Social Justice and Sustainability: arguments from political theory [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Simon Caney, Professor Paul Kelly; Baroness Onora O'Neill | Three distinguished political philosophers examine and discuss how theories of social justice and sustainability can be related to each other.
Majority Judgement: a completely new voting system. Part Three - Majority Judgement Compared with Ot
Speaker(s): Professor Michel Balinski | Balinski argues that, although the new Majority Judgement voting system is not perfect, Approval Voting fails in theory and in practice, and that Majority Judgement is better than Condorcet's and Borda's classical proposals, point-summing methods, first-past-the post and others.
Imagining a Humanist Europe [Audio]
Speaker(s): Francois Bayrou | Frangois Bayrou will address the theme of humanism. He will outline how he believes that Europe needs a new set of values and specially humanism after the failures of capitalism. Frangois Bayrou is the leader of the French centre party called Mouvement Democrate (Democratic Mouvement) and former presidential candidate. Mr Bayrou entered politics in the early 1980s and joined the centre right party called UDF. He served as education minister in centre-right governmen
Progressive Governance: Greece and the New International Order [Audio]
Speaker(s): George Papandreou | George A. Papandreou is president of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and president of Socialist International. He was minister of foreign affairs from 1999 to 2004, a period that saw inter alia a new rapprochement with Turkey. He has served as minister for national education and religious affairs on two occasions (1988-89; 1994-96).He is the son and grandson of two Greek prime ministers. In 2006 he became president of the Socialist International. The la
The State between Migration and Sojourning: the China difference [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Wang Gungwu | At the end of the 19th century, the Qing court described all Chinese living overseas as sojourners. Under the Republic, overseas Chinese were enjoined to be patriotic. After 1949, migration policies changed several times. Why did three different Chinese states pay so much attention to this subject?
Gray's Anatomy: Thoughts on Politics, Religion and the Meaning of life [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor John Gray | The world has entered a period of crisis and upheaval in which the ideologies of the past give little guidance. How did it reach its present condition? Is there a pattern of thinking that has led governments to make systematic errors? In conversation with Richard Reeves, John Gray will ask what went wrong and what we can expect in future. John Gray is emeritus professor of European thought at the LSE and author of Gray's Anatomy. Richard Reeves is Director of th
Fool's Gold [Audio]
Speaker(s): Gillian Tett | Gillian Tett takes us inside the shadowy world of complex finance and derivatives and explains how the business of slicing and dicing debt led us to the devastating global credit crunch. Gillian Tett has worked as a journalist for the Financial Times for fifteen years. In 2008 she won the British Press Award for the Financial Journalist of the Year. This event marks the publication of her latest book Fool's Gold :How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Glob
Do Tax Havens Cause Poverty? [Audio]
Speaker(s): John Christensen, Felicity Lawrence; Nick Mathiason; Dr Attiya Waris | Defenders of tax havens argue they provide vital financial services for international trade, and that most comply with money-laundering regulations and have juridical co-operation treaties. This panel will explore the issues surrounding tax havens, in particular their impacts on poor people.
The role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide [Audio]
Speaker(s): Linda Melvern | Linda Melvern is an investigative journalist and author. A world expert on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, she was a consultant to the prosecution team at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the military one case. She is an Honorary Professor of the Department of International Politics (University of Wales - Aberystwyth).
The Saudi-U.S. Relationship; Past Developments and Future Prospects [Audio]
Speaker(s): Prince Turki Al-Faisal | The Saudi-U.S relationship has always faced challenges that constantly test its strength. However, recent events in the region, such as the Iraq war, the 2006 war in Lebanon and the war in Gaza, have strained this relationship further. Prince Turki Al-Faisal, with his long and extensive experience in this area, gives his personal insight into this important relationship, its historical development and future challenges and prospects.
The Global Financial Crisis Revisited [Audio]
Speaker(s): Will Hutton, Martin Wolf | Journalists Will Hutton and Martin Wolf discuss the global financial crisis. What are its dimensions? Have governments done enough to avoid the worst economic outcomes? And is the global economy teetering on the edge of depression?
