Podcasts about heyman center

Philanthropy is one of the most important tools for families to strengthen their communities, establish their legacy and communicate their values - both inwardly and outwardly. What happens when the organizations that receive family resources don't fulfill the donor's intent? What if the charities mean well, but aren't effective? What if the charities use the resources for something else entirely? Well, these issues came up in a big way when the Robertson Family of A&P Supermarket fame disagreed with the way Princeton handled the proceeds of a $35 million gift. Author, DOUG WHITE is going to lay out the case, explain where it went wrong, and give us some lessons on how to avoid future quagmires around donor intent. https://open.spotify.com/show/51hVAo0WB8Lp1ECeyCWZhC DOUG WHITE, a long-time leader in the nation's philanthropic community, is a 5-time author, teacher, and an advisor to nonprofit organizations and philanthropists. He is Co-Chair of the FoolProof Foundation's Walter Cronkite Project Committee and a governing board member of the Secular Coalition of America. He is the former director of Columbia University's Master of Science in Fundraising Management program, where, in addition to his extensive management responsibilities, he taught board governance, ethics and fundraising. He is also the former academic director of New York University's Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising. He has also been an advisor to BoardSource, the nation's leading organization dedicated to “building exceptional nonprofit boards and inspiring board service.” Doug has written five books: “Wounded Charity” (Paragon House, 2019) “Abusing Donor Intent” (Paragon House, 2014) “The Nonprofit Challenge: Integrating Ethics into the Purpose and Promise of Our Nation's Charities” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010),  “Charity on Trial: What You Need to Know Before You Give” (Barricade Books, 2007), “The Art of Planned Giving: Understanding Donors and the Culture of Giving” (John Wiley & Sons, 1997) His expertise includes fundraising strategy, board governance, improving organizational processes, and ethical decision-making. Introduction and Doug's Background The Role of Philanthropy Help for Donors Help for Charities Donor Intent - The Robertson / Princeton Case The Robertsons (Descendants of Charles and Marie Robertson) Source of Wealth (A&P Supermarket Fortune) The Desire to Build the Woodrow Wilson School After JFK in 1961 The Gift- $35 Million in 1961 (Robertson Foundation: > $900mm in 2008) The Mistake in Structuring (and codifying) the Gift Where did Princeton veer off course? Funds used for other purposes The Conflict between Charity and Family when the Patriarch Died The Expense ($45mm in legal fees by both sides!) Princeton's Explanation: Good practices for families making the gift (and monitoring it) Establishing and Codifying Donor Intent Balancing Rigidity and Flexibility around terms and uses of the gift Drawing up a Binding Agreement Communication (Oversight at the Charity and the Family) Performance Metrics Accountability Structures and Procedures https://www.amazon.com/Abusing-Donor-Intent-Robertson-University/dp/1557789096 DOUG's CONTACT INFORMATION https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Actually-Intelligent-Decision-Making-1-ebook/dp/B07FPQJJQT/

Topic: Breaking Barriers While Helping Others   Guest: Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin   Bio:   Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin is a Clinical Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School and the Founding Director of the Program on Leadership at the Heyman Center for Corporate Governance.  Professor Greenberg-Kobrin is a Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School, where she served as Dean of Students for eleven years. She also holds an appointment at Columbia University's Teachers College in the Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership.  She teaches in the areas of transactional law, leadership, conflict resolution and negotiation, intellectual property law and educational governance.  She served as the Title IX Coordinator at Columbia Law School where she authored sexual harassment policies and oversaw the sexual respect initiative, training hundreds of students each year. Professor Greenberg-Kobrin also facilitates the Arev Fund, a grantmaking organization whose mission is to use and promote impactful female Jewish philanthropy to spur change, with a particular focus on the advancement of women.  Areas of interest include spiritual leadership, communal life, social justice, and education. Prior to her appointment at Columbia, she was an attorney in the corporate, securities, and financial Institutions group at Arnold & Porter. She received both her BA and her JD from Columbia University, and was a Bruriah Scholar at Midreshet Lindenbaum and a Torat Miriam fellow.  Professor Greenberg-Kobrin trains leaders around the world and lectures and consultants with various universities, organizations, Jewish day schools and private schools on a wide-range of issues, including leadership training, negotiation and conflict resolution, agunot, policy drafting and implementation, sexual assault and harassment prevention, crisis management, work/life balance, faculty development and training and women and Judaism. She serves on a number of not-for-profit boards and lives in Riverdale, New York with her husband. They are the parents of five children.   In this episode we discuss:   1) Hard Work 2) Memories from Columbia Law School class of 99' 3) Learning in Depth  4) Lessons in Parenting 5) Influencing Students  6) Start-Up Philanthropy 7) Never Saying No and so much more!

Listen to Laurence Pagnoni, professor at New York University's Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising and a professor with Rutgers Business School's Institute for Ethical Leadership where he has coached dozens of nonprofit executive directors on leadership, fundraising, and strategies for success. He is also the author of The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution: Powerful Revenue Strategies to Take You to the Next Level. Laurence is also the founder of LAPA Fundraising. He shares strategies for raising more today and why an Anti-Inflation Message is necessary right now and how you can combat this difficult economy and raise more for your cause! Listen to how he is guiding organizations to face inflation head-on, by sharing your struggles and successes with donors in an Anti-Inflation Message. Learn more: https://go.arreva.com/driven-by-cause-episode-9-0-0-0-0-0

