[act-ma] Energy (and Other) Events - February 4, 2018
gmoke
gmoke at world.std.com
Sun Feb 4 10:14:36 PST 2018
Energy (and Other) Events is a weekly mailing list published most Sundays covering events around the Cambridge, MA and greater
Boston area that catch the editor's eye.
Hubevents http://hubevents.blogspot.com is the web version.
If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe to Energy (and Other) Events email gmoke at world.std.com
What I Do and Why I Do It: The Story of Energy (and Other) EventsGeo
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-i-do-and-why-i-do-it.html
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Details of these events are available when you scroll past the index
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Index
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Monday, February 5
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12pm Glacial Tropical Climate Revisited
12pm Making, breaking and linking memories
4pm Norton Lecture II, 'The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part II' by Frederick Wiseman
4pm Dispossession, Enslavement, Trade: The New York City Public History Project
5pm Askwith Forums – Realizing Human Potential through Education
5:30pm Labor Policy as the Defining Issue of Our Time: Dunlop Lecture with the Honorable Tom Perez
6pm When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
6pm The Power of Muppets: Bringing Hope to the World’s Most Vulnerable Children
6:15pm Science and Diplomacy in the Arctic - Dinner and Speaker!
6:30pm Film Screening and Panel: The New Barbarianism
7pm CHASING COLOR: Art and the Hidden Narratives of Industrial Waste
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Tuesday, February 6
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10am FAS Diversity Dialogue - Truths About Race
12pm Speaker Series: Margaret Sullivan
12pm Governing and Mental Health Policy: Addiction, Poverty, Guns and Prisons
12pm Three transportation revolutions: Steering sharing, automation, and electrification toward the public interest
12pm Things Fall Apart: Land Use History, Non-native Insects, Climatic Change, and the Decline of a Forest Foundation Species
12pm Berkman Klein Luncheon Series - Health Care Costs and Transparency
12pm Turkey’s Democratic Backsliding: The US and EU Response
12:30pm The Changing Security Landscape on the Korean Peninsula: Implications for Tokyo, Beijing, and Washington
4pm Deciphering the human microbiota using chemistry
4:15pm The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
5:30pm Askwith Forums – Immigration, Activism, and DACA: An Evening with Jose Antonio Vargas and Joy Reid
5:30pm Emerging Professionals for the Environment: Building a Sustainable Business
5:30pm Ubiquitous Autonomous Vehicles: Upending Industries – Unlocking Entrepreneurial Opportunities
6pm Hurricane Season 2017: Assessing Public and Private Sector Responses
6pm Opening Conversation "Where is Cambridge From?" & Annual Meeting
6pm [MIT CEO] Cryptocurrency and Blockchain - Insights and Opportunities
6pm Invite to Ignite 2018
6pm Film screening and discussion: Albatross
6:30pm Designing Reality: Authors’ Talk
6:30pm Hemlock Hospice: Landscape Ecology, Art & Design
7pm This Narrow Space: A Pedriatic Oncologist, His Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Patients, and a Hospital in Jerusalem
7pm Code for Boston's Next Demo Night: first in nearly 2 years!
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Wednesday, February 7
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9am The Implications of Machine Learning on Cybersecurity
10am The State of Equity in Metro Boston Policy Agenda 2018
12pm Why has the lower stratosphere stopped cooling for the last 20 years?
12pm The damping of ITCZ (intertropical convergence zone) shifts by the ocean circulation through its coupling to the trade winds
12pm Mirage on the Horizon: Geoengineering and Carbon Taxation without Commitment
12pm Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics
2pm Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
4pm Plastic Solutions
4pm The Role of Meteorite Impacts in the Origin and Evolution of Life
4:15pm Efficient Mitigation of Climate Change
5:30pm Claiming God's Peace When Whiteness Stands Its Ground
5:30pm Undoing Empire: Form, Function, Feminism
5:30pm Wearable Technologies: Advances for Medical Care
6:30pm SOUND ART CHINA
7pm Jennifer Rudolph & Michael Szonyi (editors)- The China Questions
7pm The Beautiful Adaptations of Native Plants: Inviting the Wild into our Gardens
7:30pm Facing the Flint crisis: documentary & discussion with Flint organizers
8pm Resistance Mic!
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Thursday, February 8
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11am MLK Celebration Luncheon
11:45am Pursuing Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities
12pm Pipeline Economics
12pm Data Science to Solve Social Problems — Long Beach Innovation Team
12pm Ambient Thickness: On the Atmospheric Materiality of the Anthropocene
4pm Dissecting and Reconstructing Plant Metabolism With Synthetic Biology
4pm Talk of the Lab
4:10pm Does the Middle East Really Need Nuclear Power?
4:30pm Askwith Forums – Teach Us All: A Community Conversation with Members of the Little Rock Nine
5pm From Augmented to Virtual Learning: Affordances of Different Mixes of Reality for Learning
6pm Exposing Global Corruption: The Inside Story of The Panama/Paradise Papers Investigations
6pm Migration and the Humanities: A Conference
6pm RPP Colloquium Series: Why Nonviolent Civil Resistance Works: Highlighting the Power of Spiritually-Engaged Communities in Movements for Sustainable Peace
6:30pm Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico: Roots of the Crisis
7pm MIT IDEAS Spring Generator Dinner 2018
7pm Let’s Talk Carbon Neutrality
7pm This Week in Dystopia Live Podcast + Screening of Idiocracy
7:30pm Going Solar in Zimbabwe!
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Friday, February 9
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8:30am Discovering, Understanding, and Harnessing Gut Microbiome-Drug Interactions
10am 2018 Net Impact Summit
10am Migration and the Humanities: A Conference
11:30am Shaun King is Speaking at Northeastern University in Boston
2pm Biology at Transformative Frontiers
6pm Worlds & World-building
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Saturday, February 10
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12:30pm Return of the Woolly Mammoth
1:30pm Worlds & World-building
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Monday, February 12
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12pm PAOC Colloquium: Liz Moyer (University of Chicago)
12pm BetterMIT Innovation Week: Ideation & Design Thinking
12pm Imperfect Markets versus Imperfect Regulation in U.S. Electricity Generation
12:15pm The Stylized Facts of Inequality
12:30pm India's Coal Industry: History and Prospects
3pm Tech Talk for Educators: Social Media for Family Engagement
4:15pm The Epidemic of Poverty: The Government Imperative
5:30pm Energy for Development Talk by Rohini Pande
5:30pm Lesson on Mindfulness: Perspective from Zen Buddhist Priest in Kyoto
6pm New Discoveries at Wadi al-Jarf
6pm Eliminate the Muslim: Science, Religion, and the Future of Brown
6pm Boston New Technology Startup Showcase #BNT86
7pm How to Think Globally & Act Locally
7pm Anatomy of a Genocide
7pm Taking Note: Connecting Citizen Science to Science Learning
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Tuesday, February 13
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9:30am MIPS SEMINAR: Nanoparticles and extracellular nanovesicles in the lungs- who talks to whom about what
12pm Torrents, turds & tilapia: ecosystem approaches to mitigate disaster risk, waterborne disease and aquatic biodiversity loss in Pacific Island watersheds
12pm Sr. Helen Prejean at the Harvard Law Forum
12pm How to use Life Cycle Assessment to Strengthen your Sustainability Program
12pm Speaker Series: Garrett Graff
12:30pm Recovering Agency: The Politics of Reconstruction in Post-Tsunami Tohoku
4pm BetterMIT Innovation Week: Social Change & Impact
5pm Urban Farming Institution Celebration at Flatbread
5:15pm Governor Francis W. Sargent: Fisheries Manager
5:30pm Seeing Text, Reading Maps
6pm Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: William Bonvillian
6pm Boston FinTech: The Role of AI in Financial Services
6:30pm Not Built to Last: Disrupting planning outcomes through temporary placemaking
7pm Ecological and Psychological Perspectives on Climate Change: The Science for the Public 2018 Science Lectures at MIT
7pm With Passion: An Activist Lawyer’s Journey
7:30pm Film Screening - "Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey”
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My rough notes on some of the events I go to and notes on books I’ve read are at:
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com
Geometry Links - January 31, 2018
http://geometrylinks.blogspot.com/2018/01/geometry-links-january-31-2018.html
Notes on Gilliamesque: A Pre-posthumous Memoir
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2018/01/gilliamesque-pre-posthumous-memoir.html
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Monday, February 5
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Glacial Tropical Climate Revisited
Monday, February 5
12:00PM
Harvard, Haller Hall (102), Geo Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences welcomes, Jessica Tierney, Professor, Arizona University
EPS Colloquium
https://eps.harvard.edu/event/department-colloquium-series-47
Contact Name: Milena Perez
aperez02 at fas.harvard.edu
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Making, breaking and linking memories
Monday, February 5
12:00PM – 1:00 PM
BU, Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering, Room 101, Auditorium, 610 Commonwealth, Boston
Professor Sheena Josselyn, University of Toronto
More information at http://www.bu.edu/cmb/news-and-current-events/
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Norton Lecture II, 'The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part II' by Frederick Wiseman
WHEN Monday, Feb. 5, 2018, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Film, Humanities, Lecture, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
SPEAKER(S) Frederick Wiseman
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.boxoffice.harvard.edu/Online/default.asp
TICKET INFO Tickets will be available starting at noon on the day of each lecture. Tickets will be available in person at Sanders Theatre or online (handling fees apply). Limit of two tickets per person. Tickets valid until 3:45pm.
CONTACT INFO humcentr at fas.harvard.edu, 617-495-0738
DETAILS Wide Angle: The Norton Lectures on Cinema
The Norton Professors in 2018 are Agnès Varda, Wim Wenders, and Frederick Wiseman
Monday, Jan. 29 and Monday, Feb. 5: Frederick Wiseman
The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part I and Part II
Monday, Feb. 26 and Tuesday, Feb. 27: Agnès Varda
The 7th Art and Me and Crossing the Borders
Monday, April 2 and Monday, April 9: Wim Wenders
Poetry in Motion and The Visible and the Invisible
LINK http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/norton-lectures
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Dispossession, Enslavement, Trade: The New York City Public History Project
WHEN Monday, Feb. 5, 2018, 4 – 6 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, 2 Arrow Street, Room 408, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Education
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR This event is generously sponsored by the Provostial Fund for Arts & Humantiies. It is hosted by the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights and The Committee on Degrees in History & Literature.
SPEAKER(S) Professor Jack Tchen
CONTACT INFO Yennifer Pedraza (yennifer_pedraza at fas.harvard.edu)
DETAILS Please join us for a lecture by Jack Tchen, Associate Professor at New York University. Professor Tchen is the founding director of the A/P/A (Asian/Pacific/American) Studies Program and Institute at New York University and part of the original founding faculty of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, NYU. He co-founded the Museum of Chinese in America in 1979-80 where he continues to serve as senior historian.
Should the horrendous Equestrian Statue of Teddy Roosevelt, a bronze monument at the eastern entrance of the American Museum of Natural History be moved, stay, or be "complicated"? John Kuo Wei Tchen served on the NYC Mayor's Commission on Monuments and has now formed the New York City Public History Project with co-PIs Audra Simpson and Mabel O. Wilson. This talk and discussion will propose a way for New York City to tell a deeper, more informed yet creative public story and history about itself--a story New Yorkers know exists yet has so far been disappeared and too difficult to deal with in the public sphere. Can New Yorkers reckon with this disavowed yet unresolved injustice?
LINK https://emr.fas.harvard.edu/event/provostial-talk-professor-jack-tchen
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Askwith Forums – Realizing Human Potential through Education
WHEN Monday, Feb. 5, 2018, 5 – 6:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
TYPE OF EVENT Forum, Question & Answer Session
PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT Alumni, Askwith Forum
BUILDING/ROOM Askwith Hall
CONTACT NAME Roger Falcon
CONTACT EMAIL askwith_forums at gse.harvard.edu
CONTACT PHONE 617-384-9968
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT Harvard Graduate School of Education
REGISTRATION REQUIRED No
ADMISSION FEE This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP REQUIRED No
FEATURED EVENT Askwith Forums
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
DETAILS Inaugural 2017 Yidan Prize Laureates:
Vicky Colbert, Yidan Prize for Education Development; founder and director, Fundación Escuela Nueva, Colombia
Carol Dweck, Yidan Prize for Education Research; Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology, Stanford University
Moderator: Nonie Lesaux, Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society and Academic Dean, HGSE
Founded in 2016, the Yidan Prize Foundation has a mission to create a better world through education. The Yidan Prize consists of two awards, the Yidan Prize for Education Research and the Yidan Prize for Education Development, that include a cash prize and a project fund. Join Professor Lesaux in a conversation with the inaugural Prize laureates about their work.
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Labor Policy as the Defining Issue of Our Time: Dunlop Lecture with the Honorable Tom Perez
WHEN Monday, Feb. 5, 2018, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Austin Hall, Room 100, 1515 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School
SPEAKER(S) Tom Perez, HLS and HKS '87, Chair of the Democratic National Committee and former United States Secretary of Labor
COST Free
CONTACT INFO Info at ash.harvard.edu
DETAILS Join the Honorable Tom Perez, HLS and HKS '87, Chair of the Democratic National Committee and former United States Secretary of Labor, for the John T. Dunlop Memorial Forum where he will lead a conversation on why he believes that labor policy is the defining issue of our time. Secretary Perez will discuss his lifelong fight to protect and expand opportunities for American workers and the challenge the current Administration poses for the future of labor and the American workforce.
Sharon Block, Executive Director of the Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, will moderate the discussion. Archon Fung, HKS Academic Dean and Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government and Brandeis Heller School for Social Policy and Management Dean David Weil will give introductory remarks.
The John T. Dunlop Memorial Forum honors a distinguished member of the Harvard community, recognizing the contributions of Professor John T. Dunlop. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Economics Department and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Professor Dunlop was United States Secretary of Labor during the Ford administration. He founded the Harvard Trade Union Program, now a part of Harvard Law School’s Labor & Worklife Program.
LINK https://ash.harvard.edu/event/labor-policy-defining-issue-our-time-dunlop-lecture-honorable-tom-perez-0
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When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
Monday, February 5
6:00 PM (Doors at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
RSVP at http://www.harvard.com/event/daniel_h._pink1/
Cost: $5 -$28.75 (online only, book included)
Harvard Book Store welcomes DANIEL H. PINK—author of #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human—for a discussion of his latest book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.
About When
Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don't know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of "when" decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork.
Timing, it's often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science.
Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. How can we use the hidden patterns of the day to build the ideal schedule? Why do certain breaks dramatically improve student test scores? How can we turn a stumbling beginning into a fresh start? Why should we avoid going to the hospital in the afternoon? Why is singing in time with other people as good for you as exercise? And what is the ideal time to quit a job, switch careers, or get married?
In When, Pink distills cutting-edge research and data on timing and synthesizes them into a fascinating, readable narrative packed with irresistible stories and practical takeaways that give readers compelling insights into how we can live richer, more engaged lives.
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The Power of Muppets: Bringing Hope to the World’s Most Vulnerable Children
WHEN Monday, Feb. 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) George W. Casey, Jr., Jeffrey D. Dunn, Ann Compton, Elmo
CONTACT INFO JFK Jr Forum Office
617-495-1380
DETAILS A Conversation with George W. Casey, Jr., General, US Army (Retired)
Jeffrey D. Dunn, President and Chief Executive Officer, Sesame Workshop, Harvard College ‘77 HBS ’81, Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow ‘14
Ann Compton (Moderator), Fall 2016 Resident Fellow, Institute of Politics ABC News, White House Correspondent (1973-2014)
Special appearance by: Elmo
LINK http://iop.harvard.edu/forum/power-muppets-bringing-hope-world’s-most-vulnerable-children
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Science and Diplomacy in the Arctic - Dinner and Speaker!
Monday, February 5
6:15 PM to 9:15 PM
Gran Gusto and The Atrium at the Brickyard Office Park, 90 Sherman Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/Economy-Dinner-And-Social-Club/events/247093373/
Details
Our Speaker this month will be Prof Paul Arthur Berkman, Science Diplomat, Oceanographer, Polar Explorer!
One of the consequences of the melting of the Arctic Icecap has been the creation of new opportunities for the countries bordering the Arctic Ocean and the world and simultaneously new opportunities for conflict. Without new international agreements concerning shipping, fishing, national security and science cooperation the possibility of conflict is becoming greater than ever.
Professor Berkman has been in the forefront of efforts to negotiate these agreements and create new policies. He will talk about his experiences regarding these efforts both in the Arctic and Antarctic!
Professor Paul Arthur Berkman is building connections between science, diplomacy and information technology to promote cooperation and prevent discord, balancing national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth. He was a visiting professor at the University of California at the age of 23, after wintering the previous year in Antarctica on a SCUBA research expedition. He was a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar and Head of the Arctic Ocean Geopolitics Programme at the University of Cambridge, where he co-directed the first formal dialogue between NATO and Russia regarding environmental security in the Arctic Ocean. He also coordinates the Arctic Options and Pan-Arctic Options projects (involving support from national science agencies in the United States, Russian Federation, Norway, France, China and Canada from 2013-2020) as well as a Carnegie Corporation project on US-Russia Relations. In September 2015, he joined the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University as Professor of Practice in Science Diplomacy and is now Director of the Science Diplomacy Center. He has an extensive record of interdisciplinary research and publication, including books on Science Diplomacy as well as Science into Policy. For his contributions, Prof. Berkman has received many awards nationally and internationally, most recently the Vernadsky Medal from the Russian Academy of Natural Science in 2017.
About the Dinner:
Usually about 20 to 35 people composed of members and meetup invitees.
Social Hour: 6:00 p.m. Dinner: 7 p.m. Speaker : Around 8 p.m.
2 fixed menus - Pizza ($24) or 7 course dinner ($36); or order from menu.
You can come at any time.
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Film Screening and Panel: The New Barbarianism
WHEN Monday, Feb. 5, 2018, 6:30 – 9 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Malkin Penthouse, L-P-9 Littauer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Ethics, Film
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
SPEAKER(S) Margaret Bourdeaux, MD Director of the Threatened Health System Project
Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH, Director of the Harvard Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University
Susannah Sirkin. Director for International Policy, Physicians for Human Rights and Senior Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
COST Free
CONTACT INFO sarah_peck at hks.harvard.edu
DETAILS Please join the Carr Center for a very special event: A screening of The New Barbarianism, followed by a panel and reception.
Healthcare and humanitarian workers are increasingly in the crosshairs as hospitals and aid centers have become part of the battlefield in today’s wars. So far, there has been little to stop the profound surge of violence seen across several open-ended conflicts which has claimed thousands of lives, destroyed health systems, triggered mass displacement and state collapse, and exposed the crisis facing the norms of international humanitarian law contained in the Geneva Conventions.
