MeToo and current women's issues*
Rebecca Vilkomerson, national executive director of Jewish Voice for
Peace, on Palestinian rights*
Jill Stein on the crisis in Korea and US imperialism*
member of Boston Teachers Union on labor issues and education*
Our lunchtime plenary presents different perspectives on the 2018 elections and electoral politics, seeking common ground and strengthening the movement: presentations will include the Socialist Party of Boston, a member of Our Revolution, the Communist Party USA of Greater Boston, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation*
Two sessions of participatory workshops will showcase movement-building work and issues.
Proposed topics so far include Puerto Rico, immigrant rights and deportations, work of Our Revolution, Fair Trade Action, Jobs not Jails, lessons from Gramsci, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel
Breakfast and lunch options available at the conference.
Everyone is welcome, $10 suggested donation; nobody turned away for lack of
funds.
Write with your questions and more information:
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Monday, March 19
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PAOC Colloquium: Michael Bender (Princeton)
Monday, March 19
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
Michael Bender received a BS in Chemistry from Carnegie-Mellon University, where he was introduced to geochemistry by Truman Kohman. He did his PhD in Geology at Columbia University with Wallace Broecker. After a brief postdoc, he moved to the Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, where he taught for 25 years. In 1997, he moved to Princeton.
Bender's research has centered on two themes. One is glacial-interglacial climate change, and the other is the global carbon cycle. Since 1984, Bender's paleoclimate research has involved measuring gas properties in ice cores to date critical climate changes of the ice ages, and to advance our understanding of changes in the biosphere on glacial-interglacial timescales. The carbon cycle research involves studies characterizing the fertility of ecosystems at the global scale, at the scale of ocean basins, and at regional to local scales within the oceans.
Much current work in Bender's lab involves making highly precise measurements of the concentration and isotopic composition of O2 in air, in seawater, and in ice core trapped gases as a means of studying both the geochronology of climate change and the carbon cycle at a range of scales. Bender's past work has also included studies of trace element assimilation by carbonate tests, seawater trace metal geochemistry, hydrothermal processes on the flanks of mid-ocean ridges, diagenesis of organic matter in deep sea sediment pore waters, and the history of the seawater Sr isotope composition.
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Methane: A Uniquely Difficult Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Problem
Monday, March 19
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Robert Kleinberg, Schlumberger. Lunch will be provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
Contact Name: Lousia Lund
617-485-8693
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DNA and Divination: On Yearning For Genetic Deliverance
Monday, March 19
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, CGIS South S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Patricia Williams, Columbia Law School
STS Circle at Harvard
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Enabling Interaction on Everyday Surfaces
Monday, March 19
4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Refreshments: 3:45 PM
MIT, Building 32-G449, Patil/Kiva, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Robert Xiao
Abstract: Computers are now ubiquitous. However, computers and digital content have remained largely separate from the physical world – users explicitly interact with computers through small screens and input devices, and the “virtual world” of digital content has had very little overlap with the immediate, physical world. My work aims to help computing escape the confines of screens and devices, and spill information- and computationally-rich digital content out into the familiar world around us. I approach this problem from several directions: from the low-level algorithmic work of providing ad hoc touch sensing on everyday surfaces, to high-level questions surrounding the interaction design between physical and virtual realms. I have built many embodiments of these mixed-reality experiences, including a computational lightbulb capable of projecting interactive content onto everyday surfaces, as well as a head-mounted augmented reality system that integrates touch interaction on the environment.
Bio: Robert Xiao is a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. He develops novel sensing and interactive technologies that enable richer and more powerful interactions with our computers, combining his love of computer science, mathematics and electronics. He has won Best Paper Awards at UIST 2016, ICMI 2015, and GI 2011, and is an NSERC Scholar and Qualcomm Innovation Fellow. His research has been covered by the New York Times, NBC News, Wired, Discovery Channel, TechCrunch, Gizmodo and many other outlets. Robert is also active in computer security competitions, winning DEFCON CTF the past two years with the CM
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Waste of A Nation Book Talk
WHEN Monday, Mar. 19, 2018, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Poetry/Prose
SPEAKER(S) Assa Dorn and Robin Jeffrey
COST Free and open to the public
DETAILS Waste of A Nation Book Talk with Assa Dorn and Robin Jeffrey
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Citizen Indigenous
WHEN Monday, Mar. 19, 2018, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Norbert Hill (Oneida Nation), Former Director of Education, Oneida Nation of Wisconsin; Founder, “Winds of Change” magazine, published by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society; and “The American Indian Graduate Magazine,” published by the American Indian Graduate Center; Lifetime Achievement Award, National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering
Olivia Hoeft (Oneida Nation), associate product marketing manager, Google; Former Miss Oneida, 2014–2015
Tesia Zientek (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), Director, Department of Education, Citizen Potawatomi Nation
Moderated by N. Bruce Duthu (United Houma Nation of Louisiana), Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies and Frank J. Guarini Associate Dean of the Faculty for International Studies & Interdisciplinary Programs, Dartmouth College
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events@radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS Leading members from the Oneida Nation, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and United Houma Nation of Louisiana will discuss vital issues of tribal citizenship in Indian Country. By exploring topics such as constitutional reform, tribal enrollment, blood quantum, and descendancy, the speakers will discuss the many different ways Native tribes and national define, grant, and express indigenous citizenship. Register online.
