Ideas Matter
Ideas Matter, a joint project of Boston Review and
MIT’s Political Science Department, is a lecture series that
brings our writers together with other experts and practitioners for
substantive debate on the challenges of our times. The series, free and
open to the public, will offer four events in the 2011–12
academic year. Return to this page for dates and information on
forthcoming events on the responsibility of intellectuals, ethical consumption, and more.
2012-2013 Events
Climate Change: Science and Politics, November 7, 2012
Occupy the Future, December 6, 2012
2011-2012 Events
Revisiting Port Huron, April 11, 2012
Islam in America, May 15, 2012
The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the 21st Century, September 22, 2011
The Promise of Ethical Consumption, November 3, 2011
The Future of Black Politics, March 8, 2012
Browse the 2010–2011 Ideas Matter Events Here
Climate Change: Science and Politics
Dr. Kerry Emanuel, author of What We Know About Climate Change
MIT Wong
Auditorium (in the Tang Center)
70 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
6:00 p.m.
Dr. Kerry Emanuel, one of America’s leading experts on climate change and severe weather, will discuss recent severe weather events, the politics of climate change, as well as his Boston Review Book, What We Know About Climate Change.
“Emanuel’s words are measured and authoritative. His book should help reduce the huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the people who need to know, the public and policymakers.”
—James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Occupy the Future: Justice, Economics, Activism
Chris Hedges, Debra Satz, J. Phillip Thompson, Nadeem Mazen
MIT 26-100
Access via 60 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
Thursday, December 6, 2012
4:30 p.m.
Boston Review Boston Review has closely followed the Occupy movement and we welcome both the attention it has drawn to societal problems as well as its potential to re-democratize American politics. On Thursday, December 6th, Debra Satz, director of the Stanford Center for Ethics in Society, leads a panel discussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, MIT Professor of Urban Studies and Planning J. Phillip Thompson, and Occupy Boston participant Nadeem Mazen, on the state and future of the Occupy movement. The panel will be moderated by MIT Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy Sally Haslanger.
The panel will be followed by an audience Q&A and then a book signing. Refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public.
• • •
Revisting Port Huron
MIT Wong
Auditorium (in the Tang Center)
70 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142
Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 7:00 p.m.
The Port Huron Statement, this year celebrating its 50th anniversary, was the manifesto of Students for a Democratic Society and a foundational text of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Tom Hayden, the statement’s primary author, will join Noam Chomsky, Boston Review, and the MIT Center for International Studies to consider the Statement five decades after its publication.
Tom Hayden is a political activist, politician, and author. His most recent book is The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama.
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics at MIT (emeritus).
• • •
Islam in America
Bartos Theater, MIT E15 Atrium level
20 Ames Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 4–5:30 p.m.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, author of Moving the Mountain, and Professor John Bowen, author of the new Boston Review Book Blaming Islam, join Boston Review and the MIT Political Science Department for a discussion of the state of Islam in the United States, moderated by Christopher Lydon.
John Bowen is an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. He has traveled the world, from Indonesia to France, exploring Islamic practice and the reception of Muslim immigrants in a wide variety of social contexts.
Feisal Abdul Rauf is a Sufi imam and founder of the Cordoba Initiative, which advocates improved understanding and trust between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans. He experienced the tensions of integration firsthand, at the center of the controversy over plans to build a cultural and community center near the World Trade Center site in Manhattan.
Christopher Lydon is the host of Radio Open Source, a conversation on arts, ideas and politics from Brown University's Watson Institute. Proto-blogger Dave Winer calls Chris Lydon "the original podcaster."
Past Events
The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the 21st Century
Thursday, September 22, 2011, 4:30–6 p.m., MIT Wong
Auditorium (in the Tang Center)
In 1967, as the Vietnam War escalated, Noam Chomsky penned The Responsibility of Intellectuals, a stunning rebuke to scientists and scholars for their subservience to political power. Today we face a similar array of crises, from wars to escalating debt. What are the obligations of intellectuals in this day and age?
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics at MIT (emeritus).
• • •
The Promise of Ethical Consumption
Thursday, November 3, 2011, 4–5:30 p.m., MIT Wong
Auditorium (in the Tang Center)
“Buy local,” “buy green,” “buy organic” . . . we cannot buy anything without considering its moral implications. How has consumption become suffused with right and wrong? How effective has the ethical-consumption movement been in changing market behavior?
Dara O’Rourke,
Associate Professor of Environmental and Labor Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, is co-founder and Chairman of GoodGuide, Inc. He is author of Community-Driven Regulation and co-author of Can We Put an End to Sweatshops?
Scott Nova is Executive Director of the Worker Rights Consortium.
Richard Locke is the Department Head of Political Science and Class of 1922 Professor of Political Science and Management at MIT, and co-author of Working in America: A Blueprint for the New Labor Market.
Jens Hainmueller is Assistant Professor of Political Science at MIT and Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.
Archon Fung is Ford Foundation Professor of Democracy
and Citizenship at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and coauthor
of Full Disclosure: The
Perils and Promise of Transparency in
Government.
• • •
The Future of Black Politics
East Maclaurin Building, MIT 4-237
182 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Thursday, March 8, 2012, 4–5:30 p.m.
Black movements have historically been at the forefront of progressive change for all Americans. But, these days, black civil society is in retreat. How can we rebuild black politics, to ensure both racial justice and economic justice for all?
Michael Dawson is is John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and author of Not in Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics.
Andra Gillespie is Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University and author of The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark, and Post-Racial America.
J. Phillip Thompson is Associate Professor of Urban Politics at MIT and author of Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for a Deep Democracy.
Melissa Nobles is
Professor of Political Science at MIT and author of The Politics of Official
Apologies.
Ideas Matter, 2010–2011
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