Today, Dr. Rob Goodman, author of Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions, drops in to discuss rhetoric. From Cicero to Facebook, we delve into the evolution of this integral speaking and writing tool, as well as explore the extreme rhetoric entrenched in modern politics and how this art of persuasion aids the news in problematic ways. Shortened Bio: Rob Goodman is Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University. He received his Ph.D. with distinction from Columbia University in 2018 and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University. His most recent book, Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions (Cambridge University Press, 2022), investigates the development of models of skilled speech in classical antiquity, as well as their translation into modern institutional settings. It proposes that these models remain a valuable resource for critiquing the current state of political speech. Rob is also the co-editor of Populism, Demagoguery, and Rhetoric in Historical Perspective (Oxford University Press, under contract). His current research project, Black Cicero: Race and American Oratory, is funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant. Before beginning his doctoral studies, Rob worked as speechwriter for U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Senator Chris Dodd. At Columbia, Rob worked as a Core Curriculum instructor and was a Heyman Center for the Humanities Fellow. His paper "Edmund Burke and the Deliberative Sublime" was the co-winner of the Review of Politics Award for best paper in normative political theory at the 2016 Midwest Political Science Association Conference. Website - https://sites.google.com/view/robgoodman/home Book - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09M928QCX/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2 Artwork by Phillip Thor - https://linktr.ee/Philipthor_art To watch the visuals with the trailer go to https://www.podcasttheway.com/trailers/ The Way Podcast - www.PodcastTheWay.com - Follow at Twitter / Instagram - @podcasttheway (Subscribe and Follow on streaming platforms and social media!) As always thank you Don Grant for the Intro and Outro. Check out his podcast - https://threeinterestingthings.captivate.fm Intro guitar copied from Aiden Ayers at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UiB9FMOP5s *The views demonstrated in this show are strictly those of The Way Podcast/Radio Show*

In this episode of “Keen On”, Andrew is joined by Rob Goodman, the author of “Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions”. Rob Goodman is Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University. He received his Ph.D. with distinction from Columbia University in 2018 and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University. At Columbia, Rob worked as a Core Curriculum instructor and was a Heyman Center for the Humanities Fellow. Before beginning his doctoral studies, Rob worked as speechwriter for U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Senator Chris Dodd. He also studied at George Washington University and Duke University. Visit our website: https://lithub.com/story-type/keen-on/ Email Andrew: a.keen@me.com Watch the show live on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajkeen Watch the show live on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankeen/ Watch the show live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lithub Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiteraryHub/videos Subscribe to Andrew's newsletter: https://andrew2ec.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On a spectrum of philosophical topics, one might be tempted to put mathematics and morality on opposite ends. Math is one of the most pristine and rigorously-developed areas of human thought, while morality is notoriously contentious and resistant to consensus. But the more you dig into the depths, the more alike these two fields appear to be. Justin Clarke-Doane argues that they are very much alike indeed, especially when it comes to questions of “reality” and “objectivity” — but that they aren’t quite exactly analogous. We get a little bit into the weeds, but this is a case where close attention will pay off.Support Mindscape on Patreon.Justin Clarke-Doane received his Ph.D. in philosophy from New York University. He is currently Associate Professor of philosophy at Columbia University, as well as an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham and Adjunct Research Associate at Monash University. His book Morality and Mathematics was published in 2020.Web siteColumbia web pageGoogle Scholar publicationsInterview at What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher?Heyman Center event

In this episode, Lilith Acadia examines the dangers of epistemic uncertainty and the possible use of post-pandemic recovery as a pretext to ignore pressing global issues, including climate emergency and social inequality, in the United States. Listen here. Lilith Acadia is a former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Cofund Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Taiwan University. She is also involved in the Hublic Sphere, a podcast series created and produced by early career researchers in the Trinity Long Room Hub. The Rethinking Democracy Podcast is produced by the Trinity Long Room Hub in partnership with the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Find out more about the Rethinking Democracy Podcast here: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/rethinking-democracy-podcast.php

In this episode, Melody Barnes discusses the developments in the Black Lives Matter movement, technology and misinformation, vaccine distribution and the 2020 US election. Melody Barnes is co-director for Policy and Public Affairs for the Democracy Initiative at the University of Virginia. She is the Dorothy Danforth Compton Professor of Practice at the Miller Center of Public Affairs and a Distinguished Fellow at the School of Law. From 2009 until January 2012, Melody was Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. She also served as chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the US Senate Judiciary Committee. The Rethinking Democracy Podcast is produced by the Trinity Long Room Hub in partnership with the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Find out more about the Rethinking Democracy Podcast here: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/rethinking-democracy-podcast.php

In this episode, Etain Tannam explores the erosion of trust in British-Irish relations, issues of stereotyping, and the future of cross-border cooperation in the wake of Brexit and Covid-19. Etain Tannam an Associate Professor International Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She is currently writing a book on British-Irish Relations in the 21st Century. She is also part of the Working Group on Unification Referendums on the Island of Ireland led by the UCL Constitution Unit. The Rethinking Democracy Podcast is produced by the Trinity Long Room Hub in partnership with the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Find out more about the Rethinking Democracy Podcast here: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/rethinking-democracy-podcast.php

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. The End of Landscape in Nineteenth-Century America examines the dissolution of landscape painting in the late nineteenth-century United States. Maggie M. Cao explores the pictorial practices that challenged, mourned, or revised the conventions of landscape painting, a major cultural project for nineteenth-century Americans. Through rich analysis of artworks at the genre’s unsettling limits—landscapes that self-destruct, masquerade as currency, or even take flight—Cao shows that experiments in landscape played a crucial role in the American encounter with modernity. Landscape is the genre through which American art most urgently sought to come to terms with the modern world.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. From a prizewinning economic historian, an eye-opening reinterpretation of the 2008 economic crisis (and its ten-year aftermath) as a global event that directly led to the shockwaves being felt around the world today. In September 2008 President George Bush could still describe the financial crisis as an incident local to Wall Street. In fact it was a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, forcing a rearrangement of global governance. In the United States and Europe, it caused a fundamental reconsideration of capitalist democracy, eventually leading to the war in the Ukraine, the chaos of Greece, Brexit, and Trump. It was the greatest crisis to have struck Western societies since the end of the Cold War, but was it inevitable? And is it over? Crashed is a dramatic new narrative resting on original themes: the haphazard nature of economic development and the erratic path of debt around the world; the unseen way individual countries and regions are linked together in deeply unequal relationships through financial interdependence, investment, politics, and force; the ways the financial crisis interacted with the spectacular rise of social media, the crisis of middle-class America, the rise of China, and global struggles over fossil fuels. Finally, Tooze asks, given this history, what now are the prospects for a liberal, stable, and coherent world order?

