http://mitworld.mit.edu/ MIT World media in category 'Public Policy'. en-us Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:11:51 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.” ]]> Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/718 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/718 The collapse of print and other traditional news and the rise of celebrity culture have contributed to the sharp decline of in-depth stories involving race and society, say these two speakers, in a discussion that’s replete with personal anecdote.

Juan Williams sets out detailing his childhood dreams to break into the newspaper business. He read all the New York papers for baseball coverage, “and noticed no people of color telling their stories … The absence struck me.” From prep school through college, Williams found internships at progressively larger papers, which had at most a handful of black reporters, and often denied those the right to bylines. But the turmoil of the ‘60s, recalls Williams, led to a wave of more militant black journalists who demanded respect and greater attention to their own communities.

In spite of some gains, Williams does not see signs of great progress over the years. President Obama’s election may have led to more African-American commentators, but Williams is the only regular person of color on Washington’s Sunday morning talk shows, which he describes as “conversations among elite white males.” Nor are there African-American anchors: “It always comes down to, ‘Is the audience going to relate to a black male as lead dog?’”

Williams deplores the “pandering” that big media institutions engage in with people of color. An executive at a black cable network, rejecting the idea of a news show, told Williams that the black men “who would identify with you like to watch sports and pornography…” Magazines like Ebony, Jet, and Essence focus on the “fabulously rich singer or superstar,” and avoid discussing the nation’s social and economic crises. There’s “no investment of money, or placing journalists in a position to tell you critical stories … to find the political power players who have their fingers on the levers causing distress in lower income communities. It doesn’t exist.”

J. Phillip Thompson believes that the waning of local newspapers like New York’s Amsterdam News marks the end of one of the last resources communities of color have to learn about issues affecting them. As a former public housing manager in New York, he knows the importance of reporters scrutinizing the words and actions of politicians. Now “I’ll read about a shooting in a mainstream newspaper. But the voice of community and debates I heard all the time I don’t read about.”

He traces a class divide in black America today that’s different from previous incarnations. For instance, black officials representing majority black districts “don’t want issues, don’t want people excited.” Elected leadership, he says, is not focused on addressing “fundamental problems like jobs, the fact that people can’t pay mortgages, raise families. Instead of dealing with that, officials move onto other issues like Skip Gates being arrested off of his porch. That’s unfortunate, but it’s just not a vital issue in black America.” ]]> Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/715 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/715 John M. Barry brings unsettling news from the frontlines of H1N1 research: this novel influenza virus is very hard to pin down. In spite of international scientific scrutiny, H1N1 continues to baffle and elude, worrying health officials defending against the pandemic, and challenging some ideas about influenza in general. Says Barry, “A lot of things we thought we knew, the virus demonstrates we knew wrong.”

Barry examines the current pandemic in both historic and scientific context. Most influenza viruses share certain features: They can jump to other species by way of mutation, or by mixing genetic components with another virus that happens to be infecting the same cell at the same time. Influenza pandemics go “as far back in history as we can look,” with 10 occurring in just the last 300 years. Four of the most recent pandemics appear to have rolled out in waves of varying lethality, infecting at peak times some 30% of the human population.

Before last year, the latest pandemic threat seemed to be H5N1, an avian flu jumping to humans. But, says Barry, “while we were all looking at H5N1, this H1N1 virus snuck up on us…and we have no idea yet how serious it will be.” The problem for researchers is that H1N1 simply won’t behave in predictable ways. When ordinary influenza viruses are transmissible between humans, novel molecular markers are present. The current H1N1 doesn’t bear these markers, yet is transmissible. There are conflicting reports on whether this flu is more infectious than the seasonal flu. There’s evidence that some people over 60 are resistant, perhaps because they carry antibodies to previous influenzas. And although H1N1 doesn’t exhibit conventional molecular tags for virulence, it is virulent. Unlike seasonal flu, when H1N1 kills, it targets younger people, and it does so through viral pneumonia, as opposed to complicating bacterial infections. “Depending on how you ask the question, it’s either extraordinarily mild, more mild than seasonal flu, or more than 100 times as virulent as seasonal influenza.”

While H1N1 seems stable for the moment, and to some, unthreatening, its path can’t yet be plotted. Some of the most infamous flu epidemics take two years to travel around the world, moving from sporadic activity to “blanketing the entire globe and causing enormous morbidity numbers.” If this flu takes off, history tells us, short of a “retreat on a Vermont mountain with shotguns,” there will be nowhere to hide, says Barry. “This virus is going to find me.” ]]> 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, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/706 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/706 In a lively discussion with Simon Johnson,
Lawrence Fish deconstructs the near collapse of the banking system and points out the multiple factors that have contributed to the financial crisis.

Topics in the discussion include the banks that did not fail, how Canadian and other countries' banking systems also did not fail, the political landscape of banking regulation, ethics, bonuses in the banking industry and the ethics oath signed by 50% of the students at the Harvard Business School. ]]> Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/696 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/696 It’s a good thing for a world increasingly beset by mammoth challenges that universities are responding with new engineering systems programs. These initiatives, as Daniel Roos attests, are swiftly proliferating in the U.S. and abroad to equip students to address such complex issues as health care, sustainable energy, and infrastructure. Roos celebrates the fifth year of the Council of Engineering Systems Universities (CESUN), one of this symposium’s sponsors, and recaps his survey of group members on the state of engineering systems education.

While some traditionalists resist the interdisciplinary dimensions and broad compass featured so prominently in engineering systems programs, Roos believes that rapid global change necessitates corresponding change in how engineers are trained to think and practice. A case in point: a collapsing 100-year-old automobile and transportation system whose revival must incorporate complex, networked systems: intelligent infrastructure that can improve safety and alleviate congestion; and new, green, digitally wired vehicles integrated in a “smart energy net.”

ESD researchers study the complex social/technological questions that “will increasingly determine the future,” says Susan Hockfield. At MIT, Hockfield's job “is to lower boundaries that still exist between departments, and schools. By bringing together faculty, ESD creates enormous energy."

Charles Vest tells his audience, “Your time has come,” but warns that the U.S. lags dangerously far behind other nations in graduating engineers. Redesigning college-level engineering programs won’t be enough to meet the “grand challenges” posed by our times, if more children can’t be inspired to study engineering. The field lacks luster, and simply doesn’t connect with young people, says Vest. “We have failed miserably in projecting what engineering is, what it can accomplish and what’s exciting.”

The nation faces a great opportunity “to start rebuilding the economy based on real engineering innovations, to produce real goods and services, providing real value to people and society.” Vest wants to draw young people to work “at the frontiers of technology.” He notes a lot of interest in “tiny systems” such as biology, information and nano-technology. But “we need to worry” about the big macro systems of energy, environment, healthcare, manufacturing –“where the rubber hits the road between engineering and society.”

Vest wants to capture the passion of the next generation through some “soul stirring.” Through a campaign involving government, industry, and media, Vest hopes to convince young people that engineers are vital to meeting the “Engineering Grand Challenges” of global warming and sustainable energy, improving medicine and healthcare delivery, reducing vulnerability to human and natural threats, and expanding and enhancing human capability and joy (a somewhat unusual category for engineers, Vest admits).