The New Barbarianism is a feature documentary that examines the crisis, its causes, the limited international response and possible ways forward through dozens of interviews and original footage obtained from inside Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.
Event Specifics:
6:30 Welcome and Intro
6:35 - 7:35 Film Screening, including intro to film by co-director Justin Kenny
7:35 - 8:30 Panel and Q&A
8:30 - 9:00 Reception
LINK https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/event/film-screening-and-panel-new-barbarianism
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CHASING COLOR: Art and the Hidden Narratives of Industrial Waste
Monday, February 5
7:00pm (doors: 6:0pm)
Café ArtScience, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chasing-color-art-and-the-hidden-narratives-of-industrial-waste-tickets-41670357160
Cost: $15 in advance; $20 at the door; Students w/ID admitted free
Presented by the Long Now Boston
Art, design, and other creative practices are not only an aesthetic muse. They have the power to influence civic conversation and can be especially transformative when the meme at hand is abstract, if not invisible.
Founded in 1917, The Nyanza Colorant Company in Ashland, MA was one of the first textile dying plants in the U.S. For 60 years, until its closing in 1978, the factory provided a livlihood to the town’s workers. It also dumped over 45 thousand tons of chemical sludge into the air, ground, and water. The trespass on the environment was so extreme that in 1982 the 35-acre Nyanza Chemical Waste Dump became one of the nation’s first Superfund cleanup sites.
After 40 years of dormancy there is still no formal timeline to finish remediation and restore the site to a ’clean' condition. Area residents can trace many health problems, including cancer, back to Nyanza, and the long-term effects of the toxic runoff are still unknown.
Industrial waste is not endemic to Ashland, nor is it a thing of the past. Irresponsible and harmful manufacturing practices continue to this day on a global scale, and textile manufacturing in particular is the second largest polluter worldwide.
Dan Borelli’s artwork literally sheds light on the transformative power of art to engage a community, especially when a problem seems out of sight, out of mind. Borelli digs into the “folklore of color” in his hometown of Ashland to ask what is going on with the remediation today, how is public knowledge disseminated, and how does a community regenerate while acknowledging it’s past? To learn more visit the Ashland-Nyanza Project.
Nick Anguelov takes a macro look at Superfund intitiatives like Nyanza to understand these sites from a regulatory standpoint. He examines the effect America’s contempt for industrial regulation can have on the local living economies where our clothes are made today.
Dr. Emilia Javorsky brings an entreprenuer’s and physician’s view of the conversation througn the lens of existential risk. She will also open the conversation to audience engagement through Q&A.
Our Guest Presenters:
DAN BORELLI As part of his Master studies at the GSD, Dan started an art-based research inquiry into the Nyanza Superfund Site in Ashland Massachusetts, which is his hometown. Nyanza is one of the first 10 sites that launched the EPA’s Superfund program and Dan’s project makes public hidden narratives of cancer clusters, human loss, activism, and ultimately regeneration with the support of Harvard Innovation Learning Technology, ArtPlace America and NEA Our Town grants.
NICK ANGUELOV Assistant Professor, Department of Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Dr. Nikolay Anguelov is Assistant Professor in the department of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He has a Ph.D. in Policy Studies with a focus on Rural and Regional Economic Development from Clemson University. His research is interdisciplinary with a focus on international trade and diplomacy. His last two books are Economic Sanctions vs. Soft Power: Lessons from North Korea, Myanmar and the Middle East (Springer) and The Dirty Side of the Garment Industry: Fast Fashion and Its Negative Impact on Environment and Society (CRC Press).
EMILIA JAVORDKY, MD, MPH
Emilia Javorsky MD, MPH is focused on the invention, development and commercialization of new medical therapies using a problem-focused approach. Emilia received her undergraduate degree from Columbia University, her masters from Boston University, her medical degree from the University of Massachusetts, and completed her post-doctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital. Currently she is involved in early-stage life science ventures. She also leads an Artificial Intelligence in Medicine initiative, and is launching programming on Imaginaries & the Future with the Future Society at Harvard Kennedy School. She was a Fulbright-Schuman Scholar to the European Union, is a TEDx speaker, a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Shaper community, and was honored as part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2017 in Healthcare.
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Tuesday, February 6
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FAS Diversity Dialogue - Truths About Race
Tuesday, February 6
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST
Harvard Hillel, 52 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fas-diversity-dialogue-truths-about-race-registration-41395575280
With degrees in psychology and religious education, Anthony Peterson has developed diversity education for nearly two decades. Anthony’s diversity discussions took a different turn in 2014, when his five-year-old white grandson asked, “Am I white or am I black?” In conversation with Callie Crossley, host of WGBH’s Under the Radar, Anthony will draw from his life story, current research, and discussions with his grandchildren to explore social narratives about race in the 21st century.
Speaker: Anthony Peterson, Adjunct Instructor and Ed.D. candidate, Leadership and Professional Studies, Trevecca Nazarene University
in conversation with
Callie Crossley, Broadcast journalist and host of WGBH’s Under the Radar
Please RSVP by Friday, February 2, 2018.
Please note that space is limited and seats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis for registered guests.
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Speaker Series: Margaret Sullivan
Tuesday, February 6
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Rubenstein 414, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Margaret Sullivan is the media columnist for The Washington Post, writing on journalism ethics, free speech, and the intersection of politics and the news media. Before joining The Post in 2016, she was The New York Times public editor, and previously, the chief editor of The Buffalo News, her hometown paper where she started as a summer intern. She was the first woman to serve as managing editor and editor in chief of The News, as well as the first female public editor of the New York Times. A graduate of Georgetown University and Northwestern University’s Medill School, she is a former member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and was twice elected as a director of the American Society of News Editors, where she led the First Amendment committee. Sullivan taught in the graduate schools of journalism at Columbia University and City University of New York. In 2017, she won the Stephen Hamblett First Amendment Award from the New England First Amendment Coalition, recognizing her columns at The Times and The Post that championed free speech and press rights.
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Governing and Mental Health Policy: Addiction, Poverty, Guns and Prisons
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Leadership Studio - 10th Floor, Kresge Building, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Voices in Leadership webcast program, HSPH
SPEAKER(S) Ted Strickland, former Governor of Ohio
COST free
TICKET WEB LINK https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/voices/events/ted-strickland-former-governor-of-ohio/
CONTACT INFO Alison Barron - abarron at hsph.harvard.edu
DETAILS Join us for the next “Voices in Leadership” event of the Spring semester, featuring Ted Strickland, former Governor of Ohio. He became Ohio’s governor as the nation teetered on the brink of economic collapse and tackled the crisis with a plan to ensure that Ohio emerged from the recession stronger than ever by laying a foundation for economic progress and a thriving middle class. He made strategic investments in job creation, improved Ohio’s business climate, reformed education, proposed and signed into law an energy bill with strong renewable and efficiency standards and worked with the legislature to prepare Ohio for the post-recession economy.
Gov. Strickland will be interviewed by Dr. John McDonough. Please join us online or in-person for this dynamic event! For lottery and live webcast details, please visit www.hsph.me/Strickland.
LINK https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/voices/events/ted-strickland-former-governor-of-ohio/
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Three transportation revolutions: Steering sharing, automation, and electrification toward the public interest
Tuesday, February 6
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building E51-315, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Dan Sperling’s research examines the potential benefits, impacts, and synergies of the three transportation “revolutions:” electrification, automation, and pooling. In this seminar, Sperling will describe what needs to happen for this new transportation paradigm to truly benefit the public interest. Sperling will provide insight into the forces—from effective government policies to partnerships between transit operators, mobility service companies, automakers, and others—that will be instrumental in enhancing social equity, environmental sustainability, and urban livability.
These ideas are discussed in depth in the book Three Revolutions: Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a Better Future, co-authored by Sperling along with other leaders in the field. The first fifty pre-registered individuals to arrive at this seminar will receive free copies of the book.
Examining the potential benefits, impacts, and synergies of the three “transportation” revolutions
Reviewing innovative ideas and partnerships within the transportation sector
Exploring the necessity of effective government policy in shifting the new transportation paradigm toward the public interest
Speaker Bio:
Daniel Sperling is a distinguished professor of civil engineering and environmental science and policy, and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis (ITS-Davis). He was appointed to the transportation seat on the California Air Resources Board by Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown and served as chair of the Transportation Research Board in 2015-16. He won the 2013 Blue Planet Prize from the Asahi Glass Foundation for being “a pioneer in opening up new fields of study to create more efficient, low-carbon, and environmentally beneficial transportation systems.”
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Things Fall Apart: Land Use History, Non-native Insects, Climatic Change, and the Decline of a Forest Foundation Species
Tuesday, February 6
12:00PM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, HUH Seminar Room 125, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Aaron Ellison, Senior Research Fellow in Ecology, Harvard Forest
Abstract: Foundation species create and define particular ecosystems; control in large measure the distribution and abundance of associated flora and fauna; and modulate core ecosystem processes. In forests, foundation species are large, long-lived, late-successional trees whose ecological characteristics and functions rarely co-occur in other species. In New England, eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is the foundation species, but it is declining and dying throughout its range because of additive and interactive effects of climatic change, the nonnative hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae), and anthropogenic activities. In this talk, I describe aspects of eastern hemlock's unique ecological characteristics that contribute to its foundational role and discuss data from historical reconstructions, ongoing observations, and manipulative experiments at Harvard Forest and throughout southern New England aimed at understanding the structure and dynamics of the forests of our future.
Herbaria Seminar
https://huh.harvard.edu/event/huh-seminar-aaron-ellison
Contact Name: huh-requests at oeb.harvard.edu
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Berkman Klein Luncheon Series - Health Care Costs and Transparency
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Milstein West B, Room 2019, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Information Technology, Law
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The series is cosponsored by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
SPEAKER(S) John Freedman, President & CEO of Freedman HealthCare
COST Free
TICKET WEB LINK https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/luncheon/02/Freedman#RSVP
TICKET INFO RSVP required to attend in person
DETAILS Health spending continues outpace wages and GDP, while some new insurance designs transfer greater shares of that to patients’ own out of pocket costs. In this talk, Dr. Freedman will discuss what is driving health care costs up, who is benefiting, and how data is harnessed to study problems and remedy them.
LINK https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2018/luncheon/02/Freedman
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Turkey’s Democratic Backsliding: The US and EU Response
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, 12 – 1:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, 124 Mt Auburn Street, Room 105, Suite 160S (First Floor), Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
SPEAKER(S) Ash Center Democracy in Hard Places Fellow Dr. Amanda Sloat
COST Free
CONTACT INFO Info at ash.harvard.edu
DETAILS Join Ash Center Democracy in Hard Places Fellow Dr. Amanda Sloat for a discussion on U.S. and EU responses to Turkey's democratic backsliding. Professor Tarek Masoud will moderate.
Turkey is facing internal and external threats, including the aftermath of a July 2016 coup attempt and the destabilizing effects of the Syrian war. At the same time, Turkey's domestic politics are becoming increasingly authoritarian with narrowing space for political opposition, free media, and civil society. With mistrust growing on both sides, Turkey is near an all-time low in its relations with the west. This talk will discuss the challenges currently facing Turkey, as well as the policy options available to the US and EU in response.
LINK https://ash.harvard.edu/event/turkey’s-democratic-backsliding-us-and-eu-response
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The Changing Security Landscape on the Korean Peninsula: Implications for Tokyo, Beijing, and Washington
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
SPEAKER(S) John Park, Director of the Korea Working Group and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Moderator: Susan Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and Director, WCFIA Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University
COST Free and open to the public
LINK https://programs.wcfia.harvard.edu/us-japan/calendar/upcoming
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Deciphering the human microbiota using chemistry
Tuesday, February 6
4pm
MIT, Building 32-123, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Emily Balskus, Harvard University
More information at https://biology.mit.edu/events/biology_colloquium_series
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The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, 4:15 – 6:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, 27 Kirkland Street, Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way, Lower Level Conference Room, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
SPEAKER(S) Yascha Mounk, Lecturer in the Government Department, Harvard University; Local Affiliate, CES, Harvard University
CONTACT INFO Jessica Barnard
https://wigh.wcfia.harvard.edu/people/jessica-barnard
DETAILS Two core components of liberal democracy—individual rights and the popular will—are increasingly at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of “rights without democracy” took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create something just as bad: a system of “democracy without rights.”
The consequence, Mounk shows in The People vs. Democracy, is that trust in politics is dwindling. Drawing on vivid stories and original research, Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters’ discontent: stagnating living standards, fears of multi-ethnic democracy, and the rise of social media. To reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms that benefit the many, not the few.
The People vs. Democracy goes beyond a mere description of the rise of populism. In plain language, it describes both how we got here and where we need to go.
LINK https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/events/2018/02/the-people-vs.-democracy-why-our-freedom-is-in-danger-and-how-to-save-it
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Askwith Forums – Immigration, Activism, and DACA: An Evening with Jose Antonio Vargas and Joy Reid
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
TYPE OF EVENT Forum, Question & Answer Session
PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT Alumni, Askwith Forum
BUILDING/ROOM Askwith Hall
CONTACT NAME Roger Falcon
CONTACT EMAIL askwith_forums at gse.harvard.edu
CONTACT PHONE 617-384-9968
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT Harvard Graduate School of Education
REGISTRATION REQUIRED No
ADMISSION FEE This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP REQUIRED No
FEATURED EVENT Askwith Forums
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
DETAILS Speaker:Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist; founder and CEO, Define American
Moderator: Joy Reid, political analyst and host of “AM Joy,” MSNBC
Introduction: Roberto G. Gonzales, professor of education, HGSE
On September 5, 2017, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Obama policy that shielded nearly 800,000 young people from deportation. In light of DACA’s termination and new concerns over immigration policy, Professor Gonzales will kick off a multi-week series on DACA, immigration reform, and community responses to restrictionist policies. Reid will interview Vargas about the politics and policies of immigration, the termination of DACA, and the meaning of American in this current political moment.
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Emerging Professionals for the Environment: Building a Sustainable Business
Tuesday, February 6
5:30PM-7:30PM
50 Milk Street Boston
RSVP at http://www.elmaction.org/epe-repat
Come hear from Nathan Rothstein, Co-founder and President of Project Repat, about his experience as a young entrepreneur making a sustainable idea into one of the fastest growing consumer goods businesses in the country. Stick around afterwards to grab some free food and drinks while you mingle with other young professionals interested in business and sustainability.
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Ubiquitous Autonomous Vehicles: Upending Industries – Unlocking Entrepreneurial Opportunities
Tuesday, February 6
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM
MIT, Building 32-123, Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Pre-registration is required at http://www.mitforumcambridge.org/event/ubiquitous-autonomous-vehicles/
Cost: $30; Members: $20; Students: $10; Student members: $5
By 2040, we estimate that 95% of new vehicles sold, or 96.3 million cars, will be fully autonomous
—a $3.6 trillion opportunity. Fortune 2017
You cannot go one day without hearing about how the large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles will impact our lives and the numerous benefits to society.
But what about the new industries that it will create and the entrepreneurial impact of AV deployment? How about the implications for the industry, the built environment, data security, safety and energy? Our panel will delve into these and other entrepreneurial opportunities unlocked with the adoption of autonomous transportation.
To start, how about advanced mapping, data and analytics, networking/privacy, intelligent infrastructure, location-based services, mobility transactions, new mobility and ownership models and logistics. Perhaps the reallocation of parking and redistribution of traffic flow? Saving significant levels of energy? Providing transportation for seniors and the disabled to get to work? How about the communication necessary for connected vehicles and eliminating the need for military drivers to be in dangerous areas?
The impact is extremely broad – and the entrepreneurial opportunities seemingly endless.
Please join our expert panel to learn:
How true are the adoption predictions?
What are the impacts of a 90% reduction in traffic accidents?
What are the implications of smart technology for vehicles and road systems?
How will autonomous vehicles be impacted by AI, data and data analytics?
Who will provide the financial backing?
Moderator
Dylan Martin, Staff Writer: BostInno
Speakers
Dr. Christopher Borroni-Bird, Founder of Afreecar LLC; Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab
Chris Cheever, Founder and Partner, Fontinalis Partners (Boston office)
Chris Thomas, Founder and Partner of Fontinalis Partners (Detroit office); board member of nuTonomy till acquisition by Delphi in October 2017
Augustin Wegscheider, Principal, Boston Consulting Group; Project Manager of Future of Urban & Autonomous Mobility, World Economic Forum
Agenda
5:30-6:00: Registration
6:00-7:30: Panel and Q&A
7:30-8:30: Networking with refreshments
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Hurricane Season 2017: Assessing Public and Private Sector Responses
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 6, 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) José Andrés, Jason Jackson, Jeh Johnson, Brad Kieserman, Juliette Kayyem
DETAILS A discussion with
José Andrés, Internationally-recognized Culinary Innovator, Author, Educator, Humanitarian and Chef & Owner, ThinkFoodGroup
Jason Jackson, Senior Director of Emergency Management, Walmart
Jeh Johnson, Senior Fellow, The Homeland Security Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, HKS, Partner, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (2013-2017)
Brad Kieserman, Vice President of Disaster Operations and Logistics, Red Cross
Juliette Kayyem (Moderator), Robert and Renee Belfer Lecturer in International Security, HKS, National Security Analyst, CNN, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Intergovernmental Affairs (2009-2010)
LINK http://iop.harvard.edu/forum/hurricane-season-2017-assessing-public-and-private-sector-responses
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Opening Conversation "Where is Cambridge From?" & Annual Meeting
Tuesday, February 6
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EST
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/opening-conversation-where-is-cambridge-from-annual-meeting-tickets-42132259723
Join us at this Opening Conversation, launching our 2018 theme, "Where is Cambridge From?"
Opening Conversation speakers Alexandra Sedlovskaya and Dr. Kerri Greenidge, guided by Diana Lempel; will be setting the table for this year's programs which will explore the ways Cantabrigians define where they're "from" and why it matters. What makes someone feel they're from Cambridge or not, and how has this changed over time?
Event is open to the public and free. Please register!
Light Refreshments
The Opening Conversation will be followed by the Annual Meeting of the Members. All are welcome.
Inclement Weather Date: 2/8/18
Speakers:
Alexandra Sedlovskaya, Assistant Director, C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard Business School
Dr. Kerri Greenidge, Department of History, Tufts University; Co-Director Tufts / African American Freedom Trail Project, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy
Moderator: Diana Lempel, Doing History Curator at Cambridge Historical Society and Co-Founder, Practice Space
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[MIT CEO] Cryptocurrency and Blockchain - Insights and Opportunities
Tuesday, February 6
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
MIT, Building 34-101, 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mit-ceo-cryptocurrency-and-blockchain-insights-and-opportunities-tickets-42508031667
Bitcoin has been luring some investors with potentially huge reward - and scaring others away with equally big risks. Should we put it on our investment shopping list?
