Harper Lecture Series

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Since the presidency of William Rainey Harper, the University of Chicago has cultivated a powerful and distinct identity marked by intellectual rigor, merit, and free debate. In this talk based on his forthcoming book, The University of Chicago: A History (University of Chicago Press), dean John Boyer, AM’69, PhD’75, shows that this identity is profoundly interwoven with the University’s history—a history that is unique in the annals of American higher education. John W. Boyer, the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History, became dean of the College in 1992 and was reappointed to a fifth term in 2012. Boyer has served as an editor of the Journal of Modern History since 1980. In 1992 and 1993 he was acting dean of the Division of Social Sciences. He was also chair of the Council on Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences from 1986 to 2009. He regularly teaches European Civilization in the College, as well as courses on modern European history, the Habsburg Empire, and modern Germany.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Since the presidency of William Rainey Harper, the University of Chicago has cultivated a powerful and distinct identity marked by intellectual rigor, merit, and free debate. In this talk based on his forthcoming book, The University of Chicago: A History (University of Chicago Press), dean John Boyer, AM’69, PhD’75, shows that this identity is profoundly interwoven with the University’s history—a history that is unique in the annals of American higher education. John W. Boyer, the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History, became dean of the College in 1992 and was reappointed to a fifth term in 2012. Boyer has served as an editor of the Journal of Modern History since 1980. In 1992 and 1993 he was acting dean of the Division of Social Sciences. He was also chair of the Council on Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences from 1986 to 2009. He regularly teaches European Civilization in the College, as well as courses on modern European history, the Habsburg Empire, and modern Germany.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Explore history, the arts, or the inside of your own brain with University of Chicago faculty around the world. Harper Lectures offer a chance to learn while connecting with the UChicago community. alumni.uchicago.edu/harper

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Explore history, the arts, or the inside of your own brain with University of Chicago faculty around the world. Harper Lectures offer a chance to learn while connecting with the UChicago community. alumni.uchicago.edu/harper

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Terrorism and insurgency sway national and international politics and have profound repercussions for human welfare, the stability of governments, and economic growth. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, AB’96, using leading social scientific research, argues that terrorists’ actions unfold according to the same strategic decision-making models that economists use to understand and predict competitive markets and interpersonal behavior. In this lecture, Bueno de Mesquita will describe what social scientists—who both create game theory models and perform empirical research—have learned about the causes of political violence and how it can be reduced. Bueno de Mesquita is a professor and deputy dean in the Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, where his research focuses on terrorism, insurgency, rebellion, and other forms of asymmetric conflict.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Terrorism and insurgency sway national and international politics and have profound repercussions for human welfare, the stability of governments, and economic growth. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, AB’96, using leading social scientific research, argues that terrorists’ actions unfold according to the same strategic decision-making models that economists use to understand and predict competitive markets and interpersonal behavior. In this lecture, Bueno de Mesquita will describe what social scientists—who both create game theory models and perform empirical research—have learned about the causes of political violence and how it can be reduced. Bueno de Mesquita is a professor and deputy dean in the Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, where his research focuses on terrorism, insurgency, rebellion, and other forms of asymmetric conflict.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Harper Lectures bring faculty to selected cities around the globe to discuss recent breakthroughs and discoveries and give the UChicago community a chance to share ideas and conversation. Reserve your spot today. alumniandfriends.uchicago.edu/harper

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Harper Lectures bring faculty to selected cities around the globe to discuss recent breakthroughs and discoveries and give the UChicago community a chance to share ideas and conversation. Reserve your spot today. alumniandfriends.uchicago.edu/harper