Vest concludes with some personal comments about engineering systems, including anecdotes about Toyota’s innovations in auto assembly; NASA’s hard-won lessons in integrated design and manufacture of space-bound vehicles; and improvements in hospital care following simple changes integrated system wide. He sees the implosion of our financial system as an opportunity to study an incredibly complex human-technological system and set in place “at least an early warning system.” Vest also finds cheer in the public’s budding grasp of complex systems, as witnessed by increasing discomfort with fuel-based ethanol. ]]> Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/693 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/693 In trying financial times, Susan Hockfield remains optimistic and committed to pursuing MIT’s massive, multi-year initiatives in energy and life sciences. She prefaces her “whirlwind” tour of MIT for an alumni audience by referencing the campus-wide relief at the change in presidential administrations, which promises to make science and engineering more central, and to make “MIT values more mainstream.” If it indeed becomes “cool to be smart,” Hockfield believes MIT can count on taking a prominent national role in research, policy and education.

One key area in which MIT hopes to make a major contribution is sustainable energy. The MIT Energy Initiative, two years old, brings together faculty and students across all disciplines to develop a portfolio of new technologies (although the focus seems increasingly to fall on solar). Campus interest is so intense that the Institute has committed to a minor in energy, and it’s seeking five new professorships in the area. The other major enterprise involves fusing biological sciences with engineering, especially in the study of cancer. At the new Koch Institute, cancer biologists and engineers have already made “fundamental discoveries underlying new targeted cancer drugs,” and they are hard at work decoding the disease, and devising new methods for diagnosis and treatment.

Hockfield also candidly describes the impact of the economic downturn on the Institute, acknowledging that “most revenue streams have been compromised,” except for research. With the endowment down by 20-25%, departments across the board are making significant but strategic cuts for the next two to three years. MIT will not compromise on providing financial aid to needy students, a cost that understandably has risen in the past year, nor on hiring faculty. Hockfield hopes that private philanthropy will help MIT “preserve core strengths and values.” At the end of the recession, she says, “We want to come out with a leaner, stronger Institute.”

Fellow neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe outlines her research investigating the neural basis for a Theory of Mind -- how the human mind seems geared to “glean what others are thinking and feeling.” From her work with children and adults, Saxe has determined that there’s a very specific region of the brain -- the right temporal-parietal junction -- dedicated to thinking about how others think. This area lights up in the fMRI scanner when people read stories involving another person’s beliefs and moral judgments, but not when they digest other kinds of written material. The RTPJ develops this special function slowly (young children don’t have it), and Saxe has discovered that she can interfere with this region’s activities, altering her subjects’ sense of what constitutes morally permissible behavior. She’s exploring whether these distinct neural networks develop differently in children with autism, with the hope of finding therapies that might someday help treat the disorder. ]]> Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/691 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/691 While Arnold Barnett acknowledges addressing the same questions around flying year after year (“Does he ever change his schtick?”), he advertises some new twists this time ‘round. Barnett remains remarkably consistent, though, in his quite sunny assessment of the current state of aviation safety -- even after a recent string of air accidents.

Wielding statistics and the occasional wisecrack, Barnett arrives at his destination by way of a series of dialectical questions. How safe is it to fly now? Doesn’t that depend on how we measure aviation safety, and which statistics are the most informative? You could look at such metrics as fatal accidents per flight hours, or hull loss per 100 thousand departures, or passengers killed to passengers carried. Barnett proposes instead the “imperfect but meaningful” statistic of death risk per randomly chosen flight, which among other conceptual advantages, deals with the odds of being killed -- a factor with “intuitive appeal.”

Barnett’s numbers: From 2000 to 2008, someone who chose a U.S. jet flight at random would sustain an accidental death risk of 1 in 23 million (there were 3 crashes in 69 million total jet flights). There’s a much greater likelihood an American child will become president (one in 2 million) than die in flight.

Death risk statistics from the 1960s through today have improved steadily, plateauing in the current decade due to the unprecedented tragedy of 9/11. Currently, there’s a one in 10 million risk of death by jet in U.S. flight, around 1 in 14 million for other developed nations (the developing world’s aviation risk poses somewhat greater hazards: one in 1.5 million). Says Barnett,“Despite recent suggestions to the contrary, regional jet flights are not less safe than national airlines.”

While “fatal accidents on first world jets are on the verge of extinction,” Barnett worries about an increase in runway collisions, as the global economy improves. He hopes technological advances will address these concerns. The greater challenge comes from terrorism, which he feels sure will continue to target aviation. Using a cost benefit analysis, Barnett dispenses with proposals to ban laptops on flights, and also dismisses the idea of faster, more effective responses to terrorist attacks, which often come in clusters. Ultimately, our “optimal strategy might actually be to do nothing, except hope.” Perhaps we should come to view aviation dangers as Californians regard the threat of earthquakes: Take precautions but acknowledge “we have to take certain risks in life if we’re going to have lives worth risking.” ]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/683 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/683 The situation facing our planet could hardly be more dire: There’s increasingly dangerous competition among nations for ever scarce energy resources, and climate change is racing ahead of predictions. Although Steven Chu believes “We are getting close to where it’s very nervous time,” he also sees “reason for hope.”

Just as science in the 1970s produced a “green revolution” in agricultural productivity, preventing mass starvation in a swelling global population, Chu is counting on transformative scientific and engineering ideas to achieve sustainable energy and cap climate change.

As chief architect of new policy, and with tens of billions of dollars to pump into his vision, Chu is targeting key areas. Number one on his list: energy efficiency and conservation. Since buildings use 40% of the nation’s total energy, designing more efficient homes and offices will make a big difference. There are “tune ups” possible for existing buildings, and software that can direct lighting, heating and cooling where it’s needed that can achieve 50% plus energy savings, and won’t break the bank. Says Chu, “This is truly low-hanging fruit, but we have to build the tools that allow architects and structural engineers to get on with it.”

On the supply side, Chu has his heart set on transformative technologies such as nanotech breakthroughs in solar power. He’s looking for ways to scale up biomass fuel production, now that synthetic biology can make microbes manufacture gas-like fuels. Noting in particular the work of MIT’s Dan Nocera, Chu says he “wants to use nature as an inspiration, but go beyond nature,” performing artificial photosynthesis to create new hydrocarbons. And as the U.S. and China continue dependence on coal, figuring out how to capture and sequester carbon from these plants figures “high on the list of things we must do.” He’s again hoping researchers will find some analog to nature’s ability to grab and neutralize CO₂.

The ideal environment for jumpstarting such urgent scientific efforts, believes Chu, is something like Bell Labs, where Chu himself worked. The Labs performed “mission-driven research” around communications and for U.S. war efforts, but along the way also developed the transistor, information theory, radio astronomy, and lasers, among many examples. These scientist-led labs emphasized exchange of ideas and rapid infusion of research funds to the most promising work. This led to inventions that in turn transformed the U.S. economy. Chu envisions energy lab equivalents that “deliver the goods” along with fundamental science, “so you can have the Nobel Prize and save the world at the same time.” ]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/662 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/662 The Obama campaign owes its victory not to a single charismatic candidate, but to the efforts of a disciplined and motivated organization whose roots go back to landmark movements of the 1960s. Marshall Ganz, who cut his teeth on civil rights work and with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, describes how the principles and practices he learned around organizing and leadership played out in the most recent presidential election.

