http://mitworld.mit.edu/ MIT World media in category 'International Affairs'. en-us Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:07:43 GMT Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/725 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/725 His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke at an inaugural event for a new institute in his name, the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values. He tempered his provocative ideas about promoting ethics in a secular society with a stream of lively banter. He recalled that he had visited a homeless shelter in San Francisco the other day and told a man he met that he, too, had suffered the same fate after he went into exile in 1959. "I said, 'me too. Homeless'."

Turning to global issues, he framed the two largest issues facing the world as the economy and ecology. These must be solved with compassion toward those we don’t agree with, and by acknowledging the root causes of them. He rejects the notion that the economic meltdown was caused by "market forces" and instead names the causes as human behaviors--greed and hypocrisy.

He called upon the community to not think in terms of "we and them" and encouraged all of humanity to come forward to solve the world's problems. The only condition that should allow for a "we and them" mindset, he declares, would be if aliens from another planet were to visit the earth. "Inner disarmament can be achieved, external disarmament is difficult.” ]]> Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/720 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/720 Six years after Darfur made its appearance on the world stage, the horrific crisis burns on, as these panelists vividly attest. In a forum companion to the traveling exhibit DARFUR/DARFUR, the speakers provide big picture political context, as well as actual images from the field.

Note: This lecture contains descriptions and images of horrific war crimes which may be difficult for some to view.

While the conflict may no longer be “hot news,” the “genocidal years are continuing,” says Robert Rotberg. Three million Darfuris are languishing in refugee camps on the border with Chad and in their own country. The leader of this desert nation, President Omar al-Bashir, has been accused by the International Court of war crimes, yet militias under his direction, including the feared Janjaweed, continue to rain death down on villages and refugee camps. Neither the world’s condemnation, nor a multilateral force, has stopped the violence. China’s support of Sudan (with its rich oil fields) presents another obstacle to peace. Rotberg worries about the appointment by President Obama of a special envoy, J. Scott Gration, who “has made welcoming noises to Bashir…offering carrots without carrying a big stick.” A plan for peace, says Rotberg, should include a ban on overflights; dismantling of the Janjaweed and all the militias, and their repatriation into village life; a mechanism for power-sharing at all levels; compensation for genocide; and support for reconstruction.

Susannah Sirkin and her investigators from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) are among those who have documented the Sudanese government’s atrocities against the people of Darfur. People have been bombed, strafed and burnt out of their villages. Says Sirkin, “The government of Sudan knew full well what would happen when hundreds of thousands of people were forced out of their homes, knew they wouldn’t make it to a place where they could receive the basic necessities of survival.”

In spite of harrowing conditions, including the regime’s persecution of aid workers, PHR has collected ample evidence of “the crime of mass rape as a weapon in this war,” a crime that goes on even at the refugee camps. The peaceful pre-war existence of women, tending animals, family and farming, is brutally shattered when militias massacre their families, and assault them sexually. PHR doctors describe their suffering as “unimaginable.” Sirkin recounts the tragic story of one 18-year-old, whose experiences stand for the thousands who endure comparable horrors.

The finale of the panel is a slideshow by photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale of his 12 trips to Darfur in the past six years. He captures the fear -- entire communities huddled under trees for fear of detection by government planes – and the aftermath of Janjaweed attacks. There are charred villages, bodies left to rot in the sun and people burned by white phosphorus, dumped by helicopter. At the camps, there are child soldiers with amputated limbs, starving mothers and babies, and long lines for the plastic bottles of water provided by aid agencies. Says Bleasdale, “These aren’t singular stories; they’re happening thousands of times, in every village.” ]]> Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/714 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/714 At times humorous and other times defiant, José Ramos-Horta describes nurturing the 21st century’s first sovereign state through its formative years. The journey of East Timor from brutal Indonesian rule to fragile self-governance has involved Ramos-Horta in conflict and debate from the halls of the U.N. to the smallest villages of this tiny Southeast Asian island.

He describes the scene in 2002, after two years of UN-supervised transition, when Indonesia handed off a nation it had governed by force for decades: “A human calamity -- close to 200 thousand people lost their lives.” Another 200 thousand were forcibly displaced into West Timor. As it departed “in anger and frustration,” Indonesia’s military orchestrated the destruction of the nation’s cities, roads, schools and clinics. “The economy was at a standstill,” says Ramos-Horta. “We received barely a sketch of a state, a skeleton.”

The challenge of rebuilding East Timor is all the more daunting given “the psychological-emotional trauma of 24 years of violence.” There are bitter disputes involving how to conduct a national process of reconciliation. Western ambassadors recently called on Ramos-Horta, “representatives of two countries most notorious…for providing weapons and the red carpet treatment to the dictatorship of Indonesia.” They advocated establishing an international tribunal to pursue crimes against humanity during Indonesian rule. Says Ramos-Horta, “Had I been in a bad mood, I would have said, ‘Excuse me, the two of you are lecturing me on human rights and justice?’”

Despite warnings from the U.N. that “lack of justice encourages impunity,” he believes East Timor must travel its own path toward reconciliation. If East Timor set up such a tribunal, “Who would it start with -- Indonesia or the U.S., which provided weapons to Suharto, or Australia, or all of them at once?” He states, “If you pursue justice at any cost without being sensitive to the challenges and complexities on the ground, you undermine the incipient nation, democracy and justice.”

Today, when Ramos-Horta travels in the countryside, people don’t want to discuss security and unity. Recounts Ramos-Horta, “They joke with me: ‘Mr. President, we really like your road to peace, but we prefer a road to our village.’” He’s now focused on providing his people with such essentials as clean water and electricity, and shoring up the nation’s fragile social and economic institutions. “Let’s put all the past behind us. Look after the victims, the wounded, in their minds, bodies and souls, build a country that is deserving of so much sacrifice. Chasing the ghosts of the past leads us nowhere,” says Ramos-Horta. ]]> Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/713 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/713 To the dismay of these seasoned Cuba specialists, the Obama administration is not pursuing a rapid thaw in relations with the Castro regime. While there appears no speedy end to 50 years of icy antipathy toward Cuba, the speakers detect a few hopeful signs of warming in recent times.

Wayne Smith has seen opportunities for a real bilateral relationship come and go. He first went to Cuba in 1958, just before the U.S. broke off diplomatic relations. He was among the first to go back in 1977 when Jimmy Carter attempted to reopen channels for discussion. Smith left the foreign service in 1982 after Reagan was elected, and had great hopes that Clinton would soften the U.S. stance following the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Cuban exiles in the U.S. succeeded in retaining a hard-line policy against Cuba. Smith says, “Here we are again: another opportunity.” It’s in the best interest of the U.S., says Smith, to begin “a mature relationship” with Cuba. He thinks the window is open a crack now. He knows many Cuban-Americans whose families lost property, or had relatives imprisoned, and “50 years later have come around to say, it’s time to begin talking.”

We may be entering “an interesting period of change” following a half century of “abnormal, unnatural relations,” says Julia Sweig. A few years ago, on the heels of Fidel Castro’s illness, Cuba initiated a “significant reform agenda.” In a record-short (34 minute) inaugural speech, Castro’s appointed successor, brother Raul, “implied awareness of the intense unhappiness on the island,” announcing proposed internal travel freedoms, and discussing agrarian and currency reform. “He sounded often more like Margaret Thatcher than Karl Marx,” says Sweig. But this fledgling effort to expand opportunities for Cubans was derailed in 2008 by three devastating hurricanes, the collapse of world commodity and financial markets, and Fidel Castro’s recovery (he’s “notoriously allergic to the market,” Sweig says).

There is some reason for optimism beyond Cuba. Sweig perceives a major shift in public opinion among Cuban-Americans, especially the young cohort that helped vote in Obama. There’s a prevailing sense that the embargo has failed, and that America should completely lift its travel ban. And the Obama administration has indicated a slight softening toward Cuba, permitting family remittances, and signaling that it might allow American telecom companies to do business in Cuba.