Entrepreneurs are currently rushing into this surging field with blockchain products and have triggered a flood of ICO funding. As an emerging market with low barriers of entry, what should entrepreneurs consider and understand in order to make the best ones successful?
What are the real values behind the hype around cryptocurrencies? How will they be evaluated when they are used in the real world? Is it a bubble or digital gold that actually offers something?
Given its volatility and uncertainty about the technology’s long-term viability, will countries add regulations onto what’s currently a stateless, bankless Wild West of payment tools?
We invites Mr. Waikit Lau to MIT to share with us his experiences and opinions in cryptocurrency and blockchain investment, as well as his thoughts and expectations about the future of cryptocurrency.
This event will be in English.
Mr. Waikit Lau founded and grew 2 startups to successful exits(one acquired and one IPO). With 17+ years of experience in Technology and Finance, across product, marketing, and sales functions, he has been on both VC and operations sides. He is an active investor in ICO and 20+ startups, and will be teaching an upcoming MIT class on cryptocurrency.
Mr. Lau's past investments include BladeLogic (NASD: BLOG, acquired by BMC for $800M), Endeca (acquired by Oracle for more than $1B), WaveSmith (acquired by Ciena for $178M), Netli (acquired by Akamai for $170M), Berkeley Design Automation (acquired by Mentor Graphics). He is also runing AIDL (Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning), one of the largest and most active Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning communities with 85,000+ members. Prior to co-founding ScanScout, he was the Director of Strategy and Business Development at Scientific Atlanta (a division of Cisco) where he helped lead product strategy for next-generation media delivery platforms. Before Scientific Atlanta, he was an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, investing in and working with early-stage technology companies. Prior to serving as a VC, he co-founded Photo.net, one of the largest online photo-databases and served as its Vice President of Product and Business Development. He has also consulted to the Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer of Technology at Merrill Lynch in the technology strategy and operation areas. He's an advisor to Motally (acquired by Nokia) and serves on the Advisory Board of Harvard University's Digital Community and Social Networking Group.
Mr. Lau holds BS in Electrical Engineering, Finance & Computer Science from MIT and MBA from Harvard Business School.
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Invite to Ignite 2018
Tuesday, February 6
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Cambridge Innovation Center - Venture Cafe, 1 Broadway, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/invite-to-ignite-2018-tickets-42059111936
Cost: $8 – $12
Last February, Boston Area Sustainability Group (BASG) hosted a special evening to affirm the positive actions of local groups with the goal of providing a breadth of opportunity for our members to sample volunteer opportunities in the area. Twenty organizations accepted and the result was an exciting evening of rapid exposure to great ideas and ways for everyone in the room to get involved with their favorite impact model. So we’re doing it again!
Nominations Are Open
As we prepare the lineup for the 2nd Annual Invite to Ignite event, we’re looking for your recommendations of organizations, campaigns, or initiatives from communities, non-profits, academia, government and industry, that would benefit from an introduction to BASG and our audience. The emphasis of the evening is to help amplify action and engagement.
Email sustyboston [at] gmail.com with your ideas about organizations to include in this exciting event and remember you can nominate your own organization too. Suggest as many as you like, and if possible, provide a contact for us. We'll announce everyone here before the event.
Please help spread the word, far and wide and plan to come for the fun!
Thanks so much! Carol, Holly & Tilly
Need Inspiration?
See this list of the 2017 Ignite Speakers:
Mothers Out Front, The Sierra Club, Boston Area Gleaners, ClimateX, Change is Simple, 350MA, Boston Harbor Now, CABA (Climate Action Business Association), US Green Building Council, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, InnerCity Weightlifting, Clime-IT, Sustainability Collaborative, Net Impact Boston, Resonant Energy, Social Innovation Forum (SIF), Mass Audubon, Livable Streets, The Story of Energy (and other Events), and SaveOhno
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Film screening and discussion: Albatross
Tuesday, February 6
6–8:30 pm
Menschel Hall, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScJY0XBBweueWzHmjEO9lzcGNESsK-Ef2X8au-h0pp0E3gxqQ/viewform
Join the Planetary Health Alliance, Harvard University Center for the Environment, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions for a special film screening of "Albatross" – a stunning visual journey exploring the consequences of global plastics pollution in the ocean through the eyes of the Albatross population on Midway Island. Following the screening we will hold a discussion with filmmaker Chris Jordan, Robin Kelsey, Matthew Potts, and Jim McCarthy. Terry Tempest Williams and Sam Myers will moderate the discussion.
The discussion will explore territory we sometimes avoid: in witnessing environmental degradation and its consequences, what is the role of grief? What does it mean to “bear witness”? As scientists and scholars, is our emotional reaction to the degradation of Nature relevant to our work? How do we acknowledge emotional ties to Nature, even reverence for Nature, while retaining scientific objectivity in our work? Is it even possible to activate the change we need without acknowledging the moral and emotional dimensions of what we are witnessing?
Registration is required. Space is limited. Free and open to the public.
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Designing Reality: Authors' Talk
Tuesday, February 6
6:30-8 p.m.
MIT Museum, Building N51, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld and co-authors Alan, and Joel Gershenfeld as they discuss their latest book Designing Reality, an exploration of the dawning of the third digital revolution where anyone can fabricate (almost) anything.
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Hemlock Hospice: Landscape Ecology, Art & Design
Tuesday, February 6
6:30 PM – 8:15 PM EST
Harvard, Graduate School Of Design, 48 Quincy Street Room 124, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hemlock-hospice-landscape-ecology-art-design-tickets-42462762265
This talk focuses on the intersection of ecology, art, and design as viewed through the lens of the Hemlock Hospice project. Hemlock Hospice is an, art-based interpretive trail conceived and developed by David Buckley Borden, Aaron M. Ellison, and their team of interdisciplinary collaborators. On view through mid-November 2018, this immersive site-specific science-communication project tells the story of the ongoing demise of the eastern hemlock tree at the hands (and mouth) of a tiny aphid-like insect, the hemlock wooly adelgid. While telling the story of the loss of eastern hemlock, the project addresses larger issues of climate change, human impact, and the future of New England forests.
The talk includes an overview of the Hemlock Hospice project from the complementary perspectives of science, art, and design, and also addresses the practical challenges of creating and realizing such interdisciplinary projects. Borden and Ellison will share their research-driven creative process, including challenges and lessons and highlight the team’s collaborative approach to science communication at the intersection of landscape, creativity, and cultural event.
Aaron M. Ellison is the Senior Research Fellow in Ecology in Harvard’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Senior Ecologist at the Harvard Forest, and a semi-professional photographer and writer. He studies the disintegration and reassembly of ecosystems following natural and anthropogenic disturbances; thinks about the relationship between the Dao and the intermediate disturbance hypothesis; reflects on the critical and reactionary stance of Ecology relative to Modernism, blogs as The Unbalanced Ecologist, and tweets as @AMaxEll17. He is the author of A Primer of Ecological Statistics (2004), A Field Guide to the Ants of New England(2012; recipient of the 2013 USA Book News International Book Award in General Science, and the 2013 award for Specialty Title in Science and Nature from The New England Society in New York City), and Vanishing Point (2017), a collection of photographs and poetry from the Pacific Northwest). On weekends, he works wood.
David Buckley Borden is a Cambridge-based interdisciplinary artist and designer known for his creative practice of making ecological issues culturally relevant to the general public by means of accessible art and design. David studied landscape architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design and worked with Sasaki Associates and Ground before focusing his practice at the intersection of landscape, creativity, and cultural event. David’s work now manifests in a variety of forms, ranging from site-specific landscape installations in the woods to data-driven cartography in the gallery. David's place-based projects highlight both pressing environmental issues and everyday phenomena and have recently earned him residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Teton Art Lab, Trifecta Hibernaculum, and MASS MoCA. David was a 2016/2017 Charles Bullard Fellow in Forest Research at the Harvard Forest where he answered the question, “How can art and design foster cultural cohesion around environmental issues and help inform ecology-minded decision making.”
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This Narrow Space: A Pedriatic Oncologist, His Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Patients, and a Hospital in Jerusalem
Tuesday February 6
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Elisha Waldman
A memoir both bittersweet and inspiring by an American pediatric oncologist who spent seven years in Jerusalem treating children—Israeli Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza—who had all been diagnosed with cancer.
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Code for Boston's Next Demo Night: first in nearly 2 years!
Tuesday, February 6
7:00 PM to 9:30 PM
CIC Boston Lighthouse West, 50 Milk Street 20th Floor, Boston
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/Code-for-Boston/events/246668834/
Details
At Code for Boston Demo Nights, Brigade teams have the opportunity to show off the civic technology projects they're working on, celebrate successful work, and discuss blockers they're working through. For this Demo Night, we'll be joined by partners from government, non-profit groups, community groups, companies, and other institutions to show off the great civic innovation and technology work they're doing here in Boston.
We welcome members of the public to come in and see what we're up to, as well as members of the technology and government communities.
We hope to see you there!
Get started here on our New Member page! (http://codeforboston.org/new-members/)
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Wednesday, February 7
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The Implications of Machine Learning on Cybersecurity
Wednesday, February 7
9:00am - 11:00am
Harvard, Taubman Building, Nye A, B, & C, 5th Floor, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Join the Cybersecurity Project for a special event on the impacts of machine learning on cybersecurity. Sameer Bhalotra (StackRox) will moderate a discussion between Dan Chenok (IBM), Tom Corn (VMWare), and Jennifer Lin (Google).
Seating will be available on a first come, first serve basis.
More information at https://www.belfercenter.org/event/implications-machine-learning-cybersecurity
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The State of Equity in Metro Boston Policy Agenda 2018
Wednesday, February 7
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Massachusetts State House, Room 222, 24 Beacon Street, Boston
RSVP at https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ef26gvwl826722d2&oseq=&c=&ch=
Join us at the release of the updated policy agenda! Special guest speakers, Senator Linda Dorcena Forry, Celina Barrios-Millner, and Lisa Wong, among others, will be joining us to share their experiences at the release event.
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Why has the lower stratosphere stopped cooling for the last 20 years?
Wednesday, February 7
12:00pm
Harvard, HUCE MCZ 440, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Harvard Climate Seminar: Lorenzo M Polvani, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Earth & Environmental Sciences, Columbia University
The cooling of the stratosphere is an important fingerprint of CO2 on the climate system. This stratospheric signature of CO2, however, is confounded by the presence of ozone-depleting substances (ODS). The talk will summarize the latest observations and, with simple arguments and with the help of ensembles of chemistry-climate model integrations, demonstrate the crucial role of ODS not only on stratospheric temperature trends, but also on the entire large-scale circulation of the stratosphere.
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The damping of ITCZ (intertropical convergence zone) shifts by the ocean circulation through its coupling to the trade winds
Wednesday, February 7
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-915 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Brian Green (MIT)
Global-scale rain bands in the tropics, known as the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), are sensitive to the atmosphere’s energy balance and reside in the hemisphere most strongly heated by radiation and surface heat fluxes. Coupled to the atmosphere above by the trade winds that feed the ITCZ, the tropical ocean circulation is capable of transporting large amounts of energy across the equator, strongly affecting the energy balance and the position of the ITCZ. Using a coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model, we show how the coupling of the trade winds to the ocean’s subtropical cells results in a robust damping of northsouth ITCZ shifts by up to a factor of four on interannual and longer timescales. This damping effect can be quantified using a simple model of the atmosphere’s hemispheric energy balance that accounts for the structure of the inter-hemispheric heating contrast and the ocean’s ability to redistribute energy within the climate system. Implications of these results for past and future changes in tropical rainfall will be discussed.
About the Speaker
Brian Green's interests lie in ocean dynamics, their role in climate, and the use of numerical techniques to model them. He was lead author on a recent study which showed interaction between ocean circulation and the trade winds damps movement of the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) to transport heat across the equator. Green's PhD advisor is John Marshall.
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Mirage on the Horizon: Geoengineering and Carbon Taxation without Commitment
Wednesday, February 7
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Allison Dining Room, 5th Floor Taubman Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Daron Acemoglu, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, MIT Department of Economics.
The second Solar Geoengineering Research Seminar, co-sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Belfer Center’s Science Technology and Public Policy program. Formal seminars are interspersed with more informal weekly reading group meetings at the same time and place to deepen members’ understanding of solar geoengineering research.
Lunch provided. Registration to contact listed requested at http://harvard.us15.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=53594b4e03c222f6c2f7d8311&id=2bac0f57d3
To receive future updates and announcements from the Solar Geoengineering Research Program, subscribe to mailing list.
Solar Geoengineering Research Seminar
https://geoengineering.environment.harvard.edu/
Contact Name: Lizzie Burns
eburns at g.harvard.edu
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Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics
Wednesday, February 7
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building E40, 496 (Pye Room), 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Summary
Despite being repeatedly surprised by unexpected change, public debate and mainstream international relations scholarship continue to assume that the world is governed by calculable risk based on estimates of power. Protean power highlights and challenges this assumption by arguing for the acknowledgement of uncertainty as an important condition of political and social life.
Short Bio
Peter Katzenstein is the Walter S. Carpenter Professor of International Studies at Cornell University and a former president of the American Political Science Association.
SSP Wednesday Seminar
All Welcome
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Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Wednesday, February 7
2:00 pm
Northeastern, 177 Huntington Avenue, 11th floor, Boston
Max Tegmark, Professor, MIT
We've traditionally thought of intelligence as something mysterious that can only exist in biological organisms, especially humans. But from my perspective as a physicist, intelligence is simply a certain kind of information processing performed by elementary particles moving around, and there's no law of physics that says one can't build machines more intelligent than us in all ways. This suggests that we've only seen the tip of the intelligence iceberg, and that there's an amazing potential to unlock the full intelligence that's latent in nature and use it to help humanity flourish - or flounder. I discuss recent progress both in building AI and in staying on ensuring that it’s societal impact is beneficial, keeping us on the right side of that flourish/flounder balance.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Max Tegmark is a professor doing physics and AI research at MIT, and advocates for positive use of technology as president of the Future of Life Institute. He is the author of over 200 publications as well as the New York Times bestsellers “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” and "Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality". His work with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey on galaxy clustering shared the first prize in Science magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year: 2003.”
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Plastic Solutions
Wednesday, February 7
4:00PM TO 5:00PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 440, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/harvard-events/events-calendar/?trumbaEmbed=vie...
Join the Planetary Health Alliance for an inspiring event showcasing innovative and scalable solutions to the big, ugly, planetary health problem of plastic pollution. Author Terry Tempest Williams will frame a discussion of how we move forward in the face of grievous environmental degradation – such as that highlighted in our Feb. 6 Albatross screening – towards actionable solutions to these environmental challenges. Featuring Shaun Frankson, co-founder of The Plastic Bank, and George Serafeim, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, this discussion will explore The Plastic Bank model of buying plastic waste from individuals, recycling it, and reselling it at a premium to corporations for social and environmental impact.
Reception to follow.
Co-sponsored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Global Health Institute, Harvard University Center for the Environment, Center for the Study of World Religions, and Harvard Divinity School.
Contact Name: Perri Sheinbaum
pha at harvard.edu
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The Role of Meteorite Impacts in the Origin and Evolution of Life
Wednesday, February 7
4:00pm to 5:00pm
MIT Building 54-915/923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Gordon Osinski (Univ. of Western Ontario)
Impact cratering is one of the most ubiquitous geological processes in the Solar System. Over the past decade, it has become clear that impact events have profoundly affected the origin and evolution of Earth and producing benefits in the form of economic mineral and hydrocarbon deposits. The destructive geological, environmental, and biological effects of meteorite impact events are well known. This is largely due to the discovery of the ~180 km diameter Chicxulub impact structure, Mexico, and its link to the mass extinction event that marks the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 Myr. ago. In recent years, it has also become apparent that, once formed, impact events also have certain beneficial effects, particularly for microbial life. The effects range from generating conditions conducive for the origin of life (e.g., clays, which form catalysts for organic reactions, and hot spring environments) to varied habitats for life that persist long after an impact event, including hydrothermal systems, endolithic habitats in shocked rocks and impact glasses, and impact crater lakes. This may have important implications for our understanding of the origin and evolution of early life on Earth, and possibly other planets such as Mars.
About the Speaker
Dr. Osinski's research interests are diverse and interdisciplinary in nature. His work synthesizes field, remote sensing, and laboratory observations with a range of geochemical data. His current research falls into three main areas: planetary geology, astrobiology, and economic geology. Meteorite impact craters provide a common cross-cutting theme. He approaches planetary geology with the fundamental view that interpretations of other planetary bodies must begin by using the Earth as a reference and fieldwork forms the basis for much of his research. In addition, he is also interested in developing technologies and techniques for human and robotic surface operations on the Moon and Mars. Examples of current research projects include:
Impact-metamorphosed materials and the geology of meteorite impact structures on the Earth, Moon and Mars.
Glacial and periglacial landforms in the Canadian Arctic, and analogous environments on Mars.
Impact melt-bearing meteorites, of asteroidal and lunar origin.
Origin and evolution of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System.
Ore emplacement within the North Range of the Sudbury impact structure, Ontario.
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Efficient Mitigation of Climate Change
Wednesday, February 7
4:15pm
Harvard, Littauer-382, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Kenneth Gillingham, Yale University, and James Stock, Harvard University. A
Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy
https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/30064
Contact Name: Casey Billings
casey_billings at hks.harvard.edu
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Claiming God's Peace When Whiteness Stands Its Ground
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2018, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Religion
SPONSOR Center for the Study of World Religions
CONTACT CSWR, 617.495.4476
DETAILS Please join us for the Annual Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice, delivered by Kelly Brown Douglas. This lecture will examine the social/political and theological implications of whiteness as an impediment to living into God’s justice. Special attention will be given to the implications for the church as well as theological education.
Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas is Dean of Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. Ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1983, Douglas holds a master’s degree in theology and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Union. She is the author of many articles and five books, including Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God which was written in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin. Professor Douglas’s academic work focuses on womanist theology, sexuality, and the black church. She was formerly the Susan D. Morgan Professorship of Religion at Goucher College.
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Undoing Empire: Form, Function, Feminism
Wednesday, February 7
5:30pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Building E51-095, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
GCWS Feminisms Unbound roundtable
J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Professor of American Studies and Anthropology, Wesleyan University
Kalpana Seshadri, Professor of English, Boston College
Kaysha Corinealdi, Assistant Professor of History, Emerson College
Moderator, Jyoti Puri, Simmons College
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Wearable Technologies: Advances for Medical Care
Wednesday, February 7
5:30 - 8:30 PM
Regis College Fine Arts Center, Weston
RSVP at http://www.mdgboston.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1035101
Cost: $10 - $45 (early discount)
Wearables are playing a key role in the advancement of digital health.