For Ganz, our time represents the end of “40 years of wandering in the desert,” the end of “the politics of disappointment.” We’ve arrived at an extraordinary moment of rapid change -- a time of both possibility and uncertainty -- with commensurate challenges to political leaders. But Ganz’s take, after years with progressive movements, is that leadership involves “taking responsibility to enable others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty.” Leaders recruit, motivate and develop others, constructing a community around common interests, and building capacity from within the community. And unlike businesses, which tend to rely on rigid hierarchies, and systems and procedures, effective volunteer-based organizations must engage and enable lots of people to become innovators, adaptive in the face of uncertainty.

This kind of “civic capital” is precisely what the Obama campaign cultivated and invested in, says Ganz. Thousands of people acquired the skills and practiced “the arts of leadership necessary to self govern in democracy.” Some unique conditions made this campaign so successful, including Obama’s story of hope, which drew on a persuasive personal narrative. There was also the campaign’s strategy of developing grassroots capacity to win caucuses and close primaries; its use of the Internet to attract an army of small-scale, repeat contributors; and its capacity for “continual learning” about what was and was not working.

In the summer of 2007, Ganz served as counselor in LA’s “Camp Obama,” teaching key state organizers to share personal narratives and create compelling politics around human experience and emotion, rather than around issues. He led workshops on motivating from “a place of hopefulness,” rather than of fear, and on how to build from common ground to shared political values and commitments. Obama staffers and volunteers learned how to create mutually reliant leadership teams that could act independent of the campaign HQ; and how to amass and utilize voter information both to get out the vote, and to tap additional volunteers. A “cascade of training and leadership development” led to a massive field organization that built upon itself, where volunteers continually joined and moved up the ranks, and everyone felt “they owned a piece of it.” ]]> Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/659 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/659 There will be a time “beyond crisis,” asserts Robert C. Merton, who delves into the dense science of derivatives -- a field he has fundamentally shaped -- to explain how the vast global economic collapse has come about, and how financial innovations at the heart of the collapse could also be tools for reconstruction.

Merton uses deceptively simple graphs to show how risk propagated rapidly across financial networks, bringing down financial institutions. While he admits the crisis “is very big and complicated,” Merton boils a piece of it down to the use of put options, a derivative contract that’s been around since the 17th century. This asset-value insurance contract, a guarantee of debt, is the basis for the credit default swaps widely adopted by financial giants in the last few years -- now widely regarded as a primary cause of the meltdown. It turns out, says Merton, that the put “makes risky debt very complicated, and treacherous…”

In these puts, if the value of assets goes down, the guarantee value goes up, so the value of the written insurance is worth more. The value of this guarantee is very sensitive to the movement of the underlying asset. When dealing with puts on the local level, this movement can be tracked and managed more easily. But when financial institutions manipulate bundles of assets (for instance, mortgage-backed securities), the increase in risk proves non-linear. Add some volatility, like the jolts posed by widespread drops in housing prices, and the difference between the decline in asset value and the value of the guarantee becomes enormous -- leading to mountains of debt and felling behemoths like AIG (insurer to lenders).

Yet, Merton counsels not to blame the current crisis on put options, or too much complexity, but rather on incomplete understanding of the models of risk involved. It’s not “bad and incompetent people” who have brought this about (although he admits there are plenty of those) but “a structural issue between financial innovation and crisis.” We’ve essentially built a high speed train for which there’s not yet an appropriate track. We’ve created instruments for manipulating financial risk without a thorough understanding of the underlying engineering.

Derivatives are not going away, says Merton. We need regulators who understand these instruments, and perhaps a sovereign wealth fund intended to “maximize the expected return for risk for people of the U.S.” Merton concludes with “something positive” -- a model of how to “weaken the tradeoff between pursuing comparative advantage vs. efficient risk,” applied to the nation of Taiwan. ]]> Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/654 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/654 “Paint it Black” is all about red -- the mountain of debt challenging the viability of all the nation’s institutions. James Poterba takes a scholarly approach to moderating this detailed discussion of the unfolding economic collapse, its ramifications on business and the possible impact of governmental remedies.

“From the standpoint of economic analysis,” says Poterba, “this appears to be a once-in-a -generation or perhaps longer global storm.” He expands on this statement throughout, with forays into macroeconomics, credit and equity markets, the tools historically and currently wielded by government to interfere with economic crises, and an occasional joke (at the expense of economists). He engages his speakers in their areas of expertise.

Alan Cohen discusses how the practice of “shadow banking” helped trigger the subprime mortgage crisis. Non-financial institutions invented ways to package mortgages, slicing and dicing them into securities that could be traded without oversight. These credit derivative instruments existed without adequate capital backing, and so were exceedingly risky. Cohen also blames rating agencies for becoming complicit in the game, talking to investment bankers “about what was necessary to get AAA.” There were warning signs, says Cohen, as early as 2006 of “deteriorating housing numbers, but … the rating agencies didn’t downgrade.” Suddenly, in 2007, these packaged, unregulated securities lost their value, and banks, faced with debt, ended up selling assets under pressure.

Cohen says that TARP funds won’t necessarily free up credit for small business or the mortgage market, since banks and other institutions are still trying to pay off vast debt. In this over-leveraged environment, no financial institution trusts another, and companies seeking loans must demonstrate they represent extremely low risk. Some lenders worried about “getting hurt by entrepreneurial activity” may ask for rights, or participation, in the venture. “To attract the more disciplined lender, you must provide more bang for the buck,” says Cohen.

David Tabak reckons that volatility poses the premiere challenge for small business. At a time of great flux for all markets, firms must attempt to calculate what their patents and investments will be worth months and years down the road. He remains guarded about whether government intervention will calm the waters. For one thing, bank stress tests must decide how much value actually exists in different tiers of assets held by banks -- including loans to small business. Some banks may be partly nationalized if they fail to meet capital reserve requirements. This won’t fuel stability and growth in the private sector. Also, Tabak sees some businesses holding out for a second round of government funding, or for investment tax credits.

Tabak’s advice for the government: “Put in an option clearing corporation, and ban credit default swaps for speculators.” To businesses, Tabak says, “Get your financial statements right,” and “ask, ‘What do I need in the short and long run, what are the differences between the two, and plan out.’” There are strong opportunities for those who survive. ]]> 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.” ]]> Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/649 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/649 Two “sisters” -- both university chiefs -- celebrate the victory of the first African-American U.S. President, but remind listeners that American institutions have not yet achieved the full measure of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream.

MIT, which prides itself on inventing the future, says Susan Hockfield, must stop looking backwards and “make diversity and inclusion a daily reality.” To fulfill these goals, says Hockfield, MIT is pursuing policy and practical change in such areas as retention, recruitment, climate, communication and accountability. For instance, candidate searches must move beyond sorting through known options, Hockfield states. She also notes that the steps required “in a very long journey” to build a culture of inclusion will not be threatened by budget pressures. Many actions cost nothing at all, she says: pairing up a new hire with a long-term employee “as a welcoming guide,” and reaching out to student cultural and affinity groups, for instance. Department heads can check in with women and professors of color for the “cost of no more than an occasional cup of coffee.” Concludes Hockfield, “Distributed leadership is the only path to success in building a culture of inclusion, because real progress in mentoring, reaching out, locating new talent, must happen step by step, unit by unit, in labs, offices and residence halls across all MIT.”