'And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently …' - Kitty O'Meara As health systems struggle to cope with the rapid spread of Covid-19, billions of people worldwide are currently living in some state of lockdown. Schools are closed. Movement is restricted. Physical interactions are limited to members of the same household. In the most extreme cases, permits are required to leave the house at all. In a new world of social distancing and #stayathome, access to green spaces and time outdoors is increasingly valued. Online concerts and digital exhibitions are opening up new virtual worlds. The arts are not only providing much-needed sources of distraction, but also the tools to process the trauma of the crisis. Humans are adapting and creating new routines. The lasting psychological impacts of the pandemic and the associated isolation and economic downturn, however, are not yet known. The fourth in a five-part series, this workshop will examine the implications of the Covid-19 on the everyday. Our speakers will discuss their daily lockdown routines, how their work has been shaped by the pandemic and why walking is a superpower. The floor will then be open for participants to respond: to ask questions and to widen the parameters of the conversation. Panellists Rita Duffy is currently Artist in Residence at the Trinity Long Room Hub. She is one of Northern Ireland's groundbreaking artists who began her work concentrating primarily on the figurative/narrative tradition. Her art is often autobiographical, including themes and images of Irish identity, history and politics. Read about Rita's Raft Project at the Trinity Long Room Hub here. Rishi Goyal is Director of Medicine, Literature and Society at Columbia University, and an Emergency Medicine doctor. He is broadly interested in the intersection of medicine and culture and is more specifically interested in the areas of medical cognition and identity and representation after illness. Shane O'Mara is a Professor of Experimental Brain Research and Director of the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. His work explores brain systems supporting learning, memory, and cognition, and brain systems affected by stress and depression. He is the author of In Praise of Walking: The new science of how we walk and why it's good for us (2019). Resources Crises of Democracy curriculum Duffy, Rita. Art in a Time of Pandemic: Jogging in Lipstick. Goyal, Rishi. A Letter from the Emergency Room. Synapsis. May 15, 2020. About the series This is a special five-part series organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute in partnership with the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University in response to the Covid-19 crisis.

"This virus does not respect borders.” - Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organisation Director-General In an effort to contain the spread of virus, many countries have tightened or closed their borders. Some are rejecting globalisation and returning to the ideal of the nation state. Nationalism is on the rise. Informed by political decisions, multilateral action is falling out of favour in some quarters. There is a danger that mass fear and anxiety will be exploited by right-wing authoritarian and populist leaders. The first in a five-part series, this workshop will explore how Covid-19 is changing how we think about nations and borders. Our speakers will discuss the pandemic in relation to US immigration law, border politics and international refugee policy. They will examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on political cooperation in Northern Ireland and Ireland, with divergent government responses politicised and feeding into existing stereotypes. The floor will then be open for participants to respond: to ask questions and to widen the conceptual and geographical parameters of the conversation. Panellists Susan McKay is a writer and journalist from Derry in Northern Ireland. She is currently writing a sequel to her book Northern Protestants - An Unsettled People, and working on Outside in the Navy Dark, a book about borders. Sarah Stillman is the director of the Global Migration Program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her work focuses on immigration and criminal justice issues. Etain Tannam is Associate Professor International Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She is currently writing a book on British-Irish Relations in the 21st Century due for publication with Oxford University Press in 2020. About the series This is a special five-part series organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute in partnership with the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University in response to the Covid-19 crisis. Read More here https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/whats-on/details/2020/rethinking-democracy.php

This Behind the Headlines, in partnership with the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanites at Columbia University, explored what pandemics and public health crises mean for democracies around the world. Social distancing, cocooning, and ‘lockdown' measures implemented worldwide to stall the spread of Covid-19 have raised questions about what the absence of public life means for democracy. We have also seen a range of emergency powers introduced by governments trying to manage social order during this time. Our international panel will discuss the politics and policies of disease prevention and control, how the absence of public life might impact on those on the margins of our societies, and what we might learn from plague and democracy in classical Greece. The Behind the Headlines Series is supported by the John Pollard Foundation.

Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin is the director of The Indie Film Clinic at Cardozo School of Law, which is supported by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. Professor Greenberg-Kobrin served as the dean of students at Columbia Law School from 2005 to 2016, where she also taught courses in deals, negotiation and leadership. Prior to her work at Columbia Law, she was an associate at the New York office of Arnold & Porter, where her practice focused on international corporate and securities matters, mergers and acquisitions, sovereign debt issuances and financial institutions. Professor Greenberg-Kobrin also serves as senior fellow and director of the Leadership Program at the Heyman Center on Corporate Governance. The Indie Film Clinic was established in 2011 to provide free legal services to filmmakers in New York City. To date, Cardozo students in the clinic have represented over 90 independent, documentary and student films, many of which have gone on to appear in leading U.S. and international film festivals including Cannes, Sundance, SXSW, the Tribeca Film Festival, the Los Angeles Film Festival, Hot Docs and DOC NYC. The clinic is part of Cardozo’s Intellectual Property and Information Law Program, one of the highest-ranked IP programs in the country. Professor Greenberg-Kobrin talks about basic legal advice for filmmakers, what is ethical filmmakers, and the best way for filmmakers to apply for the Indie Film Clinic. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/americanfilmmaker/support

Doug White, a long-time leader in the nation’s philanthropic community, is an author, teacher, and an advisor to nonprofit organizations and philanthropists. He is Co-Chair of the FoolProof Foundation’s Walter Cronkite Project Committee and a governing board member of the Secular Coalition of America.  He is an adjunct faculty member at Southern University’s Valdry Center for Philanthropy, the former director of Columbia University’s Master of Science in Fundraising Management program, and the former academic director of New York University’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising.  For almost two decades he has taught graduate courses in board governance, ethics and fundraising.  His latest book is Wounded Charity. Learn more! www.dougwhite.net

