The World Beyond the Headlines from the University of Chicago

A talk by author and Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown. As fossil fuel prices rise, oil insecurity deepens, and concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new energy economy is emerging. Wind, solar, and geothermal energy are replacing oil, coal, and natural gas, at a pace and on a scale we could not have imagined even a year ago. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, we have begun investing in energy sources that can last forever. Plan B 4.0 explores both the nature of this transition to a new energy economy and how it will affect our daily lives. Cosponsored by the Program on the Global Environment. From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series.

20th Anniversary Roundtable with the Consuls General of Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Poland. A discussion concerning the historic events of two decades ago in Central and Eastern Europe, and the paths taken since then - through personal reflections and recollections of how the process developed, the spirit of the movements, the leaders, the political atmosphere, and the ways in which the transition has resonated through the past twenty years. Cosponsored by the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies and the International House Global Voices Program. Part of "With Immediate Effect": The Events of 1989 Revisited

A talk by New York Times journalist Neil MacFarquhar. His book, "The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday" reveals a cross-section of unsung, dynamic men and women pioneering political and social change. There is the Kuwaiti sex therapist in a leather suit with matching red headscarf, and the Syrian engineer advocating a less political interpretation of the Koran. MacFarquhar interacts with Arabs and Iranians in their every day lives, removed from the violence we see constantly, yet wrestling with the region's future. Cosponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series.

A talk by professor and author David Bosco. From the Berlin Airlift to the Iraq War, the UN Security Council has stood at the heart of global politics. Part public theater, part smoke-filled backroom, the Council has enjoyed notable successes and suffered ignominious failures, but it has always provided a space for the five great powers to sit down together. Five to Rule Them All tells the inside story of this remarkable diplomatic creation. Drawing on extensive research, including dozens of interviews with serving and former ambassadors on the Council, the book chronicles political battles and personality clashes as it opens the closed doors of its meeting room. What emerges here is a revealing portrait of the most powerful diplomatic body in the world. From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series.

A talk by South African author and journalist Mark Gevisser.

Mark Gevisser is currently The Nation's Southern African correspondent. In South Africa, his work has appeared in the Mail & Guardian, the Sunday Independent, the Sunday Times and many magazines and periodicals. Internationally, he has written widely on South African politics, culture and society, in publications ranging from Vogue and the New York Times to Foreign Affairs and Art in America.

Read Mark Gevisser's featured CIS article connecting Barack Obama's election and the legacy of liberation in South Africa...

From the World Beyond the Headlines lecture series. Cosponsored by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT), the Political Science Department, the African Studies Workshop, and the Human Rights Program.

A talk by Rashid Khalidi.

Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, and is among the foremost U.S. historians of the modern Middle East. He is the author of numerous books on the region--several written during his many years on the faculty at the University of Chicago--including Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness; Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East; and The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood.

From the World Beyond the Headlines Series.

A talk by authors Jim Shultz & Melissa Crane Draper. (Moderated by Jerome McDonnell, host of Chicago Public Radio's Worldview.)

Author Jim Shultz is founder and Executive Director of the San Francisco based Democracy Center and has lived and worked in Bolivia for much of the past decade, chronicling grassroots movements to control exploitation of Bolivia's natural resources, from water resources to oil and natural gas. With Melissa Crane Draper and other Democracy Center affiliates, Shultz places Bolivians' struggles in a broader context of Latin America's experiences with forces of globalization.

From the World Beyond the Headlines Series.

A talk by Antonia Juhasz, author, policy expert, and activist. Antonia Juhasz is an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies, a fellow with Oil Change International, and a senior analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus. The author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (2006), Juhasz has also written extensively on various aspects of globalization. Her articles and commentary on politics and policy have appeared in New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Petroleum Review Magazine, In These Times, and Washington Post, among other sources. From the World Beyond the Headlines Series.

Writer, film-maker, and leading figure of the international left Tariq Ali speaks about Pakistan, Afghanistan and the future of U.S. involvement in the region. Ali's new book, "The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power", weighs the prospects of those contending for power in the aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's assassination, and demonstrates Pakistan's unique influence on the emergence of a secure world or global conflagration.

A talk by Juan Cole.

Juan Cole will discuss the future of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond the November presidential elections. Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He studies and writes about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. His media and press interviews since September 11, 2001 and throughout the war in Iraq have received worldwide attention. His most recent book is "Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East".

From the World Beyond the Headlines Series.