What has happened to the bipartisan consensus on the importance of protecting public health and the environment with environmental law in the United States? P Robert L Glicksman from the George Washington University Law School, updates us on what is happening in the US. SPEAKER: Professor Robert L Glicksman is the J B & Maurice C Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at the George Washington University Law School, is an authority on environmental, natural resources, and administrative law. ...
Apr 04, 2017•58 min
Professor George Sugai is a world leader in positive behaviour support (PBS), a behaviour management system used to understand what maintains an individual's challenging behaviour, and establishing goals for change. For this presentation he outlines how PBS is just one part of prevention-based multi-tiered systems approach that can be used to support the academic and social behavioural goals of schools. SPEAKER: Professor George Sugai, Center for Behavioral Education and Research Neag School of ...
Apr 04, 2017•1 hr 20 min
Dr Duncan Green of Oxfam joins Sydney Ideas to share the ideas in his latest book How Change Happens, exploring the topic of social and political change from the perspective of international development. SPEAKER: Dr Duncan Green is Oxfam Great Britain’s Senior Strategic Adviser. He teaches on international development at the London School of Economics, where he is a Professor in Practice. His blog is one of the most widely read on international development, From Poverty to Power blog (http://www...
Apr 03, 2017•1 hr 10 min
The Dawkins reforms to higher education in the late 1980s roused passions at many universities across the nation, over fears for the academic enterprise and Australia’s system of free, public university education. What was the impact of the Dawkins reforms, particularly at the University of Sydney? SPEAKERS: - Emeritus Professor Deryck Schreuder, 4th Challis Professor of History at The University of Sydney during the era of the Dawkins White Paper, and then Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Macquarie Un...
Mar 29, 2017•52 min
Corruption in the post-Tiananmen era exhibits distinct characteristics not found in the 1980s, such as astronomical sums of money looted by officials, their family members, and their cronies in the private sector, large networks of co-conspirators, and the sale of public office. By examining the evolution of Chinese economic and political institutions since the early 1990s, we can trace the emergence of crony capitalism to two critical changes in the control of property rights of the assets owne...
Mar 29, 2017•1 hr 31 min
Professor Pavel Pevzner from the University of California, San Diego, shares the concerns about the quality of early, primitive MOOCs, which have been hyped by many as a cure-all for education. At the same time, he believes that much of the criticism of MOOCs stems from the fact that truly disruptive educational resources have not been developed yet. He proposes to transform MOOCs into a more efficient educational product called a Massive Adaptive Interactive Text (MAIT) that can prevent individ...
Mar 23, 2017•52 min
A Sydney Ideas conversation co-presented with the Sydney School of Entrepreneurship A serial entrepreneur, Ryan Holmes started his first business in high school, ultimately opening a string of ventures - from a pizza restaurant to a digital media agency – before starting Hootsuite in 2008. As founder and CEO, he has helped grow Hootsuite into the world’s most widely used social relationship platform, with 15-million-plus users, including more than 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies. Ryan Holmes i...
Mar 23, 2017•1 hr 8 min
As Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network from 2008 to 2011, Wadah Khanfar was in a unique position to observe war, uprisings and revolution in one of the most turbulent regions in the world, the Middle East. He is now President of Al Sharq Forum, an independent think-tank dedicated to developing long-term strategies for political development, social justice and economic prosperity of the people of the Middle East. Wadah Khanfar joins Sydney Ideas for a conversation about the rapidly evolv...
Mar 16, 2017•1 hr 17 min
Professor Stuart Kauffman is one of the most distinguished scholars of complexity and the author of several acclaimed books, including The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution (1993), At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1995), and Humanity in a Creative Universe (2016). In this Sydney Ideas talk, he proposes that the ever-changing phase space of evolution means we can write no laws of motion for evolution, and it is thus not...
Mar 01, 2017•1 hr
A panel presents fresh perspectives on museums approaches to human rights and the Holocaust, exploring and explicating contemporary international debates. Experts from various disciplinary backgrounds alongside museum practitioners analyse, challenge, and critically assess existing approaches, while considering possible future directions for these increasingly influential institutions. For while human rights museums with a Holocaust core or theme proliferate internationally, this burgeoning area...