The recent advancements in wearable medical technologies has created opportunities for dramatic improvements in personalized healthcare.
Moderator: Geoff Gill, President, Shimmer Americas
Geoff leads the U.S. commercial operations and the global product and business strategy for the consumer neuroscience and medical markets.
Justin Chickles, CEO and Co-Founder, Mobile Sense Technologies
Justin is building a company to develop and commercialize a cardiac monitoring device and mobile health platform.
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SOUND ART CHINA
Wednesday, February 7
6:30pm (doors: 6:0pm)
Le Laboratoire Cambridge, 650 East Kendall Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sound-art-china-tickets-41224139511
Sound art didn’t exist in China until three decades ago. Even Sound art China was born outside of academic, and contemporary art global market, it still draws international attention. As a curator and artist, Wenhua's talk will trace some historical and artistic impacts of the recent emerging sound art scene in China, discuss its key artists and their influences as well as also raise the question of the future of Sound art in China.
As usual the event is Free
Wenhua Shi pursues a poetic approach to moving image making, and investigates conceptual depth in film, video, interactive installations and sound sculptures. His work has been presented at museums, galleries, and film festivals, including the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, the European Media Art Festival, the Athens Film and Video Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pacific Film Archive, West Bund 2013: a Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary art, Shanghai, Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism, and the Arsenale of Venice in Italy.
He has received awards including the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and Juror’s Awards from the Black Maria Film and Video Festival.
Recently he presented a solo show, A Year from Monday, at Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center in Buffalo, NY and a solo screening, Autumn Air, at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA.
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Jennifer Rudolph & Michael Szonyi (editors)- The China Questions
Wednesday, February 7
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jennifer-rudolph-michael-szonyi-editors-the-china-questions-tickets-41882222856
Many books offer information about China, but few make sense of what is truly at stake. The questions addressed in this unique volume provide a window onto the challenges China faces today and the uncertainties its meteoric ascent on the global horizon has provoked.
In only a few decades, the most populous country on Earth has moved from relative isolation to center stage. Thirty-six of the world’s leading China experts—all affiliates of the renowned Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University—answer key questions about where this new superpower is headed and what makes its people and their leaders tick. They distill a lifetime of cutting-edge scholarship into short, accessible essays about Chinese identity, culture, environment, society, history, or policy.
China has already captured the world’s attention. The China Questions takes us behind media images and popular perceptions to provide insight on fundamental issues.
About the Authors:
Jennifer Rudolph is Associate Professor of modern Chinese political history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Michael Szonyi is Professor of Chinese History at Harvard University.
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The Beautiful Adaptations of Native Plants: Inviting the Wild into our Gardens
Wednesday, February 7
7 - 8:30pm
Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge
Dan Segal, Owner of the Plantsmen Nursery
Co-sponsored by the Friends of Fresh Pond Reservation
Native plants have evolved a broad array of adaptations in the wild, yielding not only the ornamental features embraced in horticulture but many fascinating mechanisms for survival. Dan will take us beyond 'pretty' plant features to explore the origins of these adaptive traits, and the critical importance of regional variation. This insight helps us to select plants that are genuinely suited to our landscapes. He will also compare and contrast large-scale nursery production that favors the cloning of cultivars, with small-scale nursery propagation that favors seed-grown straight species. To know and source native plants effectively, understanding their propagation can be just as important as species selection.
Dan Segal is the owner of The Plantsmen Nursery near Ithaca, NY, which specializes in native plants, local seed collection, and natural landscaping. He has collected and propagated over 1,000 species of native plants in his three decades of work as a nurseryman, giving him great insight into the fascinating variety of adaptations that plants have evolved to survive. He founded the Ithaca Native Plant Symposium in 2009.
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Facing the Flint crisis: documentary & discussion with Flint organizers
Wednesday, February 7
7:30 PM – 9:00 PM EST
First Church In Jamaica Plain, 6 Eliot Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/facing-the-flint-crisis-documentary-discussion-with-flint-organizers-tickets-42437570917
You’re invited: Please join Corporate Accountability and Jamaica Plain Forum for a documentary screening and community discussion with two water justice organizers from Flint, Michigan.
Nayyirah Shariff and Gina Luster are Flint-based organizers with Flint Rising, a coalition born from the city’s water crisis that is leading the ongoing struggle for justice for Flint residents.
After Flint’s water supply was switched from the Detroit city system to the Flint River in 2014, lead levels spiked, potentially exposing 8,000 children and nearly 100,000 Flint residents to toxic lead levels -- in some cases several times more than the EPA action level. By the date of our event, Flint residents will have gone 1,384 days without clean water. The Flint water crisis is a stark reminder of the realities of environmental racism in the U.S. and the devastating impacts of lack of access to clean, safe drinking water, which affects one in four people worldwide.
The event will begin with a screening of a short documentary called Here's to Flint, which tells the story of how one of the biggest environmental scandals of our generation took place. Then, Nayyirah and Gina will tell their own stories and the stories of other organizers who worked and continue to work tirelessly against great odds to secure justice for their community. You’ll hear how they’re exposing the racist emergency management law in Michigan and challenging the reckless government officials and corporate interests whose policies and practices blatantly disregarded the lives and health of poor and Black residents in the city.
It has been over 1,300 days since residents of Flint have had access to clean water -- and there is still so much to be done to secure justice. Come join us and learn what actions we can take to ensure everyone has access to safe drinking water at rates affordable for all for generations to come.
Co-sponsors: Flint Rising, Corporate Accountability, Jamaica Plain Forum
For more on the Flint water crisis and Flint Rising, visit: www.flintrising.com. For more on Corporate Accountability’s water campaign visit www.corporateaccountability.org.
*The screening will be preceded by a supporters reception at a nearby home. For more information or to RSVP for the reception please contact Marilyn Willmoth at RSVP at corporateaccountability.org
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Resistance Mic!
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2018, 8 – 10 p.m.
WHERE Oberon, 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Concerts, Humanities, Law, Music, Opera, Poetry/Prose, Special Events, Support/Social, Theater
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, American Repertory Theater
SPEAKER(S) Beekan Erena
Richard Hoffman
Obehi Janice
Dom Jones
Sonya Larson
Sebastian Jones
Kuumba Singers of Harvard College
Hosted by Timothy Patrick McCarthy and Sarah Sweeney
COST $5-10
CONTACT INFO info at resistancemic.org
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.
LINK https://americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/resistance-mic
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Thursday, February 8
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MLK Celebration Luncheon
Thursday, February 8
11:00am to 1:00pm
MIT Building 50, Walker Memorial, Morss Hall, 142 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
All members of the MIT community are warmly invited to the 2018 Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Luncheon, "Sustaining the struggle for equity: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Seating is limited; please register at http://iceo.mit.edu/rsvp.
We gather each February as a community to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The program honors Dr. King's dual emphasis on global and local issues, including remarks by MIT President Rafael Reif, a brief address by a graduate and an undergraduate student, and announcement of the 2018 MLK Leadership Award recipients. The 2018 keynote speaker will be Wade Davis, former NFL player, equality advocate, and educator.
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Pursuing Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities
Thursday, February 8
11:45AM TO 1:00PM
Harvard, Fainsod Room, 3rd Floor, Littauer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
William C. Clark, Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development, will give a talk as part of M-RCBG's Business and Government Seminar Series.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/news-events/event-calendar
mrcbg at hks.harvard.edu
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Pipeline Economics
Thursday, February 8
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Elizabeth Stanton, Environmental economist/Founder, Applied Economics Clinic
Proposals to construct new gas and oil pipelines around the United States have sparked controversy and protest, sometimes with deadly consequences for those seeking to protect environmental resources and cultural artifacts. Economic analysis has an important role to play in determining the pros and cons of pipeline projects, especially when it is used to shed light on which communities will benefit and which will be hurt. This talk will introduce the Applied Economics Clinic, focusing on its work related to pipelines.
Dr. Elizabeth A. Stanton is the founder and director of the Applied Economics Clinic. She has worked for more than 16 years as an environmental economist, and has authored more than 140 reports, policy studies, white papers, journal articles, and book chapters on topics related to energy, the economy, and the environment. Dr. Stanton leads studies examining environmental regulation, cost- benefit analyses, and the economics of energy efficiency and renewable energy. She has submitted expert testimony and comments in Illinois, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and several federal dockets. Her recent work includes extensive analysis of the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan, developing testimony on Massachusetts’ Global Warming Solutions Act, and analysis of the need for new gas pipelines in New England and the U.S. Southeast.
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Data Science to Solve Social Problems — Long Beach Innovation Team
Thursday, February 8
12:00pm to 1:15pm
MIT, Building E51-095, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc-A0GYhrxm5UUy8VyZNx0WetMD3-Mi8F_sC5o9CPGhIZNh6Q/viewform
Learn about the City of Long Beach Innovation Team’s work using data science and technology to improve social services.
The City of Long Beach Innovation Team (i-team) was launched in May of 2015 and extends the city's capacity to rapidly advance research and development through a data-driven and transparent approach to innovation. In 2017, the i-team shifted its focus from economic development to public safety and works with partners both inside and outside of city government to develop new approaches to solving urban challenges.
The MIT GOV/LAB is a research group of political scientists focusing on innovation in citizen engagement and government responsiveness.
The Data Science to Solve Social Problems series features practitioners who are applying data science techniques to real world social problems. This series aims to promote dialogue and collaboration between social scientists and data analysts / engineers working on innovative projects.
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Ambient Thickness: On the Atmospheric Materiality of the Anthropocene
Thursday, February 8
12:00PM TO 2:30PM
Harvard, Science Center 469, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Gastón Gordillo, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia
Abstract: In the humanities, concepts such as “place” and “territory” help us account for the social-historical nature of space; but these are anthropocentric concepts that are unable to explain those spatial dimensions that are indifferent to how humans experience them, such as the intensification of weather events associated with climate change. Drawing from my fieldwork about deforestation by agribusiness in northern Argentina, I propose to analyze the shifting atmospheres affected by environmental disruptions through the concept of “ambient thickness”: i.e. the ambient intensities that in the form of heat, droughts, or wind affect human practice and sensory experience. Attentiveness to how local people are affected by, and respond to, shifting levels of ambient thickness, I argue, can help us appreciate the often elusive, ever-shifting but palpable materiality of the spatial-environmental transformations and turbulences that define “the Anthropocene.”
History of Science Seminar
https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/event/history-science-seminars-gastón-gordillo
Contact Name: hsdept at fas.harvard.edu
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Dissecting and Reconstructing Plant Metabolism With Synthetic Biology
Thursday, February 8
4:00 PM EST
MIT, Building 32-141, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Patrick Shih, Indiana University
More information at http://be.mit.edu/news-events/events/dissecting-and-reconstructing-plant-metabolism-synthetic-biology
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Talk of the Lab
Thursday, February 8
4:00pm to 5:30pm
MIT, Building 48-308, 15 Vassar Street, Cambridge
This special seminar brings together four different labs working at the intersection of ecology and evolution.
Come and hear about the latest research going on at Parsons.
Prof. David des Marais “Life history variation in plants”
Prof. Penny Chisholm “Channeling Prochlorococcus”
Prof. Martin Polz “On microbial communities”
Prof. Serguei Saavedra “Structural Ecology”
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Does the Middle East Really Need Nuclear Power?
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, 4:10 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Littauer Building, Fainsod Room, Littauer-324, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Conferences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Middle East Initiative/Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) A seminar with Ali Ahmad, Scholar In-Residence and Director, Energy Policy and Security in the Middle East Program, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut.
LINK https://www.belfercenter.org/event/does-middle-east-really-need-nuclear-power
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Askwith Forums – Teach Us All: A Community Conversation with Members of the Little Rock Nine
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, 4:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge
TYPE OF EVENT Forum, Question & Answer Session
PROGRAM/DEPARTMENT Alumni, Askwith Forum
BUILDING/ROOM Askwith Hall
CONTACT NAME Roger Falcon
CONTACT EMAIL askwith_forums at gse.harvard.edu
CONTACT PHONE 617-384-9968
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT Harvard Graduate School of Education
REGISTRATION REQUIRED No
ADMISSION FEE This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP REQUIRED No
FEATURED EVENT Askwith Forums
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education
DETAILS 4:30-5:50 p.m. Film screening** of “Teach Us All”
6-7 p.m. Panel
Members of the Little Rock Nine:
Minnijean Brown Trickey, nonviolence and antiracism facilitator, Sojourn to the Past
Terrence Roberts, principal, Terrence Roberts Consulting
Additional speakers:
Jonathan Crossley, principal, Baseline Academy, Little Rock, AK
Sonia Lowman, director, Teach Us All; director of communications, Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes
Treopia G. Washington, director of special initiatives, College of Education, Bowie State University
Moderator: Domonic Rollins, senior diversity and inclusion officer and special assistant to the deans, HGSE
Join members of the Little Rock Nine, who sixty years ago faced violent resistance when desegregating Central High in Arkansas; the Little Rock Baseline Academy Elementary School Principal; and the director of the documentary “Teach Us All” for an unforgettable evening, which will include a screening of “Teach Us All”.
**NOTE: Film will not be part of the HGSE live stream. Please visit http://www.teachusallfilm.org/ for advance screening information.
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From Augmented to Virtual Learning: Affordances of Different Mixes of Reality for Learning
Thursday, February 8
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 56-114, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
Mixed realities that combine digital and real experiences are now becoming a true reality. These experiences are being delivered over smartphones as well as increasingly accessible and practical head mounted displays. This ubiquity of devices is in turn making mixed reality the next digital frontier in entertainment, education and the workplace. But what do we know about where these technologies have value? Where do they add to the learning experience? And what theories and evidence can we generate and build upon to provide a foundation for using these technologies productively for learning?
We have been working on mixed realities in education for over a decade and have started to learn about where, when and for whom they can add value. Part of this understanding stems from differentiating the wide variety of mixed realities and focusing on affordances. Landscape based augmented realities, popularized by Pokemon Go, have fundamentally different affordances than smartphone based virtual realities like Google Cardboard, which in turn are different than immersive experiences delivered by headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. The core of our work has been doing research and development to identify these affordances that match with key learning challenges, particular in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). In this talk, Eric Klopfer will draw upon our work in location-based augmented reality games, as well as work in virtual reality. In the realm of augmented reality, he will discuss a long series of design experiments through which we have learned about where these technologies play an important role in learning, primarily around socio-scientific issues. In the space of virtual reality our newest designs and experiments focus on the concept of scale, and how we can use virtual realities to teach about STEM systems at radically different scales. This talk will provide a history and overview of these experiences, including iterations of design research experiments.
Eric Klopfer is Professor and Director of the Scheller Teacher Education Program and The Education Arcade at MIT. Klopfer’s research focuses on the development and use of computer games and simulations for building understanding of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
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Exposing Global Corruption: The Inside Story of The Panama/Paradise Papers Investigations
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 8, 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) Marina Walker Guevara, Frederik Obermaier, P Vaidyanathan Iyer, Samantha Henry
CONTACT INFO IOP Forum Office
617-495-1380
DETAILS Marina Walker Guevara, Deputy Director, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Frederik Obermaier, Investigative Reporter, Süddeutsche Zeitung
P Vaidyanathan Iyer, The Indian Express
Edward Mason Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School MPA/MC 2018
Samantha Henry (Moderator), Assistant Director for Programming and Special Projects, The Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University
Harvard Kennedy School MPA/MC 2019
LINK http://iop.harvard.edu/forum/exposing-global-corruption-inside-story-panamaparadise-papers-investigations
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Migration and the Humanities: A Conference
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Piper Auditorium, Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Concerts, Education, Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Humanities, Lecture, Music, Poetry/Prose, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
Sponsored by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
CONTACT INFO humcentr at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Performance by Members of the Silkroad Ensemble
Edward Perez ’00, bass; Martine Thomas ’18, viola; Hadi Eldebek, oud
Introduction by Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard University
Homi Bhabha, Harvard University
Reading by Junot Díaz, Novelist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Conversation with Junot Díaz; Parul Sehgal, New York Times Book Critic; Homi Bhabha
LINK http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/migration-and-humanities-conference
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RPP Colloquium Series: Why Nonviolent Civil Resistance Works: Highlighting the Power of Spiritually-Engaged Communities in Movements for Sustainable Peace
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018, 6 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Religion, Special Events
SPONSOR Religions and the Practice of Peace, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at HDS
CONTACT Laura Krueger
DETAILS Space is limited. RSVP is required at https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_aUU3rN9JdvAV80J&Q_JFE=0
This colloquium explores some of the key challenges that nonviolent resistance movements face, including obstacles to building and maintaining movement cohesion, ensuring effective communication, and gaining political leverage; how advocates of principled nonviolence (who promote nonviolence on a moral basis) often clash with advocates of civil resistance (who promote nonviolent action on a strategic or utilitarian basis); the ongoing debate on diversity of tactics; and the ways in which power and privilege undermine solidarity. The colloquium highlights the power of women in these movements and addresses ways in which spiritually-engaged communities are well-positioned to address many of these key movement challenges.
Speaker
Erica Chenoweth, PhD, Professor and Associate Dean for Research, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver; and Fellow, One Earth Future Foundation
Moderator and Respondent
Jocelyne Cesari, PhD, Professor and Chair of Religion and Politics at the University of Birmingham, UK; Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center on Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; Professorial Fellow at the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Society at the Australian Catholic University; and Visiting Professor of Religion and Politics at Harvard Divinity School
Erica Chenoweth, PhD, is an internationally recognized authority on political violence and its alternatives. She is Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Foreign Policy magazine ranked her among the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2013. She won the 2014 Karl Deutsch Award, given annually by the International Studies Association to the scholar under 40 who has made the most significant impact on the field of international politics or peace research. Her book (with Maria J. Stephan), Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order and the 2012 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award. Chenoweth has authored or edited four books, including The Politics of Terror (Oxford, 2018) with Pauline Moore; Rethinking Violence: States and Non-State Actors in Conflict (MIT, 2010) with Adria Lawrence; Why Civil Resistance Works (Columbia University Press, 2011) with Maria J. Stephan; and Political Violence (Sage, 2013). Her research has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR’s Morning Edition, TEDxBoulder, Web Summit, and elsewhere. She co-hosts the blog Political Violence @ a Glance, hosts the blog Rational Insurgent, and blogs occasionally at The Monkey Cage. Along with Marie Berry, she co-directs the Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative, which seeks to shine a light on the work of women activists around the world. And along with Jeremy Pressman, she co-directs the Crowd Counting Consortium, a public interest project that documents political mobilization in the US during the Trump Administration. She holds a PhD and an MA in political science from the University of Colorado and a BA in political science and German from the University of Dayton.