Sweig believes “this glacial, almost like walking through peanut butter pace of change that we have in bilateral relations suits each government just fine.” She concludes with a genuine bright spot: the September ‘09 Havana concert by Colombian musician Juanes, which demonstrated that the U.S. and Cuba can have meaningful contact with each other “without governments getting in the way.” ]]> Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video http://mitworld.mit.edu/video ]]> Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/711 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/711 After centuries of insufferable oppression by colonial powers, bloody independence struggles, and corrupt home-grown regimes, “Africa today is quickly awakening, and determined to mainstream itself in the phenomenon of the globalization process,” says John Kufuor, who served as Ghana’s president for two terms starting in 2000. Kufuor recounts how Ghana transcended its dark history to attain astonishing political and economic progress, establishing the nation as an exemplar for fellow African states.

In a brisk history lesson, Kufuor accounts for the lag between Africa and other continents in socioeconomic development: geography kept Africa outside ancient trading routes, and when “marauding” Europeans eventually encountered Africa, it was “more or less a one-sided, institutional gang rape...” Denied citizenship and rights, for 600 years “the African ego and personality was assailed and trampled upon.”

Following World War 2, colonial powers relinquished their African holdings, but successor native governments were often little better, says Kufuor, spouting revolutionary rhetoric, and stifling “visionary individualism and creativity.” State control meant “private capital formation went underground.”

African rulers maintained attachments to their “former European overlords,” who imported Africa’s resources “raw on concessionary terms.” Kufuor blames the “stinginess” of foreign entrepreneurs, their unwillingness to “add value” to these products, for African nations’ current paucity of medium and large-scale business. But Ghana’s trick was to transform this disadvantage -- a large pool of small, agriculturally based businesses -- into the centerpiece of an economic revival. Kufuor cites in particular cocoa farmers, responsible for one of Ghana’s principal exports, who own on average no more than three acres. When he arrived in office, Kufuor determined to support the “self-reliant, risk-taking initiative” of such farmers and other small-scale businesses, recognizing that they were key to “unleashing the potential wealth of the nation.”

His government pursued debt forgiveness by the IMF; separating the central bank from the president’s office; and distributing more banking licenses and lowering lending rates. Aid to farmers with trading, modernization, irrigation, and other infrastructure led to unprecedented economic growth: the GDP quadrupled over an eight year period beginning in 2000, with growth at 7.3% last year. Government “had promised to usher the country into a golden age,” says Kufuor, and came through not just with economic policies, but with investment in education and a national health insurance plan for all citizens. Two years ago, oil was discovered offshore, and Kufuor, “proud of having laid a solid foundation” for Ghana, prays that this find will prove “a blessing and not a curse, for the good of all our sons and daughters.” ]]> Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/705 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/705 People sometimes ask Montek Singh Ahluwalia questions loaded with “aspirational objectives,” such as when India will “get rid of poverty.” Few are as well equipped to respond as Ahluwalia, one of the architects of India’s breathtaking economic transformation.

The current income of an average Indian citizen is about 1/15th that of a U.S. citizen. Ahluwalia envisions increasing India’s per capita income ten fold. He sees this as a matter of “simple arithmetic.” To achieve this advance, India must sustain GDP growth of 9% a year (which corresponds to a 7%/year growth in personal income) -- for 32 years. By 2040, India’s 1.5 billion people could be living more like Americans. “Regrettably, I won’t be around to see it,” says Ahluwalia.

By 2020, though, assuming such sustained economic growth, he would be around to witness “more modest results.” Indians would double their annual income to $6,600, and the nation would be able to “provide a basic level of services to the vast majority of its population,” essentially leaving behind its problems of poverty. This kind of growth, “an extremely worthwhile objective” for India, would also leave its mark on the rest of the world. It would inspire other emerging economies, for one thing. It would also shift the balance of power in global trade, with the combined economies of India and China taking on the U.S.

So can India really achieve this kind of relentless economic progress? Ahluwalia’s not sure, but invokes the successes of Japan, Korea and China, and sees reasons for optimism. Over the past eight years, India’s averaged a 7.2% GDP growth rate, and looks likely to land on its feet after the current worldwide recession. On the other hand, the nation’s vibrant democracy (420 million voted in the most recent elections) can make agreement on economic policy and its implementation difficult. Ahluwalia is “not complaining,” but acknowledges that this kind of participative society “means we’re taking longer to get done what needs to be done.”

He sees institutional strengths that will enable India to push its development agenda forward: a sense of confidence pervades Indian society; past reforms have “unleashed tremendous energy in the private sector;” the economy has opened up to greater domestic and foreign markets; and in spite of changes in government, the general economic policies continue to evolve. Ahluwalia acknowledges that defeating poverty may not address everyone’s goals for success. The true objective for India, he believes, is “inclusive growth,” an equitable and constructive distribution of economic gains via market forces, government and public means. ]]> Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/692 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/692 Contrary to popular thinking, China owes its astonishing economic expansion not to far-sighted government policy but to hundreds of millions of entrepreneurial peasants. Yasheng Huang’s research reveals not only how small-scale rural businesses created China’s miracle but how that nation’s recovery from the global recession and righting the massive East-West trade imbalance depend on this same under-acknowledged sector.

Huang begins with questions, including why China produces so much relative to its own consumption. He shows graphs dramatically illustrating the rise of China’s GDP with a concurrent drop in domestic consumption. A nation that doesn’t consume what it produces must export. Huang has pounded away at the question of this drop in consumption. He rejects explanations pointing at a Chinese bent for thrift, and believes instead that households have become impoverished in the midst of the nation’s decades-long boom.

Huang’s research analyzed previously unexamined data to resolve this paradox and produce a novel thesis, detailing the rise and fall of rural entrepreneurship in China. In the 1980s, enabled by government liberalization, tens of millions of peasants began home-grown private businesses, from small-scale manufacturing to service delivery. They supplemented meager agricultural incomes, generating profits that they used to better their standards of living. The Chinese economy boomed. But in the 1990s, a new regime took over, taxing the grass-roots entrepreneurs and pouring money into infrastructure and state-run enterprises. Politicians imposed steep fees on education and healthcare, soaking the newly minted rural capitalists. GDP rose, but household incomes dipped, as hundreds of millions pinched pennies instead of generating profits. The Chinese made lots of things that they couldn’t buy. A global trade imbalance ballooned.

The recession has struck the rural Chinese especially painfully (they make up 70% of the nation’s population). More than 100 million who had migrated to cities for work have lost their jobs with the shutdown of factories, and there has been a “virtual collapse in non-farm business income growth,” says Huang. New Chinese policies have begun to attend to rural issues, such as abolishing rural taxation, reducing fees, and spurring microfinance. This should help increase household income. But in key areas like land reform, there’s only been talk. Huang believes a Chinese stimulus package aimed at reinvigorating the building boom won’t do nearly as much good for the economy as liberalization of social policies and attempts to unleash once again the productive energies of the rural poor. ]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/681 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/681 European archivists grapple with the legal obligations, civic responsibilities and future prospects of their collections, which, thanks to the Internet and other new technologies, are increasingly awash in image and sound. As William Urichhio notes, “tradition-bound institutions know what we should be gathering: feature films, books, newspapers, political documents, but it’s much harder to know what to do with things like social media…say, networks of interactions.” Different organizations are evolving diverse strategies.

At France’s National Institute of the Audiovisual (INA), Claude Mussou describes managing “memory and heritage policies in the information age.” In the 16th century, she recounts, Francois 1 mandated that any book published would be first deposited in the royal library. The national collection law broadened over centuries to include new forms of knowledge production: documents, film, radio and TV, and beginning in 2006, websites, because of the migration of so many activities online, and because of the fleeting life of many websites. Says Mussou, “Twenty, 50 or 100 years from now, when scholars or academics look for evidence and testimony for what the 21st century was,…web archives will be a necessary and valuable source.” She pointedly notes that we can’t rely on Google or other commercial interests to maintain web archives, and therefore governments must not “surrender their role as gatekeepers to collective memory.”