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Each year half a million people are murdered worldwide; and in almost every society on earth, violence is disproportionately concentrated among young people. In the United States, African American males lose nearly as many years of potential life before age 65 to homicide as to the nation’s overall leading cause of death, heart disease. Jens Ludwig , director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab and codirector of the University’s Urban Education Lab, will examine the key causes and potential remedies of youth violence, drawing on examples from the Crime Lab’s ongoing projects. Ludwig is the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and has been awarded the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s David N. Kershaw Award for contributions to public policy by age 40. In 2014 the Crime Lab received a $1 million award from the MacArthur Foundation, recognizing creative and effective institutions.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Each year half a million people are murdered worldwide; and in almost every society on earth, violence is disproportionately concentrated among young people. In the United States, African American males lose nearly as many years of potential life before age 65 to homicide as to the nation’s overall leading cause of death, heart disease. Jens Ludwig , director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab and codirector of the University’s Urban Education Lab, will examine the key causes and potential remedies of youth violence, drawing on examples from the Crime Lab’s ongoing projects. Ludwig is the McCormick Foundation Professor of Social Service Administration, Law, and Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and has been awarded the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s David N. Kershaw Award for contributions to public policy by age 40. In 2014 the Crime Lab received a $1 million award from the MacArthur Foundation, recognizing creative and effective institutions.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. According to conventional wisdom, democracies can only form once an authoritarian regime collapses in a destabilizing crisis. Yet East and Southeast Asia have shown that leaders can democratize nations during times of strength without sacrificing political stability. In fact, conceding democratic reforms at stabler times allows ruling parties to leverage their strength in order to win free and fair elections and stay in power. In this lecture, Dan Slater will describe the rise of democracy under such conditions in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia in contrast to its struggles to emerge in Thailand and Myanmar. Dan Slater is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and associate member of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and coeditor of Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis (Stanford University Press, 2008).