Moderator and Respondent
Jocelyne Cesari, PhD, holds the Chair of Religion and Politics at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center on Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Her work on religion, political violence and conflict resolution has garnered recognition and awards from numerous international organizations such as the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, the Royal Society for Arts in the UK, or the European Academy of religion. She is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute for Religion, Politics and Society at the Australian Catholic University. She teaches on contemporary Islam and politics at Harvard Divinity School and directs the Islam in the West program. Her most recent books are: Islam, Gender and Democracy in a Comparative Perspective, (Oxford University Press, 2017), The Awakening of Muslim Democracy: Religion, Modernity and the State (2014, Cambridge University Press), and Why the West Fears Islam: An Exploration of Islam in Western Liberal Democracies (2013). Her book, When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States (2006), is a reference in the study of European Islam and integration of Muslim minorities in secular democracies. She edited the 2015 Oxford Handbook of European Islam. She coordinates a major web resource on Islam in Europe: http://www.euro-islam.info/.
Co-sponsored by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. With generous support from Rev. Karen Vickers Budney, MDiv '91, and Mr. Albert J. Budney, Jr., MBA '74, as well as Farley Urmston and Karl Bandtel.
Recommended Reading
Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria J Stephan. Why Civil Resistance Works: the Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Columbia University Press, 2013.
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Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico: Roots of the Crisis
Thursday, February 8
6:30pm - 8:30pm
Central Square Public Library, 45 Pearl Street, Cambridge
How was the groundwork for the ongoing hurricane disaster in Puerto Rico laid by a legacy of U.S. intervention, colonialism, neo-liberal economic policy, unsustainable agricultural development, and the deepening climate crisis?
How are Puerto Rican activists promoting economic sustainability and social justice?
Join us for a discussion with
Jovanna Garcia-Soto, Grassroots International
Pedro Reina-Pérez, University of Puerto Rico
Jovanna Garcia-Soto is the Program Coordinator for Latin America at Grassroots International. Grassroots International works in partnership with social movements to create a just and sustainable world by advancing the human rights to land, water, and food through global grantmaking, building solidarity across organizations and movements, and advocacy in the US. Prior to joining Grassroots’ Program team, Jovanna spent five years at the Chelsea Collaborative, where she directed their environmental justice program. She is originally from Puerto Rico and was involved there with the student movement for ending the US military occupation of Vieques. She has also spent some time working in Brazil with the riverine communities in the Amazonian region.
Pedro Reina-Pérez is historian and writer who specializes in contemporary Spanish Caribbean history. The author of eleven books, he is a professor at the University of Puerto Rico and a visiting scholar at the David Rockefeller Center at Harvard.
Sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action; Cosponsored by Grassroots International, Biodiversity for a Livable Planet, and American Friends Service Committee
For more information contact Rosalie at rosalie.h.anders at gmail.com and John at John_Macdougall at uml.edu
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MIT IDEAS Spring Generator Dinner 2018
Thursday, February 8
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
MIT Stratton Student Center (W20) Lobdell, 2nd Floor, 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Working on a project that will contribute to a better world? Want to recruit new team members? Want to get involved, but don't yet have an idea?
Join us for dinner. Pitch an idea. Find a team.
The IDEAS Generator Dinner is one of the best venues to find a team to join, pitch your idea to woo and recruit teammates, or pitch your skills to get hired onto a team. With the last chance to submit a Scope Statement just a few weeks away (March 1, 2018), get started at this event!
Event Program
6:45 Doors Open - Dinner
7:00 Opening Remarks
7:15 Advice from Past Participants
7:45 Sixty-second Pitches
8:15 Networking
9:00 Event Ends
-> PITCH YOUR IDEA / SKILL
During the event, we will have openings for 20-30 sixty-second pitches from attendees.You must sign up in advance to request a slot.
Sign up to pitch an idea or your skills when you register for this event. Those selected to pitch will be contacted before the event with instructions on the process.
Note: Pitching is optional! If you don’t want to pitch, just attend to mix and mingle, meet potential teammates, or hear about some of the exciting projects already underway.
ABOUT THE COMPETITION
Teams must be led by a full-time MIT student with MIT students making significant contributions to the project’s innovation. However, if you are not an MIT student, you are still welcome to attend the Generator Dinner to pitch an idea or get hired on a team. For full competition criteria and guidelines, please visit our website: http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/
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Let’s Talk Carbon Neutrality
Thursday, February 8
7:00 - 9:00 pm
BU, Questrom School of Business, First Floor Auditorium, 595 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Carbon Free Boston is our new initiative to support our commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050. It will review the costs and benefits of policies and technologies that will help us reach that goal. We’re working with our partners at Boston University’s Institute of Sustainable Energy and the Green Ribbon Commission to lead this analysis, which will help inform the next update to Boston’s Climate Action Plan.
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This Week in Dystopia Live Podcast + Screening of Idiocracy
Thursday, February 8
7:00 PM
Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge
FREE – Tickets will be available on a first-come-first-served basis on the day of the event beginnng at 6:00pm.
More information at http://www.brattlefilm.org/2018/02/08/this-week-in-dystopia-live-podcast/
We’re excited to host a screening of IDIOCRACY followed by a live recording of the THIS WEEK IN DYSTOPIA podcast, with special guest co-screenwriter Etan Cohen in person.
Repertory Series: This Week in Dystopia February 8 - 11
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Going Solar in Zimbabwe!
Thursday, February 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
Sajed Kamal returns from launching a solar project
Boston Area Solar Energy Association (BASEA) is proud to announce the return of Sajed Kamal from a solar project in Zimbabwe. Sajed has sown the seeds of solar development in several regions of the world, always with an eye toward future growth, involving local communities in the enterprise. We are happy to be associated with his impactful efforts and we offer our February Forum in his honor, to share stories from this great adventure. In his own words:
"Invited by Kuhlubuka Development Trust, an organization (growing out of the United Church of Christ of Zimbabwe) with a mission to combat climate change, create jobs and promote sustainable economic development, I went to Zimbabwe as a volunteer consultant to launch a pilot solar energy project to include educational presentations and workshops, train a KDT Solar Energy Team, and lay a foundation for the project's future expansion. Traveling deep into the rural heart of Zimbabwe, the team installed solar PV systems at a village hospital, a primary school, and four village homes. I also conducted a solar cooker demonstration/workshop and shared a delicious solar-cooked spiced rice dish with a group of villagers and project folks!
My hosts took me for sightseeing tours to mingle among some fellow creatures (from a safe distance), visit ruins turned national monuments (testifying to the country's glorious past) and stand under gigantic balancing rocks, the geophysical explanation of which remains a mystery."
Come to the February BASEA Forum for a visual tour of the lush, mountainous, fertile and expansive landscapes of Zimbabwe. Be inspired by what can be achieved-and how quickly-when a handful of people, distanced by geography and with limited resources, but united by a vision of a compassionate, sustainable and peaceable world for all, come together. Marvel at safe encounters with Leo the Lion, the hissing Black Mamba, curious baboons, munching giraffes, a friendly herd of zebras, and more! All ages welcome.
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Friday, February 9
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Discovering, Understanding, and Harnessing Gut Microbiome-Drug Interactions
Friday, February 9
8:30AM TO 9:30AM
Harvard, Classroom 375 (formerly Room 310), 3rd floor, Geo Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Emily Balskus (FAS-CCB)
Coffee, tea, and pastries will be served.
MSI Chalk-Talk
http://www.msi.harvard.edu/events/fridays.html
Contact Name: Monica McCallum
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2018 Net Impact Summit
Friday, February 9
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM EST
BU Questrom School of Business, 1 Silber Way, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2018-impact-summit-tickets-39861382468
Cost: $45 – $60
The sixth annual Impact Summit will be held on February 9, 2018 featuring keynote speakers Stephen Ritz and Bob Massie!
About the 2018 Impact Summit:
Now in its sixth year, the Impact Summit is organized through a collaborative effort between NIB and Net Impact and MBA chapters. The annual Impact Summit brings together Boston-area professionals and MBA students for a full day of engaging discussions about how to make lasting social and environmental impact with their careers. The Impact Summit features speakers and exhibitors from the corporate, nonprofit, and government sectors.
Interested in joining Net Impact? Join here! Note: Premium members receive discounted pricing on the Impact Summit!
Download the event app for updates on speakers and sessions. EventsXD (event ID 4642), also viewable here.
Work for a social impact-focused organization? Consider becoming a sponsor! Benefits include a table during the Impact Summit Expo, inclusion in event marketing, and complementary conference passes. For more information, please contact Matt Ng at mng at netimpactboston.org.
Agenda:
9:30 am - 10:00 am Registration / Coffee
10:00 am - 10:45 am Opening Keynote
Stephen Ritz, Author, Educator, Innovator, Urban Farmer
11:00 am - 12:00 pm Session One
Track One (Sustainability): Fair-trade and Ethical Sourcing: Supply Chain in Consumer Goods (Presented by Boston University)
Jesse Last, Director Cocoa Sourcing & Strategic Planning, Taza Chocolate
David Sachs, General Manager of Bay State Milling’s Mini-Milling and Blending business unit.
Ravdeep Jaidka, Oke USA
Cathy Resler, Head of Global Sustainability at Ocean Spray Cranberries
Track Two (Design and Innovation): Technology and Social Impact (Presented by Net Impact Boston Professional Chapter)
Track Three (Business and Impact): Social Impact Consulting (Presented by Tufts Fletcher)
Stacy Neal, FSG
Don Reed, PwC
Emily Gannam, The Fletcher School (moderator)
12:15 pm - 1:30 pm Lunch and Expo
1:45 pm - 2:45 pm Session Two
Track One (Sustainability): Clean Energy and Renewables (presented by Northeastern)
Mr. Joe Rife, Director MechE Alliance Program at MIT; Innovation Executive at Greentown Labs
Mr. Bradford Swing, Director of Energy Policy, City of Boston, Office of the Mayor
Mr. Andre Richter, Managing Consultant, Innogy Consulting
Mr. Ted Wiley, Co-Founder and CEO at Baseload Renewables
Track Two (Design and Innovation): Maximizing Impact on Non-Profit Boards (presented by Net Impact Boston Professional Chapter)
Julie Crockford, Executive Director, Empower Success Corps
Track Three (Business and Impact): Next Wave for Impact Investing: The Circular Nature of Capital Formation, Connecting Social Businesses to Investor Values (presented by Boston University)
Ryan E. Dings, COO & General Counsel, Sunwealth
Jennifer Murtie, COO, Pathstone Federal Street
Pat Miguel Tomaino, Director of Socially Responsible Investing, Zevin Asset Management, LLC
Darby Hobbs, CEO/Founder, SOCIAL3, Co-Founder and Chairperson Conscious Capitalism Boston Chapter and Professor Strategy and Innovation, Boston University (moderator)
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Session Three
Track One (Sustainability): Reducing Food Insecurity Through Agriculture (Presented by Tufts)
Julie Nash, Senior Manager on Ceres Food Team
Track Two (Design and Innovation): Design Thinking Workshop (presented by Net Impact Boston Professional Chapter)
Alexander Dale, Senior Officer, Sustainability Community, Solve
Sharon Bort, Community Relations Officer, Sustainability, Solve
Track Three (Business and Impact): Social Responsibility: Giving Back to Communities (Presented by Clark)
Johanna Jobin, Director, Global EHS & Sustainability, Biogen
Isa Garbutt, Executive Director, Illampu Sustainability Epicenter
Pauline Jurasinski, Associate Director of Program Management & Business Processes, Sanofi Genzyme
Remke van Zadelhoff, Independent Sustainability Consultant
Will O'Brien, Associate Professor of Practice - Sustainability, Clark University (moderator)
4:15 pm - 4:45 pm Closing Keynote
Bob Massie, former executive director of Ceres, environmentalist, entrepreneur and Gubernatorial candidate
4:45 pm - 5:45 pm Happy Hour Reception
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Migration and the Humanities: A Conference
WHEN Friday, Feb. 9, 2018, 10 a.m. – 4:15 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Concerts, Education, Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Humanities, Lecture, Music, Poetry/Prose, Social Sciences, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard
Sponsored by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
COST Free and open to the public; seating is limited.
CONTACT INFO humcentr at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS Opening Remarks 10:00am-10:30am
Identity and Dignity 10:30am–12:45pm
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Princeton University
Veena Das, Johns Hopkins University
Uday Mehta, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Tommie Shelby, Harvard University
Homi Bhabha, Harvard University
Survival and Security 2:00pm–4:15pm
Inderpal Grewal, Yale University
Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, University of Texas, Austin
Bernard Harcourt, Columbia University
Lisa Lowe, Tufts University
John Hamilton, Harvard University
LINK http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/migration-and-humanities-conference
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Shaun King is Speaking at Northeastern University in Boston
Friday, February 9
11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Northeastern, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston
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Biology at Transformative Frontiers
Friday February 9
2:00pm - 3:00pm
MIT, Building 76-156, KI Auditorium
Patrick O. Brown, CEO and Founder, Impossible Foods Inc.
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Worlds & World-building
Friday, February 9
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Jerry Gretzinger, Keynote
Storytelling Space Group
This symposium, convened by the Storytelling Space Group, brings together scholars, architects, psychologists, geographers, artists, and authors to discuss worlds, world-building, and the potentials of world-building as a provocative tool for designers of the built environment. An audacious feat of the imagination, world-building creates rich, challenging, and daunting worlds. As a process, it offers a medium for escaping to the fantastic, the banal, and the dark. Built worlds open up imaginations both deeply personal and overpoweringly collective. They invite exploration, examination, and experimentation with pressing ecological, economic, and political issues. The interdisciplinary group will speculate on how a rekindled discourse on imagination & world-building prompts new insights into our relationship with objects, spaces, and environments, but also with each other, our future, and the worlds in which we are all enmeshed.
And, of course, in the end we want to tell better stories and build better worlds.
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Saturday, February 10
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Return of the Woolly Mammoth
Saturday, February 10
12:30 – 1:30 pm
Museum of Science, Gordon Current Science & Technology Center, 1 Museum of Science Driveway, Boston
Author Ben Mezrich and geneticist George Church describe the science facts behind this science fiction-esque idea. Presentation followed by book signing.
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Worlds & World-building
Saturday, February 10
1:30 Introduction
2:00-3:30 Panel 1: Worlds
4:30-6:00 Panel 2: World-Building
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Storytelling Space Group
This symposium, convened by the Storytelling Space Group, brings together scholars, architects, psychologists, geographers, artists, and authors to discuss worlds, world-building, and the potentials of world-building as a provocative tool for designers of the built environment. An audacious feat of the imagination, world-building creates rich, challenging, and daunting worlds. As a process, it offers a medium for escaping to the fantastic, the banal, and the dark. Built worlds open up imaginations both deeply personal and overpoweringly collective. They invite exploration, examination, and experimentation with pressing ecological, economic, and political issues. The interdisciplinary group will speculate on how a rekindled discourse on imagination & world-building prompts new insights into our relationship with objects, spaces, and environments, but also with each other, our future, and the worlds in which we are all enmeshed.
And, of course, in the end we want to tell better stories and build better worlds.
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Monday, February 12
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PAOC Colloquium: Liz Moyer (University of Chicago)
Monday, February 12
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
My research interests fall in two main threads. The first includes the use of the isotopic composition of atmospheric water vapor as a tracer of convective processes, cirrus formation, and stratosphere-troposphere exchange; and the design of spectroscopic techniques for in-situ trace gas measurements. The second includes climate (and human) response to greenhouse-gas forcing; development of tools for impacts assessment; statistical emulation of climate model output; and climate and energy policy evaluation.
About this Series
The PAOC Colloquium is a weekly interdisciplinary seminar series that brings together the whole PAOC community. Seminar topics include all research concerning the physics, chemistry, and biology of the atmospheres, oceans and climate, but also talks about e.g. societal impacts of climatic processes. The seminars generally take place on Monday from 12-1pm. Lunch is provided to encourage students and post-docs to meet with the speaker. Besides the seminar and lunch, individual meetings with professors, post-docs, and students are arranged.
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Ideation & Design Thinking
Monday, February 12
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 3-442, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Ideation & Design Thinking
12-1PM: Talk by Tactile | 3-442
5-6:30PM: Workshop by Mia Siochi, NASA Langley Research Center | 4-145
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week at mit.edu
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Imperfect Markets versus Imperfect Regulation in U.S. Electricity Generation
Monday, February 12
12:00PM TO 1:30PM
Harvard, Bell Hall, 5th Floor, Belfer Building, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Steve Cicala, Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. Lunch is provided.
Energy Policy Seminar
https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/m-rcbg/cepr/seminar.html
Contact Name: Louisa Lund
louisa_lund at hks.harvard.edu
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The Stylized Facts of Inequality
Monday, February 12
12:15PM TO 2:00PM
Harvard, CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
Daniel Hirschman (Brown, Sociology)
STS Circle at Harvard
http://sts.hks.harvard.edu/events/sts_circle/
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India's Coal Industry: History and Prospects
Monday, February 12
12:30 pm - 1:45 pm
Tufts, Cabot 206, 170 Packard Avenue, Medford
Rohit Chandra is currently a sixth-year doctoral student at the Harvard Kennedy School focusing primarily on energy policy and economic history in India. His dissertation covers the economic and political history of the Indian coal industry from 1959-present. In particular, he looks at how the role of the Indian state, particularly through its state-owned enterprises (first NCDC and then Coal India), has adapted to various changes in the national political and economic environment. Other than his dissertation, he is also currently working with the Regulatory Assistance Project on electricity in Jharkhand and Brookings India on coal sector reforms. Prior to his doctoral work he worked at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and the Center for Advanced Study of India in Philadelphia.
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Tech Talk for Educators: Social Media for Family Engagement
WHEN Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, 3 – 4:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Avenue, Allston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Classes/Workshops, Education, Special Events
COST Free and open to the public
DETAILS By better understanding digital trends in social media, educators can open channels of communication with students and families. From likes to retweets and comments, social media provides endless opportunities for families to get involved. Yet these tools can also raise a number of questions. What platform is best for open discussions? What type of content is most interesting or useful to parents?
Join the Harvard Ed Portal for Tech Talk for Educators: Social Media for Family Engagement, a free workshop presented by Rhianon Gutierrez, Digital Learning Specialist at Boston Public Schools. Attendees will gain hands-on experience with select social media tools to help promote meaningful communication and digital citizenship practices with students and families. They will also hear from other educators about their experiences using these tools.