Sweden’s national library recently merged with the national media archive, says Pelle Snickars, which includes seven million hours of media material. The legal deposit law mandates anything put out on tape, radio or TV must find its way into the state’s collections. This imposes an enormous burden, both curatorial and budgetary. As it transitions to digital, the library must maintain its analog collection. Snickars says the larger problem involves rights: researchers would love access via the web to the material that’s being transferred, but the material belongs to others. Snickars worries about the best methods for digital preservation, and whether quality concerns should be sacrificed to quantity demands, as more and more people assume access to information online.

The BBC boasts 100 kilometers of shelves for its A/V collection, says Richard Wright, from 1920s radio to videotape from the 1960s onward -- all of which must be digitized to be preserved. The BBC is converting 200 terabytes per week of current broadcast material -- an enormous commitment to digital. As Wright points out, “We’re putting a very big egg in that basket, and the basket is not perfect.” The risk of loss of data is proportional to the data stored, and since so much is pouring from analog to digital, “the risk is growing by Moore’s Law.” One way to mitigate this loss: avoid compressing data, and seek redundancy. As we’ve moved from stone, to paper, and onto disc, storage capacity gets denser and cheaper, he notes -- almost overwhelming: “It’s why our grandchildren are swimming in a sea of digital photos.” If we can’t tag all this material appropriately, it will be “struggling to survive” for future generations. ]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/682 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/682 While Barack Obama has rejected the Bush administration’s harsh stance toward Iran, panelists warn that we’re far from the start of fruitful relations, and that achieving real diplomacy will paradoxically require both patience and a sense of urgency.

Suzanna DiMaggio observes the U.S. seeking “areas of common interest and managing areas of profound differences” with Iran, moving “well beyond a change in language” to concrete and profound shifts in policy, such as recognizing Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program; curtailing support for Iranian opposition groups; and reaching out for Iran’s cooperation on Afghanistan. DiMaggio says Afghanistan may prove key to building the foundations of a relationship, since Iran is concerned about halting the spread of violent fundamentalism and curtailing drug trafficking. The way forward, she suggests, involves approaching Iran in a “direct and sustained way to clarify U.S. intentions in the region while building confidence and trust,” which “will require each side to exercise great restraint,” and an acceptance that there will be frequent setbacks.

Jim Walsh describes recent U.S. actions toward Iran as “scene setting,” with such moves as dropping preconditions for discussing Iran’s nuclear program, and discouraging Israel from contemplating a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But “Iran is cautious,” with its government demonstrating “a certain schizophrenia” -- hopefulness and curiosity about Barack Obama, but skepticism about the U.S. pursuing substantive change. Tactical cooperation with Iran around Afghanistan and the drug trade appears to Walsh a better starting point for discussions than Iran’s nuclear program. He says, “Barack Obama may speak with a nicer tone, offer greater incentives, but if at the end of the day, he insists on no centrifuges, we will end up at the same outcome as before.” Substantial movement will take months, and all the while, Iran will continue to build centrifuges. Walsh sees a dilemma for the president: he must attempt to build confidence by moving slowly, but the “best chance for success is if Obama acts early and boldly while he still has the power of public opinion behind him domestically and internationally…It won’t last forever.

Stephen Heintz points out that “Iran is in the center of a set of issues of direct national interest to the U.S.,” including Middle East peace, the war on terror, regional stability and oil. The problem is that in trying to find points of intersection with Iran, each nation “has very little knowledge of the other,” as well as bad memories (the hostage crisis of 1979, the U.S. support of the Shah). This “only reinforces a relationship based on suspicion.” While Barack Obama “has done a superb job at creating different atmospherics,” there is a huge debate underway within policy circles, as different groups jockey to shape Iran policy. Heintz doesn’t expect much movement until after the Iranian elections, but hopes that the restart of multilateral talks, and discussions about regional security and drug trade will help free both nations of the “paranoia and fear” that’s built up over time. ]]> Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/680 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/680 Linda Mason was originally going to make a case study of Bright Horizons, her $1.3 billion, early childhood care business, but reconsidered in light of the current economic crisis -- to the benefit of her audience. Instead, she takes up her own story as a recession-era entrepreneur who built several hugely successful, socially oriented ventures, navigating very real pitfalls and challenges along the way. Her “nonlinear path” yielded important life lessons, which she shares in this talk. Some highlights from her story:

Mason took a major detour from a planned career in management consulting when she and Roger Brown, who was to become her husband, left Yale in 1979 with their MBAs to work in Cambodian refugee camps. After a year, they returned to corporate life. But some time later, she and Brown experienced a watershed moment at a New Year’s Eve party, realizing their years of accumulating money and frequent flyer miles left them “depressed.” They determined that night to make a change.

Soon after, Save the Children called, looking for help dealing with the terrible famine sweeping western Sudan. Mason and Brown had 24 hours to make up their minds: There was “no time to make a list of pros and cons. It was a fork in the road, and we knew it was the path we were to take,” says Mason. This experience taught her, “It’s sometimes important to leap before you look.”

Management skills came in handy as the team set up a complex food distribution operation, one that challenged relief organization orthodoxy. This experience, which at the time “seemed crazy and risky,” fueled Mason and Brown’s next move in 1986: addressing the shortage of high quality child care in the U.S. The couple turned their Cambridge home into a start up headquarters, and developed a business plan, which they sold to enthusiastic VCs. But corporations balked at buying in, viewing the fledgling Bright Horizons team as “flaky Peace Corps types.” Mason, reflecting on this period, counsels “do your homework extremely well, then be very, very stubborn.”

As New England sank into a recession, and their idea faced collapse, the duo transformed crisis into opportunity. They summoned all their energy for a final effort, marketing onsite childcare to real estate developers looking to attract businesses. In 1990, four years after starting, Bright Horizons was in the black. The two ran the business for 15 years, when they moved onto other interests. “Discover your passions,” Mason advises, and combine them with your skills “to give your life meaning.” ]]> Tue, 19 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/670 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/670 Just as digital technology has expanded the means of producing media, so has it increased the geographic range new media may travel. Locally generated content can zip around the world in a heartbeat. But, says moderator Henry Jenkins, “as a society we’re in a contradictory state in terms of having greater access to global content than ever before, but not having developed a conceptual framework to think about it very well.” These panelists attest to an unsettled time for global media.

At a recent Bombay conference celebrating the globalization of Indian film, Aswin Punathambekar saw international heavy-hitters, including Warner, Fox Searchlight, and Disney, all attempting to shape the future of the industry. Part of Indian film is still defined by the families that started the industry in the 1930s, but the last decade or so has seen dramatic changes, including attempts at fusing with Hollywood, and perhaps more dramatic, the explosion of new distribution channels through media piracy and imitation. Bollywood now exists outside of Bombay, says Punathambekar, in Karachi, Dubai, Beirut and Nigeria. The “culture of the copy” has come to define production and circulation of film and TV programs in these outlying hubs.

Two billion people watch Latin America’s telenovelas, long serial dramas featuring outsize villains and heroes. Carolina Acosta-Alzuru provides a tour through a global business that produces 12 thousand hours every year. Different regions feature different flavors. While Mexican telenovelas are “moralistic and melodramatic,” Venezuela’s programs appear suffocated by the censorship of the Chavez regime. Multinational broadcasters compete to distribute their products (distinguishable by differently accented Spanish) all over the world. They also fail to prevent bloggers and YouTube aficionados from placing episodes on the Internet. She laments the missed opportunity of telenovelas to teach and present the world in constructive ways.

