Contributor(s): Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Patrick Cockburn, Tim Finch, Baroness Margaret Jay, Professor Mary Kaldor | Following a series of hearings, Channel 4 aired the findings of the Channel 4/ Foreign Policy Centre Iraq Commission in a special programme presented by Jon Snow on Saturday 14 July 2007. The Commission, the equivalent of the US Iraq Study Group, is an independent, cross-party Commission which has produced recommendations on the future of Britain's role in Iraq.
Jul 24, 2007•1 hr 27 min
Contributor(s): The Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, Shami Chakrabarti, Nick Clegg MP, Peter Facey Dominic Grieve QC MP, Professor Robert Hazell, Gus Hosein, Henry Porter, Justice Robert Sharpe, Roger Smith, Michael Willis MP | In what will be his first major speech since taking on leadership of constitutional reform, the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw, will deliver a keynote address at the launch of the LSE's Future Britain project. The project is a two-year initiative to e...
Jul 18, 2007•1 hr 28 min
Contributor(s): Professor Mary Kaldor, Yahia Said, George Soros, Professor Sir Nicholas Stern | This event seeks to encourage a more holistic approach towards thinking about energy security, and will mark the launch of the publication Oil Wars, edited by Mary Kaldor, Terry Karl and Yahia Said.
Jul 04, 2007•1 hr 25 min
Contributor(s): Mark Wilson, James Deane, Gerald Milward-Oliver | How can the media hold governments in developing countries to account? How can more effective media development improve development more widely? What is the impact of the digital revolution in Africa? Are there fragile states in which media development must be abandoned altogether? This report sets out the POLIS view of 'networked journalism' for fostering media development in Africa.
Jun 27, 2007•1 hr 37 min
Contributor(s): Sir Nicholas Stern | Professor Stuart Corbridge is head of the Development Studies Institute, LSE. Mr Anwar Hasan, is managing director of Tata Ltd.UK. Professor S Parasuraman is Director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Professor Sir Nicholas Stern is the IG Patel Professor of Economics & Government and director of the Asia Research Centre at LSE.
Jun 26, 2007•1 hr 39 min
Contributor(s): Professor Axel Honneth | This lecture develops Freud's implicit idea of the freedom of the will. For Freud, the 'healthy' person is very often determined by the same kind of irrational powers to which the neurotic personality is subjected. On the basis of a 'normalised' concept of repression, Freud has to explain how a normal subject should be able to gain emancipation from these unconscious constraints of his or her will. What conception of the individual self-relationship will ...
Jun 21, 2007•1 hr 35 min
Contributor(s): Professor Jiang Wang | Liquidity is of critical importance to the stability and the efficiency of financial markets. Shortages of liquidity has often been blamed for exacerbating and sustaining financial market crises such as the 1987 stock market crash and the 1998 near collapse of the Long Term Capital Management. Yet there is little consensus about exactly what liquidity is, what determines it, how it affects asset prices and welfare. Views become even more divergent when it c...
Jun 18, 2007•1 hr 9 min
Contributor(s): Professor Paul Krugman | Progressive free-traders - people who believe both in domestic equity and in the promise of globalisation - are feeling chastened these days. What's left of the case for globalisation? How can we make it work?
Jun 14, 2007•1 hr 32 min
Contributor(s): Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP | In this lecture, Patricia Hewitt will reflect on the achievements and lessons learnt from the last ten years of investment and reform in the health service. She will set out how, over the coming decade, the NHS can rise to the challenge of delivering the best health and healthcare for patients, and the best value for money for taxpayers. Ms Hewitt will also tackle head on proposals for alternative ways of funding healthcare, such as co-payments, and de...
Jun 14, 2007•1 hr 10 min
Contributor(s): Professor Shai Feldman, Dr. Khalil Shikaki | Professor Shai Feldman is director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, Boston. From 1997-2005 he served as head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In 2001-2003 he served as a member of the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Mat...
Jun 13, 2007•1 hr 26 min
Contributor(s): Imran Khan | [Please note that due to a sudden change of venue, the beginning of this lecture is missing] Imran Khan is a member of the Pakistan parliament and Chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) which he established in 1997. He is also the founder of the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Lahore. Khan is thought of by many in the cricketing world as being one of the finest all rounders to play the game and led the Pakistan cr...
Jun 12, 2007•1 hr 8 min
Contributor(s): Professor Saskia Sassen | Global warming will fundamentally alter the political economy of cities. A large number of cities will be in the front line of the most massive onslaughts of these changes. What do engineers and architects already know about how we can adjust our built environments? And how can ecological economists help to take us beyond the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change? Saskia Sassen is Centennial Professor at LSE and Professor, Committee on Global T...
Jun 06, 2007•1 hr 25 min
Contributor(s): Professor Gerald Frug | There is a widespread consensus that, everywhere in the world, urban development has to be based on the rule of law. But what is 'the rule of law'? Does any formal legal system qualify - or must it have specific requirements? If there are specific requirements, who says what they are? Does the rule of law inhibit - or does it encourage - the extent of privatisation of urban space? Does it require the abolition of informal settlements and businesses or allo...
Jun 05, 2007•1 hr 14 min
Contributor(s): Hari Sankaran | Financing urban development and infrastructure requires consistent strategic planning. While urban planning adjusts to flexible, short-term and incremental implementation, cities rely on long-term visions. How can capital intense investments become socially and financially sustainable given this critical long-term perspective? Hari Sankaran is managing director of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd.