Doug White is a leader in the nation's philanthropic community, an author, teacher, and an advisor to nonprofit organizations and philanthropists. He is Co-Chair of the FoolProof Foundation's Walter Cronkite Project Committee and a governing board member of the Secular Coalition of America. He is the former director of Columbia University's Master of Science in Fundraising Management program, where, in addition to his extensive management responsibilities, he taught board governance, ethics and fundraising. He is also the former academic director of New York University's Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising. He has also been an advisor to BoardSource, the nation's leading organization dedicated to “building exceptional nonprofit boards and inspiring board service.” He completed a comprehensive review of the media allegations against Wounded Warrior Project: The First Casualty: A Report Addressing the Allegations Made Against the Wounded Warrior Project in January 2016. That report has been expanded into a book, Wounded Charity, published in the fall of 2019, bringing his total of books to five.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. "To teach correct Latin and to explain the poets" were the two standard duties of Roman teachers. Not only was a command of literary Latin a prerequisite for political and social advancement, but a sense of Latin's history and importance contributed to the Romans' understanding of their own cultural identity. Put plainly, philology-the study of language and texts-was important at Rome. Critics, Compilers, and Commentators is the first comprehensive introduction to the history, forms, and texts of Roman philology. James Zetzel traces the changing role and status of Latin as revealed in the ways it was explained and taught by the Romans themselves. In addition, he provides a descriptive bibliography of hundreds of scholarly texts from antiquity, listing editions, translations, and secondary literature. Recovering a neglected but crucial area of Roman intellectual life, this book will be an essential resource for students of Roman literature and intellectual history, medievalists, and historians of education and language science.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. Almost fifty years ago, Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni published the manifesto “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” helping to set the agenda for a generation of film theory that used cinema as a means of critiquing capitalist ideology. In recent decades, film studies has moved away from politicized theory, abandoning the productive ways in which theory understands the relationship between cinema, politics, and art. In Cinema/Politics/Philosophy, Nico Baumbach revisits the much-maligned tradition of seventies film theory to reconsider: What does it mean to call cinema political? In this concise and provocative book, Baumbach argues that we need a new philosophical approach that sees cinema as both a mode of thought and a form of politics. Through close readings of the writings on cinema by the contemporary continental philosophers Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, and Giorgio Agamben, he asks us to rethink both the legacy of ideology critique and Deleuzian film-philosophy. He explores how cinema can condition philosophy through its own means, challenging received ideas about what is seeable, sayable, and doable. Cinema/Politics/Philosophy offers fundamental new ways to think about cinema as thought, art, and politics.

The CHCI-Mellon Crises of Democracy Global Humanities Institute (GHI) is a partnership between 5 universities—Trinity College Dublin, University of São Paulo, Jawaharlal Nehru University, University of Zagreb, and the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. The GHI brings together early career researchers and a consortium of humanities scholars to explore crises of democracy through the lens of cultural trauma. The second and most significant phase of the GHI, a 9-day summer institute in Dubrovnik wherein faculty and early career researchers from around the world came together to examine crises of democracy through the prism of cultural trauma from a comparative global perspective, has just concluded. The GHI in Dubrovnik comprised of 40 researchers travelling from 10 countries, 5 continents, and representing over 30 disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The programme consisted of lectures, panels, practical skills workshops, film screenings, and early career researcher presentations. The first day of the Crises of Democracy Global Humanities Institute in Dubrovnik began with a fantastic introductory lecture delivered by Professor Mridula Mukherjee. Prof Mukherjee employed a long-term historical frame to understand the evolution of democracy in the modern world.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. An anonymous book appeared in Venice in 1547 titled L'Alcorano di Macometto, and, according to the title page, it contained "the doctrine, life, customs, and laws [of Mohammed] . . . newly translated from Arabic into the Italian language." Were this true, L'Alcorano di Macometto would have been the first printed direct translation of the Qur'an in a European vernacular language. The truth, however, was otherwise. As soon became clear, the Qur'anic sections of the book—about half the volume—were in fact translations of a twelfth-century Latin translation that had appeared in print in Basel in 1543. The other half included commentary that balanced anti-Islamic rhetoric with new interpretations of Muhammad's life and political role in pre-Islamic Arabia. Despite having been discredited almost immediately, the Alcorano was affordable, accessible, and widely distributed. In The Venetian Qur'an, Pier Mattia Tommasino uncovers the volume's mysterious origins, its previously unidentified author, and its broad, lasting influence.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean investigates the long process of transition from a world of empires to a world of nation-states by narrating the biographies of a group of people who were born within empires but came of age surrounded by the emerging vocabulary of nationalism, much of which they themselves created. It is the story of a generation of intellectuals and political thinkers from the Ionian Islands who experienced the collapse of the Republic of Venice and the dissolution of the common cultural and political space of the Adriatic, and who contributed to the creation of Italian and Greek nationalisms. By uncovering this forgotten intellectual universe, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean retrieves a world characterized by multiple cultural, intellectual, and political affiliations that have since been buried by the conventional narrative of the formation of nation-states.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. The Shahnameh: The Persian Epic as World Literature By: Hamid Dabashi The Shahnameh, an epic poem recounting the foundation of Iran across mythical, heroic, and historical ages, is the beating heart of Persian literature and culture. Composed by Abu al-Qasem Ferdowsi over a thirty-year period and completed in the year 1010, the epic has entertained generations of readers and profoundly shaped Persian culture, society, and politics. For a millennium, Iranian and Persian-speaking people around the globe have read, memorized, discussed, performed, adapted, and loved the poem. In this book, Hamid Dabashi brings the Shahnameh to renewed global attention, encapsulating a lifetime of learning and teaching the Persian epic for a new generation of readers. Dabashi insightfully traces the epic’s history, authorship, poetic significance, complicated legacy of political uses and abuses, and enduring significance in colonial and postcolonial contexts. In addition to explaining and celebrating what makes the Shahnameh such a distinctive literary work, he also considers the poem in the context of other epics, such as the Aeneid or the Odyssey, and critical debates over the concept of world literature. Arguing that Ferdowsi’s epic and its reception broached an idea of world literature long before nineteenth-century Western literary criticism, Dabashi makes a powerful case that we need to rethink the very notion of “world literature” in light of his reading of the Persian epic.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. Shari'a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology By: Brinkley Messick A case study in the textual architecture of the venerable legal and ethical tradition at the center of the Islamic experience, Sharīʿa Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. There—while colonial regimes, late Ottoman reformers, and early nationalists wrought decisive changes to the legal status of the sharīʿa, significantly narrowing its sphere of relevance—the Zaydī school of jurisprudence, rooted in highland Yemen for a millennium, still held sway.