Instead of movie theaters, Malawi features “video shows,” where men only watch pirated films on DVD, says Jonathan Gray. This impoverished nation produces neither original films nor TV programs, but people flock to see video copies of 20-year-old American action movies. Village music sellers neglect native musicians to hawk Dolly Parton CDs (she’s “as big as it gets,” says Gray). Country music is huge in Malawi due to American missionaries who passed through in the ‘70s. Gray believes it’s worth studying how media circulates not just spatially, but temporally, throughout the world.

Filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako acknowledges the appetite in Africa for western media. “It is a sad situation for my country, and in a larger way for the continent, because if images are a mirror, imagine you go every night to your home bathroom, and see somebody else in front of you.” He mourns the overwhelming “reculturization” of his countrymen via telenovelas and Bollywood, which prevent an actual appreciation of other cultures, and also obstruct an interest in authentic African life, including his own films. Sissako works out of France, and when he tries getting his native Mauritanian television to show one of his films, “they ask me to pay for it.” ]]> Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/651 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/651 MIT President Susan Hockfield hails a new era of collaboration between the Institute and China, and Zhou Wenzhong, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the People's Republic of China, discusses the larger relationship between his country and the U.S., particularly in light of the economic crisis enveloping the world.

Chinese students have been matriculating at MIT, says Susan Hockfield, since 1876 -- almost as long as the university has been around. But the 1990s saw the start of a broader and deeper institutional commitment, with Mandarin courses at MIT, and a program to send MIT students to intern with Chinese companies. Now, the relationship is deepening, with an MIT-China initiative to spark research ideas and collaborations, particularly around energy and sustainable development, robotics, and healthcare; and a China Forum Lecture series. Hockfield believes partnerships between MIT and the People’s Republic of China “are virtually unlimited.”

In the 30 years since China began economic reforms, Zhou Wenzhong recounts, its domestic economy has grown roughly twice as fast as the world economy. Its GDP has expanded from the equivalent of $216.5 billion to $3.28 trillion. The ambassador reminds his audience that in spite of such gains, China remains a developing country, with an enormous population whose per capita GDP is less than 1/17th of that of U.S. citizens’. It is “a long way from basic modernization and prosperity for all.”

Much of China’s growth stems from a quadrupling of international trade. But intense globalization, an “irresistible reality” for all nations, poses major challenges, especially now with the rapid onset of profound economic malaise. China is moving to respond to this crisis, and looking beyond it, to help “establish a new international financial order that is fair, just, inclusive and orderly, fostering an institutional environment conducive to sound global economic development.” The government has set out a comprehensive package of reforms to keep the country’s economy running in hard times. The remedy, loaded as it is with tax cuts, social investments, restructuring of major industries, and energy conservation measures, may ring a bell for the U.S. public.

China also looks to its global neighbors in facing the immediate economic challenge, says Zhou Wenzhong, and in responding to such other pressures as terrorism, proliferation of WMD, climate change, epidemic diseases and national disasters. He hopes for a strengthening of U.S.-China relations, predicated on an approach steeped in the “long-term and strategic perspective.” The U.S. and China should “shoulder greater shared responsibilities,” promote common interests in trade, counterterrorism, law enforcement, science, technology and young people. China asks that the U.S. treat it as an equal, and respect such core interests “as the Taiwan question and Tibet relation matters.” With mutual trust and dialog, he concludes, “A new era offers unprecedented opportunities…to build a better future.” ]]> Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/650 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/650 If economic analyses earned ratings like movies, this event would receive an X for extremely disturbing. Two of the field’s most prominent voices spare any sugar coating in their unsettling accounts of the world’s unfolding economic crisis.

Martin Feldstein had a hard time choosing which of the innumerable problems to focus on, he admits, but ultimately settles on near-term challenges faced by the U.S. First off, this downturn is atypical; past recessions generally resulted from the Federal Reserve responding to inflation by nudging up interest rates and slowing the economy. This one involves two disparate but interacting problems: “the weakness of aggregate demand and the dysfunctional character of the financial markets.” In laymen’s terms, consumers are declining to spend money, the housing market’s hit the skids; and banks big and small have no clue the value of their balance sheets, so they won’t lend money to any but the best bets. There are some impressive numbers involved: The U.S. GDP is less than $15 trillion. A $12 trillion fall in household wealth (a combination of stock market and housing losses) has entailed a $750 billion decline in GDP.

The government’s attempts to pick up slack in the credit market haven’t to date brought private markets back to life, says Feldstein. “We’re in a very awkward situation, where the Fed is moving well beyond anything a central bank has ever done before to act as a credit provider.” The stimulus package doesn’t come close to addressing the $750 billion hole in our economy: it’s “a poorly designed program that delivers so little bang for the buck.” Turning from “the bleak picture of the U.S. to the rest of the world,” Feldstein sees a chain of events pulling all major financial centers down, leading to “a mutually reinforcing global recession.” The nations most likely to avoid “being dragged down” by this crisis: China and India.

Astonishingly, Simon Johnson promises “to be quite a bit more negative.” The U.S. banking situation “is much worse than what Marty said.” The system needs a complete recapitalization -- a simple solution -- but practically impossible due to “the power of the banking lobby.” Europe’s banking system is even worse off (poster child: Iceland). European bank losses are dragging down not just banks, but entire nations. Their governments can’t pull together fiscal stimulus packages, either. While “Europe is in denial,” emerging markets like Russia have seen their reserves plunge, and are making stark decisions about “which of their people get bailed out.” And don’t think the IMF can come to the rescue; it has a meager $250 billion to loan, and is trolling for additional money from Western pockets, which just now have very big holes in them. Johnson’s grim conclusion: Economists are reaching a consensus about the possibility of a very long period of slow or no growth: “There’s a danger we could lose a decade.” ]]> Thu, 12 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/645 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/645 While he admits to no surprise about events in Gaza, Noam Chomsky does consider “the latest U.S.-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians” a step beyond terrorism and aggression. He says “some new term is needed for the sadistic and cowardly torture of people caged with no possibility of escape, being pounded daily by the most sophisticated products of U.S. military technology.”

Chomsky says these “new crimes” don’t fit easily into any standard category except for “familiarity,” and his talk recaps the history of Israeli relations with Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere. He notes that while many are engaged in “sober debate on what the attackers hope to achieve,” he doesn’t find Israeli motives at all “obscure.” Chomsky says “rational Israeli hard-liners” decided it was senseless to subsidize the illegal Israeli settlement of Gaza in 2005, which would have required significant resources. Instead, they decided to back settlement of the West Bank, a more valuable territory, with its arable land and water supplies. The intent of this criminal annexation is “a vastly expanded Jerusalem.” Says Chomsky, “It made more sense to turn Gaza into the world’s largest prison, and let people rot.”

Upcoming elections influenced the timing of the Gaza invasion, he continues. Ehud Barak was lagging badly in the polls, and an attack in the name of defending Israel against Hamas rockets was calculated to buy Barak parliamentary seats, says Chomsky. And while every state has a right to defend itself against criminal attacks, there’s “a matter of choice of action in the first place, proportional or not. Any resort to force always carries a heavy burden of proof.” Israel surely has a “peaceful alternative to the use of force on its territory,” says Chomsky: It could accept a ceasefire.

Chomsky recites a litany of examples of Israeli and U.S. hypocrisy in action and policy around Israel’s claimed desire for peace. “Of course it wants peace, everyone wants peace. Hitler wanted peace, for example. The question is, on what terms.” Going back to the earliest days of the Zionist movement, it was clear that Israel wanted to delay a political settlement, “while building facts on the ground.” Says Chomsky, “Today Israel could have security, and normalization of relations and integration into the region, but it clearly prefers illegal expansion, conflict, repeated exercise of violence, to teach lessons to the ‘two-legged beasts,’ actions that are severely eroding its security even if it gains short-term military victory.” He concludes, “We’re observing a rare moment in history: politicide, the murder of a nation at our hands.” ]]> Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/616 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/616 Don’t forsake The New York Times for online media, instructs Ethan Zuckerman, because newspapers provide opportunities for learning about the world largely unavailable in the digital kingdom. Zuckerman points in particular to the “serendipity box” -- that intensely local or exotic piece that often grabs attention at the bottom of the front page. This “juicy bait on a hook,” as he calls it, often leads to an in-depth, fascinating report about a culture or perspective far removed from most Americans’. At a time when the world has become connected by infrastructure of all kinds, it behooves Americans to take a closer look at our neighbors, especially those in developing nations. But capturing people’s attention on these matters, says Zuckerman, turns out to be a “surprisingly difficult problem.”