Feb 28, 2017•1 hr 15 min
International insights on achieving affordability with quality density. Real estate development expert Professor Richard Peiser at Harvard University and guests of the Cities Leadership Institute at the University of Sydney, spoke on how to achieve quality, affordable housing drawing on case studies and strategies from the United States. They discussed ways that we can better finance loans for key workers in affordable housing, new tenure strategies, and trends in commercial and residential real...
Feb 23, 2017•1 hr 27 min
How do theatre plays, such as The Trouble with Harry contribute to advancing contemporary transgender issues? A post-performance Q&A co-presented with the Seymour Centre as part of the 2017 Mardi Gras. The playwright Lachlan Philpott is joined by the University of Sydney PhD candidate Rillark Bolton whose research explores the experiences of identity formation and community creation for trans masculine individuals, and Dr Anna Hickey-Moody, Associate Professor in Gender and Cultural Studies ...
Feb 23, 2017•53 min
Efforts to reconcile theories and practices of democracy with environmental sustainability have long been central to environmental political thought. Since this first wave of scholarship on ecological democracy, there have been numerous crucial developments that pose a range of challenges. On the environmental side, we have seen the acceleration of climate change, arguments for setting planetary boundaries around humanity’s environmental impacts, and widespread acknowledgement that the Earth has...
Feb 20, 2017•1 hr 1 min
Contemporary governments frame surveillance and secrecy as evils necessary to ensure our security. Individual privacy has been trumped by the need for covert behaviour on the part of states and corporations who collect and store our personal metadata and monitor our activities via new technologies without our knowledge or consent. We ask: how does the gathering and suppression of information subvert our right to know and preclude the media from exposing wrongdoing and holding officials accountab...
Feb 16, 2017•1 hr 26 min
In 2010 environmentalist David de Rothschild sailed from San Francisco to Sydney in 'The Plastiki' , a unique 18.3-metre catamaran made from approximately 12,500 reclaimed plastic soft drink bottles, sails of recycled PET, and masts made from aluminium irrigation piping and consist of 98 per cent post-consumer billet. In his talk for Sydney Ideas, with inventor, educator and adjudicator Sally Dominguez, David de Rothschild explained the technology used on board and revealed what he and crew lear...
Feb 15, 2017•1 hr 37 min
With the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States, it now seems climate change denial has reached into the most powerful political office in the world. In this special Sydney Ideas public lecture, world-renowned climate scientist Professor Michael Mann provides a somewhat light-hearted take on a very serious issue - the threat of human-caused climate change and what to do about it. Based on his recent collaboration with Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles, Profe...
Feb 08, 2017•1 hr 31 min
Since the smashing of labour’s collective bargaining power under neoliberalism, how is the transition to a postcapitalist society to be enacted? Are we currently witnessing the zombie state of neoliberalism in its death throes? What is the role of technology and automation, as well as human agency, in shaping the future? These issues and more animate Paul Mason’s talk. SPEAKER: Paul Mason, journalist and broadcaster A Sydney Ideas talk presented by the Department of Political Economy in the Scho...
Feb 06, 2017•55 min
Cancer and neurologial diseases are among the top 5 causes of death in Australia. However, there is some good news in this battle against these as new big data technologies now allow scientists to measure nearly every aspect of a cancerous tumor and take real-time scans of the active human brain. This big data may hold the key to understanding causes and possible cures for cancer as well as understanding the complexities of the human brain. Genevera Allen highlights how exactly is data science t...
Jan 31, 2017•54 min
False memories, like true ones, have consequences for people, affecting later thoughts, intentions, and behaviours. Once planted, the false memories look very much like true memories – in terms of behavioural characteristics, emotionality and neural signatures. If false memories can be so readily planted in the mind, do we need to think about ‘regulating’ this mind technology? And what do these pseudomemories say about the nature of memory itself? SPEAKER: Professor Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguish...