LINK https://edportal.harvard.edu/event/tech-talk-educators-social-media-family-engagement
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The Epidemic of Poverty: The Government Imperative
WHEN Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, 4:15 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Radcliffe, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
SPEAKER(S) Abdul El-Sayed, physician; former health director of the City of Detroit; candidate for the governor of Michigan
COST Free
CONTACT INFO events at radcliffe.harvard.edu
DETAILS After Detroit’s bankruptcy, El-Sayed rebuilt the city’s health department to meet the needs of Detroit’s most vulnerable citizens. His achievements include providing vision care to children, forcing Marathon Petroleum to reduce its sulfur dioxide emissions in the state’s most polluted zip code, and screening every Detroit public school building for lead poisoning in the water. Now, he’s running for governor of Michigan. Register online.
LINK https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2018-abdul-el-sayed-lecture
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Energy for Development Talk by Rohini Pande
Monday, February 12
5.30 pm
MIT, Building E18-304, 50 Ames Street, Cambridge
Professor Rohini Pande, Harvard Kennedy School
Professor Pande is a renowned economist whose research examines the costs and benefits of informal and formal institutions in the developing world and the role of public policy in affecting change. Her work has been published in top journals and featured in media outlets such as The Guardian, Vox, The New York Times, Times of India, The Economist, and Quartz India.
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Lesson on Mindfulness: Perspective from Zen Buddhist Priest in Kyoto
Monday, February 12
5:30pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building E40-496, 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Rev. Takafumi Zenryu Kawakami, Deputy head priest, Shunkoin Temple, Myoshinji, Kyoto will lead us in a thoughtful discussion and practice of mindfulness.
Mindfulness has become a significant phenomenon in the West that is also becoming increasingly popular in Asia. Mindfulness is generally defined as non-religious meditation. As a secular practice supported by scientific evidence, mindfulness is now accepted as a valid medical and therapeutic method that has been broadly incorporated into workplace and school wellness programs.
This Western and de-contextualized perspective of mindfulness began in the late 1970s. The practice of mindfulness in Japan, however, has its roots in Buddhism and is not just about meditation. To fully appreciate the importance and meaning of mindfulness, it should be considered within the context of Buddhist philosophy, like the concept of no-self. Ultimately, mindfulness is about much more than achieving temporal happiness and relaxation, it is about changing one’s approach to actuality. This talk will highlight the importance of re-contextualizing mindfulness and present its holistic practice from the Zen Buddhist perspective.
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New Discoveries at Wadi al-Jarf
WHEN Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Museum of Natural History, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Education, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Semitic Museum
SPEAKER(S) Gregory Marouard, Research Associate in Egyptian Archaeology, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
COST Free and open to the public.
CONTACT INFO semiticm at fas.harvard.edu, (617) 495-4631
DETAILS Located along the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, Wadi al-Jarf is considered the oldest known harbor in the world. This exceptional 4,600-year-old site dates to the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty, the “golden age” of ancient Egypt. In this free and public lecture presented by the Harvard Semitic Museum, Gregory Marouard, Research Associate in Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Chicago, will discuss recent archaeological excavations at Wadi al-Jarf, including the discovery of hundreds of papyrus fragments that provide important details about the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza and insights into the complex organization and well-structured logistics of royal Egyptian projects.
LINK https://semiticmuseum.fas.harvard.edu/event/new-discoveries-wadi-al-jarf
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Eliminate the Muslim: Science, Religion, and the Future of Brown
WHEN Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, 6 – 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Sperry Room, Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
SPONSOR Science, Religion, and Culture Program
CONTACT Amanda Heffner-Wong
DETAILS In a present punctuated by bans, walls, registries, violence, and deportations, what is the future of black, brown, and queer? The B/B/Q person is stuck in a timeplay where the future is only a repetition of the present, and affirmation of the past. Thinking through science (fiction), religion and culture, we discuss what the future means, what time entails and what implications a timeplay has on present and future identities. The talk/talk-back will be followed by a Science, Religion, and Culture Program Open House Reception.
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Boston New Technology Startup Showcase #BNT86
Monday, February 12
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
10 Ware Street · Cambridge
Upon Arrival: Look for BNT signs and be ready to present your Photo ID at our check-in desk to receive your name tag.
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/Boston_New_Technology/events/246972944/
Cost: $12.00 /per person
Join Boston New Technology at Alley Cambridge on February 12th to:
See 7 innovative and exciting local technology product demos, presented by startup founders
Network with 150 attendees from the Boston-area startup/tech community
Get your free professional headshot photo from Kubica & Nguyen
Enjoy dinner with beer, wine, other beverages and more!
Please click here to share/tweet this event. (https://ctt.ec/422gQ)
Each presenter gets 5 minutes for a product overview & demonstration and 5 minutes for Q&A. Please follow @BostonNewTech (http://twitter.com/BostonNewTech/) and support our startups by posting on social media using our #BNT86 hashtag. We'll retweet you!
To save on tickets and enjoy exclusive benefits, purchase a BNT VIP Membership. Learn more: http://bit.ly/bNtvip
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How to Think Globally & Act Locally
Monday, February 12
7:00 PM
Belmont Library (Assembly Room), 336 Concord Avenue, Belmont
Note: Dr. Cziczo's appearance is by special request.
Dan Cziczo, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Secondary Appointment: Civil and Environmental Engineering Cziczo Research Group
A discussion: how to be effective global citizens:
the most important things to know about climate change
the most effective ways to shape climate policy
the most effective actions to take individually
Selected awards
The Citizen Literacy Series: science-media-civic literacy for an informed, engaged public
Science for the Public, Belmont Media Center, and Belmont Public Library
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Anatomy of a Genocide
Monday, February 12
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EST
Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Avenue, Cambridge
Omer Bartov
A fascinating and cautionary examination of how genocide can take root at the local level—turning neighbors, friends, and even family members against one another—as seen through the eastern European border town of Buczacz during World War II.
For more than four hundred years, the Eastern European border town of Buczacz—today part of Ukraine—was home to a highly diverse citizenry. It was here that Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In truth, though, this genocide didn’t happen so quickly.
In Anatomy of a Genocide Omer Bartov explains that ethnic cleansing doesn’t occur as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren’t just sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbors and friends and family. They are human beings, proud and angry and scared. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder: an island of normality floating on an ocean of blood.
About the Author: Omer Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University. He is the author of Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz, along with several other well-respected scholarly works on the Holocaust and genocide, including Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories and Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine. He has written for The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and The New York Times Book Review. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Taking Note: Connecting Citizen Science to Science Learning
Monday, February 12
7:00–8:30pm
Arnold Arboretum, Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain
Colleen Hitchcock, PhD, Assistant Professor of Ecology, Department of Biology and
Colleen Hitchcock will speak about the value of taking note of natural phenomena and the contributions such actions can make to science, society, and one’s own scientific and bio-literacy. She will share how citizen science is used in courses and on campus to educate and engage students. Finally, Colleen will introduce the 2018 City Nature Challenge on iNaturalist, a citizen science project coordinated by Environmental Studies at Brandeis University, UMass Boston, Zoo New England, New England Ocean Science Education Collaborative, Mass Audubon, Encyclopedia of Life at Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, MIT Senseable lab, and Earthwatch Institute. Following Colleen’s presentation, Danny Schissler, Research Assistant in the Friedman Lab, will introduce TreeVersity, an online citizen science initiative at the Arnold Arboretum to classify over 25,000 historic and contemporary plant images.
Fee Free, but registration requested
Register at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.
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Tuesday, February 13
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MIPS SEMINAR: Nanoparticles and extracellular nanovesicles in the lungs- who talks to whom about what
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 9:30 – 10:30 a.m.
WHERE Harvard, HSPH Building I, Room 1302, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Research study, Science
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR MIPS/HSPH
SPEAKER(S) Nagarjun V. Konduru, PhD, Research Associate, MIPS, HSPH
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Torrents, turds & tilapia: ecosystem approaches to mitigate disaster risk, waterborne disease and aquatic biodiversity loss in Pacific Island watersheds
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, 26 Oxford Street, Room 429, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Environmental Sciences, Health Sciences, Research study, Science, Sustainability
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Planetary Health Alliance
SPEAKER(S) Dr Aaron Jenkins, inaugural Research Fellow in Planetary Health at University of Sydney and Edith Cowan University
COST Free, lunch provided
CONTACT INFO Planetary Health Alliance, pha at harvard.edu
DETAILS The health and well being of inhabitants in small Pacific Island watersheds are highly influenced by the interacting processes of climate (e.g. tropical cyclones and flooding) and land cover (e.g. deforestation and road building) change. A breadth of research conducted over the past decade has shown that prolonged rainfall and flooding in heavily altered watersheds is associated with loss of downstream biodiversity and increased incidence of waterborne bacterial disease. Environment, public health, and disaster agency interventions have been mostly piecemeal, with few attempts at watershed-scale preventative actions or joint assessment of downstream impacts on ecosystem services such as disease regulation or food provision. This talk will bring together existing and newly initiated research on watershed landscape condition, aquatic biodiversity, socio-cultural aspects of resource use, bacterial pathogens in aquatic environments, and incidence of waterborne diseases in Pacific Islands to explore some of the complex connections between waterborne diseases and aquatic biodiversity loss. This stream of research is helping to provide clearer guidance for cross-sectoral coordination of watershed management to improve both environmental provision services and public health outcomes.
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Sr. Helen Prejean at the Harvard Law Forum
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Law School, Langdell Hall North, Vorenberg Classroom, Room 225, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Law Forum
SPEAKER(S) Sr. Helen Prejean
CONTACT INFO Pete Davis, PeDavis at jd18.law.harvard.edu, 347-453-3135
DETAILS Sr. Helen Prejean is the nation's leading death penalty abolitionist. She is the author of the bestselling book Dead Man Walking, which was made into an Oscar-winning movie with Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.
She is coming to Harvard Law School to share her experience and wisdom from a life of fighting abolish the death penalty.
The event is open to the public and pizza will be provided. Contact PeDavis at jd18.law.harvard.edu for more information.
LINK https://www.facebook.com/events/157156725015214/
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How to use Life Cycle Assessment to Strengthen your Sustainability Program
Tuesday, February 13
12- 1pm ET
Webinar
RSVP at https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/3577870597474386177
With presentations from Kohler Co. and Hypertherm
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) when implemented into your sustainability program, can constructively influence business decisions and mitigate risks within product material and supplier selections. It can also enhance product efficacy and brand integrity.
Case in point...
Hear from Jeff Zeman, Principal Environmental Engineer at Kohler Co., a company committed to sustainability as critical to its mission of gracious living for those touched by its products and services , and Robin Tindall, Environmental Stewardship Manager at Hypertherm, a world-class manufacturer and recent Environmental Merit Award recipient from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, about how LCA has greatly and positively influenced their sustainability programs.
Two uniquely different companies with two uniquely different successful approaches to sustainability, both grounded in life cycle assessment.
Kohler uses life cycle assessment to inform its Design for Environment (DfE) program, and to provide environmental impact transparency through Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).
Certified EPDs are offered through in-house experts in product sustainability, with ever-growing transparency capability for hundreds of individual product models on demand. EPDs allow informed decision-making for both Kohler designers as part of the product development process and customers, by disclosing a product's cradle-to-grave environmental impacts and product certifications. Many of Kohler Co.'s clients seek products with EPDs for credits towards LEED-certified building projects.
Hypertherm has conducted screening LCAs across all product families.
And to bring LCA to the drawing table, Hypertherm created their own custom Design for Sustainability Scorecard, which is being used for new products in the design phase, as well as in the research and development phases. This allows designers to ask questions, such as which material has fewer environmental impacts, while design revisions can still be easily made.
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Speaker Series: Garrett Graff
Tuesday, February 13
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Taubman 275, 15 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Garrett M. Graff, a distinguished magazine journalist and historian, has spent more than a dozen years covering politics, technology, and national security. Today, he serves as the director of the Aspen Institute’s cybersecurity and technology program, and is a contributor to WIRED, Longreads, and CNN. He’s written for publications from Esquire to the New York Times, and served as the editor of two of Washington’s most prestigious magazines, Washingtonian and POLITICO Magazine, which he helped lead to its first National Magazine Award, the industry’s highest honor. Graff is the author of multiple books, including The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House, which examined the role of technology in the 2008 presidential race, and The Threat Matrix: The FBI At War, which traces the history of the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts. His most recent book, Raven Rock, about the government’s Cold War Doomsday plans, was published in May 2017. He also is the chair of the board of the National Conference on Citizenship, a congressionally-charted civic engagement group founded by Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
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Recovering Agency: The Politics of Reconstruction in Post-Tsunami Tohoku
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018, 12:30 – 2 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Bowie-Vernon Room (K262), CGIS Knafel Building, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
SPEAKER(S) Andrew Littlejohn, Postdoctoral Fellow, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Moderator: Susan Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics and Director, WCFIA Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University
Discussant: Daniel Aldrich, Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Director, Masters Program in Security and Resilience, Northeastern University
COST Free and open to the public
LINK https://programs.wcfia.harvard.edu/us-japan/calendar/upcoming
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Social Change & Impact
Tuesday, February 13
4:00pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 2-131, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Workshop by Lean On Me and PKG Public Service Center
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week at mit.edu
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Urban Farming Institution Celebration at Flatbread
Tuesday, February 13
5pm - 7pm
Sacco's Bowl Haven, 45 Day Street, Somerville
Join the Urban Farming Institute at Flatbread in Davis Square for a night of amazing (responsibly-sourced + ridiculously-delicious) wood-fired pizza! Great food, great drinks, great company!
From 5pm to closing, UFI will get a portion of the sales of every pizza ordered (dine-in or takeout). All proceeds will support our critical job training and land transformation work across Boston.
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Governor Francis W. Sargent: Fisheries Manager
Tuesday, February 13
5:15PM
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston
The Massachusetts Historical Society hosts Benjamin Kochan, Boston University with comment by Brian Payne, Bridgewater State University. Free and open to the public. Light sandwich supper will follow.
Boston Environmental History Seminar
http://www.masshist.org/research/seminars
Contact Name: seminars at masshist.org
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Seeing Text, Reading Maps
Tuesday, February 13
5.30 pm: Lecture, Lamont Library, Forum Room
6.30 pm: Viewing of the exhibition "Landmarks: Maps as Literary Illustration," and reception, Houghton Library, Edison and Newman Room
Harvard, Lamont Library, 11 Quincy Street, Cambridge
RSVP at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdtkMPTdN_UxcheqSJhxvuUQPcNNLmp5wcZXvcBGqAkRotKEA/viewform
Houghton library presents a lecture to celebrate its latest major exhibition "Landmarks: Maps as Literary Illustration."
"Seeing Text, Reading Maps"
Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
Specializing in the relations of space and writing in literature, cartography, and cinema, Professor Conley will discuss his lifelong fascination with literary maps. Conley’s most recent essay on the subject appears in the newly published "Literature and Cartography : Theories, Histories, Genres," ed. By Anders Engberg-Pedersen (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2017).
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Vannevar Bush Lecture Series on Science and Technology Innovation: William Bonvillian
Tuesday, February 13
6:00pm to 7:00pm
MIT, Building E51-335, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
This lecture series, which includes imminent researchers and innovators from a wide variety of fields across MIT, will showcase the numerous forms that innovation takes and the pathways it can take from ideation to implementation.
Topic Summary
In 2016 the political system experienced significant disruption in part due to an angry voting block suffering from a long decline in American manufacturing, which became particularly acute in the decade of the 2000s. Manufacturing employment fell by one third in this period, 64,000 factories closed, manufacturing capital investment and output suffered, and the productivity rate dropped. The U.S. had been systematically shifting production abroad, and experts began to realize as the next decade began that the decline in its production capability was starting to affect its innovation capacity – which had long been viewed as its core economic strength.
The talk reviews the origins of the policy response to this dilemma, which came to be called “advanced manufacturing.” It will trace the way the foundational concepts were developed in a series of reports from in and out of government. It will explore how, for the first time, an innovation system response was considered and developed to strengthen the U.S. production system. It will examine the key new policy mechanism created by the Administration and supported by Congress, the manufacturing innovation institutes, a complex public-private collaborative model to develop new production technologies and processes, with supporting workforce education. It will review how the new institutes are working, lessons learned as they have started up and possible enhancements that could expand their policy reach. The talk draws on the new book by Bonvillian (with Peter Singer), Advanced Manufacturing - The New American Innovation Policies just released in January by MIT Press.
About the Speaker
William B. Bonvillian is a Lecturer at MIT, and an advisor on research projects at MIT’s Office of Digital Learning and its Industrial Policy Center. From 2006 until 2017, he was director of MIT’s Washington Office, supporting MIT’s historic role in science policy. He teaches courses on innovation systems at MIT and on energy technology policy at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and is coauthor of three books on innovation, Advanced Manufacturing – The New American Innovation Policies (MIT Press 2018), Technological Innovation in Legacy Sectors (Oxford University Press 2015) and Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution (MIT Press 2009). Previously, he worked for over 15 years on innovation issues as a senior advisor in the U.S. Senate, and earlier was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Transportation. He serves on the National Academies of Science standing committee for its Innovation Policy Forum, chairs the Committee on Science and Engineering Policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and serves on the board of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was awarded IEEE’s public service award, and has written and spoken extensively about science and technology and innovation policy issues.
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Boston FinTech: The Role of AI in Financial Services
Tuesday, February 13
6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
ImpactHub Boston, 50 Milk Street, Boston
RSVP at https://www.meetup.com/Boston-FinTech/events/246323872/
Artificial Intelligence (AI), once the domain of science fiction books and films, is now increasingly commonplace. From Amazon's recommendation engine to driverless vehicles to virtual assistants, AI is increasingly part of our everyday life. AI is also having a significant impact on financial services – from algorithmic stock trading applications, to credit card fraud detection and “robo-advisors” providing investment advice. We are convening a panel of hands-on FinTech experts to discuss the use of AI, its future and the ethical implications of its use in influencing what is arguably some of our most important decisions.
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Not Built to Last: Disrupting planning outcomes through temporary placemaking
Tuesday, February 13
6:30pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, Long Lounge, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Panelists:
Zofia Basista, Plateau Urbain
Aurore Rapin, Yes We Camp
Dan Campo, The Accidental Playground
Rahul Mehrotra, Ephemeral Urbanism
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Ecological and Psychological Perspectives on Climate Change: The Science for the Public 2018 Science Lectures at MIT
Tuesday, February 13
7:00 PM
MIT, Building 54-915 (the tallest building on campus), Cambridge
Brian Helmuth, Ph.D., Professor, Marine and Environmental Sciences, Marine Science Center, College of Social Sciences & Humanities; and School for Public Policy/Urban Affairs, Northeastern University Helmuth Lab
John Coley, Ph.D.,, Associate Professor, Psychology, Northeastern University
the impact of climate change on marine ecological systems and the problem of psychological resistance to the facts
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With Passion: An Activist Lawyer’s Journey
Tuesday February 13
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Michael Meltsner
Growing up in a Depression-battered family, one tangled by a mortal secret, With Passion tells the improbable story of an unsung hero of the civil rights movement who thought of himself as a “miscast” lawyer but ended up defending peaceful protesters, representing Muhammad Ali, suing Robert Moses, counseling Lenny Bruce, bringing the case that integrated hundreds of Southern hospitals, and being named “the principal architect of the death penalty abolition movement in the United States.”