In the age of the web, traditional gatekeepers such as broadcast anchors and newspaper editors wield less clout. The internet, increasingly the primary source of information for millions, doesn’t maintain gatekeepers as much as self-publishing bloggers or user groups that clump together around specific interests. Useful search technology, such as the collaborative filtering employed by Netflix, helps you find the kinds of things you’re interested in, based on previously expressed preferences. But these kinds of prediction systems won’t surprise you, and, says Zuckerman, “are more likely to trap (you) in a circle of recommendations.”

Current web searches encourage homophily, says Zuckerman, the tendency to flock together. While this clustering by like-minded people is part of human nature, it becomes problematic when it guides our exposure to media and information. “In a global world, we’ve gotten much better at moving stuff around than ideas and perspectives. Moving stuff around can be incredibly dangerous,” says Zuckerman. “We isolate ourselves in political cocoons, and nationalist cocoons” at our peril.

To break out of these “echo chambers,” Zuckerman has developed a method called “bridging,” which he employs in his Global Voices web project. He finds people from around the world to act as filters for what’s happening in their country, and as translators of both language and context. These bridge bloggers are “people with feet in two worlds.” One blogger Zuckerman mentions works to explain Bahrain to the rest of the world, “trying to dispel the image Muslims and Arabs suffer from.” While this is a start, Zuckerman wonders how he can better “engineer serendipity” to help us “resist homophily,” lest we get stuck in the digital age wearing blinders. ]]> Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/611 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/611 Imagine if thousands of Amy Smiths were unleashed on the world, providing simple, ingenious inventions to make life easier for those subsisting on less than $2 a day -- half of humanity. This MacArthur Award-winning inventor has been seeding such programs at MIT, and describes tangible results of efforts to inspire students to apply innovative thinking and technology to everyday problems in the developing world.

The Designs for Developing Countries Project, the MIT Program in Developmental Entrepreneurship and D (Development)-Lab have spawned a range of initiatives, spanning the fields of public health, labor, and agriculture. In Ghana and Ecuador, MIT students are helping provide safe drinking water, with low-cost water testing methods that can be applied in the field with no electricity.

In places like Haiti and Tibet, smoke from indoor cooking fires leads to high mortality rates among young children. Solar cookers have proven effective in some regions, but old models are very heavy and often slow to boil water in winter. So an MIT project came up with an inexpensive cooker made of canvas and Mylar, easily assembled by villagers, and highly portable – a major selling point with nomadic communities.

Smith recounts other ventures: a bicycle pedal-powered, corn-shelling machine in Tanzania, which entrepreneurs can rent out, and which saves hours of drudgery for women who traditionally remove kernels of corn by hand; a backpack for storing hundreds of doses of vaccine that can be delivered as an inhaled powder and therefore require no refrigeration; cell phone services that allow Brazilian day laborers and bosses to vet each other in advance, and permit Indian health workers to follow up on TB patients.

Concludes Smith, “Something like 90% of the world’s resources creates products and technologies that serve only the wealthiest 10% of the worlds’ population. There’s a revolution afoot to promote R&D to get designers to work on technologies for the other 90%.” ]]> Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/613 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/613 MIT produces students who are “deep, entrepreneurial, passionate, diverse and active,” says Phillip Clay, the kind of talented individuals who should play major parts on the world stage. MIT has begun a drive to ensure that its students fulfill their promise. Central to this mission, Richard Samuels says, is the kind of education that steeps students in the realities of globalization. In a world that’s not so much flat as converging and increasingly complex and diverse, students must “step boldly and intelligently into the global market of ideas and commerce,” says Samuels, lest they “become cogs in a global machine.” MIT hopes “to create the people who design and operate those machines.”

This means making international studies a core part of the MIT experience, and establishing MIT in an international context. At a time when MIT faces increased global competition, Subra Suresh worries that flat and reduced federal research funding will cut into MIT’s research preeminence. So the School of Engineering is seeking out partnerships around the world for faculty, and looking to provide its undergraduates with exchange and practicum opportunities abroad.

All over the world, “countries want to reproduce MIT,” says Marc Kastner. But MIT’s unique culture is difficult to replicate: the Institute pours resources into the youngest students and faculty; promotes an egalitarian atmosphere; draws instructors from an international talent pool; and is “great in everything” -- science, engineering, liberal arts and business. As MIT seeks out international alliances, “We must think about how to communicate to our partners what’s important about our culture,” he says.

The “crown jewel” of MIT’s international programs is the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative (MISTI), says Deborah Fitzgerald. More than 300 MIT students each year get to spend time working in a company in another country, at no expense to them. A program that often requires two years of language, history and culture study, MISTI boosts confidence, says Fitzgerald, allowing students to see themselves “as people who can solve any kind of problem, anywhere, in a foreign language” -- a “great vindication of all they’ve worked so hard for.” Fitzgerald’s wish is to make MISTI possible for every student.

MIT Sloan is committed to developing principled and innovative leaders who can improve the world, says Dave Schmittlein. The school has developed a Center for Leadership that emphasizes “values, transparency, consistency in decision making,” and provides its budding leaders with international experience through a global entrepreneurship lab that operates in 17 different countries.

Adele Naudé Santos declares herself “passionately opposed to outposts” in foreign lands, because it would be impossible to clone MIT’s collaborative, multidisciplinary, nonhierarchical ethos. Instead, “we partner,” she says. Students and faculty work and study with colleagues abroad in projects like the Urbanization Laboratory, which develops sustainable designs for new cities in such nations as India, China and Japan. Graduates in architecture and planning migrate to all corners of the globe, carrying their unique experience and MIT’s culture with them. ]]> Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/604 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/604 The news these days from Africa isn’t all bad. In fact, in some places, it’s downright hopeful, as Rwandan President Paul Kagame attests. “Our continent is no longer all about violence and disease and human disasters that scarred many African countries in recent decades,” says Kagame. “We are now becoming a continent of opportunities.”

There are those who doubted Rwanda could “constitute a viable state,” says Kagame, but 14 years after bloody genocide and civil war, his country has managed an astonishing revival -- enough “stability and resilience to allow the economy to grow at an average 7% annually in the past several years.” Other African nations have been expanding at the same pace; oil producers are zooming along at even faster clips. Kagame attributes this recovery to such factors as the “leapfrogging power of mobile technology,” where hundreds of millions of new cell phone users, even in remote areas without electricity, drive the growth of new business. And the number of internet subscribers in Africa is growing more than three times as fast as the rest of the world, says Kagame.

Cell phones and the internet allow Rwandan and other micro entrepreneurs to develop business networks. Kagame describes how technology helped a Kigali bakery expand beyond its neighborhood to reach more customers and suppliers, enabling workers to move into larger homes. In Kenya, Kagame recounts, a new agricultural commodity exchange “has reduced barriers between farmers, traders and consumers,” with the internet and cell phone text messages providing timely market information. This network has improved the incomes of farm families by 25%, leading to better healthcare and education. Rwanda’s power utility is also reaping the benefits of technology, keeping track of customers and accounts more efficiently, and no longer relying on government handouts.