In the first episode of "The Trilling Tapes," the scholar Lauren Berlant talks live about her new project: an analysis about the affect of humorlessness in politics. Featuring the scholar Bruce Robbins as a guest interlocutor and host Olivia Rutigliano. The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University is home to the Lionel Trilling Seminars, established in 1976 to honor one of the most prominent cultural critics of the twentieth century and his decades-long career at Columbia. Trilling's legacy represents a broad-ranging critical engagement with literature and culture. Speakers in the series include such formidable public intellectuals as Noam Chomsky, Martha Nussbaum, and Amartya Sen, among many others. In this podcast series, Olivia Rutigliano mines the recorded archives--the Trilling Tapes--to uncover and contextualize more than forty years of exceptional critical thought.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. The Oxford History of Life Writing: Volume 2. Early Modern By: Alan Stewart The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 2. Early Modern explores life-writing in England between 1500 and 1700, and argues that this was a period which saw remarkable innovations in biography, autobiography, and diary-keeping that laid the foundations for our modern life-writing.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. Mandarin Brazil; Race, Representation, and Memory By: Ana Paulina Lee In Mandarin Brazil, Ana Paulina Lee explores the centrality of Chinese exclusion to the Brazilian nation-building project, tracing the role of cultural representation in producing racialized national categories. Lee considers depictions of Chineseness in Brazilian popular music, literature, and visual culture, as well as archival documents and Brazilian and Qing dynasty diplomatic correspondence about opening trade and immigration routes between Brazil and China. In so doing, she reveals how Asian racialization helped to shape Brazil's image as a racial democracy. Mandarin Brazil begins during the second half of the nineteenth century, during the transitional period when enslaved labor became unfree labor—an era when black slavery shifted to "yellow labor" and racial anxieties surged. Lee asks how colonial paradigms of racial labor became a part of Brazil's nation-building project, which prioritized "whitening," a fundamentally white supremacist ideology that intertwined the colonial racial caste system with new immigration labor schemes. By considering why Chinese laborers were excluded from Brazilian nation-building efforts while Japanese migrants were welcomed, Lee interrogates how Chinese and Japanese imperial ambitions and Asian ethnic supremacy reinforced Brazil's whitening project. Mandarin Brazil contributes to a new conversation in Latin American and Asian American cultural studies, one that considers Asian diasporic histories and racial formation across the Americas.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. We are living in a time of deep divisions. Americans are sorting themselves along racial, religious, and cultural lines, leading to a level of polarization that the country hasn’t seen since the Civil War. Pundits and politicians are calling for us to come together, to find common purpose. But how, exactly, can this be done? In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, bookstores, churches, synagogues, and parks where crucial, sometimes life-saving connections, are formed. These are places where people gather and linger, making friends across group lines and strengthening the entire community. Klinenberg calls this the “social infrastructure”: When it is strong, neighborhoods flourish; when it is neglected, as it has been in recent years, families and individuals must fend for themselves.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition By: Souleymane Bachir Diagne What does it mean to be a Muslim philosopher, or to philosophize in Islam? In Open to Reason, Souleymane Bachir Diagne traces Muslims’ intellectual and spiritual history of examining and questioning beliefs and arguments to show how Islamic philosophy has always engaged critically with texts and ideas both inside and outside its tradition. Through a rich reading of classical and modern Muslim philosophers, Diagne explains the long history of philosophy in the Islamic world and its relevance to crucial issues of our own time.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. A special edition of our series, hear the full event featuring Cory Doctorow from September 2018. Cory Doctorow and Dennis Tenen, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, have a conversation about science fiction, the changing material conditions of contemporary authorship, copyright, and surveillance.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. Aulus Gellius and Roman Reading Culture: Text, Presence, and Imperial Knowledge in the Noctes Atticae By: Joseph Howley Long a source for quotations, fragments, and factoids, the Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius offers hundreds of brief but vivid glimpses of Roman intellectual life. In this book Joseph Howley demonstrates how the work may be read as a literary text in its own right, and discusses the rich evidence it provides for the ancient history of reading, thought, and intellectual culture. He argues that Gellius is in close conversation with predecessors both Greek and Latin, such as Plutarch and Pliny the Elder, and also offers new ways of making sense of the text's 'miscellaneous' qualities, like its disorder and its table of contents. Dealing with topics ranging from the framing of literary quotations to the treatment of contemporary celebrities who appear in its pages, this book offers a new way to learn from the Noctes about the world of Roman reading and thought.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. Living in the shadow of death may enhance the gift of life. In 2006, Taylor (Religion/Columbia Univ.; Speed Limits: Where Time Went and Why We Have So Little Left, 2014, etc.) developed an infection after a biopsy, resulting in septic shock that took a month to stabilize; five months later, he underwent surgery for cancer. That life-threatening experience, he reflects, was like “dying without dying,” and the last 10 years have seemed like “life after death for me,” a reprieve that made him feel unexpectedly liberated. Trying to make sense of the experience, he turned to writers whose works he has read, taught, and cherished during his long career. The result is an erudite intellectual autobiography focused on 11 writers’ insights about the end of life: several (Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, David Foster Wallace, and Freud) committed suicide; two (Nietzsche, Poe) died in delirium; and two (Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida) are likely to be unfamiliar to readers without a background in philosophy. Kierkegaard, Melville, and Thoreau round out the cast. None could be characterized as bright spirits but rather echo the abiding depression that Taylor believes he inherited from his mother. “In one way or another,” he admits, “everything I have written over the years has been an effort to overcome the melancholy of unhappy consciousness.” From his father, however, a science teacher, poet, and artist, he inherited an uplifting love of nature and artistic talent. Living in New England, Taylor senses the ghosts of Melville and Thoreau close at hand. As he watches the sun rise each morning over the Berkshires, he is struck by the moment before light appears and “reality remains virtual and all things seem possible.” As an artist, “exploring ways of writing without words,” he has created large-scale land art from steel, stone, and bone that depict letters from the signatures of Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. They stand as impressive homages to a trinity of beloved philosophers. Taylor’s personal recollections emerge as the most engaging passages, punctuating analyses of often challenging works. A learned meditation on mortality.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain By: Caitlin Gillespie In AD 60/61, Rome almost lost the province of Britain to a woman. Boudica, wife of the client king Prasutagus, fomented a rebellion that proved catastrophic for Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London), and Verulamium (St Albans), destroyed part of a Roman legion, and caused the deaths of an untold number of veterans, families, soldiers, and Britons. Yet with one decisive defeat, her vision of freedom was destroyed, and the Iceni never rose again. Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain introduces readers to the life and literary importance of Boudica through juxtaposing her different literary characterizations with those of other women and rebel leaders. This study focuses on our earliest literary evidence, the accounts of Tacitus and Cassius Dio, and investigates their narratives alongside material evidence of late Iron Age and early Roman Britain. Throughout the book, Caitlin Gillespie draws comparative sketches between Boudica and the positive and negative examples with which readers associate her, including the prophetess Veleda, the client queen Cartimandua, and the rebel Caratacus. Literary comparisons assist in the understanding of Boudica as a barbarian, queen, mother, commander in war, and leader of revolt. Within the ancient texts, Boudica is also used as an internal commentator on the failures of the emperor Nero, and her revolt epitomizes ongoing conflicts of gender and power at the end of the Juilio-Claudian era. Both literary and archaeological sources point towards broader issues inherent in the clash between Roman and native cultures. Boudica's unique ability to unify disparate groups of Britons cemented her place in the history of Roman Britain. While details of her life remain elusive, her literary character still has more to say.