This program is cosponsored by the Harvard University Native American Program and the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development’s Honoring Nations Program.
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Ancient Egypt in Africa: New Excavations at the Island Fortress of Uronarti
Monday, March 19
6:00pm
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Laurel Bestock, Associate Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World, Egyptology and Assyriology, and the History of Art and Architecture, Brown University
Ancient Egyptian kings conquered Lower Nubia—today northern Sudan—nearly 4,000 years ago, defending it with a string of monumental fortresses along the Nile River. Previously thought lost, when the construction of the Aswan High Dam flooded the area, one fortress, known as Uronarti, was recently rediscovered and is being excavated for the first time since George Reisner’s Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition worked there in the early twentieth century. Laurel Bestock will highlight recent archaeological finds at the site and discuss the intercultural encounters and lifestyles in this Egyptian colonial outpost.
Livestreamed at https://www.facebook.com/harvardmuseumsofscienceandculture
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Tuesday, March 20
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Speaker Series: Heather Ann Thompson
Tuesday, March 20
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Dr. Heather Ann Thompson is a historian at the University of Michigan, and is the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon Books, 2016). Blood in the Water was won the Ridenhour Prize, the J. Willard Hurst Prize, the Public Information Award from the New York Bar Association, the Law and Literature Prize from the New York County Bar Association, the Media for a Just Society Award from the National Council for Crime and Delinquency, and the book also received a rarely-given Honorable Mention for the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association. Blood in the Water was also long listed for the Cundill Prize in History, and was a finalist for the National Book Award as well as the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Upon its release Blood in the Water was prominently reviewed and profiled in the New York Times in four different sections, and Thompson herself was profiled in the highly-coveted “Talk” section in the New York Times Magazine. Blood in the Water ultimately landed on fourteen “Best of 2016” lists including the New York Times Most Notable Books of 2016 list, and ones published by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Newsweek, Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, and others. The book also received rave reviews in over 100 top popular publications, and Thompson appeared on over 25 television shows, including PBS Newshour, CBS Sunday Morning and the Daily Show, as well as on over 50 radio programs, including Sirius and NPR.
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Estelle Freedman seminar: Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation
Tuesday, March 20
4:00pm to 5:30pm
MIT, Building 3-133, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
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Starr Forum: US-Russian Relations: What's Next?
Tuesday, March 20
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building E25-111, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge
Speakers
Barry Posen (MIT), Angela Stent (Georgetown) and Andrei Kozyrev (Russia's first Foreign Minister)
Co-sponsors: MIT Center for International Studies, MIT Security Studies Program, MIT-Russia Program
A session of the Focus on Russia Lecture Series
Co-chairs, Carol Saivetz and Elizabeth Wood
Free & open to the public | Refreshments served
Can't attend in person? Watch it in real-time on Facebook live at https://www.facebook.com/MITCenterForInternationalStudies/ or later at your convenience on our YouTube channel event archive at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo3E2h2KZsZD3S8ThEn_UxA
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Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: Richard Lester
Tuesday, March 20
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building 3-333, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, 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
Innovation happens at a variety of scales and with the involvement of innumerable parties. Prof. Lester will discuss how systems of innovation are built, how they compare with another, and how they can be harnessed to tackle the energy issues that face us today.
About the Speaker
Richard Lester is the Japan Steel Industry Professor and Associate Provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he oversees the international activities of the Institute. From 2009 to 2015 he served as head of MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, leading the Department successfully through a period of rapid rebuilding and strategic renewal. His research is concerned with innovation strategy and management, with a frequent focus on the energy and manufacturing sectors. He is widely known for his work on local, regional, and national systems of innovation, and he has led major studies of national and regional competitiveness and innovation performance commissioned by governments and industry groups around the world. He is the founding director and faculty chair of the MIT Industrial Performance Center.
Professor Lester is also well known for his teaching and research on nuclear technology innovation, management and control. He has been a long-time advocate of advanced nuclear reactor and fuel cycle technologies to improve the safety and economic performance of nuclear power, and his studies in the field of nuclear waste management helped provide the foundation for new institutional and technological strategies to deal with this longstanding problem. His latest book, Unlocking Energy Innovation: How America Can Build a Low-Cost, Low-Carbon Energy System (written with David Hart), outlines a strategy for mobilizing America’s innovation resources in support of a decades-long transition to an affordable and reliable low-carbon global energy system.