“We are still such a mighty, might long way from being able to declare victory over bigotry and discrimination,” says Johnetta B. Cole. Behind these twin evils stand people with power and privilege. Quoting Frederick Douglass, Cole cautions that such people ‘concede nothing without a struggle.’ So those in power must perceive a rewarding alternative: “We need to imagine and work toward making a world where difference doesn’t make any more difference.”

Even the most marginalized of us, says Cole, must locate in ourselves the power and privilege we do, have, and expunge the temptation to victimize others. “Some white women who have been the victims of sexism can systematically practice racism,” Cole points out, and “some black folk who have known the bitter sting of racism can be intensely homophobic…” She asks her audience to “learn how you learned your prejudices and interrogate yourself around your particular journey around questions of diversity and inclusion.” Own all parts of your identity, and “never again let anyone interact with you on the basis of one alone.”

While she acknowledges MIT’s work toward diversity, Cole says “that is not enough,” and that each person must take personal responsibility “for helping to change this mighty institution.” Her advice: make sure the curriculum moves away from “WWW:” western, white and womanless. No faculty or staff searches should move forward without a diverse pool of candidates. Real inclusion means not just recruiting a diverse class of students each and every year, but “creating an inclusive culture so students of color, or the LGBT community, students who are differently abled -- all the underrepresented groups -- can say this is my university.” ]]> Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/647 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/647 These five security specialists seem dubious about major Defense Department reforms as the Obama administration winds into action.

Cindy Williams first unloads these basics: the U.S. FY 2009 Department of Defense non-war budget is over half a trillion dollars – “about as much money as the rest of the world combined spends on their military endeavors;” another $200 billion is going to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military is the nation’s and possibly the world’s largest employer, with 1.4 million active duty men and women and another million plus in the guard, reserves and civilian side. But in spite of this manpower and budget, says Williams, “the Secretary of Defense will face daunting constraints,” from the current economic meltdown, to the looming entitlement deficit posed by baby boomer retirement. Williams also notes a set of pressures driving costs skyward, not least of which include the likelihood of global conflicts springing up.

There’s a “popular parlor game in D.C.,” says Owen Coté, of tracking “elaborate, often baroque programs that are over budget, to figure out which will be canceled.” To Coté’s thinking, “dozens of programs fit into that category.” Complicating this “game” is a tug of war among the different services. The perception, says Coté, is of “a zero-sum fight for resources between the Army and Marine Corps, and the Navy and Air Force on the other hand.” Yet all our forces must prepare for both irregular warfare (military operations that don’t involve states), and traditional wars against nations with militaries. The simplest approach to Defense program allocations, Coté says, “is to decide what kinds of wars we think we’re going to fight, and what is the relevance of the program in one of these kinds of wars. If it doesn’t look relevant to either, I’ve got some candidates to help you save money.”

“I don’t think much new will happen in the new administration,” says Harvey Sapolsky. “It helps that Republicans started a big, messy war.” But Sapolsky is worried about “continuities,” including the U.S. “propensity to intervene internationally,” “exploitation of our gullibility about management systems,” and “wishful thinking about inter-organizational agency coordination.” We’re fortunately “out of troops” to do interventions he says, but he imagines we’ll still find ourselves “in the thick of it unnecessarily.” He wishes there could be a “moratorium on management fads in DOD,” the endless discussion of achieving reforms when “defense is inherently an inefficient enterprise.”

William Fallon sees a mountain of DOD “desirements,” stemming from an endless “to-do list of things people want done in the name of security.” Well-intended outsiders, from Congress to the general public, press for new weapons programs, and military interventions. We “have a phenomenal budget, filled with all kinds of things, that if you lay them out, you’re probably hard-pressed to find a connection between that line item and national security.” Nevertheless, “despite all the hand wringing, inefficiencies and angst, overall, security for the country stands in pretty darn good shape.” ]]> Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/646 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/646 Inspired by the vast potential of bioengineering, ordinary people are seeking their inner Frankenstein -- doctor, not monster. Two speakers who know their way around Petri dish and beaker discuss the possibilities and pitfalls of do-it-yourself biology with an MIT Museum crowd.

Showing ads from a 1980 Omni magazine, Natalie Kuldell reflects on the vast changes in computer engineering in the past few decades – from 20-lb PCs to laptops and handhelds. In contrast, she laments, genetic engineering today still resembles in large part its 1980 antecedents -- inserting bits of DNA into organisms like E. coli. She avers that computer engineering made such leaps because its technology was widely available to amateurs, who helped drive many advances. Biotech hasn’t moved as fast, and won’t, believes a nascent do-it-yourself (DIY) community, until basic components of biology become accessible to a larger population.

Synthetic biology aims to make new biological forms easier to engineer. Kuldell complains that “much of my time is spent doing things to do the experiments I need to do. It would be terrific not to have to build things in advance.” But building biological components and streamlining processes is difficult in biology, because biosystems are complex, and unpredictable. Can amateurs working with “Tupperware, thermometers and genetic engineering in the kitchen” discover “something remarkable doing their biology at home?”

Reshma Shetty thinks engineered organisms can do more than sense toxic metals in the environment or determine whether seawater is contaminated. She can “imagine a DIY bioengineer…doing something more fantastical, ambitious…. What about growing your own house?” Shetty describes a home experiment that can make bacteria smell like bananas. This is a small feat, but to achieve something significant, a real contribution to science, Shetty says DIY biologists need bio-engineered friendly organisms that will serve as common models, safe, easy to grow “and fun to use.” Candidates include moss, an easy to grow bacterium called Acinetobacter, and the salt-loving Halobacterium. By giving people the right tools, “they can build something fun and creative others can appreciate.” ]]> 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, 02 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/642 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/642 Imagine a response to oil dependence and climate change that offers people around the world a new and improved version of the car, premised on redesigning infrastructure top to bottom with green technology in a way that recharges ailing national economies. Applying both an entrepreneurial spirit and a systems engineering approach, Shai Agassi has devised just such a visionary plan for cracking these vexing global challenges.

A recent World Economic Forum asked participants how to make the world a better place by 2020. Agassi felt an engineer’s compulsion to respond. He describes a process “like a fractal problem…opening up a cascade of questions.” First came the notion of running a country without oil. He seized on, then dismissed, the idea of bio- and hydrogen-based fuels. He then experienced the seminal insight that “you need to go down from molecules to electrons if you want to change the world.”

This realization meant addressing both economic and engineering problems. He’d need to offer consumers not a vehicle limited to two seats, three wheels and 28 mph speeds -- but one that could go faster than gas cars, with all the requisite bells and whistles. To move his plan along, he also determined to use available electric car battery engineering. This raised significant issues of convenience: where to recharge and how frequently. Agassi envisioned charging docks in parking lots and home garages. He devised a simple battery replacement method.

Then came the issue of affordability, which Agassi solved by applying a familiar business model, though not one associated with cars: cell phone minutes. Sell consumers an electric car with a subscription for miles: the longer the subscription, the greater the discount (or rebate check). In Europe, Agassi notes, where gas costs $7 to $8 a gallon, a five-year subscription pretty much gets you “a free electric car.”