But while technology has enabled Africans “to leapfrog some features of underdevelopment,” Kagame says it is not enough. “Our vision of becoming a middle income country by 2020 … requires thinking and acting inventively, boldly and creatively.” Kagame wants to build a foundation not just in technology but in science. Doing this requires a heavy investment in all levels of education. “Without a knowledge base,” he says, “Africa’s imperative for agricultural and industrial development to create wealth will remain unrealized.” He calls for members of the MIT community to join “in overcoming our challenges and turning them into rewarding opportunities.” ]]> Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/605 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/605 After tuning in closely to the presidential campaign, these panelists don’t discern worlds of difference in the candidates’ approaches to foreign policy. But the speakers convey key concerns and offer words of advice to the next U.S. president.

Barry Posen is interested in the future of U.S. grand strategy, by which he means our plan for achieving and maintaining security and power. Thus far, says Posen, both presidential candidates “largely share the same view on U.S. grand strategy,” which is very expansive, with “a long, global agenda for U.S. security goals.”

Both sides agree on the continued struggle against terror, containment of rogue states, and a commitment to the spread of democracy. Their disagreements are “tactical, though not trivial,” involving for instance the relevance of international institutions, and the role of diplomacy. Posen worries that both campaigns “overlook key problems in U.S. post-Cold War strategy or offer facile answers.” Money is a big problem: we’ve been financing military ventures with so much borrowed money that Posen wonders if our power position in the world hasn’t been diminished. The candidates “tend to talk about national security policy as if there are no resource constraints,” and if the next president adopts the same unfettered approach, the U.S. risks provoking other nations -- pushing them to act recklessly and build up their militaries. Candidates must join the issue of “whether or not we need to make tradeoffs between solving problems at home and slaying dragons abroad.”

Carol Saivetz worries that the next president will usher in a new cold war with Russia. The past eight years have led to a steady erosion of U.S.-Russian relations. When Putin came to power, he “wanted to play in the old boy’s club,” but met with a series of “perceived and real humiliations,” from NATO expansion to Kosovo. Because “Russia is a superpower wanna be,” says Saivetz, the next president must “craft serious policy towards Russian and not just knee-jerk reactions.”

Toward that end, Saivetz recommends the new administration develop a consistent and even tone of discourse with the Russians; keep them in international institutions but “reign them in tightly;” work with Russia on all issues where there’s a commonality of interests, such as terrorism; make room for Russia in the negotiations around Iran’s nuclear program; and if U.S. missile defense must go on in Europe, at least give the Russians access to sites. “We must stop this tit for tat retail,” she says, noting Russia’s new interest in Venezuela. The next president must “pull back from the edge; it sounds like Cuba.”

The candidates are not really discussing Asia, says Taylor Fravel, but they are surprisingly similar in what they do say. He describes a set of challenges to the next administration, including handling the evolving crisis with North Korea’s nuclear program; maintaining stability in Taiwan and Chinese relations; achieving a climate change agreement with China; engaging multilateral institutions like ASEAN rather than bilateral military agreements; and “coping with and accommodating China’s rise.” ]]> Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/595 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/595 Roberto Rigobon somehow makes his audience laugh while summarizing preliminary research on worldwide inflation and recession, data that bring some grim tidings about our global economic state of health. (NB: Argentina and France get knocked about a bit in this talk.)

By pulling favors with friends at central banks, Rigobon has gathered data on the prices of every conceivable product from dozens of nations over many years, from the clothes we wear to the cars we drive. He searches for correlations between the changes in price of major commodities, such as wheat and rice, and price changes in domestic retail items associated with them, such as bread, pasta and cookies (the latter he admits are of special concern to him). He calculates both how much the increases are and how long it takes for the price increases to occur. In a similar fashion, Rigobon has charted the international price of oil over time, and the domestic prices of oil products.

Some of Rigobon’s findings: In Chile, when the price of wheat goes up by 10%, the price of bread goes up by 5% 18 months later. In Colombia and Peru, it takes three years for this same percentage increase to occur, with these countries taking longer “to digest the international shock of commodity prices.” Not only do the prices of bread, cookies, meat, chicken, move in lockstep with wheat, but in some cases, so do housing, health and education. But Rigobon found that when the international price of oil increases, there is an immediate impact on all products related to oil. What’s worse, when the price of oil increases, the price of gas at the pump or for a rental car goes up disproportionately.

It’s been true for years, notes Rigobon, that “oil is unconditionally negatively correlated with cereals.” If oil is up, maize, sorghum and wheat prices are down. But this has recently changed, a sign “of the unique times we’re in, the policy challenges we’re facing.” We are simultaneously facing recession (due in large part to the sub-prime mortgage crisis), and inflation, in both food and oil prices. Central banks, he notes with scorn and wonderment, don’t include food and energy in their calculations of “core inflation.” If the job of these banks and government is to take care of their citizens, they must respond to this crisis along the lines of the response to 9/11 or Enron. Rigobon endorses well-communicated, transparent policies, and some tough measures like interest rate increases. ]]> Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/591 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/591 At the very moment when “we have to confront the opportunity or challenge of globalization,” says Allan Goodman, higher education appears woefully unprepared. The world is not ‘flat’ for the vast majority of college students.

Only 30 of 192 U.N. member states boast enrollments of international students at levels that exceed 1%. In the U.S., it is a little over 3%. Of the 2.7 million international students, 600 thousand come to the U.S. -- most hoping to end up at Harvard, according to Goodman. They are distributed among just 150 schools, usually in very small numbers. This is bad news, because “never has there been a more difficult time for us in the world,” says Goodman, and education exchange broadens not just the “knowledge enterprise” but enhances the image of both host and origin country.

Goodman worries about a shortfall in capacity, as developing countries graduate students from secondary schools with no, few or bad choices for college. The U.S. has 4000 accredited higher education institutions, 1/3rd of all such institutions in the world, and employs 2/3rds of the world’s faculty. Cairo University has 250 thousand students, many of whom have never seen a professor or entered a classroom. By the end of this decade, one university in Nanjing will have a million students, but won’t have enough space to educate them. It’s no wonder there’s increasing pressure to come to the U.S. for an education. Who is going to teach the 200 million or so people who will be trying to attend universities by 2025, wonders Goodman. That will be the “single biggest challenge for educators everywhere, whether you’re in Cambridge, Chile or China.”

MIT and other world-class universities should develop their own multilateral foreign policy, says Goodman, enabling students to enter from all over the world, and for U.S. students to study elsewhere. 75% of Americans currently don’t have passports; foreign language study, from elementary school through college, is no longer required. This must change, says Goodman. U.S. students and older scholars who travel to other parts of the world “can be genuine voices of our society and culture,” perhaps staying to “build a bridge in China” or cars in Germany. They might even help develop educational resources in another country, serving the rising tide of students overseas. It’s time to change the paradigm, says Goodman: “I think we should aspire to say, to be educated in America means you need to have international (study) as part of your education.” ]]> Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/572 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/572 The Bush administration began its “great misuse of history” shortly after 9/11, says
John Dower, when it seized upon Japan’s 1941 Pearl Harbor attack as a useful analogy, a way to promote its own invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation. Dower views as simplistic these “popular hooks to history” and mercilessly slashes away at the Bush administration’s continuing efforts to manipulate the public with historical imagery and example. Yet, with his more refined historical lens, Dower finds some unsettling areas of congruence between those days and our own times.

Reflecting on popular associations between 9/11 and Iraq, and Pearl Harbor and Japan, Dower offers two lines of analysis (and suggests he’s got a few more up his sleeve): what he calls “a Pearl Harbor code,” and “Ground Zero 2001 and Ground Zero 1945.” The first area involves comparing explanations of failures of intelligence that might have anticipated the attacks. Congressional and other investigations of the 1941 and 2001 attacks reveal that despite lots of “noise and chatter,” intelligence agencies grossly miscalculated and missed enemy intentions. This represents “not just system breakdown, but a stunning failure of the imagination,” says Dower. In both cases, the U.S. was caught unawares because it misjudged the enemy in a manner typical of “white supremacists,” simultaneously diminishing the other side’s capabilities and casting it as irrational or illogical. In an ironic aside, Dower notes that the Japanese launched their war on “a wish and a prayer, with no contingency planning and no serious contemplation of worst case scenarios.” How like the “U.S. strategic imbecility in the Iraqi invasion,” he says.