Jun 04, 2007•1 hr 34 min
Contributor(s): Dr Michael Thomas | Most scholars explain America's nearly unconditional support of Israel either as a result of inordinate influence by a small pro-Israel lobby or as the product of strategic choices by presidents. Studies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations demonstrate a more useful way to understand American policy and to predict when it might change. That method involves analysing how policy advocates redefine, institutionally embed, and enforce versions of long-stan...
May 30, 2007•1 hr 15 min
Contributor(s): Lord Paddy Ashdown | In this lecture Lord Paddy Ashdown discusses his new book - Swords and Ploughshares: Bringing Peace to the 21st Century. There have been 15 UN-led interventions since 1946, and there are at least 74 wars in progress today. From his perspective as a former Royal Marine officer in the 1960s to the High Representative in Bosnia from 2002-6, Lord Ashdown discusses the successes and failures of peace-keeping operations, questions what lessons have been learned - a...
May 21, 2007•1 hr 30 min
Contributor(s): Professor Michael Cole | From its founding as an academic discipline, psychology has been divided in its understanding of itself. The project to create a psychology that unifies experimental, 'physiological' psychology and ethnographic, cultural-historical psychology requires a reconfiguration of the disciplinary landscape of the late 19th century that, from our current perspective, appears inter-disciplinary, including, as it does, scholarship from anthropology, sociology, disco...
May 16, 2007•1 hr 28 min
Contributor(s): Professor Anthony Giddens, Lord Kinnock, Ed Miliband MP, Mandy Telford, Stephen Twigg | Many children approaching adulthood today will not remember anything other than a Labour government. So ten years on from the dawn of New Labour, what has been achieved and how has Britain changed? Was New Labour just a campaigning vehicle, or did it herald a new philosophical direction for the Labour Party? Is New Labour still relevant today, or does Labour need to find a different way of art...
May 09, 2007•1 hr 28 min
Contributor(s): Jeremy Rifkin | This lecture critically examines the fossil fuel era and its consequences for industrial civilisation. It explores the nexus of politics, society and business and the massive potential for industry and capital investment. It also considers the future of renewable energy and the hydrogen economy, and how an integrated infrastructure and energy regime can be created in Europe.
May 08, 2007•1 hr 26 min
Contributor(s): Professor Paul Krugman | Manufactured imports from developing countries have risen sharply since the mid-90s, when the effects of trade on inequality were a major political issue. Should we be reconsidering the link between globalisation and inequality?
May 04, 2007•53 min
Contributor(s): Professor Richard Goldstone and Dr Leslie Vinjamuri | Intuitively all defenders of human rights are in favour of war crime trials. But can the idea of an international code of criminal law survive the realpolitik of states trading insults over who has been most complicit? Will war crimes become as familiar as ordinary criminal trials are today, or is it merely a passing liberal fad?
May 03, 2007•1 hr 36 min
Contributor(s): Sir Stephen Wall | Tony Blair was at ease in the European Union. He saw the EU as part of the solution to the challenges of economic reform, energy security and climate change. Gordon Brown does not like 'abroad'. Will he be tempted to play the euro sceptic card? Will the EU constitution be, for him, a text too far? Or can Brown do for UK relations with her EU partners what Nixon did for US/China relations?
May 03, 2007•1 hr 20 min
Contributor(s): Lord Howe, Lord Hurd, Dr Robin Niblett, Lord Owen, Gideon Rachman, Sir Malcolm Rifkind | This public debate marks the launch of British Diplomacy: Foreign Secretaries Reflect edited by Graham Ziegner (Politico's, March 2007). The book includes contributions from five former UK Foreign Secretaries who provide a unique insight into the thoughts and actions of the holders of one of the most difficult and challenging posts within British government, highlighting the problems faced du...
Apr 30, 2007•1 hr 36 min
Contributor(s): Sir John Major in conversation with Elinor Goodman | During the course of this conversation Sir John Major will reflect on his experiences as Prime Minister and discuss current affairs in the UK and across the globe.
Apr 24, 2007•1 hr 9 min
Contributor(s): Lord Triesman | Lord David Triesman of Tottenham will discuss the role that public diplomacy plays in the achievement of the government's international objectives. As chair of the Public Diplomacy Board, he will describe the approach that has been developed as a result of Lord Carter's 2005 Review of Public Diplomacy, with a primary focus on engaging with foreign public audiences.
Apr 23, 2007•1 hr 18 min
Contributor(s): Lord Adair Turner | As part of LSE's series of lectures looking at the long term challenges facing Britain and British politicians 'after Blair', Adair Turner will examine the issues of pensions, welfare reform and the challenges posed by an ageing society.
Apr 23, 2007•1 hr 33 min
Contributor(s): Professor Harvey Brown | Professor Brown will reappraise the reality and origins of the relativistic phenomena of length contraction and time, arguing that the reason why rods and clocks 'measure' the geometry of space-time is often misunderstood.
Apr 18, 2007•1 hr
Contributor(s): Dr Hasok Chang | This lecture will argue that examining what seems to be a very straightforward question - what is temperature and how can we measure it? - reveals surprising insights into the nature of science and of scientific authority.
Apr 18, 2007•1 hr 4 min