New Books at the Heyman Center: a podcast featuring audio from events at Columbia University, and interviews with the speakers and authors. The Art of Love Poetry By: Erik Gray -The first volume to offer an integral theory of love poetry that explores why poetry is consistently associated with romantic love -Offers close readings of numerous love poems to guide readers to a deeper appreciation of some of the world's most beautiful love lyrics -Covers topics such as the poetic kiss, the lyric of conjugal love, and the role of animals in love poetry -All non-English poems are given in, or accompanied by, a translation

As a baby, Griff Eldridge was quieter than most. But he slept well. He fed. He played with his big brother Ira. And he smiled easily. For a long time, his parents Luke and Davinia didn't worry, because he was so happy and healthy.When Griff became a toddler, Luke and Davinia started to compare his speech to the speech of other children and to the standards laid out in the Personal Child Health Record, a book issued to new parents by the UK government. Griff was on track when he started to babble around 12 months old. But, unlike other children, the babble never evolved to understandable sentences.Luke and Davinia began to track Griff's speech in a notebook and test his hearing. They took him to several doctors, none of whom agree on a single diagnosis. They learned of “Verbal Dyspraxia” and “Phonological Disorder”. He'd see a speech therapist.Griff is nearly four years old, about to start primary school, and still he's never spoken a fully coherent sentence. They have 18 months to get him up to speed. Recently, Davinia's been teaching Griff the signing language Makaton.In this episode, producer Luke Eldridge (Griff's father) shares scenes from their home as his family works together to help Griff learn to talk. Bethany Denton edited this episode, along with help from Jeff Emtman. Additional editing help from Nick White at KCRW.Music: The Black Spot, FlowersHello NYC! Jeff and Bethany are speaking at The Unplugged Soul at Columbia University's Heyman Center on April 14th and 15th. It's free. Register here.

As a baby, Griff Eldridge was quieter than most.  But he slept well.  He fed.  He played with his big brother Ira. And he smiled easily.  For a long time, his parents Luke and Davinia didn’t worry, because he was so happy and healthy.When Griff became a toddler, Luke and Davinia started to compare his speech to the speech of  other children and to the standards laid out in the Personal Child Health Record, a book issued to new parents by the UK government.  Griff was on track when he started to babble around 12 months old.  But, unlike other children, the babble never evolved to understandable sentences.Luke and Davinia began to track Griff’s speech in a notebook and test his hearing. They took him to several doctors, none of whom agree on a single diagnosis.  They learned of “Verbal Dyspraxia” and “Phonological Disorder”.  He’d see a speech therapist.Griff is nearly four years old, about to start primary school, and still he’s never spoken a fully coherent sentence.  They have 18 months to get him up to speed.  Recently, Davinia’s been teaching Griff the signing language Makaton.In this episode, producer Luke Eldridge (Griff’s father) shares scenes from their home as his family works together to help Griff learn to talk.  Bethany Denton edited this episode, along with help from Jeff Emtman. Additional editing help from Nick White at KCRW.Music:  The Black Spot, FlowersHello NYC!  Jeff and Bethany are speaking at The Unplugged Soul at Columbia University’s Heyman Center on April 14th and 15th.  It’s free.  Register here.

As we marked St Patrick's Day and two months of Donald Trump's four year presidency of the United States of America, our distinguished panel explored what his election and presidency means for the world and ourselves. Dr Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (Loyola University Chicago) drew on her extensive research on American political history to discuss long-term trends right-wing populism, the US electorate's dissatisfaction with the party system, and the citizenry's expectations to be led by strong-men politicians. Dr Tandy Shermer is Assistant Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago and currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub in collaboration with the School of Histories and Humanities. Dr Shermer's current research explores why, how, and to what degree the funding mechanism central to the America's market-based postsecondary education system has been exported abroad in the new millennium. Dr David Kenny (School of Law, TCD) drew on his knowledge of American and comparative constitutional law to discuss how the US Constitution empowers Trump, how he might challenge constitutional principles, and the prospect of the Constitution being invoked to remove him from office. Dr David Kenny is an Assistant Professor in the Law School in Trinity, where he teaches and researches Irish and comparative constitutional law. He previously attended Harvard Law School as a Fulbright Scholar, undertaking a masters degree in US and comparative constitutional law, and was at the time of the 2016 election a Visiting Scholar at Washington and Lee University Law School in Lexington, Virginia. Jacob Erikson (School of Religions, Peace Studies and Ecumenics, TCD) explored immigration, islamophobia, and religious resistance to Trump's Agenda. Jacob Erickson previously taught Religion and Environmental Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, and was "Ecotheologian in Residence" at Mercy Seat Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, MN. His work as a constructive theologian writes within the creative interdisciplinary fields of environmental humanities, Religion and Ecology, and ecotheology. He's a contributor to four academic books of theology, The Huffington Post, and Religion Dispatches. Dr Eileen Gillooly (Columbia University) reflected on the challenges to US higher education posed by Trump's immigration policies, by his proposed cuts to research and to federal funding for education overall, as well as on the efforts of colleges and universities to resist his agenda. Dr Gillooly is the Executive Director of the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and associate faculty in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in the City of New York. Her work as a center director includes partnering with other university centers and non-profit institutions to extend the reach of the public humanities. She is currently a co-principal investigator for the Mellon-funded Justice-in-Education Initiative, which aims to provide education to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals and to integrate the study of social justice more fully into the Columbia curriculum.

