Sydney Ideas

SPEAKER: Professor David Goodman, Professor of Chinese Politics, and Director, Institute of Social Sciences

Mao Zedong (1893-1976) is best known as the founder of the People’s Republic of China. He led the Chinese Communist Party from 1935 until his death, and brought it to political power in 1949. Mao is well known as a revolutionary, a guerrilla leader, a political and military strategist and icon for post-modern art. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that started in the mid-1960s he attacked the establishment of the new party state in China for “succumbing to the sugar coated bullets of the bourgeoisie”, though his motives have always been a matter of controversy inside as well as outside the People’s Republic of China. Mao himself was always anxious to be seen as an ideologist, as well as an active revolutionary. The lecture will introduce the different and often competing strands in his ideology, which remain an important legacy for China today.

How does the past shape the present? Should history play a role in shaping politics today? Should we be held accountable for the wrongs of the past? Does history divide or unite us? Join prominent Australian and American scholars for an open discussion of these and other issues. Panellists will also explore how and what we remember collectively, and how this contributes to our sense of patriotism, nationalism, or indeed, alienation. With: Bob Carr, former Premier of New South Wales; Professor David Blight, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University; Professor W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina; Profesor James T. Campbell, Stanford University; Professor Jonathan Hansen, Harvard University; and Professor Glenda Sluga, the University of Sydney,

For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/why_history_matters.shtml

How does the past shape the present? Should history play a role in shaping politics today? Should we be held accountable for the wrongs of the past? Does history divide or unite us? Join prominent Australian and American scholars for an open discussion of these and other issues. Panellists will also explore how and what we remember collectively, and how this contributes to our sense of patriotism, nationalism, or indeed, alienation. With: Bob Carr, former Premier of New South Wales; Professor David Blight, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University; Professor W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina; Profesor James T. Campbell, Stanford University; Professor Jonathan Hansen, Harvard University; and Professor Glenda Sluga, the University of Sydney,

For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/why_history_matters.shtml

How does the past shape the present? Should history play a role in shaping politics today? Should we be held accountable for the wrongs of the past? Does history divide or unite us? Join prominent Australian and American scholars for an open discussion of these and other issues. Panellists will also explore how and what we remember collectively, and how this contributes to our sense of patriotism, nationalism, or indeed, alienation. With: Bob Carr, former Premier of New South Wales; Professor David Blight, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University; Professor W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina; Profesor James T. Campbell, Stanford University; Professor Jonathan Hansen, Harvard University; and Professor Glenda Sluga, the University of Sydney,

For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/why_history_matters.shtml

At the same time that we have been developing the capabilities to detect distant Earths, we have also been finding that life on Earth occurs in places that earlier scientists would have considered too hostile to support life. We now know that extremophiles can exist (and sometimes thrive) in the most astounding places.

Since life-as-we-know-it is so extraordinarily hardy, might it exist on any of the exoplanets that are being found?

In this 2009 Sydney Ideas lecture, professor Jill Tarter discussed what was then known about life on other planets, as well as the questions that would likely remain unanswered until new technologies enable new explorations. She argued that it might even turn out that our first indication of another inhabited world will be the signals deliberately generated by its inhabitants.

For more info see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/extremophiles_exoplanets.shtml

At the same time that we have been developing the capabilities to detect distant Earths, we have also been finding that life on Earth occurs in places that earlier scientists would have considered too hostile to support life. We now know that extremophiles can exist (and sometimes thrive) in the most astounding places.

Since life-as-we-know-it is so extraordinarily hardy, might it exist on any of the exoplanets that are being found?

In this 2009 Sydney Ideas lecture, professor Jill Tarter discussed what was then known about life on other planets, as well as the questions that would likely remain unanswered until new technologies enable new explorations. She argued that it might even turn out that our first indication of another inhabited world will be the signals deliberately generated by its inhabitants.

For more info see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/extremophiles_exoplanets.shtml

At the same time that we have been developing the capabilities to detect distant Earths, we have also been finding that life on Earth occurs in places that earlier scientists would have considered too hostile to support life. We now know that extremophiles can exist (and sometimes thrive) in the most astounding places.

Since life-as-we-know-it is so extraordinarily hardy, might it exist on any of the exoplanets that are being found?

In this 2009 Sydney Ideas lecture, professor Jill Tarter discussed what was then known about life on other planets, as well as the questions that would likely remain unanswered until new technologies enable new explorations. She argued that it might even turn out that our first indication of another inhabited world will be the signals deliberately generated by its inhabitants.

For more info see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/extremophiles_exoplanets.shtml

Artist, curator and producer Fiona Winning discusses the often problematic relationship between the hard and soft infrastructure - of arts buildings and the artists and organisations that work in them.

This lecture was the 2009 Rex Cramphorn Lecture.

For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/rex_cramphorn.shtml

Artist, curator and producer Fiona Winning discusses the often problematic relationship between the hard and soft infrastructure - of arts buildings and the artists and organisations that work in them.

This lecture was the 2009 Rex Cramphorn Lecture.

For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/rex_cramphorn.shtml

Artist, curator and producer Fiona Winning discusses the often problematic relationship between the hard and soft infrastructure - of arts buildings and the artists and organisations that work in them.

This lecture was the 2009 Rex Cramphorn Lecture.

For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/rex_cramphorn.shtml