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Film Screening - "Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey"
Tuesday, February 13
7:30pm to 9:30pm
MIT, Building 26-100, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Hailed as one of the most influential climbers of all time, Fred Beckey is the original American “Dirtbag"–one who abandons societal norms and material comforts in pursuit of a nomadic mountaineering lifestyle.
This rebel athlete’s lifetime of accomplishments set the bar for the entire sport. He shattered records with an unparalleled string of superhuman first ascents, bushwhacking trails and pioneering direct routes thought previously impassable.
Beckey burned bridges, eschewed fame and stayed unencumbered so his only obligation would remain conquering the next summit. He kept meticulous personal journals where he mused on everything from arcane geology to his romantic life, to the myriad sunrises he witnessed from vantages not seen by anyone else on Earth. An environmentalist before there was such a term, Beckey’s legacy includes 13 essential books that act as blueprints for new generations. He defiantly continued climbing until passing away in October 2017 at age 94.
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Upcoming Events
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Wednesday, February 14
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Skills for the Innovator
Wednesday, February 14
12-1PM
The Engine, MIT Building 6-120, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Talk by Katie Rae
5-6:30PM: Workshop by Gordon Engineering Leadership Program | 4-145
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week at mit.edu
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The Activist Collector: Recovering the Story of an African American Woman in Pre-Apartheid South Africa
WHEN Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018, 12 – 1:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Humanities, Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research
SPEAKER(S) Christa Clarke, Senior Curator, Arts of Global Africa at the Newark Museum
COST Free & open to the public
CONTACT INFO hutchinscenter at fas.harvard.edu
DETAILS A Q+A session will follow the talk.
LINK http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/events-lectures/events/february-14-2018-1200pm/spring-colloquium-christa-clarke
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The Double Game: The Demise of America's First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation
Wednesday, February 14
12:00pm to 1:30pm
MIT, Building E40-496 (Pye Room), 1 Amherst Street, Cambridge
Summary
How did the United States move from a position of nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1960s to one of nuclear parity under conditions of mutual assured destruction in 1972? Drawing on declassified records of conversations, James Cameron argues that John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon struggled to reconcile their personal convictions about the nuclear arms race with the views of the public and Congress. In doing so they engaged in a double game, hiding their true beliefs behind a façade of strategic language while grappling in private with the complex realities of the nuclear age.
Short Bio
James Cameron is an assistant professor of international relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo, Brazil. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at International Security Studies, Yale University and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. He defended his PhD in history at the University of Cambridge in 2013.
SSP Wednesday Seminar
All welcome.
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Slum Upgrading and Long-run Urban Development: Evidence from Indonesia
Wednesday, February 14
2:45pm to 4:00pm
Maisy Wong (University of Pennsylvania)
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The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial in the Trump Era is Threatening our Planet, Politics, and the Public
Wednesday, February 14
4:15PM TO 5:45PM
Harvard, Starr Auditorium, Belfer Building, 2nd Floor, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Join the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Shorenstein Center for a forum discussion with award-winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Tom Toles.
Mr. Mann and Mr. Toles' collaborative book, The Madhouse Effect, discusses how climate change deniers maintain their stance despite the overwhelming scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change. Both Mr. Mann and Mr. Toles have dedicated much of their careers to understanding motivations and biases behind climate change denial, and their book provides readers with strategies for combatting arguments that refuse to accept scientific evidence.
More information at https://www.belfercenter.org/event/madhouse-effect-how-climate-change-denial-trump-era-threatening-our-planet-politics-public
Contact Name: belfer_events at hks.harvard.edu
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Skills for the Innovator
Wednesday, February 14
5-6:30PM
MIT, Building 4-145, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Workshop by Gordon Engineering Leadership Program
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week at mit.edu
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Thursday February 15
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Albedo, Climate, & Urban Heat Island
Thursday, February 15
11 AM EST
Webinar at http://cshub.mit.edu/news/public-webinars
The United Nations predicts that nearly 70 percent of the global population will live in urban environments by the year 2050. This rapid urbanization is changing the surface of the planet, which has an impact on climate regionally and globally. CSHub researchers are studying the effects of albedo, which is the measure of the fraction of solar energy reflected by the Earth’s surface, on climate and the urban heat island effect (defined as a temperature difference between urban areas and their rural surroundings where the city temperature is higher). Lighter color surfaces have a high albedo and reflect light, while darker surfaces have low albedo and absorb light. CSHub researchers have developed an approach to quantify the impacts of changing pavement albedo on the climate and building energy demand and then translate both of those into global warming potential. This webinar will describe the approach and results from recent studies.
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Entrepreneurship & Innovation Resource Roundup
Thursday, February 15
11:30am to 1:30pm
MIT Stata Center, Student Street, First Floor, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
As part of BetterMIT Innovation Week, the MIT Innovation Initiative will be hosting an in-person version of the resource guide on Thursday, February 15, 2018 from 11:30 am–1:30 pm on Stata Student Street.
Come by to learn about the many entrepreneurship and innovation resources available on campus this spring and summer: classes, sources of funding, mentoring programs, makerspaces, prize competitions, and more.
The Innovation Initiative will also be on hand to help answer questions about the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Minor.
As an added bonus, free pizza will be provided for participants!
While normally spread across campus, all of spring’s sources of entrepreneurship and innovation resources will be in one location:
MIT Innovation Initiative
Arts at MIT: Creative Arts Competition
Boston University School of Law Clinics at MIT
Flux
Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program (GEL)
HackMIT
Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship
Lemelson-MIT Program
Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
MISTI: MIT Global Startup Labs
MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition
MIT D-Lab
MIT Hacking Medicine
MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node: MEMSI
MIT I-Corps
MIT Machine Intelligence Community
MIT Sloan Entrepreneurship & Innovation (E&I) Club
MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS)
Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center: IDEAS Global Challenge
Project Manus
ProjX
Sandbox Innovation Fund Program
StartLabs
Thursday, February 15, 2018
11:30 am–1:30 pm
Free pizza will be provided to participants!
Questions? Contact us at innovation at mit.edu
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The Living, Breathing, Hungry Soil: Modern Agriculture in the Age of Climate Change
Thursday, February 15
12:00-1:00pm
Tufts, Rabb Room, Lincoln Filene Center, 10 Upper Campus Road, Medford
Kelsey Sakimoto, Departments of Chemistry and Systems Biology, Harvard University
It comes as no surprise that climate change has already triggered and will continue to present dramatic challenges to modern agriculture. Forward-looking solutions must leverage deeper insight into not only how soil chemistry affects agriculture, but how soil (micro)biology presents both sustainable solutions and challenges. This living collection of soil microorganisms - the soil microbiome - holds untapped potential to not only resist the antagonism of a changing world, but surpass the performance of conventional farming. This talk will focus on our current global practices as well as examine new technologies to feed the world of 2050 and beyond.
Dr. Kelsey K. Sakimoto is a Harvard University Center for the Environment Fellow working on technologies to connect renewable energy with sustainable agriculture. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Yale University, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley. His current postdoctoral work is centered in the laboratories of Daniel Nocera (Chemistry) and Pamela Silver (Systems Biology) at Harvard University/Harvard Medical School.
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Form, Function, and Fossils: Modern Twists on Ancient Evolutionary Transitions
Thursday, February 15
4:00pm
Harvard, Biological Labs Lecture Hall, Room 1080, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge
Stephanie E. PierceStephanie Pierce, Harvard University, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
OEB Seminar
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Ecology, Extinction, and the End of the Second Pandemic: Plague in the Ottoman Empire
Thursday, February 15
4:00PM TO 5:30PM
Harvard, HUCE Seminar Room 429, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Nükhet Varlık, Associate Professor, Rutgers University.
The Environmental History Working Group at Harvard University convenes once or twice a month to discuss the many ways in which humans have shared their history with non-human entities and forces. We welcome participants studying all regions and time periods at any stage of their career and from any relevant branch of history or allied fields.
Environmental History Working Group
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/envihist
Contact Name: Daniel Zizzamia
zizzamia at fas.harvard.edu
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From the Ashes: Film Screening with Producer Sidney Beaumont
Thursday, February 15
5:00pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Building E15-070, Bartos Theater, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge
Join a screening of "From the Ashes" followed by a discussion featuring the film’s producer, Sidney Beaumont
From Appalachia to the West’s Powder River Basin, the film goes beyond the rhetoric of the “war on coal” to present compelling and often heartbreaking stories about what’s at stake for our economy, health, and climate. From the Ashes invites audiences to learn more about an industry on the edge and what it means for their lives.
Doors open at 5PM
Dinner will be served
Hosted by:
Environmental Solutions Initiative, Sustainability Initiative, and Fossil Free MIT
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Dharma Gaze: Practices of Buddhism and Poetry—An Evening with Anne Waldman
WHEN Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018, 5:30 – 7 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Religion
SPONSOR Center for the Study of World Religions
CONTACT CSWR, 617.495.4476
DETAILS “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” —from the Heart Sutra
Based on personal study and experience, this talk will touch on the refuge and Bodhisattva vows, the Six Realms of Existence, “co-emergent wisdom” as well as a parallel vow to poetry, and the joys and contradictions therein. It will also reference Giorgio Agamben’s notion of being contemporary with one’s time as “looking into the darkness.” The presentation will be supplemented by reference to particular writers associated with the Beat Literary Movement as well as the presenter’s own poetry.
Anne Waldman is a poet, teacher, performer, and cultural activist who has been a student of Tibetan Buddhism since 1970. Waldman was one of the founders and directors of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery in NYC and went on to co-found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado with Allen Ginsberg in 1974. Waldman has taught poetics and performed her texts all over the world and has been an active collaborator with composer/vocalist Meredith Monk, choreographer Douglas Dunn, and painter Pat Steir. She was recently the keynote speaker at the Jaipur Festival in India in 2017 and performed at The Casa del Lago Voz Alta festival in Mexico City. With her son Ambrose Bye, and nephew, Devin Brahja Waldman, she is part of the Fast Speaking Music collective and recording label. She is the author of more than 40 books, including her newest title, Trickster Feminism, a book of protest, which is forthcoming from Penguin in 2018.
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Microbial Life: A Universe at the Edge of Sight
Thursday, February 15
6:00PM
Harvard, Geological Lecture Hall (100), 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge
https://hmnh.harvard.edu/event/microbial-life-universe-edge-sight
The Harvard Natural History Museum invites you to an exhibition opening lecture by Roberto Kolter, Professor Emeritus, Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology, Harvard Medical School; Director, Microbial Sciences Initiative, Harvard University; and Scott Chimileski, Microbiologist and Photographer, Harvard Medical School.
Although largely invisible, microbes are ubiquitous and have a profound influence on daily life. Using the familiar environment of our homes as a basis for their talk, Roberto Kolter and Scott Chimileski will guide the audience through a tour of the remarkable microbial universe, from “invisible chefs” instrumental in preparing many of our favorite foods, to microbes that inhabit our bodies and help keep us healthy. In considering the role microbes play in shaping both human life and the natural history of the planet, this lecture will introduce the new Microbial Life exhibition opening to the public Saturday, February 17. Program attendees are welcome to visit the museum galleries after the lecture for a sneak preview of the exhibit.
https://hmnh.harvard.edu/event/microbial-life-universe-edge-sight
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Kurt Forster | The Sites and Sounds of Shells: Modern Concert Halls
Thursday, February 15
6:00pm to 7:30pm
MIT, Building 7- 429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
How could an elitist institution acquire a virtually unique standing around the world? Because it reconciles the conflicting experiences of immersion and engagement in a place of sustained silence while the world has become too lonely for the individual and too loud for our ears. After yesterday’s Museums, today’s Concert Halls extend the quest for a collective experience of intelligence at play. The challenge of designing Concert Halls as urban landmarks has solicited some of the most imaginative architectural ideas.
Kurt Forster is a Visiting Professor at MIT in Spring 2018. He will teach a graduate seminar titled "How the History of the Earth Infringes on Architecture."
Mr. Forster has taught at Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich, and Bauhaus University at Weimar and founded and directed research institutes at the Getty Research Center in Los Angeles and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. He has organized major exhibitions on Schinkel in Chicago, Carlo Scarpa in Vicenza, Italy, Herzog & de Meuron in Montreal, and for the 2004 Venice Biennale. Mr. Forster has published widely on the history of art and architecture. He is a member of the Research Council of the Palladio Center in Vicenza, Italy; the Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau, Germany; and the Accademia di San Lucca in Rome. Mr. Forster attended the universities of Berlin, Munich, and Florence and received a Ph.D. from the University of Zurich.
MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
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The Pilgrim’s Sixth Birthday Party!
Thursday February 15
7:00 pm
Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline
Join us to celebrate the sixth birthday of The Pilgrim, a ten-times-a-year literary magazine from the homeless community of downtown Boston.
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The Islamic Jesus: A bridge between Islam, Christianity—and even Judaism. Featuring: Mustafa Akyol
Thursday, February 15
7:15pm
MIT, Building W11- Main Dining Room, 40 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Religious tensions between Islam, Christianity and Judaism are some of the most complex, consequential and ominous challenges in today’s global community. Mustafa Akyol, a prominent Turkish journalist and Muslim intellectual, offers an unexpected possibility for building bridges between the three Abrahamic faiths: the Islamic Jesus—that is Jesus as he shows up in the Qur’an. Come hear and discuss the “provocative,” “timely and important” insights from Akyol’s new book The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims.
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Darwin Day: Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong
Thursday, February 15
7:15pm to 9:00pm
MIT, Building 4-270, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear), Cambridge
Why does sex exist? What are males for? Is the gender binary real? And why does a microbe have the swingingest sex life of all?
Darwin Day is a celebration of the FEB/12 birthday of naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin, a pivotal figure in the development of the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection. This year, we at the Secular Society of MIT mark it with a presentation by Abby Hafer, a zoologist and speaker who teaches at Curry College and authored Amazon theism-category bestseller "The Not-So-Intelligent Designer".
In this talk, subtitled "Part I -- The Gender Binary" (preemptively, because the misconceptions are too many to cover in a single talk), Dr Hafer will discuss the biological evolution of sex, sex and gender in the animal kingdom, and religious notions of sex and sexuality.
Cake and tea served before talk, audience Q&A after.
One lucky attendee will go home with a Darwin art poster we will randomize out at the end of the event.
Free entry and refreshments. The event will be photographed and recorded.
Facebook event: https://goo.gl/bBHe4U
Please also join us for a nature walk on the following Saturday morning ( event page at https://goo.gl/MSjP5m )
More about Darwin Day: http://darwinday.org
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Friday, February 16, 2018 (All day) to Saturday, February 17, 2018 (All day)
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Timeless Portraits and Dreams: A Festival/Symposium in Honor of Geri Allen
Paine Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA
Friday, February 16, 2018 (All day) to Saturday, February 17, 2018 (All day)
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Friday, February 16, 2018, 12pm
Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge
Keynote Address
Delivered by Farah Griffin of Columbia University.
Friday, February 16, 2018, 8pm
Paine Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Pianos for Geri
A performance curated by Vijay Iyer and featuring composer-pianists Kris Davis, Craig Taborn, Jason Moran, and Iyer in solo and duo configurations.
Saturday, February 17, 2018, 8pm
Paine Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge
Geri: Genius, Grace and Fire
A performance curated by Terri Lyne Carrington and features Carmen Lundy, Oliver Lake, Don Byron, Kris Davis, Tia Fuller, and Yosvany Terry.
Tickets are free and will be available from the Harvard Box Office on February 7, 2018
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Friday, February 16
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BU Questrom TechConnect Conference 2018: The Future of Money
Friday, February 16
8:30 AM – 3:00 PM EST
BU, Questrom School of Business, 595 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bu-questrom-techconnect-conference-2018-the-future-of-money-tickets-41702688865
Cost: $20 – $25
Please join us on February 16th for the annual TechConnect conference where we will gather experts across FinTech to discuss how a new generation of start-ups and established enterprises are improving financial services, cutting costs, and transforming the business world through technology.
Website: https://www.butechconnect.com
For questions please email earthur at bu.edu
Sample Speakers Include
Susan Pandy Ph.D.( Director of Payment Strategies, Federal Reserve of Boston)
Dan Temkin (Co-Founder Legal, First Blood)
Navroop K. Sahdev ( Research Fellow, UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies)
Havell Rodrigues ( CEO, Adjoint)
Alin Tomescu ( PhD Candidate, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory)
Jamie Goldstein ( Founder and Managing Partner, Pillar.Vc)
Michael Sullivan (Co-Founder/CEO - Real Estate Chain)
+ State Street lunch and learn
Why FinTech ?
FinTech is redrawing the lines in the financial sector. Over 80% of financial institutions believe business is at risk to innovators and 77% expect to adopt blockchain as part of an in production system or process by 2020. Even more so, funding for FinTech projects is shifting from VC direct funding to mainstream investments.
The goal of this year’s conference is to provide attendees an introduction to this emerging sector. Key questions that will be answered include.
Where mobile payment adoption has occurred and the technologies supporting it
What is the process of introducing new cryptocurrencies into the market?
How will assets be transferred between single, centralized traditional and Blockchain-enabled ledgers?
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This Garden Is a Town
Friday, February 16 through March 3
9:00am to 6:00pm
MIT, Building 7-408, Anne Whiston Spirn Keller Gallery, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Innovation in the World
Friday, February 16
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 3-310, Margaret Cheney Room, 33 Massachusetts Avenue (Rear), Cambridge
Women in Innovation Talk by Linda Foster
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week at mit.edu
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Global Food+ 2018
Friday, February 16
12:30 PM – 4:30 PM EST
Jaharis Family Center for Biomedical and Nutritional Sciences, 150 Harrison Avenue, Boston
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/global-food-2018-registration-41465288795
The Global Food+ symposium brings together leading faculty from Boston University, Harvard, MIT and Tufts to share their most important new work towards healthier and more sustainable food systems. Our speed talk format allows participants to make new connections across Boston-area schools and types of research spanning a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, from archaeology to theology.
Talks will run continuously from 12:30 to 4:30, followed by a reception. For more information, please visit https://sites.tufts.edu/globalfoodplus2018.