Dower’s second analytical line describes how a “clash of civilizations” argument has emerged powerfully since 9/11. Americans believe that Ground Zero 2001 marked the start of a new era -- the West opposing an Islamic culture that devalues human life. But Dower shows that a war machine targeting civilians and noncombatants went into high gear during World War II, with the U.S. and British air wars against Germany, then Japan. Airborne slaughter of innocents became standard operating procedure, part of an “ideological group think we associate with cultures of war.” Victims are no longer individual civilians, but entire nations. Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor became “codes for mass destruction and psychological warfare,” adopted by both bin Laden and the U.S. -- “one side using this as a model for the horrors of 9/11, the other finding inspiration in what we call the cutting edge of shock and awe, tactics that were presumably to ensure victory in the invasion of Iraq.” ]]> Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/571 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/571 José Mariano Gago draws the title of his talk from a book written collectively by European Union research ministers, following years of discussion. While it is the result of a long-term bureaucratic process, the book and the agreement it represents also constitute a political triumph of sorts, suggests Gago.

In a nutshell, says Gago, “the EU intends to become the most advanced knowledge-based economy in the world while achieving at the same time social cohesion and sustainable, environmental development.” A tall order, but one on which consensus was struck among very different member nations, and which is being translated in a variety of ways. A prominent concern for the EU, Gago notes, is the increasingly competitive global market for human resources. Ultimately, Europeans hope their policies will reverse the brain drain with the U.S. in science and technology.

The EU has spelled out specific steps for achieving its goals, which include increased public funding of and private investment in R&D, reforming universities (and pushing for their internationalization), and developing and extending R&D infrastructure such as distributed computing networks. The landscape of European research is complex, and driven not by a solitary political structure but by the means and needs of many nations, Gago reminds us. The mechanisms for taking on these challenges are consequently multifaceted. Among other initiatives, the European Research Council hopes to develop “high class basic research” in all fields, including the humanities and social sciences, with a “large sum of money at stake.” There will be joint technology initiatives, partnerships between public and private organizations that will receive funding for a decade. The EU also hopes to internationalize industrial research, encouraging collaboration among commercial groups from different nations that normally compete against each other. There is also the hope of spawning new international research organizations modeled on the highly successful CERN. Gago mentions the recent launch of a Portuguese-Spanish International Nanotechnology Laboratory.

Gago runs through some R&D statistics pulled from research by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): Portugal, he’s proud to say, has the highest proportion of women researchers, “after being one of the most traditional and backwards political systems in the 20th century.” The biggest European country, Germany, boasts fewer than 20% female researchers. European development, believes Gago, depends on building up women in the ranks in science and technology. Gago finally asks whether the U.S. and Europe might ultimately share a common vision, and if in fact the primary actors might not be research universities like MIT, with European partners. ]]> Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/569 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/569 Move over, Italy. Rafael del Pino is here to claim Spain’s rightful spot as a major European player in the global infrastructure market. Founded by del Pino’s father in 1952 as a builder of sleeper cars for trains, Ferrovial has diversified into a conglomerate with a hand in construction, real estate, road building design and operation, water treatment and desalination, airport ownership and operation, among other activities, and with 104 thousand employees in 43 countries. Del Pino describes some of the milestones passed, and hurdles overcome, during Ferrovial’s 50 years of expansive growth.

The company’s largest triumphs come from winning contracts in other nations: Ferrovial developed toll roads in Colombia, then Chile, and in 1988 bid on a huge ring highway around Toronto that involved committing 600 million Euros of Ferrovial’s own money. Not all Canadians were receptive to a Spanish company building and running a road with electronic tolls, and indeed, when the system didn’t work correctly at the start there was a great deal of public criticism, followed by a big fight with a new, opposition government.

Ferrovial bought its first airport in northern Chile in the late 90s, “in the middle of a desert, with some copper mines around and not much else.” They got the bid because of “a good relationship to the public works minister,” and because no previous experience was required. In 2004, Ferrovial “became more courageous,” and invested in the U.S., buying the Chicago Skyway from the city. Other acquisitions included a public works builder in Poland, and a joint venture in the U.K. with a company that runs three of London’s Tube lines.

Work with London's Tube lines made Ferrovial's acquisition of BAA (which runs Heathrow Airport) possible. Ferrovial, says del Pino, leverages airports as much as it can, and the BAA enterprise will leave Ferrovial with a net loss in 2008 of at least 300 million Euros, some of which flows from extensive renovations and rebuilding at a key terminal. Del Pino says the company’s shares have fallen by half in one year as a result of this venture and that “we’re being punished by uncertainty with BAA.” He notes sarcastically, “This is how the market reflects our wonderful management skills.” He’s dug in for the long run, though. “We’re a UK company based in Madrid.” ]]> Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/563 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/563 There’s a lot that seems familiar on TV in other countries, and indeed, as these panelists recount, there’s been a flow across borders of TV content and style nearly as long as the medium’s been around.

William Uricchio tells us that although TV technology developed “as a genuinely global phenomenon,” in Stalin’s Russia, Nazi Germany and in the USA, after World War II, TV became synonymous with American culture. This was no accident, says Uricchio, since it was pushed by the USIA as an American invention “to combat Communism and to help civilize and conquer the world, make it an American marketplace.”

Over time, this influence has broadened as a result of direct program sales (Germans went crazy for Dallas); the model of American production techniques and job categories; copying and then licensing actual TV formats; and the pressure on the more public-minded European broadcast networks to make a space for fast-paced, hard-driving, American-style programming. Uricchio finds it fascinating when formats “work across cultures,” because they become “a real metric for trying to understand culture specificity.”

Roberta Pearson has followed the impact of U.S. television in Britain. At first, the BBC was the only game in town, but commercial television jumped into the game in 1955, full of American content that was perceived as dumbed down and vulgar. Today, that perception has largely been reversed, and U.S. shows are widely admired in Britain. They’ve “gone from a situation where American TV used to represent the worst in popular culture to where it now represents the best, and the Brits know they can’t compete,” says Pearson. So central is American content that two major organizations, Sky TV and Virgin Media, have been waging mortal combat around the rights to American shows like Lost.

Many of this country’s most familiar programs, ones we might identify as uniquely American, derive from much older European versions, says Eggo Muller. In the case of America’s Most Wanted for example, pride of origin goes not to the U.S., nor even to the U.K. but to Germany for a show that first appeared in 1967. Muller makes the case that for the first time, the U.S. faces serious competition from Europe in TV production, specifically the export of reality TV formats, in Muller’s words, “the pornography of everyday life.” He describes the increasingly sophisticated trade in these formats – actual brands – which often involves copyrighted production elements (like computer graphics) and a senior producer who assures that the program is reproduced according to a series bible.

Nevertheless, versions of Survivor and Big Brother among others, manage to soak up a specific country’s ambience. The stories in the shows are totally different from one culture to the next, says Muller, as are the kinds of hosts, languages, “national sense of humor, national sense of how you should address those who are voted out, and how to care about them.” ]]> Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/550 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/550 The rising public awareness of climate change, says MIT President Susan Hockfield, comes with a price. “The public dialogue has evolved from nothing is wrong, so we need to do nothing, to everything is so wrong, that there’s nothing we can do.” Citizens are “starving for a sense of focus, clarity and direction,” and with that in mind, MIT and other organizations “need to speak louder,” declares Hockfield, by elevating the public debate, telling the truth about the power and limitations of technology, and focusing on the harsh reality that the scale of a proposed solution can “doom a clever idea to nothing more than a dilettante’s distraction.”