Aired Thursday, 1 December 2016, 2:00 PM ET What is it about giving to another that warms the heart and soul? Could it be that we are hardwired to give? Could giving to others promote love, joy, peace, community, charity, caring and self worth within us? The answer to all of those questions is yes. And, now there is science to prove that giving promotes happiness. While the road to happiness may appear to be wide, varied, and highly individualized, there are common threads that delight us all especially when we step into the joy of giving. Join Sylvia and her guest, Jenny Santi, author of The Giving Way To Happiness: Stories and Science Behind the Life-Changing Power of Giving. About the Guest Jenny Santi Jenny Santi is a philanthropy advisor to some of the world’s most generous philanthropists and celebrity activist. In 2013 she founded Saint & Partners, a consulting practice that has served clients including signatories of the Buffett-Gates Giving Pledge, an Academy Award-winning actress, and leading financial institutions in Europe and Asia, helping them channel their wealth, power and search for meaning towards social good. Previously, she served as head of UBS’s award-winning Philanthropy Services department based in Southeast Asia. Jenny Santi holds a MBA from INSEAD, attended the Wharton School, and New York University’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy & Fundraising and is a Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, TIME magazine, Psychology Today, and Big Think, among others. Jenny Santi is passionate about helping people discover how to give their time, talents and treasures in ways that not only change the world, but also bring happiness and fulfillment to their own lives.

More at http://philosophytalk.org/shows/gandhi-philosopher. Gandhi is famous as the leader of the movement for Indian independence, which he based on his philosophy of non-violence, an important influence on Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi's ideas and the effects of his leadership continue to influence the world and its leaders. What was the philosophical basis these ideas? Is non-violence a strategy for a certain purpose, or the basis for a way of life? Ken and John welcome Akeel Bilgrami, Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University and author of "Gandhi, the Philosopher."

Global Think-in Rethinking Knowledge: Global Governance The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University October 8, 2014 “Rethinking Knowledge: Global Governance” addresses the past, present, and future of attempts to “govern the world” (Mark Mazower) from a variety of perspectives and at a number of scales. From taking stock of past and present efforts, to examining the assumptions built into the very premise, to speculating on the necessary reconfiguration of academic disciplines, this CGT Think-in aims at a free flowing exchange in which the contours of the problem are sketched and possible models are tested. Mark Mazower, Ira D. Wallach Professor of History and Member, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University; Partha Chatterjee, Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and Member, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University; Moderator: Katharina Pistor, Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law, Columbia Law School. With the support of The Heyman Center for the Humanities

How do forgotten, interrupted, or false stories affect your life? What do you do when you feel "stuck in the past" but don't know how to move forward?  How can you confidently voice your truth?  Narrative Coaching is a mindful voicing and listening that can then be brought into all other relationships. It allows participants to discover the answers they already hold, in a creative approach and within a nurturing relationship.  Narratology is the study of story, and how we give and take meaning from our lives and come to understand our worlds. Gail Noppe-Brandon, LMSW, MPA, MA has over 25 years of experience in narratology. She is a published playwright and was the first ever recipient of the Drama League's Grant for New Works. Gail is author of three books and is a featured Communication Coach on PBS. A documentary film about her work received the Chris Award at the Columbus International Film Festival. Her Narrative Coaching method has been endorsed by such organizations as the Heyman Center for Philanthropy, Bank Street and Hunter Colleges, and the New York City Department of Education. Gail is a master teacher who has received five Carnegie Awards for Excellence, as well as an award from the President's Council on the Humanities. She is currently in clinical practice at the JBFCS Manhattan Greenberg Center and coaches individuals and groups privately.  

Akeel Bilgrami is Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy and the former Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities, at Columbia University. He holds a bachelor's in English literature from Bombay University, a bachelor's in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, with a dissertation, "Meaning as Invariance," on the subject of the indeterminancy of translation and issues concerning realism and linguistic meaning. He joined Columbia University in 1985 after spending two years as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Bilgrami has two relatively independent sets of intellectual interests--in the Philosophy of Mind and Language, and in Political Philosophy and Moral Psychology especially as they surface in politics, history, and culture. In the former, he has published a book in 1992 called Belief and Meaning (Blackwell) and another book published in 2006 called Self Knowledge and Resentment (Harvard University Press). He is presently working on a book on the relations between agency and practical reason. In the latter, Bilgrami has written extensively on issues of secularism, identity, and also on a range of issues that emerge from Gandhi's philosophy, such as the transformation of the concept of nature into the concept of natural resources. His collection of essays called Politics and The Moral Psychology of Identity was released in 2011 from Harvard University Press. He is also contracted to publish two small books in the very near future, one called What is a Muslim? (Princeton University Press) and another on Gandhi's philosophy, situating Gandhi's thought in seventeenth century dissent in England and Europe and more broadly within the Radical Enlightenment and the radical strand in the Romantic tradition (Columbia University Press). In this lecture, Bilgrami will address the issue of modern political thought from the point of view of the countries of the global South, where there is far less secularization than there is in the West and North. Gandhi's religiousity and its views and modern political assumptions will frame the talk.

Recorded March 11, 2013 at the Heyman Center for the Humanities. As part of the series Rethinking the Human Sciences, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society presents: The Harvest of Old Times: Mimesis, Sovereignty, and The Poetics of Relation --A talk by INTERACT Postdoctoral Fellow Michael R. Griffiths. Much has been made in postcolonial criticism of the question of writing in the language of the colonizer. This logic, Souleymane Bachir Diagne traces to the “kiss of death” given by Sartre to the Négritude movement at its emergence---a totalizing embrace that lay heavy over the efforts of Leopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire in their attempts to redefine the poetics and philosophy of this movement in the long history that followed. The question which animates the genealogy traced in this essay begins is as follows: how might Édouard Glissant’s poetics of relation lead us to reevaluate the problem of writing in the language of the colonizer? How might Glissant further lead us to reimagine poetic novelty in relation to both the poetics of relation in Caribbean/Antillean poets and in the founding assumptions of European modernism? Passing through and politicizing the genealogy of mimesis, poetic novelty, and political sovereignty from Kant to Bataille, via T. S. Eliot, and Carl Schmitt, this lecture emphasizes the import of Glissant in reevaluating the logic of tradition, decision, and individual talent for a globalizing era. The Rethinking the Human Sciences seminar series is made possible with the support of the Heyman Center for the Humanities.