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Before they are even one year old, infants born into poverty score lower in cognitive development than their more affluent peers. By their fourth birthday, these children will have heard, on average, 30 million fewer words than others their age. Those 30 million missing words affect future learning, academic readiness and achievement, occupational status, and even health and social well-being in adulthood. Dana Suskind will discuss the University of Chicago’s Thirty Million Words Initiative, which she founded and directs. This behavioral research program translates emerging brain science into practical lessons—and behavioral nudges—that allow parents to harness the power of their words and nurture their children’s intellectual and educational capacity. Dana Suskind is professor of surgery and pediatrics and also directs the Pediatric Cochlear Implantation Program at the University of Chicago Medicine. She is an adviser on Hillary Clinton’s Too Small To Fail initiative and part of the White House initiative on ending the achievement gap. Purchase Suskind’s new book, Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain, at http://www.penguin.com/book/thirty-million-words-by-dana-suskind-md/9780525954873.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. How can the US government protect our national security and advance our foreign policy while also respecting our commitment to privacy and civil liberties? After the leaks by Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning and Edward Snowden, that’s the question President Obama put to Geoffrey R. Stone, JD’71, University of Chicago law professor and leading constitutional scholar. In this lecture Stone will recount his work on the presidential review group and share his far-reaching conclusions on the state of the nation in the age of the National Security Agency. Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. After serving as a clerk to Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan Jr., Stone joined the University of Chicago faculty, eventually serving as dean of the Law School and provost of the University. He is the author or coauthor of several books on constitutional law, most recently The NSA Report: Liberty and Security in a Changing World (2014). His upcoming book, Sexing the Constitution, will explore the history of sex, from ancient Greece to contemporary constitutional law.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Before they are even one year old, infants born into poverty score lower in cognitive development than their more affluent peers. By their fourth birthday, these children will have heard, on average, 30 million fewer words than others their age. Those 30 million missing words affect future learning, academic readiness and achievement, occupational status, and even health and social well-being in adulthood. Dana Suskind will discuss the University of Chicago’s Thirty Million Words Initiative, which she founded and directs. This behavioral research program translates emerging brain science into practical lessons—and behavioral nudges—that allow parents to harness the power of their words and nurture their children’s intellectual and educational capacity. Dana Suskind is professor of surgery and pediatrics and also directs the Pediatric Cochlear Implantation Program at the University of Chicago Medicine. She is an adviser on Hillary Clinton’s Too Small To Fail initiative and part of the White House initiative on ending the achievement gap.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. How can the US government protect our national security and advance our foreign policy while also respecting our commitment to privacy and civil liberties? After the leaks by Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning and Edward Snowden, that’s the question President Obama put to Geoffrey R. Stone, JD’71, University of Chicago law professor and leading constitutional scholar. In this lecture Stone will recount his work on the presidential review group and share his far-reaching conclusions on the state of the nation in the age of the National Security Agency. Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. After serving as a clerk to Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan Jr., Stone joined the University of Chicago faculty, eventually serving as dean of the Law School and provost of the University. He is the author or coauthor of several books on constitutional law, most recently The NSA Report: Liberty and Security in a Changing World (2014). His upcoming book, Sexing the Constitution, will explore the history of sex, from ancient Greece to contemporary constitutional law.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The University of Chicago is undertaking an ambitious plan to transform the health and health care environment of traditionally underserved and low-income communities, beginning on Chicago’s South Side. These communities have never had a coordinated health care system, an absence aggravated by such factors as outdated civil infrastructure, undereducation, violent crime, and high unemployment. An alternative, asset-based view of these communities, generated in part by local students, is revealing a wealth of resources—businesses, proprietors, civic leaders, community organizations, health care providers, and committed residents—that can be leveraged for good health, community vitality, and even business innovation. In this talk given in Morristown, New Jersey, Stacy Tessler Lindau discusses how her asset-based research is engaging South Side high school students and community-based organizations to build a working model for excellent urban health. Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, AM’02, is an associate professor of obstetrics/gynecology and medicine-geriatrics at the University of Chicago and director of the South Side Health and Vitality Studies, which uses an asset-based, community-engaged approach to urban health improvement and innovation. A former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar (2000–02), Lindau is a population- and clinic-based scholar who studies issues of health justice across the life course. In June 2012, she received a Health Care Innovation Award from the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to launch CommunityRx at the University of Chicago Medicine and in more than 30 community health centers on Chicago’s South Side. CommunityRx links electronic health record systems to high-quality, reliable information about South Side assets (businesses and organizations identified by the MAPSCorps program), which people can use to stay well and manage disease.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. The University of Chicago is undertaking an ambitious plan to transform the health and health care environment of traditionally underserved and low-income communities, beginning on Chicago’s South Side. These communities have never had a coordinated health care system, an absence aggravated by such factors as outdated civil infrastructure, undereducation, violent crime, and high unemployment. An alternative, asset-based view of these communities, generated in part by local students, is revealing a wealth of resources—businesses, proprietors, civic leaders, community organizations, health care providers, and committed residents—that can be leveraged for good health, community vitality, and even business innovation. In this talk given in Morristown, New Jersey, Stacy Tessler Lindau discusses how her asset-based research is engaging South Side high school students and community-based organizations to build a working model for excellent urban health. Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, AM’02, is an associate professor of obstetrics/gynecology and medicine-geriatrics at the University of Chicago and director of the South Side Health and Vitality Studies, which uses an asset-based, community-engaged approach to urban health improvement and innovation. A former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar (2000–02), Lindau is a population- and clinic-based scholar who studies issues of health justice across the life course. In June 2012, she received a Health Care Innovation Award from the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to launch CommunityRx at the University of Chicago Medicine and in more than 30 community health centers on Chicago’s South Side. CommunityRx links electronic health record systems to high-quality, reliable information about South Side assets (businesses and organizations identified by the MAPSCorps program), which people can use to stay well and manage disease.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Our consensus on what constitutes a human right dates back only to the 1940s, when the global human rights imagination first began to take shape. In this lecture, Mark Philip Bradley chronicles the complex histories that have formed our contemporary understanding of human rights and illustrates how that understanding has become a force behind international and local politics. In particular, he addresses the Indian Supreme Court’s decision last December to uphold Section 377, the colonial-era law that criminalizes sexual activities “against the order of nature,” most notably, gay sex. Mark Philip Bradley is the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor of International History in the Department of History and the College, chair of the Committee on International Relations, and faculty director of the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago. He is the author and coeditor of several books, including the forthcoming “The United States and the Global Human Rights Imagination” and “Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifacts after the Transnational Turn.”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Our consensus on what constitutes a human right dates back only to the 1940s, when the global human rights imagination first began to take shape. In this lecture, Mark Philip Bradley chronicles the complex histories that have formed our contemporary understanding of human rights and illustrates how that understanding has become a force behind international and local politics. In particular, he addresses the Indian Supreme Court’s decision last December to uphold Section 377, the colonial-era law that criminalizes sexual activities “against the order of nature,” most notably, gay sex. Mark Philip Bradley is the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor of International History in the Department of History and the College, chair of the Committee on International Relations, and faculty director of the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago. He is the author and coeditor of several books, including the forthcoming “The United States and the Global Human Rights Imagination” and “Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifacts after the Transnational Turn.”