Professor Lester obtained his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Imperial College and earned his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from MIT. He has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1979. He is an advisor to governments, corporations, foundations and non-profit groups, and he serves as chair of the National Academies’ Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy.
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The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion―Surprising Observations of a Hidden World
Tuesday, March 20
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
Cost: $5.00 - $26.25 (online only, book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes PETER WOHLLEBEN—bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees—for a discussion of his latest book, The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion―Surprising Observations of a Hidden World.
About The Inner Life of Animals
Through vivid stories of devoted pigs, two-timing magpies, and scheming roosters, The Inner Life of Animals weaves the latest scientific research into how animals interact with the world with Peter Wohlleben's personal experiences in forests and fields.
Horses feel shame, deer grieve, and goats discipline their kids. Ravens call their friends by name, rats regret bad choices, and butterflies choose the very best places for their children to grow up.
In this, his latest book, Peter Wohlleben follows the hugely successful The Hidden Life of Treeswith insightful stories into the emotions, feelings, and intelligence of animals around us. Animals are different from us in ways that amaze us—and they are also much closer to us than we ever would have thought. Published in partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.
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Modern Humans' Earliest Artwork and Music: New European Discoveries
WHEN Tuesday, Mar. 20, 2018, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Music, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Presented by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology
SPEAKER(S) Randall White, Professor, Department of Anthropology, New York University
COST Free and open to the public.
CONTACT INFO peabody@fas.harvard.edu 617-496-1027
DETAILS The earliest evidence of artwork made by modern humans, Aurignacian art, was created more than 35,000 years ago and has been found in French, German, and Romanian archaeological sites. Randall White will discuss the rich corpus of Aurignacian painting, engraving, bas-relief sculpture, musical instruments, and personal ornamentation that was studied before World War I in southwest France, along with recent discoveries from classic Aurignacian sites. He will also highlight how the combined study of archives, long-forgotten museum collections—and even back dirt (excavated material)—is contributing new discoveries and contextual data about early Eurasian expressive culture.
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Boston Community Briefing on Paid Leave and $15/Hour Minimum Wage
Tuesday, March 20
6 PM - 8 PM
St. Paul's Cathedral, Boston, 138 Tremont Street, Boston
The legislature needs to hear from us, in every corner of the Commonwealth, that it’s time to pass Paid Family and Medical Leave and a $15 Minimum Wage. Now that we’ve collected enough signatures to put both of these questions on the ballot, our message to the legislature is clear: let’s do this. Join us with legislators from across the region to make 2018 the year that these campaigns are realized for all workers and families across Massachusetts!
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Vietnam 1968: The War, the Turmoil, and the Presidential Election
Tuesday, March 20
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM EDT
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston
Lawrence O’Donnell, author of Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics and host of MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell; Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam; and Chris Appy, professor of history at UMass Amherst and author of American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity discuss the critical events of 1968 in Vietnam and in American politics with Ellen Fitzpatrick, professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero introduces the program.
This forum is featured in the National Archives’ Remembering Vietnam initiative. Remembering Vietnam is presented in part by the Lawrence F. O’Brien Family, Pritzker Military Museum & Library, AARP, and the National Archives Foundation.
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Preventing a Mad Max Future: How Green Electricity Could Fix Our Water Pollution Problem
Tuesday, March 20
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street, Newsfeed Café, Boston
Water pollution and subsequent water shortages are popular motifs in many dystopian science fiction stories and have now become a reality in many places around the world. As these issues become more prevalent, the sustainability of the ways we purify our water also present a daunting challenge. Using electricity from clean power sources is a promising approach to purify polluted water; however, in addition to a power source, this technology also requires use of electrodes—conductors that allow electrons to assist in removing toxins. Although many materials have been found to be efficient as electrodes, scientists are still seeking affordable and environmentally-friendly alternatives.
In this talk, Dr. Ljiljana Rajic will discuss the ways in which water pollution is currently impacting our world and innovative approaches to using cost-effective materials to clean heavily polluted waters.
Seating is first-come, first-serve in WGBH's Boston Public Library Studio. Overflow seating will be located in the Newsfeed Café and is not guaranteed.
Speaker bio: Dr. Lily Rajic is a senior research scientist at Northeastern University and a chief science officer for Pioneer Valley Coral & Natural Science Institute (Hadley, MA). Dr. Rajic received her B.Sc. (2002-2007) and Ph.D. (2007-2010) in Chemistry from Faculty of Sciences at University of Novi Sad (Serbia). Trained as a chemist but with a broad set of interests for environmental protection and injustice, Dr. Rajic focuses on creating sustainable and affordable water treatment systems along with great commitment to mentorship and education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) for learners of all ages. Find more information on her website.
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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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