The model’s complexity and infrastructure requirements imply government backing, which Agassi has already secured. In Denmark there’s a 180% tax on gasoline, and gas-powered sedans costs 60 thousand euros while electrics go for 20 thousand. North Sea windmills will provide clean electricity for charge stations. Israel’s building a desert solar field to “drive every car,” and a smart grid to monitor battery charging. The U.S. is hosting pilot programs in Hawaii and the Bay Area.

His is not a plan to phase in gradually: The time is now, he says. “We must do the right, moral thing,” to contend with climate change and brutal oil regimes, and “to create the biggest expansion in U.S. history.” ]]> Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/639 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/639 The mood of gloom has eased somewhat within the science community, with the advent of a new presidential administration, and Marc Kastner captures the mix of hopefulness and trepidation among his peers around the enormous challenges the nation faces in coming years.

Kastner describes four areas “in order of increasing difficulty” the new president must address:

The president’s first move should be to increase the prestige of science in government, by giving the science advisor a more important role, listening carefully to career scientists in government agencies, and encouraging rather than punishing them for speaking out.

Second, Kastner advises expanding basic research on energy and environment. The U.S. imports $700 billion worth of oil per year, placing the nation “in jeopardy economically and politically,” says Kastner. Clean energy is likely to be a huge industry, and if the U.S. is to lead worldwide, it must begin to master a cluster of technologies that together pose our best chance of beating climate change.

We need a huge infusion of R&D money in such thorny areas as: carbon sequestration (we don’t yet know if CO₂ can be efficiently and safely injected into underground pore space); electrical storage, where we need a five-fold improvement in battery technology to produce an all-electric car that can run for 200 miles; solar energy, where current solar cells are made from materials that are too costly, and not yet efficient enough. While federal and private energy research has been declining, the International Energy Agency estimates the world will require $17 trillion dollars to stabilize CO₂emissions between now and 2050.

The third order of business involves biology: Having teased apart the DNA molecule and mapped the genome, we now stand ready for a third revolution in life science, says Kastner. This will involve the convergence of biology with mathematics, physics and engineering. Says Kastner: “The gigantic amount of data being generated by rapid sequencing requires new approaches: biology needs theory for the first time, needs integrating ideas to explore information and come up with clarity.”

The final and perhaps toughest job involves stabilizing science funding. Over the past 20 years, math, physical science and engineering funding have remained flat. In the life sciences it doubled (partly due to 9/11), then declined. While “it’s wonderful to give more money to science,” rapid increases over short times have often been followed by sharp dips, creating major research disruptions. Plus, says Kastner, it’s unhealthy to fund one area and not the rest. “Different sciences reinforce each other and the scientific enterprise cannot do well if only one field is supported and the others are not.” ]]> Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/633 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/633 George Soros extends his “theory of reflexivity” from abstraction to application in the realm of investing. His book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, offers a timely look at the credit crisis that reached crescendo in 2008. His views fall between prescience and vindication. Nevertheless, he concedes fallibility: “With all my great, deep understanding, I don’t always get the markets right.”

In conversation with Ricardo Caballero, Soros recounts the formative experience of his life -- surviving the German occupation of Hungary -- “a far from equilibrium situation.” He credits his father for recognizing that “the normal rules don’t apply” and falsifying documents permitting the family’s escape from fascism. Soros attributes his intellectual development during college to the philosophy of Karl Popper. This led him eventually to question the economic postulate of “perfect knowledge and perfect competition.”

He concluded that markets do not exist in a vacuum nor spontaneously self-correct. Thinking participants introduce friction, inevitably influencing outcomes for better or worse. Soros characterizes this phenomenon as the cognitive function interfering with the manipulative function and vice versa, thus the reflexivity of his theory. “Path dependence is very much due to imperfect understanding,” he states and “actions have unintended consequences.”

Time and again Soros has anticipated financial bubbles and capitalized on opportunities he foresaw. Caballero elicits his ideas on bubble formation and collapse. Soros’s metaphor is “people go on dancing even though they realize that the music is about to stop.” He says the most common bubble is real estate where the misconception is that value “is independent of the willingness to lend.” Soros asserts that a “superbubble has been growing for at least 25 years,” periodically manifested by the international banking crisis and Latin debt in the early ’80s; 1997’s emerging market crisis; the Internet technology explosion; overleveraging that created the housing bubble; and escalating oil and commodity prices. He also faults financial innovation and securitization of debt. “People became very loose in their lending habits” and increased risk “by separating agent from principal.”

Soros’s prescription for a sounder financial system begins with reducing troubled mortgages to 80% of current value, thereby minimizing foreclosures and preventing further decline of housing prices. He also recommends recapitalizing banks to encourage lending, and lowering the reserve requirement to 6%. His ultimate suggestion sounds simple enough: “Stabilize the global economy.”

Soros admits markets will always tend toward bubbles. He places responsibility on regulators to rein this in, adding “that would require the use of judgment and they’re bound to get it wrong … because they’re human.” ]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/629 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/629 “We’ve been spoiled as a nation,” says Bob Malone. For decades, energy was inexpensive and abundant, and most Americans took it for granted. Recently “we’ve seen the world change around us.” Successive presidential administrations have failed to free the nation of dependence on foreign oil, and to advance alternatives to fossil fuels. We must now, once and for all, shape a comprehensive national energy policy, Malone maintains.

With the dive in financial markets and general economic gloom, Malone worries that the public can’t focus clearly on energy. He reminds us that the fate of the U.S. economy is intricately bound up with energy costs, and that this year alone, “we’ll pay more than $400 billion for imported oil,” and that the U.S. has paid out $8 trillion for foreign oil since 1973. High energy costs today are choking the airline, trucking, and manufacturing industries, not to mention straining the public sector, as families spend much more to drive, and to heat, cool and light their homes.

While Malone’s BP is eagerly exploring new energy ventures, he notes that a grab-bag of well-meaning programs introduced by industry and state governments cannot produce the change required to transform our energy infrastructure. Malone advocates a deliberate, federally directed enterprise aimed at providing long-term energy security. Some steps he recommends: energy conservation, in the form of mass transportation, higher mileage cars and green buildings; exploration and recovery of offshore oil in areas currently off-limits; continued exploitation of coal (the U.S. has a 100-year supply, says Malone), on the assumption we’ll find some way to make it clean; and large-scale investment in wind, solar, and nuclear and next-generation biofuels.

To kickstart alternative energy, though, the U.S. needs a financial regulatory and physical infrastructure. For instance, BP owns and operates the largest North American solar panel facility, but can send what it produces only to Maryland and California, which provide subsidies. There’s no way industry can overcome technological hurdles and price constraints without government incentives in place. Pricing carbon appropriately will make energy conservation more attractive, and generate investment in renewables, he says. While the higher cost of carbon “will eventually find its way to the pump, monthly utility bills and to the grocery store, the revenue we’ll get from carbon taxes or sale of carbon credits … will be used to soften the impact on society from those higher prices, and we can use some of that money to reinvest in alternative forms of energy.” ]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/631 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/631 Much like our divided country, each side of this debate strains to comprehend the perspective of the other, together reaching no consensus on the fate of the Electoral College. In what feels like a constitutional law and political science scrimmage, participants lob questions and spark exchanges. What follows is a short list of discussion themes:

Judith Best wonders how a movement currently pursuing a nationwide popular vote outside of a Constitutional amendment can accomplish its goal without usurping Constitutional process. Robert Bennett responds that advocates believe they are neither overturning the Constitutional system nor encroaching on the prerogatives of federal government. Alexander Belenky asks what benefits popular vote proponents think it will bring. Alexander Keyssar asks in return, “Why shouldn’t people … have the ultimate voice in deciding what their political institutions look like?”

