Spring 2010 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Professor Allen Buchanan | It is becoming possible to extend human capacities and perhaps even create new ones through the application of biomedical technologies. Putting biomedical enhancements in a historical context can help us avoid common misunderstandings of ethical issues.

Contributor(s): Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Professor Steven Pinker | What happens when a novelist and philosopher talks to a cognitive neuroscientist about faith, reason, fiction, and God? Listen in as Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and her husband Steven Pinker explore what Spinoza would say about Darwin, what role fiction should play in intellectual life, whether any of the arguments for the existence of God are any good, and other topics at the interface of literature, science, and philosophy.

Contributor(s): Wazhma Frogh, David Kilcullen, Horia Mosadiq, Michael Semple, Tom Tugendhat | Chaired by distinguished UN diplomat and envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, experts on Afghanistan will discuss the current situation in that country and possibilities for its future during a time of disintegrating support for western military involvement and a resurgent Taliban.

Contributor(s): Professor Allen Buchanan | Many consider genetic modification to be the riskiest mode of biomedical enhancement. The problem of unintended bad consequences is serious, but it is often misrepresented in terms of interference with the 'wisdom of nature' or the handiwork of the 'master engineer' of evolution.

Contributor(s): Ami Ayalon, Professor Christine Chinkin, Karma Nabulsi, Colonel Desmond Travers | This public discussion, chaired by the distinguished UN diplomat and envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, will discuss the findings of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict and the 'Goldstone Report' that it produced. Panellists will also examine the state of the peace process, and how this might unfold in the future.

Contributor(s): Sang-Hyun Song | Judge Sang-Hyun Song was appointed President of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March, 2009. He initially joined the ICC in 2003, when he became a judge for a term of nine years. President Song has extensive practical and academic experience in the area of court management, criminal procedure, and the law of evidence. For thirty years, he taught as a professor of law at Seoul National University Law School, beginning in 1972. He has also held visiting professorships at a number of law schools, including Harvard, New York University and Melbourne.

Contributor(s): Tony Juniper | This event will explore the role of universities in driving the sustainability agenda. Tony Juniper is a campaigner, writer, and a senior associate with the Cambridge University Programme for Sustainability Leadership. Professor Janet Hartley is Pro-director for teaching and learning at LSE.

Contributor(s): Sir Ken MacDonald QC | Public prosecutors must be free from political influence to command confidence. But if they are not answerable to politicians, how are they accountable to the public for their work?

Contributor(s): Dr David Kershaw | In this lunchtime series of lectures, a selection of LSE's academics from across the spectrum of the social sciences 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.

Contributor(s): Professor John Bowen | We discuss 'Studying Islam across times and place: how to compare?' and this time we subject 'Islam' to an analytical discussion. The anthropological approach advocated here focuses on processes by which Muslims refer back to an Islamic tradition, and employ those references to explain and change the social world. Current debates in Aceh (Indonesia) about how to understand sharî`a provide an initial case study; these debates are then shown to be quite similar to some underway in Western Europe.