Jan 03, 2017•41 min
The recent review of the national Australian Curriculum has recommended reducing arts learning in our schools. Many in the sector see the recommendations as a direct challenge to decades of research and teaching that demonstrates that students who engage in an active, demanding, high-quality arts education are more likely to excel in their academic and non-academic lives. Sydney Ideas presents a robust forum that discusses the place of arts in our schools in response to this review. It draws on ...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 24 min
How might philosophical research into apparently non-practical matters be of general relevance to the community? What benefits might tax-payers expect to flow from public support of philosophical research? In the light of comments made in last year’s federal election campaign about research funding for philosophy projects, a panel of philosophers address different aspects of these pressing questions. Panel Professor Richard Eldrige, Swarthmore College USA Professor Paul Redding, University of Sy...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 26 min
Sugar Sweetened Schools: a supply chain to childhood obesity? With rates of childhood and adult obesity at all time highs, it’s time to reconsider the delivery of nutrition to children, but where should we start? Establishing a healthy lifestyle from a young age is essential for our children’s optimal physical and mental development. A school environment can provide a platform for learning the skills for healthy living, yet our schools are possibly doing more harm than good when it comes to comb...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 54 min
What lessons should we draw from the First World War? Professor Glenda Sluga discusses the war's legacies from the perspective of its end, and the twinned principles on which a new postwar international order was to be established – namely nationality and the League of Nations. Her aim is to understand the relative significance of nationalism and of what contemporaries articulated as a 'new era of internationalism' in the last years of the war and in its wake. A Sydney Ideas event on 28 March 20...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 28 min
UNESCO’s 1972 Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural and natural heritage is the only international instrument for safeguarding the world’s heritage. Professor Lynn Meskell, Director of the Stanford Archaeology Center, examines how emergent rights to the past are now being presented, promoted and prevented by select groups. A Sydney Ideas event on 7 May 2014 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2014/professor_lynn_meskell.shtml
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 12 min
Find out how leading researchers are making a contribution to our understanding of creativity, while at the same time inspiring the next generation through their teaching. If the transformative potential of creativity in the education process is now acknowledged, how are our trainee teachers taught to teach creativity themselves? What are the realities of implementing creative practices in the classroom, and what is the latest research telling us about what teaching methods work and why? A panel...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 33 min
Why was the invention of the idea of 'global justice' in the 1970s, a sharp break from the theory of the social contract? Leading human rights scholar, Professor Samuel Moyn from Columbia University, traces the origins of the philosophy of global justice and examines where it stands now. Are the very principles the new philosophy global justice proclaims, further from reality than ever? A Sydney Ideas event on 22 July 2014 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2014/professor_samuel_moyn.sht...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 15 min
Young people aged 12–25 are the highest at-risk group for experiencing mental health problems. They are also the group most likely to look for help and support online. Using the internet for social networking is their haven – but is it safe, reliable and helpful? Andrew Campbell from the Faculty of Health Sciences and Tracy Adams from Boystown discuss the issue. A Sydney Ideas event on 10 September 2014 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2014/andrew_campbell.shtml
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 17 min
Have you ever bought a pain reliever that ‘targets’ specific pain? Can pain relievers really target a part of the body? Are ‘natural’ medicines or supplements always better or safer than prescription drugs? Turns out, a lot of what we “know” about over-the-counter or prescription medicines isn’t true – and in a world where drugs have the capacity to heal or harm us, separating fact from fiction can be life-saving. Professor Andrew McLachlan, a pharmacist and noted researcher with a special inter...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 18 min
Professor Sharon Kilbreath and Ms Sally Crossing have a lot of things in common, but perhaps the most striking is their refusal to accept the status quo. When both women were diagnosed with breast cancer over 15 years ago, they discovered a significant gap in the knowledge and understanding of life after surgery and a lack of a united voice for cancer patients. This spurred them on to become leaders in their respective fields of research and consumer advocacy. In this talk Professor Kilbreath wi...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 25 min
How will a changing climate affect global food production and global hunger? What do we know and what needs to be done? In March 2014, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change released the 5th Assessment Report of Working Group II, responsible for considering human adaptation to climate change. The Report presented a sobering, state-of-the-art assessment of how forecasts of climate change might affect global food systems. This is a complex area for future-gazing. Key assumptions about the ...
Dec 14, 2016•1 hr 12 min