Robert Hardaway worries about implementation of the direct national election. John Fortier notes possible problems among states over differing voting standards (e.g., polling hours, or mail-in ballots). Akhil Amar adds, “Who votes and who doesn’t? Is it fair if one state allows 16-year-olds and another 18-year-olds? Is it equal if one state lets you vote for three months and another lets you vote for three hours? These are real issues, but in the end don’t scare me away.”

Is a national popular vote doomed due to inertia and the preference of political parties for the Electoral College? Bennett imagines opposition might wither if a modest version of a nationwide vote emerged. Akhil Amar believes if both parties feel “bitten in the back” by the EC system, they’ll say “let’s move.” Vikram Amar says unlike other ideas for constitutional amendments (such as for a balanced budget or school prayer), a popular vote has “potential for traction,” since it involves improving democracy.

Best thinks proponents of popular election “have their priorities wrong and should go after the Senate first.” Vikram Amar agrees that the Senate is anachronistic, part of the original deal “to get the Constitution done” but Akhil Amar states there are “perfectly sound reasons for wanting to change the presidency and selection mechanism that do not require rethinking the Senate.”

Belenky wonders if it’s good for the country if we elect a president by a thin plurality who has lost the popular vote in every state. Keyssar retorts “that for any conceivable electoral system the rest of people here…can think of a disastrous counter example.” Best insists that “as thinkers, we must be careful to not confuse end and means: the goal of an election is to produce a president who can govern this nation.”

Concludes Akhil Amar, “Many arguments invoked against popular elections are actually red herrings, which might be sufficient to persuade people to stick with what we’ve got now.” Says Bennett, “I don’t think there’s any doubt, if we go to a national popular vote … there might be unexpected consequences …but the notion that it will be somehow fatal is an over-dramatization of a point.” ]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/632 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/632 Audience members take the floor in this last of five sessions debating whether to retain or discard the Electoral College system. Through question, answer and general discussion, the panelists further elucidate their positions on the main conference topic.

The following is a short list of discussion areas raised by audience questions:

Panelists engage around how a national popular vote system would impact minority groups. Judith Best and Robert Hardaway believe that minorities in swing states have an advantage in our current system, and a change would mean losing that leverage. Robert Bennett, Paul Schumaker, and Akhil Amar dispute this.

John Fortier, Schumaker, Alan Natapoff, and Vikram and Akhil Amar discuss whether a national popular vote would have the effect of mobilizing voter organization and participation at a community level. Fortier doesn’t see a panacea in the popular election, while Schumaker sees very positive consequences. Akhil Amar believes there will be “more close elections in the future than in the past,” due to 24/7 polling made possible by new technologies. Natapoff declares that “simple national voting creates pernicious incentives to play off one group against another.”

An audience member comments on the “denigration of third parties” during the conference and wonders how a change in election systems might affect the emergence of viable, elect-able third party candidates. Alexander Keyssar notes that the U.S. is the only country in the world where no new political party has come to power in the 20th century. “It’s possible that’s because our two political parties are so magnificent…” he says. Other panelists point out the dangers of multiparty elections, and the possibility of elections being thrown into the House of Representatives. Some suggest adopting instant runoff elections. Akhil Amar cites a law of political science that “when you have one office up for grabs, you’re generally going to have two parties vying for it in long-term equilibrium.”

One audience member wonders what foreign nations might offer the U.S. in terms of election process. Natapoff claims that our current system is essentially parliamentary, and Akhil Amar retorts “our system is so far from parliamentary as to be staggering.” Keyssar adds that our Electoral College, while like a parliament, is not an ongoing body. Amar believes that while we have much to learn from other systems, they won’t be adopted at the federal level unless “they’re road-tested in the states and proved to be workable.”

If the U.S. generally produces only two viable candidates, and the Electoral College handles this kind of election well, why move to a popular vote? Alexander Belenky responds that with the EC, just 11 states can elect a president. “If in those states the turnout is low and the rest of the country’s turnout is high, it may be that a small percentage of the popular vote will elect the president.”

The panelists devote additional time to discussing each other’s suggestions for modifying the Electoral College and other changes to the voting system, and discuss in detail how runoff voting works. ]]> Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/628 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/628 As David King puts it, “The Constitution has an on the one hand, on the other quality,” and the Electoral College seems a focal point for contrariness and ambivalence. King ticks off areas where the EC can be viewed alternatively: for instance, does it encourage healthy, broad-based campaigning and widespread voting, or promote targeted campaigning, and widespread voter fraud? Well acquainted with congressmen, King worries about the tension between short-term concerns (getting re-elected), and long-term interests. He believes that with the Electoral College, “you at least tip toward caring about winning multiple states…and the more states you try to win, the more candidates for office look to the long term and national best interest.”

Arnold Barnett offers a “pragmatic compromise” between a popular vote and the current Electoral College system, a potential cure for the current “funhouse mirror” of election politics based on weighted averages. Hold elections in individual states, and determine each candidate’s percentage. Says Barnett: “Each candidate’s national vote share would be a weighted average of vote shares in individual states. The weight of each state would be proportional to its share of electoral votes (i.e., the number of members of Congress).” The candidate with the highest weighted vote share would become president. Advantages of this system, says Barnett, include increasing the power of small states, and making currently irrelevant big states like New York relevant again. It would eliminate the worst consequences of winner take all (“Poster child: Florida 2000”); and there would be no danger of an election heading for the House of Representatives “where the president would be chosen under Strange Rules.”

Under the current system, not everyone has a say in presidential elections, Alexander Belenky believes, because a candidate with a very small percentage of the popular vote can actually become president. The Founding Fathers came up with a compromise to resolve problems in their day, and they “might be surprised to learn we still have this system.” Belenky suggests considering the will of the nation as a whole and the will of the states and DC as equal members of the Union as two decisive factors in determining the election outcome while retaining the Electoral College as a backup. Belenky suggests that the “winner-take-all” is the lesser evil compared to the proportional and the district (Maine-like) schemes of awarding state electoral votes and that its simple modification can make every state vote count, even under the Electoral College.

Alan Natapoff reaches for analogies from baseball and poker to describe voting systems, and ultimately relies on mathematics to shape his variation on the current EC system. Natapoff’s concept: Winner takes all by state, but rather than a fixed number of votes, states instead have the number of votes equal to the number of votes cast plus the proportional equivalent of the two electoral votes they have now. Winner takes all “magnifies the power of individual voters,” and works better than a simple national vote, unless the election is exquisitely close (with a margin less than 1 standard deviation). Concludes Natapoff: “We needn’t apologize for this system…it’s the ideal of a voting system…and it works.” ]]> Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/625 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/625 In World of Warcraft, online ‘clans’ form whose members, while dispersed geographically, exhibit fierce loyalty toward each other -- reminiscent, says Henry Jenkins of neighborhood bowling leagues. He wonders whether new media platforms that encourage bonding over long distances might help move Americans back toward more personal and immediate civic engagement.

