The Director's Notes

NEW AURORA FORUM WEBSITE

Post by Mark Gonnerman

Our new website is scheduled to launch on September 19.  Please stop back then to see a complete schedule of Aurora Forum events in the 2008-09 academic year.  Thanks for your interest.

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The Spotlight: the latest

+Transcript of "On the Pursuit of Happiness: An Evening with Robert Thurman and Pico Iyer" (24 April 2008)

+Stanford on iTunes Audio File for "On the Pursuit of Happiness: An Evening with Robert Thurman and Pico Iyer" (24 April 2008)

+Amartya Sen's Martin Luther King Lecture Manuscript (April 5, 2008), "Global Poverty and Human Rights"

+Transcript Posted for "Against Ignorance," our Conversation with Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss (9 March 2008)

+Transcript and Audio on iTunes for "The Beatles on the Brain," our Conversation with Daniel Levitan, Nick Bromell, and Jonathan Berger (21 February 2008)

+Transcript of IRAQ: REFRAME interview with Dahr Jamail (4 February 2008)

+Audio (RealAudio & iTunes), Video, and Transcript Posted for "An Evening with Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass" (8 October 2007)

+"Clean, Secure, and Efficient Energy: Can We Have it All?" our Conversation with Amy Goodman (moderator), Sally Benson, Paul Ehrlich, Fred Krupp, George Shultz, and J.B. Straubel (5 September 2007)

+Wade Davis' "We Need a Global Declaration of Interdependence"

+Explore the Aurora Forum Archive

+Link to Us

Aurora Forum History

The Aurora Forum at Stanford University is part of a history of free public programs that goes back to the University's founding. Leland Stanford Junior University opened in October 1891, and by December of that year President David Starr Jordan—an educator who believed that "the final end of education is not learning or official position, but service to humanity"—launched a fortnightly public lecture forum intended "to share the fine specialists on this campus and their knowledge with the community."

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Featured Event

STRANGER, NEIGHBOR, FRIEND:
WHAT IS CITIZENSHIP IN THE 21ST CENTURY?

Thursday, October 2, 2008
7:30 - 9:00pm

SERIES INAUGURAL LECTURE BY DANIELLE ALLEN
With Josiah Ober, Respondent

          Citizenship is the struggle, carried out through conversation, to achieve
          accounts of the world that accord with norms of friendship and provide
          grounds for action.  —Danielle Allen, “The Power of Education,” Aims of
          Education Address at the University of Chicago, 20 September 2001.

In her recent book, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education, Danielle Allen discusses those sacrifices citizens make to keep democracy working in spite of the vices that often get in the way.  One such vice is distrust of the stranger, which is overcome by the deliberate cultivation of what she calls “political friendship,” reaching out to others who appear to be different than ourselves.  “To develop a cultural habit of such friendship would, “Allen writes, “transform our political world.” In setting the context for our series on virtues and vices with the Center for Ethics, Danielle Allen will suggest ways people in institutions of higher education are prepared to effect this transformation by daring to think and act in accord with democratic ideals. 

Upcoming Events

A CONVERSATION WITH NAOMI KLEIN:
DISASTER CAPITALISM AND THE RISE OF DEMOCRATIC RECONSTRUCTION

KRESGE AUDITORIUM

Thursday, October 16, 2008
7:30 - 9:00pm

WITH TERRY KARL  (interviewer)

In her latest book, The Shock Doctrine:  The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, journalist Naomi Klein exposes the strategies of powerful people who cash in on chaos and exploit catastrophe to remake our world in their image. But this is not the whole story:  popular renewal and repair movements are gaining the strength not only to take state power but to change the power structures of the state. Join us for a conversation that presents a new paradigm for understanding global politics and celebrates those who continue to work for justice against great odds.

Only Connect:
Reinvigorating American Public Education

KRESGE AUDITORIUM

Saturday, November 15, 2008
1:30 - 3:30

Rudy Crew, Madeline Levine, Denise Pope
and Deborah Stipek (moderator)

When it comes to public education, where are we and where do we have to go? What conditions have brought about epidemic rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse among both affluent and underprivileged youth?  What does leaving no child behind really mean?  Join us for a constructive conversation with three leading educators who are addressing current problems and revitalizing our nation’s most important social institution:  our public schools.

Aurora Archive

LIFE: A PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
With Frans Lanting and Christine Eckstrom

July 14, 2008

The Aurora Forum joins with Stanford Publishing Courses to present photographer Frans Lanting and his LIFE Project, a lyrical interpretation of the story of life on Earth that has been produced as a multimedia show for symphony orchestra with...

On the Pursuit of Happiness:
An Evening with Robert Thurman and Pico Iyer

April 24, 2008

Novelist and travel writer Pico Iyer joins Robert Thurman, Columbia University professor and founder of Tibet House in New York City, for a conversation on the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, education, life on the road, and things that contribute to...

Global Solidarity, Human Rights, and the End of Poverty

April 5, 2008

To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), the Aurora Forum joins with Stanford’s King Institute to host a day-long conference on the struggle for economic...

IRAQ: REFRAME (5): Filmmaking in Iraq
Fifth of Five-Part Series
with Montalvo Arts Center

March 17, 2008

We join three Iraqi artists to discuss the challenges of filmmaking in present-day Iraq.  Maysoon Pachachi and Kasim Abid, who set up the Independent Film & Television College in Baghdad in 2004,...