Cool LSE Lectures

Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter Lectures on just how Badass the USA is.

Part of the cosmopolitan experience of this instution (and really one of the foremost reasons for my attending here) is the series of Public Lectures offered, on an almost daily basis, by the LSE. Often there are 3 or 4 really interesting lectures going on at the same time during an evening, so that students must choose which one is the most interesting to them. Events include, just taking a look at the past week, topics such as:

European Integration of Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Challenges Ahead
Media's Last Diehard?
From War to Peace: Northern Ireland and its Lessons for the 21st Century
The Third Reich at War
SIPRI Yearbook 2008: International Security, Regional Conflict, Armament and Disarmament
Confronting Failure in the War on HIV/AIDS
The Ascent of Money
China, America and India: The Dragon, the Eagle, and The Elephant - or stone, scissors, paper?
Black Panther, the Revolutionary art of Emory Douglas
Where Now for the United States After the Election?
BBC Radio 4's Any Questions? at LSE

This is one week. I usually manage to attend two of these per week, and they're always fascinating-- pages of notes, paradigm-shifting information, etc.. On top of these public lectures, each LSE Department has weekly lectures in Social Science, Internatinal Relations, Philosophy, Law, etc.. The place is always moving, to the extent that one day at the LSE really can change your life, or at least the way you see it.

How unenobling, then, to notice that out of 9000 students on campus, we probably only get about 1000 who attend these lectures on any regular basis (probably less; each event usually sits 200 - 300, and there are most often two events per night). Still to those of us who choose to take advantage of the LSE's strongest asset, my fraternal kudos.

I wish to take a moment to cover a few of the coolest lectures I've attended in the last month. I spent a while discussing Thomas Friedman's amazing lecture, and I will not be able to go into so much detail for any of these other topics, but I wish to share some of the most amazing nuggets of information that I found. A lot of these things are 'Gee I wish I knew that before' or 'Wow!! I've been wondering about that my whole life' kind of things, and I'm fairly certain that others will be enthused to join the LSE network in this watered-down way. By the way if any readers have any questions regarding this stuff, as me and I'll be sure to send whatever relevant information I have. Hence, and without further ado,

Travis' top Lectures for Michelmas (Fall) Term, to date:

Professor Lord Anthony Giddens' Lecture on the Politics of Climate Change

The lecture was particularly intriguing in that the lecturer is a politician himself, and has lived through the reality of the political situation enough to give a strong sense of what's really going on, and what we can actually expect from our governments (US and UK, for example). Giddens soberingly points out that

1) International Collaboration is Ineffective
The agreement is on really low levels, and currently very few countries are on track to meet the Kyoto target (although some cities and/ or states within those countries are, and I optimistically look to my home states of California and Oregon in this regard). Ironically, one of the primary reasons the UK is on tack to hit the Kyoto initiative is because Lady Thatcher went after the coal miners back in the 90s and reduced British dependence on CO2-producing coal.

2) Carbon Emissions Trading May be a Bit of a Pipe Dream
Sorry to say it, but even if the world agrees on setting a carbon cap, which is blerry unlikely, the market will have a limited effect in the next 10 years (Stern seems to disagree with this, suggesting growing the market in stages.. I'm not sure who's correct on this point). Even the EU is having trouble getting the carbon trading going, and Giddens suggests the EU lacks the capacity to influence its member states, as it has strict no fiscal/ welfare policy control. Add in the current credit crunch and things get REALLY interesting.

3) Technology is Going to Take Time, and the Politics Currently Aren't There for it
Oil and natural gas are the DRIVING FORCE of international politics, and will continue to be so for a while. The wind and solar power initiatives were looking solid until oil dropped to $60 a barrel (gee, thanks credit crunch). Giddens suggests that the only solution is the tried and true Nuclear power facility, which is, of course, very risky, and will take years to implement.

After bashing his audience over the head with this sobering information, Giddens goes on to assert that there IS NO POLITICS of Climate Change, as the Green party has historically been a sort of anti-politics. A lot of talk, and no walk, in other words. I'm praying the Obama factor is going to change this a little bit, but that guy has so much on his plate, this environmental stuff might be hard for him to enforce.

Giddens' Paradox: People will do very little when the risk is abstract, and will react when the risk is real, but then it will be too late!

Giddens basically links onto Friedman and suggests that there's a new game in town: ET (Environmental Technology) and that we're going to have to look for a ground-up solution brought on by innovation within the controlled market. Giddens hopes the USA will take a lead in the world community with respect to this topic.

Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter's Lecture on America's Edge

This lecture inspired me, almost as much as Friedman's. Slaughter took a look at some of the things that make America what it is, and concluded that America may not end up succumbing so easily to the Chinese behemoth after all (she actually lived in China for a year, and bases her talk on that year's experiences).

In the future, business will rely on horizontal networks MUCH MORE than typical heirarchical business organizations. The same is actually true in the Public Policy world, although this is a side issue. Pockets of business (nodes if you will) will interact with other nodes in order to bring about a product. The software-engineering business already does this, and I'll take a filial example in noting that my dad, who lives in Oregon, regularly works on projects with high-end Sun and Microsoft clientelle who themselves are nodes of the organizations, usually operating out of Northern California but certainly not restricted to that locale.

Slaughter quips (and I enthusiastically agree) that the world of 'power politics' is really a paradigm of the 20th century. Well, she might be a tad optimistic here, but she is a Harvard Professor and Academic Dean over at Princeton. Slaughter's main point: the US is demographically and geographically primed to operate from the place of power within this network: the center of it. The analogy is somewhat of a feminine/ masculine one. The network (or web) is a feminine power structure, where the individual with the most influence is the one in the center.. hence all those discussions in the bathroom-- sharing information is key. The heirarchy is a male-based pattern of dominance, and while its rigid organization keeps employees from acting knavishly, the entity as a whole moves too slowly to keep pace in the modern world. In other words, businesses are becoming androgenous in nature, allocating resources and personelle in a more horizontal, less vertical orientation.

The updraft of this is, of course, that the Chinese system is extremely heirarchical and in this sense, top-heavy, while the American machine, fuelled on liberal ideology and individualist dogma, is adapting to this new networking process extremely quickly.

Slaughter made another point that China has over 1 billion mouths to feed, and in the future, having a larger population to care for actually makes the country weaker, not stronger. It used to be that having more people created strength in an industrialized nation. Not so anymore. Slaughter mused that Nintendo brought its home operations back to Japan. Why would any company do this? After all, isn't the factory labor extremely expensive? Apparently not when each factory takes only one person to run! QED.

Culturally, Slaugher points out that the USA is the global capitol of innovation. As she and so many others have noted, this is going to be EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, especially with respect to climate change in the future. The USA is a culture of positive conflict (thank you John Stuart Mill). Innovation breeds through positive conflict.

Slaughter noted that culturally, the world is shrinking at incredible speeds. She calls my generation (and by this I include anybody who grew up on Nintendo) The First Globals. Apparently the statistics are out, and 60% of people in my age group have friends or family outside the US. 25% of use will live outside the US for a siginificant amount of time during some period or other of our lives. This information could be taken to show that power is shifting to the East, but this is not the case. The East is still sending its students to us, and those students become nodes in the global network when they go back to their home countries. The US builds connections, and these connections are going to be important.

Dr. Slaughter (what a name) made me proud to be an American. Obama made me prouder still, but some caution to be thrown in with respect to Obama:

Professor Michael Cox, Jessica T. Matthews, and Rob Singh Speak on the United States After the Election

He Did it. Yes, I stayed up till 4 AM to find out, and yes, I waited till 5:30 AM
(my time) to hear his speech, and yes, I definitely had a tear in my eye.

The picture painted was not rosy. Obama looks to the worst inherited situation since the 1950s (Truman). Here's what he's up against (according to Mrs. Matthews, specifically) in the global arena:

1) The Financial Crisis... not every bomb has gone off in this area.
2) The Re-Design of the International Financial Regulatory System. Yup, this has to happen.. we're miles behind the realities that Globalization has created on the ground.
3) 17 Days after inauguration, he has to have a budget (balanced against a deteriorating baseline).
4) Iraq. Violence could and probably will flare here again. What then?
5) Afghanistan. Europe doesn't want in, and the situation is getting worse. The biggest problem is Pakistan, as the Taliban fighters (who have lived and fought in the area for over 300 years.. can we say: Vietnam, anybody?) keep crossing the Afghani border into Pakistan and hiding in the mountains there. They can survive 15 days without food and water in those mountains. Oh and the best thing about Pakistan? Oh why oh why did the US ever create the Taliban? Oh yeah, to fight Russia, which brings me to number 6..

Demonstrators from Kashmir line up in front of the Indian Embassy,
about 1 block away from the LSE.

