Spring 2008 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdf

Contributor(s): Steven Rattner | Beginning with the subprime meltdown last summer, U.S. markets and the economy have been thrown into turmoil. Liquidity and default fears have created the worst conditions in financial markets in many years. These adverse developments have spilled over in the "real" economy, raised the specter of recession and worse. Steven Rattner is Managing Principal of Quadrangle Group LLC, a private investment firm with more than $6 billion of assets under management. Quadrangle invests in media and communications companies through separate private and public investment strategies and across all asset classes through its asset management business. Quadrangle has offices in New York, London and Silicon Valley and will be opening an office later this year in Hong Kong.

Contributor(s): Judy Cheng-Hopkins, Dr Chaloka Beyani, Dr Susan Breau | The return and reintegration of refugees and IDPs is one of the most pressing challenges faced by the international community today. Recently back from a visit to the Great Lakes region, UNHCR's Assistant High Commissioner for Operations will discuss the local settlement of refugees in Tanzania and the return and reintegration of refugees in Burundi. Dr Chaloka Beyani, Legal Advisor to the Secretariat of the International Conference on the Great Lakes, will situate this problem within the Great Lakes Pact. The Pact sets out a holistic legal framework in which this problem is treated as just one component of establishing peace and security in the region. Dr Susan Breau, a Reader in public international law and expert in the field, will explore the interface between the 'responsibility to protect' doctrine and peacekeeping, including the facilitation of the voluntary return of refugees and IDPs.

Contributor(s): Professor Dan Ariely | Why do smart people make irrational decisions every day? Why do we repeatedly make the same mistakes when we make our selections? How do our expectations influence our actual opinions and decisions? The answers, as revealed by behavioural economist Professor Dan Ariely of MIT, will surprise you.

Contributor(s): Professor John Sidel | In this new series of lunchtime lectures, nine of LSE's most senior academics explain the latest thinking on how social scientists work to address the critical problems of the day. They survey the leading ideas and contributions made by their discipline, explain the types of problems that are addressed and the tools that are used, and explore the kinds of solutions proposed. John Sidel is Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics.

Contributor(s): Professor David Levering Lewis | Professor Lewis will argue that the 732CE Battle of Poitiers and the 778CE debacle at Roncevaux are pivotal moments in the creation of an economically retarded, balkanised, and fratricidal Europe, which, by defining itself in opposition to Islam in al-Andalus, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war.

Contributor(s): Senator Rick Santorum | The LSESU Tocqueville Society presents a public lecture by former United States Senator Rick Santorum on the challenges to the West posed by Islamic extremism and its alliances around the world. Mr. Santorum served as U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007 and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 1995. As a Senator, he was a champion of efforts to counter the threat of radical Islam, to protect victims of religious persecution, and to promote democracy and religious liberty around the world. Mr. Santorum is currently Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Dr Alan Sked is a Senior Lecturer in International History at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Sir Bernard Crick, Professor Anne Phillips | As the composition of British society transforms with immigration and transnational identities, ideas about the notion of 'Britishness' are changing too. In the interest of a cohesive citizenry, must the UK return to 'core British values'? Or should Britain's identity change with its population? Should a British identity even exist? Sir Bernard Crick is emeritus professor of Birkbeck College and author of Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship, the basis for the UK citizenship exam. Anne Phillips is professor of Political and Gender Theory at LSE and author of Multiculturalism Without Culture.

Contributor(s): Frans Timmermans | Frans Timmermans will address issues of the changing political economy and the role the European Union can play in facing the challenges of today. The soft power of the EU is no longer limited to stabilisation and transformation of societies alone. Europe sets the standard in many fields. Yet, as Frans Timmermans will argue, pursuing the vision of Europe as a model power imposes a growing need for the Union's member states to start thinking and behaving in political terms. Less as a collection of different economies and more like a true economic union.

Contributor(s): Darian Leader, Professor Henrietta Moore, Professor Susie Orbach, Professor Renata Salecl | The demand that sexual relations should be at the basis both of self-understanding and self-realisation often puts our intimate lives under particular pressure. This talk will look at contemporary sexualities and their uneasy relationship to love, fantasy and intimacy. Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst. Henrietta Moore is professor of social anthropology at LSE. Susie Orbach is a psychoanalyst and visiting professor at LSE. Renata Salecl is centennial professor of law at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor David Kennedy | Winston Churchill said in 1945 that 'the United States stands at this moment at the summit of the world'. Yet just five years earlier America had been an economic catastrophe and an isolationist bastion. How that transformation came about, and its consequences, will be the subject of this lecture. David M Kennedy is Donald J McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University.