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Seeds as deep-time technologies
Friday, February 16
2:30pm to 4:30pm
MIT, Building E51-095, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Presented by: Courtney Fullilove, Associate Professor, Wesleyan University
Courtney Fullilove will discuss her recent book, The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture, to argue that histories of agricultural development require engagement with multiple timescales, from the Neolithic to the modern. Drawing on her fieldwork in the Caucasus and Central Asia collecting cereals and crop wild relatives for international gene banks, she will discuss the recent sequencing of the wheat genome as an opportunity to think about how historians use genetic records, and the kind of history produced by genomic analysis.
Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History Series
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When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency
Friday, February 16
3:00pm
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and Harvard Book Store are pleased to welcome Bernardo Zacka, junior research fellow at Christ's College Cambridge and imminent MIT assistant professor, for a discussion of his debut book, When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency.
When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government’s human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion and make decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives. Combining insights from political theory with his own ethnographic fieldwork as a receptionist in an urban antipoverty agency, Zacka shows us firsthand the predicament in which these public servants are entangled.
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BetterMIT Innovation Week: Innovation in the World (Speaker Series)
Friday, February 16
5:00pm to 6:30pm
MIT, Building 10-250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Join the UA Innovation Committee in bringing in the new year with the BetterMIT Innovation Week & Makeathon!
As an event by students and for students, our aim is to empower you as you tackle community issues you’re passionate about. So we’re bringing in inspirational speakers to host discussions and workshops.
Questions or want to get involved? Email the Innovation Week team at innovation-week at mit.edu
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Timeless Portraits and Dreams: Pianos for Geri
WHEN Friday, Feb. 16, 2018, 8 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Paine Hall, 3 Oxford Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Concerts, Conferences, Music
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Cosponsors of the Festival/Symposium include the Jazz Research Initiative of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Music Department, Office of the Provost, the Dean of Arts and Humanities, the Associate Provost for the Arts, and the Office for the Arts
COST Event is free. Tickets Required. Limit of 2 tickets per person . Tickets valid until 7:45PM. Available by phone and internet for a fee. Call 617-496-2222 or reserve on line at www.boxoffice.harvard.edu
TICKET WEB LINK http://www.boxoffice.harvard.edu
TICKET INFO The Harvard Box Office 617-496-2222
DETAILS "Timeless Portraits and Dreams: A Festival/Symposium in Honor of Geri Allen" is organized by Vijay Iyer, Ingrid Monson, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Esperanza Spalding. Cosponsors of the Festival/Symposium include the Jazz Research Initiative of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, the Music Department, Provostial Fund for Arts and Humanities, Harvard University Committee on the Arts, the Dean of Arts and Humanities, and the Office for the Arts, all units at Harvard University.
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Saturday, February 17
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BetterMIT Makeathon
Saturday, February 17
MIT, Building E51, Wong Auditorium, 2 Ames Street, Cambridge
Hosted by: UA Innovation Committee & MIT Innovation Initiative
Run by students, for students, the BetterMIT Student Life Makeathon is a weekend in which students collaborate with administrators, faculty members, internal MIT organizations, and student organizations to improve student life at MIT as part of BetterMIT Innovation Week.
The makeathon will have 3 main categories:
Live: Want to revamp study spaces, facilities, or have other ideas to improve living conditions for students? Come meet the Dean of Student Life and be heard!
Learn: Polish the MIT learning experience and help students find their passions amidst MIT’s overwhelming academic resources!
Connect: Together we are strong. If you’re passionate about social justice, fighting depression, or bringing us together as a community, this is the category for you!
We know our needs better than anyone else. Now’s the time to act! Come learn more about the community and how to realize your own initiatives with administrators and faculty representatives from internal MIT organizations, and experienced student innovators such as the creators of firehose and LeanOnMe.
For more information and to register, visit the registration page at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe775jaB_xCurZ1zLTcby92pNDPf9deqBhlq69iRZnMra60tw/viewform by Sunday, February 11th at 11:59pm!
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Monday, February 19
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Feb Fest
Monday, February 19
10:00am to 5:00pm
MIT Museum, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Join us for Feb Fest, our annual celebration of National Engineers Week, during February school vacation, with daily hands-on activities, workshops, and more. Check back for more information, including how to register for our fabulous Feb Fest workshops!
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Tuesday, February 20
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Advancing Justice in Global Trade: Lori Wallach at the Harvard Law Forum
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018, 12 – 1 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Campus Center, Room 1015, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Law, Lecture, Social Sciences
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR The Harvard Law Forum
SPEAKER(S) Lori Wallach, Founder of Global Trade Watch
COST Free, open to the public
CONTACT INFO Pete Davis, PeDavis at jd18.law.harvard.edu, 347-453-3135
DETAILS Lori Wallach (HLS Class of 1990) is the founder of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. She is a 25-year veteran of congressional trade battles, from the 1990s NAFTA fight to the TPP fight this past year. Named a “Politico 50” thinker, doer and visionary, she is one of the nation’s leading advocates of the public interest within the global trade regime.
She is coming to Harvard Law to share with students how they can advance justice and the public interest within the all-too-corporatized global trade system.
Free and open to the public, with pizza served.
Contact Pete Davis at PeDavis at jd18.law.harvard.edu for more information.
LINK https://www.facebook.com/events/1783608245006639/
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PAOC Colloquium: Kristen Corbosiero (U Albany)
Tuesday, February 20
12:00pm to 1:00pm
MIT, Building 54-923, 21 Ames Street, Cambridge
About the Speaker
My research focuses on the interaction between tropical cyclones and the environments in which they are embedded, with an emphasis on storm structure, the intensity and duration of convection, and the properties of clouds that comprise the storm.
I have tackled these problems using both observational data and numerical modeling, and my work has documented the critical role of storm asymmetries on both intensity and track.
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Speaker Series: Elizabeth Bruenig
Tuesday, February 20
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Harvard, Wexner 434, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
Elizabeth Bruenig is a columnist at The Washington Post, where she writes about ethics, politics, theology, and economics from a progressive point of view. She lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and daughter.
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Industrial Agriculture and the Humble Strawberry
Tuesday, February 20
4PM (note time)
Belmont Media Center, 9 Lexington Street, Belmont
Julie Guthman, Ph.D. and UCSC), Professor of Social Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz; Radcliffe Fellow 2017-2018. Dr. Guthman is also a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow.
Dr. Guthman discusses the worrisome features of Big Agriculture in the U.S., with the example of one of America's favorite fruits, the strawberry. Industrialized agriculture produces massive crops, but this process requires plant breeding that sacrifices flavor and nutritional quality. Big Ag also depends on extensive use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that destroy the soil and cause serious environmental pollution. Dr. Guthman's forthcoming book will examine how efforts to manage a single soil pathogen ( Verticillium dahliae) gave rise to the modern strawberry industry --and the impact in California.
Dr. Guthman will also discuss her other studies of Big Agriculture in America and its impact on both the environment and human health. She is the author of the widely praised Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism, a book that is a must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between public health and modern food production.
Contemporary Science Issues and Innovations
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Privacy Despite Mass Surveillance
Tuesday, February 20
4:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Refreshments: 3:45 PM
MIT, Building 32-D463 Star, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge
Speaker: Sebastian Angel
Abstract: In the past decade there has been a significant increase in the collection of personal information and communication metadata (with whom users communicate, when, how often) by governments, Internet providers, companies, and universities. While there are many ongoing efforts to secure users' communications, namely end-to-end encryption messaging apps and E-mail services, safeguarding metadata remains elusive.
I will present a system called Pung that makes progress on this front. Pung lets users exchange messages over the Internet without revealing any information in the process. Perhaps surprisingly, Pung achieves this strong privacy property even when all providers (ISPs, companies, etc.) are arbitrarily malicious.
I will also present several improvements to a general cryptographic building block called private information retrieval (PIR) that underlies many privacy preserving systems including Pung. Among these improvements, I will discuss SealPIR, a new PIR library that achieves orders of magnitude more network efficiency than the state-of-the-art. Finally, I will briefly touch on some of my work on verifiable computation and interfacing with malicious USB devices.
Bio: Sebastian Angel is a Ph.D. candidate at The University of Texas at Austin and a visiting academic at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. His research interests are in systems, security, and networking.
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Mellon Seminar- Open Access and Research into History: Issues of Copyright
Tuesday, February 20
4:00 pm to 6:30 pm
BU, 610 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
Casey Westerman, Chief Librarian, Institute for Advanced Studies on the Gödel MaxPhil Notebooks, joined by Peter Suber (Harvard Library and Berkman Klein Center).
More information at http://www.bu.edu/calendar/?day=2018-2-20&category=lectures&uid=201676@17.calendar.bu.edu
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Israel's Democratic Slippage and its Implications
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018, 4:10 – 5:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard, Allison Dining Room, Taubman Building, Fifth Floor, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Lecture
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School
SPEAKER(S) Naomi Chazan, Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; former Member of Israeli Knesset (1992-2003)
DETAILS A public address by Naomi Chazan, Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; former Member of Israeli Knesset (1992-2003).
Moderated by Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Affairs, HKS.
For close to a decade, Israel has been undergoing a process of democratic recession which is transforming it into a country which is divesting itself of many of its democratic trappings. This lecture will address the causes for this transition, its dynamics, its most recent manifestations and, on this basis, its key implications both domestically and internationally.
LINK https://www.belfercenter.org/event/israels-democratic-slippage-and-its-implications
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Emile Bustani Seminar: “Donald Trump's Generous Offer on Jerusalem”
Tuesday, February 20
4:30pm to 6:00pm
MIT, Building E51-325, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge
Salim Tamari, Director, Institute of Palestine Studies, Adjunct Prof., Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, Prof. of Sociology, Birzeit University
As Israel celebrates, and the rest of the world condemns, Donald Trump’s declaration of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it is pertinent to recall on this issue Arthur Koestler’s famous quip, made a century ago in reference to the Balfour Declaration, that “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.”
The new U.S. position has clearly placed the United States outside of the international consensus with regard to any future peace process over the status of the city, or indeed within the Arab-Israeli conflict. This has opened the door to other global and regional actors, particularly Europe, Russia, and Turkey, as future mediators.
Underlying the objections of the majority of countries, including the United States until Trump’s election, to Israel’s control of Jerusalem has been UN General Assembly resolution 181, which affirmed the partition plan for Palestine and the creation of an international zone in Jerusalem known as the corpus separatum. That notion established in the city a special international regime in which both Palestinians and Israelis would have a dual national identity in the city. Given the slow death of the peace process and the de facto withdrawal of the United States from a mediating role, is it time – seventy years later – to revive this plan for Jerusalem?
Salim Tamari is IPS senior fellow and the former director of the IPS-affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Studies. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat al Quds. He is professor of sociology at Birzeit University and an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He has authored several works on urban culture, political sociology, biography and social history, and the social history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent publications include: Year of the Locust: Palestine and Syria during WWI(UC Press, 2010) Ihsan's War: The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Soldier (IPS, Beirut, 2008); The Mountain Against the Sea (University of California Press, 2008); Biography and Social History of Bilad al Sham (edited with I. Nassar,2007, Beirut IPS); Pilgrims, Lepers, and Stuffed Cabbage: Essays on Jerusalem's Cultural History (edited, with I. Nassar, IJS, 2005) and Essays on the Cultural History of Ottoman and Mandate Jerusalem (editor, IJS, 2005).
The Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar is organized under the auspices of the MIT Center for International Studies, which conducts research on contemporary international issues and provides an opportunity for faculty and students to share perspectives and exchange views. Each year the Bustani Seminar invites scholars, journalists, consultants, and other experts from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States to MIT to present recent research findings on contemporary politics, society and culture, and economic and technological development in the Middle East.
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The Future of Humanity
Tuesday, February 20
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline
RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/michio-kaku-22018-tickets-41316318220
Cost: $29.95
Michio Kaku
The #1 bestselling author of The Future of the Mind traverses the frontiers of astrophysics, artificial intelligence, and technology to offer a stunning vision of man’s future in space, from settling Mars to traveling to distant galaxies.
Formerly the domain of fiction, moving human civilization to the stars is increasingly becoming a scientific possibility—and a necessity. Whether in the near future due to climate change and the depletion of finite resources, or in the distant future due to catastrophic cosmological events, we must face the reality that humans will one day need to leave planet Earth to survive as a species.
World-renowned physicist and futurist Michio Kaku explores in rich, intimate detail the process by which humanity may gradually move away from the planet and develop a sustainable civilization in outer space. He reveals how cutting-edge developments in robotics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology may allow us to terraform and build habitable cities on Mars. He then takes us beyond the solar system to nearby stars, which may soon be reached by nanoships traveling on laser beams at near the speed of light. Finally, he brings us beyond our galaxy, and even beyond our universe, to the possibility of immortality, showing us how humans may someday be able to leave our bodies entirely and laser port to new havens in space. With irrepressible enthusiasm and wonder, Dr. Kaku takes readers on a fascinating journey to a future in which humanity may finally fulfill its long-awaited destiny among the stars.
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Belief, Skepticism, and Touch: Some Thoughts on Saint Thomas the Apostle in Italian Renaissance Art
Tuesday, February 20
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT, Building 7-429, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Adrian Randolph
Few of us can ignore contemporary discourses on truth and falsity. How are we to verify information about some of the most pressing issues of the day? With this presentation, I open up discussion about a subject in art—the “incredulity” of St. Thomas—that thematized such matters in pre-modern Europe. Focusing on late medieval and Renaissance paintings and sculptures, I explore the ways in which visual artists pointed to the tactile as a way of enhancing the truth-value of their works. Along the way, I hope to raise some questions about key works of art, including Andrea del Verrocchio’s extraordinary Christ and St. Thomas, produced for the oratory of Orsanmichele in Florence.
Adrian Randolph is dean of the Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Art History. He joined Northwestern University on July 1, 2015.
Prior to joining Northwestern, Randolph served as the associate dean of the faculty for the Arts and Humanities at Dartmouth College. He also served as chair of the Department of Art History at Dartmouth, as well as director of the college’s Leslie Center for the Humanities.
Randolph’s research focuses on the art and architecture of medieval and Renaissance Italy. His scholarship emphasizes the blending of visual analysis with other contextual information, from fields as varied as science, literature, social history and gender studies. Throughout his career, he has successfully forged connections across disciplinary boundaries to build programming, lectures and conferences on topics as diverse as humor and race, Native American art, and science and visualization.
Randolph has authored, co-authored or edited eight books and numerous articles, essays and reviews. He also has served on the international advisory board of the journal Art History as well as the University Press of New England. Randolph completed his B.A. at Princeton University, his M.A. at the University of London and his Ph.D. in fine arts and the history of art and architecture at Harvard University.
MIT Department of Architecture / Spring 2018 Lecture Series
History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art (HTC) Forum, organized by PhD students Caroline Murphy and Sarah Rifky
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Big Data Justice
Tuesday, February 20
6:00pm to 8:00pm
MIT Museum, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge
Numbers can be overwhelming, powerful, manipulative, intriguing ... and what about Big Data? Join a conversation between Jose Luis de Vicente of Sonar+D, curator of the Big Bang Data exhibition; Catherine D’Ignazio, data literacy researcher and artist; and Joy Buolamwini, poet of code and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League.
Explore how data is a powerful tool that should be carefully considered as it can be biased, manipulated, and used for good or other purposes.
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel
WHEN Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
WHERE Harvard Graduate School of Design, Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium, Room 105, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge
GAZETTE CLASSIFICATION Art/Design, Special Events
ORGANIZATION/SPONSOR Harvard Graduate School of Design, Co-presented by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Office of Communications.
SPEAKER(S) Mayor Rahm Emanuel
COST Free and open to the public
CONTACT INFO Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events at gsd.harvard.edu.
DETAILS Please join us for a conversation between Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design.
Rahm Emanuel is the 55th Mayor of the City of Chicago and has served since 2011. During that time he has made the tough choices necessary to secure Chicago’s future as a global capital. The Mayor lengthened the school day and added more than 200 hours to the school year, taking Chicago from having the least educational time of any large school district in the country to being on par with its peers. He implemented full-day kindergarten for every Chicago child, and fought for and won new accountability measures to ensure that every teacher and principal had the necessary resources to succeed. The Mayor’s comprehensive public safety strategy is focused on expanded prevention programs for at-risk youth, smarter policing strategies, and empowering parents and communities to reduce violence in their neighborhoods. He attracted numerous companies to Chicago and helped to build the next generation of start-ups, while investing in the infrastructure, public transportation, open space and cultural attractions that make Chicago a great place to live, work, and play. And he has worked to make our government more effective, to deliver better services at a more competitive price, and to open government to the public.
Prior to becoming Mayor, Emanuel served as the White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama and served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Chicago’s 5th District. He previously served as a key member of the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998, rising to serve as Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy.
Mayor Emanuel graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981 and received a Master's Degree in Speech and Communication from Northwestern University in 1985. He is married to Amy Rule, and they have three children.
LINK https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/mayor-rahm-emanuel/
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With Passion, an Activist Lawyer's Life
Tuesday, February 20
7:00pm
Porter Square Books, 25 White Street, Cambridge
Growing up in a Depression-battered family, one tangled by a mortal secret, With Passion tells the improbable story of an unsung hero of the civil rights movement who thought of himself as a “miscast” lawyer but ended up defending peaceful protesters, representing Mohammad Ali, suing Robert Moses, counseling Lenny Bruce, bringing the case that integrated hundreds of southern hospitals, and named “the principal architect of the death penalty abolition movement in the United States.”
More than a meditation on frustrating legal efforts to fight inequality and racism, Michael Meltsner—also a novelist and playwright—vividly recounts the life of a New York kid, struggling to make sense of coming of age amid the tumult of vast demographic and cultural changes in the city.
Hired by Thurgood Marshall, Michael Meltsner argued major civil rights cases for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and authored Cruel and Unusual, the widely praised history of the attack on the death penalty. Winner of many awards, including a Guggenheim and an American Academy of Berlin Prize Fellowship, he teaches constitutional law at Northeastern University School of Law.
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Opportunity
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Where is the best yogurt on the planet made? Somerville, of course!
Join the Somerville Yogurt Making Cooperative and get a weekly quart of the most thick, creamy, rich and tart yogurt in the world. Members share the responsibility for making yogurt in our kitchen located just outside of Davis Sq. in FirstChurch. No previous yogurt making experience is necessary.
For more information checkout.
https://somervilleyogurtmakingcoop.wordpress.com
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Free solar electricity analysis for MA residents
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHhwM202dDYxdUZJVGFscnY1VGZ3aXc6MQ
Solar map of Cambridge, MA
http://www.mapdwell.com/en/cambridge
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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 at 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 at 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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