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. In this talk, senior University of Chicago lecturer Susan Gzesh examined the situation of asylum seekers, stateless persons, and migratory workers in the contemporary world. She discussed various models for striking the balance among the duties of citizenship, national identity, the role of foreign nationals, and respect for universal rights.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. As the amount of information available to individuals about their health status grows, important questions arise about whether people really want that information and what they will do with it when they get it. Emily Oster discusses the demand for and use of health information. Using data on individuals at risk for Huntington’s disease, Oster describes patterns in the demand for information and in how economic choices change when people get that information. Emily Oster is an associate professor of economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and was a Becker Fellow for the Price Theory Initiative at the University of Chicago. Additionally, she currently serves as a faculty research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research. Oster’s work focuses on the economics of health, and recent research topics include infant mortality and adverse selection in health care.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. James Henry Breasted (1865-1935), the founder of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, is one of the most important figures in the growth of Egyptology in North America. Emily Teeter's lecture will explore how this field developed through the colorful life and career of James Henry Breasted--from his birth in Rockford, Illinois, to his rise as a giant figure in Egyptology whose legacy is still felt at the University of Chicago and throughout the world. From his initial study of Christian scripture, Breasted expanded his view to explore the importance of Egypt and the ancient Middle East in the rise of Western civilization. With the spectacular synergy of his vision and charisma and his innate ability to attract loyal benefactors, especially John D. Rockefeller Jr., Breasted reinvented the way Americans regarded the ancient past. Every aspect of American Egyptology--the growth of museum collections, the invention of epigraphy, the rise of popular books on the ancient Near East, the interpretation of the tomb of Tutankhamun, even abortive plans to build a spectacular new museum in Cairo--bore Breasted's stamp and influence. Emily Teeter, PhD'90, is an Egyptologist and research associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. She is the author of many books, most recently Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Physical Sciences 13400, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, goes international as a free massive open online course, or MOOC, this fall on coursera.org. This course, which has been taught since 1995 and became the most popular class in the University of Chicago catalog, has a long history of outreach toward the education of students and others outside of the University. Professor David Archer will examine online education through the progression of PHSC 13400—first using online interactive models, then videotapes of classroom lectures, followed by a home-grown MOOC called Open Climate 101, which combined the video lectures, quizzes from old exam questions, and exercises using the interactive models. This summer, with the help of a team of videographers, Archer taped about 50 five-minute video clips that encompass the material in the class. Interestingly, he was able to cover the material in one-third the number of minutes as it took in the 45-minute traditional format. Archer will talk about the content of the class and share some of the undoubtedly delightful experiences of running a class that has on the order of 10,000 students. David Archer is a professor in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, publishing on Earth’s carbon cycle and its interaction with global climate. Archer has written a series of books on climate change; teaches classes on global warming, environmental chemistry, and global biogeochemical cycles; and is a regular contributor to the climate science blog site realclimate.org.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Following his Harper Lecture “Love and Friendship in Hamlet,” noted Shakespeare expert David Bevington held a live webchat with alumni viewers. Bevington is the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Professor in English Language and Literature and Comparative Literature, and Chair of Theatre and Performance Studies at UChicago. Watch his Harper Lecture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcINjKluVB8 Visit Alumni & Friends at http://alumniandfriends.uchicago.edu/

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Following his Harper Lecture “Love and Friendship in Hamlet,” noted Shakespeare expert David Bevington held a live webchat with alumni viewers. Bevington is the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Professor in English Language and Literature and Comparative Literature, and Chair of Theatre and Performance Studies at UChicago. Watch his Harper Lecture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcINjKluVB8 Visit Alumni & Friends at http://alumniandfriends.uchicago.edu/

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Noted Shakespeare expert David Bevington discusses how "Hamlet" presents amorous love as deeply problematic and doomed to failure, while male friendship emerges as a spiritual bulwark for the protagonist. Bevington is the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the humanities, professor in the departments of English and comparative literature, and chair of theater and performance studies.

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Tim Knowles, the John Dewey Director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute and clinical professor on the Committee on Education, shares his thoughts on nationwide urban school reform.