Here’s Rajendra K. Pachauri’s panic-inducing assertion: We have a window of seven years to stabilize CO₂ at today’s levels if we are to limit our global mean temperature increase to around 2.4⁰C. A world this hot would be a very unpleasant place to be. Pachauri lays out unequivocal” evidence of climate change, and describes how extreme precipitation events, heat waves and other natural catastrophes will become more frequent, endangering vast swaths of humanity. We stand to lose 20-30% of species if warming exceeds 1.5 to 2.5 ⁰C. Pachauri also notes this “scary prospect”: the rapid loss of ice sheets on polar land, leading to sea level rises of several meters, and the flight of large populations in response.

Pachauri describes the kinds of adaptations humanity must make to the changes already underway, including protection from flooding; preventing water scarcity; and retooling agriculture. Developed nations have a head start in these, and must help out developing nations, or risk global conflicts. Yet adaptation alone “cannot cope with all the projected impacts of climate change,” says Pachauri, so greenhouse gas mitigation efforts are urgent. In the midst of this desperate panorama, Pachauri holds out some hope: “Anyone who says, what’s the point, why take action—if we start today, we can really make a difference in the next two to three decades.”

What’s more, we have at hand a portfolio of technologies that are currently or soon to be available that could achieve significant mitigation, he says. If we invest in public transport and efficient vehicles, the right kinds of R&D, technology transfers and incentives, we could achieve our goals. And he notes, the cost of taking such actions “are not high at all.” To stabilize CO₂ at around 500 PPM, the costs in 2030 would be less than 3% global GDP, which amounts to a minuscule .12% annually.
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/551 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/551 Rajendra K. Pachauri leads fellow members of the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC in a remarkable public session of soul-searching. Now that the IPCC has helped make climate change a signal issue of our times, what next?

John Reilly wonders whether the IPCC should be celebrating any success, given that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise in spite of all the comprehensive study. Given the “dismal outcome so far,” it’s important that the IPCC “avoid the complacency that comes with big awards,” and that “much, all of the work is still there to be done.”

“It’s probably time for sunset, Michael Golay suggests.” Now that the IPCC has succeeded in establishing climate change as “a reality among at least the chattering classes,” the next step is actually a social question, one that is much more difficult than coming up with new technologies. “We’re really talking about interfering with markets, and doing this in a way that doesn’t become simply another vehicle for creating profits for special interests….”

William Moomaw believes IPCC reports have made possible policy and corporate innovations that would have been unthinkable only a decade ago, and the IPCC should continue to serve in an advisory capacity to the world, laying out the technological and economic possibilities. Says Moomaw, “We got off to a bad start. We talked about global warming as being an environmental issue when in fact global warming is a symptom of maldevelopment."

The IPCC “should continue as the voice of science and help a well-informed society make tough decisions,” declares Andreas Fischlin . This will mean “facing the issue of sustainability in the context of climate change to an extent many of us won’t like.” Research challenges in developing nations may impede efforts to “optimize the IPCC’s work and help in the whole issue of moving toward a more sustainable world.”

Akimasa Sumi believes IPCC should continue to have a powerful role in the future, because the “climate change issue is driven by science.” He proposes refining climate models in the hope of reducing uncertainty around such matters as the role of aerosols and clouds. He says the focus must now be on adaptation and mitigation, particularly over a 30-year time scale.

The IPCC established its relevance because it drew a line between being policy relevant and policy prescriptive, says Adil Najam. Now, “we need to claim victory on understanding the mechanics of the science and stop debating.” The next step must mean “focusing not on the scope of the problem, but on potential for solutions.”

Should the IPCC attempt to become more prescriptive, believes Howard Herzog, “it would lose respect.” In his years with the organization, “anytime we got into policy prescriptive areas, when we got close to the line, tensions rose, arguments intensified, we lost consensus.” He thinks it’s important to continue the IPCC’s work, because the science will change, and we need a “broker out there to summarize where science is on critical issues.” ]]> Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/536 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/536 From Nicholas Stern’s market perspective, climate change constitutes an “externality” that, like traffic grid lock in a city center, arises when some people’s actions affect the welfare of others, at no cost to the perpetrators. Simple price mechanisms can fix congestion, says Stern, but climate change, which he views as “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen,” requires unprecedented measures to contend with its potentially cataclysmic, long-term global impacts.

Stern is the author of an influential and provocative review prepared for the British government describing the economics of climate change and development. Here he outlines, in non-technical jargon, the key issues, choices and potential responses of a world facing warming.

Scientific modeling suggests that if nations continue on their present course, the Earth will move from CO₂ levels of around 450 parts per million (ppm) today to over 800 ppm a century from now. That could bring a 5^o C change, says Stern, accompanied by storms, droughts, and sea level rise, which would trigger massive human migration and “severe conflict.” While totting up the costs of such a scenario is nearly unimaginable, Stern has more of a handle on the “scale of damage” -- disruptions to economic and social activity -- a 3^o C increase might inflict. This is the kind of increase that many climate models suggest will come if we manage to stabilize CO₂levels at 550 ppm.

Stern argues that if we don’t act to rein in greenhouse gases to such a target, the costs to the global GDP will exceed 5% each year, forever. (If the impacts of a 3^o C increase have been underestimated, the costs might rise to 20% GDP, or more.) If nations think of this as “an insurance problem,” says Stern, they ought to be willing to invest 1%-2% of their current GDP in reducing emissions and achieving stabilization in the next 10-20 years. This is the timeframe societies have to put into play appropriate policies for carbon pricing, new technologies for conservation and non-carbon based energies. What’s needed, says Stern, is a global deal, a framework of understanding that guides all nations of the world. His six-point plan relies on rich nations acknowledging their obligation to reduce carbon emissions by greater amounts than developing nations; funding efforts to develop and share technologies, and to tackle deforestation; and monies to help needier nations adapt to change. Stern sees some evidence that the international community -- perhaps even the U.S. – is positively inclined toward cutting a global deal. ]]> Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/522 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/522 Human rights are central to the fraught politics between Israelis and Palestinians, these two panelists argue. Any conceivable solution to such an endless conflict must begin by acknowledging the current bleak realities of Palestinian life under Israeli rule, they say.

Anat Biletzki and the group B'Tselem have conducted painstaking studies of how Israel’s longstanding agenda of allowing its civilians to settle on Palestinian occupied land constitutes an infringement of the Palestinians’ basic equality, property rights, freedom of movement, their very “right to self-determination.” The settlements were given a “cloak of legality,” sanctioned as they were by one Israeli government after another. Geographically, the settlements break up what might have been a contiguous Palestinian state.

Biletzki ties the settlements together with other work by the Israelis conducted in the name of security to demonstrate the existence of a forbidding, two-tier society : a system of roads off limits to Palestinians in the occupied territories, or permitted only via carefully guarded checkpoints; the wall (or separation barrier), which runs through Palestinian land; and the total control of Gaza, from the economy to communications, which increasingly makes it “a big prison.” This barricading of Palestinians has become a “routine phenomenon” –and not worthy of the headlines, in the way bombs and torture are, says Biletzki. She insists that “our political conversation must become a human rights conversation,” and hopes that she can make an impact on American Jews and policy makers, who don’t believe in the possibility of making a deal with the Palestinians: “If we give them the land, they’ll throw us into the sea.”

Jeff Halper describes the current situation for Palestinians as apartheid, knowing full well the awful resonance of the term. He sees the system of settlements, roads and the wall as a deliberate land grab, “imprisoning tens of thousands of Palestinians within cities, towns and villages.” The word apartheid “cuts through -- immediately you get it.” This is important because the situation in Israel “is a global issue that affects everyone. It’s the epicenter of instability in the entire region…one of the reasons you can’t take toothpaste onto an airplane.”

Reframing the issue will bring the kind of negative attention that South Africa once drew, as well as international sanctions, and corporate divestment. While Halper believes Israel has essentially foreclosed a viable two-state solution, he still imagines that the U.S. might persuade Israel to pull out of the settlements, so Palestinians can move back in. “There would be dancing in the streets of Tel Aviv,” Halper predicts, because so many Israelis “want this albatross off their back.” ]]>