How did HIV/AIDS affect rural communities in Africa? The answer to the question [Audio]
Speaker(s): Professor Stefan Dercon, Dr Janet Seeley | The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa is almost 30 years old yet a number of the worst-case scenarios on the impact of AIDS in Africa have not come to pass. What did happen? The speakers give their answers using data from recent research in Tanzania and Uganda. Stefan Dercon is a quantitative economist, University of Oxford. Janet Seeley is an anthropologist at the School of International Development, University of East Anglia.
The Winning Side of an Image [Audio]
Speaker(s): Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin | Documentary photography is problematic. Without a witness, a victim is alone and de-humanised. We also know that victims are made for, or even by, the camera. In presenting their work produced in Afghanistan, while embedded with the British Army last June, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin attempt to highlight and compensate for these blind spots. In addition to showing The Day Nobody Died, they also present extracts from The Red House, produced in
Darwin and Philosophy [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr Tim Lewens, Professor David Papineau | The speakers will discuss the importance of Darwin's thinking to central philosophical issues, including creationism, the human mind, and the nature of morality.
LSE Director's Dialogue with Stephen Green [Audio]
Speaker(s): Howard Davies, Stephen Green | As the world's financial order is in a state of flux, how do we align our desire to improve material human wealth, and capitalism, with our spiritual and psychological needs? Do businesses and banks in particular have a duty to society that goes beyond the creation of profit? Does open market capitalism remain our best hope for creating wealth that benefits all of society? Green and Davies discuss history, politics, religion and economics. This event ma
The Museum of the 21st Century [Audio]
Speaker(s): Neil MacGregor, Nicholas Serota | In this 60th anniversary year of publishers Thames & Hudson, Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, and Nicholas Serota, director of Tate, will be in conversation exploring the various roles of national, and other, collections in the 21st century. This rare joint appearance by two of today's most influential figures in the international world of arts and culture promises to provide a stimulating discussion touching on topics of contemporary
Housing Markets and the Global Financial Crisis [Audio]
Speaker(s): Dr André Broome, Professor Herman Schwartz, Professor Leonard Seabrooke, Professor Mat Watson | Residential property is the single largest asset in people's everyday lives and its associated mortgage debt constitutes one of the biggest financial assets in most economies. Yet political economy largely ignores both. We know that the kind of housing people occupy and their level of debt affects their preferences for the level of public spending, taxation, and inflation. Housing is inti
'Responding to the Global Crisis' and 'Climate Change Mitigation and Development' - Launch Lecture o
Speaker(s): Heiner Flassbeck, Radhika Desai, Dr Robert Falkner | Heiner Flassbeck presents The Trade and Development Report 2009, subtitled "Responding to the Global Crisis and Climate Change Mitigation and Development." The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression is having a serious impact on developing countries, and at this point UNCTAD economists estimate that it will be virtually impossible for sub-Saharan African nations to achieve such United Nations Millennium Development Goal
Progressive state reformers v ideological state retrenchers: framing the electoral choice between La
Speaker(s): Lord Mandelson | With less than a year to go before the next general election there is an urgent need for progressive policy debate and discussion in the Labour party to show it has the ideas necessary to meet the social, economic and political challenges of the next decade. Peter Mandelson, one of the government's key figures, will launch Progress's autumn lecture series by setting out how he sees the political divide between the main parties. Lord Mandelson is First Secretary of St
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ - the path to an Islamic Democracy [Audio]
Speaker(s): Hooman Majd | A brief summary of how Iran's political system works, examples of what is most misunderstood about Iran, its leadership and the events leading up to the election (describing some of Hooman's own experiences since he was there). Majd will explain why the election and its aftermath may actually be the best thing to happen to Iran in a very long time, and why the vision of an "Islamic Democracy" which some Iranian leaders have, may come about sooner now than if there had b