These are the slides presented at her talk on Dec. 5, 2012 at the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. There was also a video clip shown. We were unfortunately unable to get a copy of that clip.

Recorded on December 5, 2012 at the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. As part of the series Rethinking the Human Sciences, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society presents: After Cardenio: an unnatural moment in the history of Natural Philosophy A talk by Jane Taylor (CEO of Handspring Trust; Visiting Professor, University of Chicago; Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape) The Rethinking the Human Sciences seminar series is made possible with the support of the Heyman Center for the Humanities. Professor Taylor will work from a Case Study to discuss the intersection of artistic practice, philosophy and medical history, in an examination of early modern forensic theory.

As part of the series Rethinking the Human Sciences, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society presents Sense in Art and Sense in Nature a talk by Anthony Uhlmann, Writing and Society Research Centre, University of Western Sydney In Stephen Hero, James Joyce’s narrator states that “For Stephen art was neither a copy nor an imitation of nature: the artistic process was a natural process.” Art and Nature have long been paired together: indeed the concept of ‘representation’ seems to presuppose the relationship between artistic practice and objects, forms, or elements that pre-exist in Nature, or human perceptions of Nature. Yet what are the limits of this identification? Do Art and Nature comprise some kind of symmetry, some kind of continuity? Or is it merely a loose analogy? Aspects of these questions might be addressed through paying attention to the concepts of meaning and sense, which is asymmetrical at least when one considers discourse surrounding art on the one hand (for example, in the hermeneutic tradition) and discourses surrounding Nature on the other (in the disciplines of Physics or Biology). While the concept of meaning (involving intention) is necessarily presupposed within artistic production and reception it is seemingly left to one side by scientific method; yet the concept of sense might be more readily applied to both domains. In drawing on examples (from the 1922 controversy between Bergson and Einstein, the concept of ‘distributed cognition’ in cognitive science, and Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee) this lecture will consider how particular concepts of ‘meaning’ and ‘sense’ derived from Spinoza might be applied to an understanding of the kind of relations that link art and Nature. Recorded October 24, 2012 at the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University.

Recorded October 19, 2012 at the Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University. Giacomo Marramao discusses his new book The Passage West: Philosophy After the Age of the Nation State. He will be introduced by Jean L. Cohen and Étienne Balibar. Giacomo Marramao is a Professor of Political and Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Rome III and Director of the Fondazione Basso. His publications also include Kairos: Towards an Ontology of Due Time and La passione del presente. Program: In introducing his argument - which resumes and develops the philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of globalization advanced in his book The Passage West: Philosophy After the Age of the Nation State (Verso, London-New York 2012) - Giacomo Marramao takes the film Babel, by the Mexican director Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu, as the point of departure for his discussion: the film depicts the globalized world as a complex space at once interdependent and differentiated in character, constituted like a mosaic, composed of a multiplicity of "asynchronic" ways and forms of life which are brought together by the manifold flux of events that traverse them. This cinematographic depiction perfectly captures the disconcerting bi-logic of globalization: the logic through which the mix of the global market and of digital technologies operating in "real time" generates an increasing diaspora of identities. The Babel of our contemporary world thereby reveals itself as a kind of planetary extension of the world of Kakania described by Robert Musil: a cacophonous compendium of proliferating and mutually untranslatable languages. In order to conceptualize, and produce a suitably fluid and dynamic account of this new "world picture," we must not only dissolve the spurious dilemma between universalism and relativism, but move beyond the current impasse encouraged by a normative political philosophy which tends to reify "cultural identities" and "struggles for recognition" by treating these as givens rather than as problems. The philosophical approach pursued in the following discussion attempts to liberate the concept of "the universal" - despite the etymology of the word - from the logic of the reductio ad unum, and apply it instead to the realm of multiplicity and difference. Developing a double phenomenology of the increasingly homogenising phenomenon of the market on the one hand and of the internally conflicted pandemic of identitarian and communitarian approaches on the other, the author indicates a variety of universalizing tendencies whose potential can only fully be evaluated in the context of a new theory and practice of translation. Marramao's proposal for a universalism of difference is predicated on the failure of the two principal models of "democratic" inclusion that have previously been attempted in the West: the republican or assimilationist model (that of a République founded upon what could be called a universalism of indifference) and the "strong" multiculturalism model (the so-called Londonistan model that derives from a mosaic of differences that also provides fertile ground for the growth of fundamentalist ideas). But to advance beyond the antagonistic complicity generated by this dilemma calls for a re-enchantment of the Political: the only way in which we may be able to read the signa prognostica, the “prognostic signs” of our present.

Professor Trivers graduated from Harvard in 1965 with a degree in history and earned a doctorate in biology from Harvard in 1972. He quickly gained an international reputation for applying Darwin's theories in dramatic new ways and is now one of the most influential evolutionary theorists alive today. His books include Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements (with Austin Burt), Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers, and Social Evolution. Trivers’s theories have inspired innovative research in animal behavior, genetics, anthropology, psychology, and other fields. “I consider Trivers one of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought,” says acclaimed language theorist Steven Pinker. “It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that he has provided a scientific explanation for the human condition: the intricately complicated and endlessly fascinating relationships that bind us to one another.” In 2007, the Royal Swedish Academy awarded Robert Trivers the Crawford Prize in Biosciences for "his fundamental analysis of social evolution, conflict and cooperation.” Professor Trivers discusses his book The Folly of Fools (Basic Books, 2011) as part of the ICLS Rethinking the Human Sciences workshop series, which is being sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities. About The Folly of Fools: From viruses mimicking host behavior to humans misremembering (sometimes intentionally) the details of a quarrel, science has proven that the deceptive one can always outwit the masses. But to undertake this deception risks peril. Trivers has written an ambitious investigation into the evolutionary logic of lying and the costs of leaving it unchecked.