Forty years after Alvin Toffler noted that American society was fragmenting due to increased social mobility, digital technology permits us “to build strong friendships and carry them with us wherever we move,” says Jenkins. Social ties can exist without regard to geography, but how do new kinds of social organization play into our politics, especially at the local level? And as local newspapers fold, and media outlets morph into print/online/broadcast hybrids, where will people turn for information about their communities? Jenkins and MIT’s Knight Center for Future Civic Media hope to explore and test new technologies that might help invigorate public discourse and democracy within communities.

Jenkins discusses with an MIT Museum audience the proliferation of media platforms deployed in the recent presidential campaign. He likes the notion of “moving democracy from special event to a lifestyle,” and wonders if the on- and off-line networks built up around the Obama campaign, for instance, will survive the election and continue in other forms. “Is there a plebiscite version, a collective intelligence, where he (Obama) collects the insights of the public to go forward?” Jenkins would like new technologies to provide “a common space” to discuss civic good and community leadership. But he worries about excluding some groups. Most young people have online access, “but still face a participation gap to do with skills, knowledge, experience, a sense of entitlement or empowerment.”

The real trick will be connecting “the real and virtual world together so the consequences of one permeate the other.” Jenkins offers some interesting examples: Global Kids, a New York group linking teen leaders online worldwide, so they work on issues face to face in their own communities, from garbage pickups to volunteer projects. They also develop awareness of larger issues such as Darfur and child prostitution. There’s a new trend of “place blogging,” where individuals report on events on a hyper local level. And some Facebook users found a way of shaming unregistered voter acquaintances – a tactic with which Jenkins isn’t entirely comfortable. ]]> Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/626 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/626 Give a hearty cheer for the Electoral College, and for the Founding Fathers, whose good sense (and good luck), say these panelists, have led to a durable, wise and relatively fair system for electing a president.

By way of introduction, Alex Belenky details the mechanics of the current Electoral College, and explains “to a certain extent, this is not in line with what was initially designed or meant by the Founding Fathers.” The founders’ idea was to appoint “some wise people from different states and they would come up with their own ideas. These wise people, a so-called independent congress, would elect a president.” Belenky encourages panelists to debate whether the current system, in which electoral votes are determined by how states vote, should be abolished, or combined somehow with a popular vote. The people’s belief that they vote for president and vice president directly “is definitely a far cry from reality,” he says.

The greatest fear of the founders, says Judith Best, was that of a majority tyranny that could control the entire government, and use it to oppress a minority. This fear led to the concept of three branches of government with separation of powers, and a federal principle shaping all governing institutions and decisions, where no popular votes for anything can be added across state lines. These are “load-bearing walls of the Constitution,” says Best.

Founders determined a method to balance nation and states, viewed as “little republics where selfish interests are forced to compromise early and often.” But they struggled with the presidential election, especially how to prevent Congress from making the president its lackey. So they cleverly created a temporary congress to hire the president, with “no further influence or power over the winner.” This ephemeral body, the Electoral College, “beats all alternatives,” believes Best. The goal of an election is to “select a president who can govern a vast, heterogeneous nation,” not serve as a public opinion poll. Requiring candidates to win states structures the election, forcing candidates to form broad cross-sectional coalitions, which unlike a popular vote, leads to a swift, sure decision to fill the world’s most powerful office.

Robert Hardaway believes the Electoral College is part of a grand plan that works quite well. This “parallel parliament” has but one duty: to meet every four years to select a president. John F. Kennedy, whose election in 1960 raised questions about the electoral mechanism, described a solar system of government power, all in balance. JFK believed any attempt to rework the Electoral College would mean transforming the other branches as well. Alternatives such as direct elections can lead to a proliferation of splinter parties, and to runoff elections where a majority of the people might reject the runoff candidates, but still end up with one of them. Founding Fathers wanted a system that protected minority rights and that “would elect a candidate whose support was broad as well as deep,” says Hardaway.

The Electoral College works pretty well in general, says John Fortier. There’s not a great likelihood that the popular vote will head in one direction and electoral vote in another, and while small states exert substantial influence, they are relatively evenly split between the two parties. Our system takes “seriously the need to win a majority or strong plurality in states to do things, not just to elect a president, but to pass state laws.” The most serious argument against the Electoral College is that campaigns don’t take place as much nationally as in selected states, says Fortier, and he’d be “open to looking at some sort of proportional system where states would allocate electors that might open up…greater competition.” ]]> Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/627 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/627 The Electoral College emphatically does not represent the best of all possible worlds, say these panelists, providing often scathing and nuanced responses to the EC advocates who precede them in this conference.

Akhil Amar favors the direct national election because it “best expresses the idea of one person, one vote.” One argument in favor of the EC, though: inertia, which essentially expresses that “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.” He takes issue with those who would preserve the EC because it exclusively sustains federalism. Direct national elections, he says, wouldn’t eliminate the Senate or the need for federal oversight of voting. Why fear a direct vote, he asks, when plenty of big states like California and Texas directly elect an executive “who looks like a mini-president…and it works just fine.”

The “origins of the Electoral College are quite tainted and not really that understood,” says Vikram Amar, and the more he listens to arguments for retaining the institution, “the more laughable some of them are.” The EC doesn’t really promote “the deepest vision of federalism,” as its proponents suggest, nor does it defeat regionalism, since as few as 11 states could dictate the outcome of an election. He also derides advocates who support the EC because it can “exaggerate the margin of victory to create legitimacy.”

Robert Bennett favors a nationwide popular vote, because he’s “concerned about the incentives we have for campaigning and promising by candidates.” Under the current system, candidates hit swing states hard and “ignore the others.” Voters in California or New York don’t hear from candidates except around money raising. Bennett believes that a popular vote “would lead to reaching out to a broader swath of the population.” Other incentives to switch systems: the minority party would need “to get its act together” and we would be “less likely to have terribly close (elections). “

Alexander Keyssar says many of the empirical claims in favor of the Electoral College “are demonstrably false,” and describes the current system as “deformed.” It’s “surely the most unpopular political institution the Founding Fathers have created.” Many attempts to abolish the system failed, owing in large part to the issue of race. “Had there been a national popular vote, the political power of the white racist South would have been dramatically diminished.” Another reason for the preservation of the EC has been the perception of short-term partisan advantage. Keyssar approves the decentralized efforts by the National Popular Vote Initiative to abolish the Electoral College.

Paul Schumaker has written a book breaking down the pros and cons of the existing election system. He recommends going beyond thinking “just in terms of a popular system,” and looking at elections based on popular plurality, popular majority and instant runoff (his personal favorite). He examines all of these in light of such qualities as simplicity, equality, neutrality, participation, legitimacy and stability. Ultimately, “I don’t think there’s an ideal system, says Schumaker. But “can we do better? Yes.” ]]> Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/624 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/624 The 2008 U.S. Presidential election was in many ways a watershed event, including the impact of religion on candidates and voters.