6) Russia. The US/ Russian relationship is NOTHING right now. The US has tread on the toes of Russia numerous times over the past decade, and guess what? Russia's been lifting weights, and is pissed off, especially with respect to Iran. Russia is ambivalent about Iran.. she doesn't want a nuclear neighbor, but wouldn't mind seeing the US stub her toes a bit either.
7) Iran. The Iranian elections are in June, so Obama can only barely start to lay the groundwork for diplomatic negotiation. Sanctions could be useful in preventing Iranian nuclear development while the price of oil is as low as $60 a barrell. Iran's public funds are drying up. Still, getting Germany, or the rest of the EU to agree to economic sanctions during a credit crunch is highly unlikely.

Moreover (and I'd just like to add) a lot of Americans have the wrong idea about Iran. More on this to come next time.

8) Climate Change. Oh bother.
9) Nuclear Non-Proliferation. I don't think I've heard that term since 1999. That's because the USA, under the Bush administration, has profoundly F-ed this situation up.. hopefully the process can START to be turned around during the Obama presidency.
10) Israel and Palestine. Neither of these looks to be in a position to talk to the other any time soon. This all, of course, ties back into Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and our general inability to see the distinction between Sunni and Shia (Iran is Shia, and Shia is friendly.. Sunni tends to have more of the 'Southern Baptist'-types running around). Like I said, I'll get to this next time.


and that's just what Obama faces on the International scene. Let's add to this the concern about Healthcare in the US, the supposed Protectionism that Obama promised from our neighbors (protectionism that all leading global economists note the US simply cannot afford to enforce, as 23% of the US economy comes from global trade), and whatever other domestic concerns there are that I can't possibly think of right now.

The big message from the lecture: Obama's got a full plate, and while he may seem a little bit like Jesus right now, we need to look at him coolly, rationally. Perhaps we should be a bit like Obama ourselves and stay calmly in the center of things. The world isn't going to change all at once, and there's a LOT to get done.

Bad Picture, but this is 200+ students in the LSE Quad at midnight
on election day, waiting for results. Twas like a giant soccer match:
We cheered every time the results came in favoring Obama.
The place was too packed to even sit down though, so I went back to Rosebery..

And found all of my Rosebery friends crammed around the TV downstairs,
watching the same thing! It was here I remained until very early that morning..

Cool Random Nuggets:

Conscience comes from the latin 'con + science', literally meaning to know together. Thus the term suggests a shared communal understanding operating through the individual (thanks Dr. Waldron :)

Neville Chamberlain, according to modern historian Dr. Zara Steiner was operating in the best interests of his cabinet at the time, although he did make two fundamental errors in thinking Hitler didn't want Czechoslovakia, and in thinking Hitler actually wanted peace with Great Britain. Hitler really wanted a temporary truce so he could fight on the Eastern front. Ooh, and in the summer of 1939, British students actually did exchanges with German students... that's how positive the countries were towards each other, right up to the British declaration of war on Germany.

The actual world GDP output in 2006 was 50 trillion dollars. Tha actual amount traded on bond/ securities/ stock/ insurance markets: 400 trillion dollars. Inevitably, Planet Finance had to come back to Planet Earth.

Money isn't precious metal. It's trust; IE a formalized relationship between a creditor and a debtor. That's why when the Spanish decided to mine silver in Bolivia back in the 1500s (I think), all that the silver caused was inflation of the European price level when it was brought back by the Spanish. Of course, this made the Spanish richer, but not for the reasons they thought it did.

Owning a home became, in the last 30 years or so, a POLITICAL INITIATIVE. Owning a home makes a person less likely to vote for a radical, on either side of the party line. That's why nobody worried when outlandish mortgages were being thrust on uneducated people in Memphis.. we have an obsession with property, but it makes no financial sense to force EVERYBODY to hedge their bet on a single asset, especially one with a known history of cyclical depreciation (can we say teh 1930s, anybody?).

The Last Three come from Professor Niall Ferguson, whose book on "The Ascent of Money" I intend to read, as it thoroughly and sensibly explains the current credit crunch in terms of what insipid excesses we have been driven to as a result of not looking beyond our own personal experience into the obvious fiscal cycles of the past...

Obama was DIRECTLY involved with his campaign, to the level of conference calling 20,000 volunteers simultaneously on Friday night before election day to discuss various tactics on the ground. This style of leadership could and will do big things.

I leave off with pictures from the Obama election. Congratulations, Barack-- I believed in you as soon as I heard about you, and I hope very sincerely that you prove yourself to be who I hope you are.

One More Blue Picture.. Blue was definitely the color of the week.

One small bit of pessimism: Obama smokes. But then again, so does Hillary. Ohhh yeah.


And once again, LSE Rocks.