Shaun Casey finds some parallels to 2008 in 1960, when John F. Kennedy eventually overcame enough Protestant resistance to become the first Roman Catholic president – just as Obama campaigned to overcome American racism and become the first African-American president. Kennedy applied a “technical rationality to most problems,” says Casey, so he hired staffers to help him present his faith in an unthreatening way. Obama also put together a staff to deal with such “religion problems” as Reverend Wright, the notion that he was a “Manchurian Meccan candidate,” or even worse, “a secular Harvard Law School educator who’s really an atheist.”

Alan Wolfe observes that in the 1960 election, people were tired of eight years of Republican power, and found a young Democratic challenger appealing. The candidate with the real religion problem then was Richard Nixon, who “essentially had to hide his religion: he was Quaker.” Says Wolfe, “What a horrible embarrassment” for a party that “believes in aggressive military posture.” What Wolfe finds of greater interest is the emergence, after the ‘60s, of “the religious litmus test.” He hypothesizes that Jimmy Carter introduced the concept, offering himself up as a man of God in whom a post-Watergate era America could trust. One of the Democrats’ more “admirable” candidates thus “opened the Pandora’s box for Republicans.”

Catching up to current times, Wolfe debunks Karl Rove’s mystique as master manipulator of the religious right, claiming that Bush actually lost the 2000 election, and that Rove was “simply lucky” in 2004. McCain deployed the Rove strategy in 2008, and “it’s been a disaster for him…” Also, McCain is simply “awkward speaking about religion…he’s tone deaf.” In contrast, “Obama the ‘Muslim’ is steeped in the Christian language.”

Casey believes Rove and George Bush “elevated religious outreach to an art form not seen in American politics,” marketing a candidate who was “a specific kind of Christian possibility independent of the reality in that candidate’s life.” Wolfe thinks conservative Christians gravitate to the Republican Party now because they’re “working in big corporations…they’re wealthier.” They see themselves as a marginalized minority group. Wolfe says the “real inheritors of the ‘60s are the Christian right. They’re victimized, oppressed, and …they’re a movement of insurgency.”

Both panelists discern a new sensibility emerging in the evangelical movement. Young people don’t clothe themselves as much in what Wolfe calls the “highly Calvinistic, punitive approach,” and instead embrace openness around such issues as poverty, climate change and genocide. Casey believes this new religious cohort, raised in public schools, has been exposed to ethnic diversity, and interracial and interethnic dating: “They’re far more cosmopolitan,” he says. They’re attracted to Obama, and less likely to oppose things like civil rights and sex education. “A kid in a suburban high school won’t get exercised about gay rights; it’s more live and let live.” ]]> Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/623 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/623 In an energetic talk delivered prior to the U.S. presidential election, Jonathan Gruber provides a useful breakdown of the two candidates’ remedies for the nation’s troubled health care system. His detailed analysis of the key issues around health care may prove invaluable as the next president assumes office.

After decades of discussing health reform and watching national health costs balloon uncontrollably, says Gruber, we may finally be watching a consensus emerge to fix what’s broken: a crisis where more than 47 million Americans lack health insurance, and “are a car accident away from being bankrupted.” Gruber describes key areas that reform must tackle: pooling of health care markets, affordable plans, and mandates. The left and right differ on how to guarantee that sick, poor, young and old pay a fair price for medical care, the degree to which government must subsidize the poorest Americans, and whether the nation should or can achieve universal coverage. One side favors a single payer system, and the other tax credits, and both sides contain fatal flaws, says Gruber.

A new way is coalescing called incremental universalism, says Gruber, and its basic outlines emerge from Massachusetts’ 2006 health care system. There’s heavily subsidized insurance for folks below the poverty line, as well as insurance that works for those above poverty cutoffs. Every employer in the state with 10 or more employees must offer health insurance. There’s also an individual mandate (a source of contentious debate, as Gruber attests), so no one can skirt the issue of holding health insurance and hoping for the best. Gruber says after two years, the plan “is doing fantastically,” with a huge pickup (440 thousand) of previously uninsured people onto the health care rolls. The cost of people getting free care at hospitals fell almost by half in the first quarter of 2008.

But Gruber admits he’s not sure what to do about cost control. We currently spend 16% of GDP on health care. Obama’s plan, modeled after Massachusetts’ but with no mandate, will likely cost between $60-100 billion. McCain advocates ending the tax exclusion for employer sponsored insurance, and handing out tax credits. Says Gruber: “Obama’s got a terrific plan that needs money and McCain’s got money in need of plan so put them together.” Add a mandate to Obama’s plan, and then get rid of the tax exclusion. “You could have universal coverage in America more generous than in Massachusetts, and have 50 billion a year left over to spend on wars or whatever.” ]]> Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/620 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/620 This two-part lecture provides a brief illustrated journey through our whaling past, and the heart-breaking current story of the North Atlantic right whale.

Using many slides, author Eric Jay Dolin recaps highlights from his recent book, Leviathan. Among the tidbits, we learn that Captain John Smith (of Jamestown fame) came to Maine and Massachusetts in 1614 to hunt for whales (with a sideline in gold and silver). It was a bust, like some of his other ventures. The next settlers had more luck, harvesting dead whales that drifted ashore. Through the next century, colonists mastered offshore whaling, and ultimately more than half the income New England earned from selling products to England was derived from whales.

With breaks during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, New Englanders built up the whaling industry steadily: By 1846, there were 735 American whaling ships (out of 900 worldwide) earning 70,000 people their living. $70 million was invested in whaling infrastructure, and 60 coastal cities and towns rose from whale harvesting. It was the fifth largest industry in the U.S., providing the clean-burning candles favored by Ben Franklin and baleen for ladies’ hoops and stays.

It was also a dangerous, bloody and stinking vocation, involving years at sea, death by fin or rope, and hours over a boiling rendering vat. Populations of whales sank drastically, and whalers searched farther for their prey. West Coast whalers chased bowheads into the Arctic and were trapped by ice. Ultimately, the American whaling industry “sailed into oblivion” with the discovery of oil in Titusville, PA, the Civil War, and the evaporation of the baleen-based corset market – done in by new Paris fashions.

The tiny, remaining population of North Atlantic right whales – perhaps 350 -- is known to researchers “better than any other mammal in the world,” says Michael Moore. Their continued existence depends on our “walking a tightrope between commerce and conservation.” Perhaps this individual knowledge adds to the poignancy of his account: Whales tracked and photographed since they were babies are spotted now with fishing rig wrapped around their fins, or hack marks cut into their bodies by ship propellers.

The “trajectory” for these animals does not look good: from 1986 to 2005, biologists counted 50 dead right whales. This does not include those animals that simply sank out of sight after they died. Moore is quietly indignant: death by fishing rope constriction is awful, lasting for months in some cases. “There’s the conservation piece,” he says, “and the extreme animal welfare issue.” There’s also the matter of deteriorating habitat and dwindling food supply, toxic contaminants, and noise.

The only hope for these creatures lies in measures that reduce the chances that whales get fouled in fishing gear, and that slow down boats in the lanes favored by whales up and down the East Coast. More mitigation must be done to achieve animal welfare and sustainable global ecology while satisfying human needs, maintains Moore. ]]>