From the world-renowned Wideman Davis Dance Company and award-winning filmmakers Ethan Payne and Brian Foster, We Dance is a love story, deconstructed and distilled into its most elemental ingredients. Dreams. Memories. Family. Environments. In this 12-minute film, Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis take us from Chicago, Montgomery, and New York to the point where their lives meet and become one. Along the way, they honor and signify on Black American art, poetry, and literature.
Media and video art practice of the last twenty years coincided with the harrowing expansion of climate degradation. While the effects of climate change had been anticipated before 2000, they took shape ubiquitously and lethally post-2000, bringing new challenges about whether and how to imagine a future for shared life on the planet. These effects coincided also with a deeper historical understanding of how we got here, tracking the history of extractive economies and their imbrication with the forces of gender, race, colonialism, and a human-centered anthropocentricism.
Please join us for a free virtual film screening of the documentary film, "This Ain't Normal." Register for a link to see the documentary at your convenience between February 15 and 16. Then join us for a discussion on...
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time—and schools have a sizable environmental impact. There are nearly 100,000 public K-12 schools in the United States occupying 2 million acres of land and producing 53,000 tons of food waste. Schools operate one of the largest mass transportation fleets in the country with 480,000 school buses, and they are one of the largest public energy consumers.
We'll talk with national education leaders—members of an Aspen Institute bipartisan commission that recently released a...
For many in the US, the narrative of cartel violence in Mexico may point to lawlessness and ineffective oversight. But there is another story; over the last 15 years, homicides have tripled in Mexico and as many as 90% of the guns used in drug-related violence come from the United States. While gun laws in Mexico are extremely restrictive, cartels find it easy to purchase them in a border state, such as Texas or Arizona, and then smuggle those guns across the border. The suit makes a combination of novel arguments regarding the targeted marketing of guns to cartels, the lack of effective...
Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School—Online
Black students have played a pivotal role in pioneering programs and in pushing their institutions to act in ways that move towards health equity. This student-led session will illuminate diverse perspectives, building from understanding history, about ways institutions can enact a clear “action agenda”, including concrete opportunities and responsibilities, through which everyone concerned about these issues can see ways to promote action to accelerate long-overdue progress.
Adolescent mental health in the United Stated has shown unprecedent changes over recent years. A key issue in attempting to understand trends over time in in adolescent’s mental health symptoms is the extent to which trends reflect age, period, or cohort effects. Dr. Katherine Keyes will join us in the next Population Mental Health forum to discuss whether mental health problems in adolescents are really on in the increase, drawing on her important research in this area.
In Benin Bronzes in Context, Sarah Clunis will look at objects currently in the care of Harvard and discuss the way that these objects represent an iconographic and contextual story of trade, contact, and crossroads between cultures. Diana Loren will moderate a discussion after the presentation.
The bronze, ivory, and wooden artworks broadly known as the “Benin Bronzes” were taken from Benin City as part of the British Punitive Expedition of 1897 and dispersed to private collections and museums around the world. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology...
How did Chicago, a city known for commerce, come to have such a splendid public waterfront—its most treasured asset? The book’s authors study the lakefront’s evolution from the middle of the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Their findings have significance for understanding not only Chicago’s history but also the law’s part in determining the future of significant urban resources such as waterfronts.
Join us for a discussion on Lakefront: Public Trust and Private Rights in Chicago with authors Joseph Kearney and Thomas Merrill and panelists Henry Smith, Richard...
The Equity and Social Justice (ESJ) is a series of lectures and dialogues which targets the Harvard Longwood community as well as communities in the greater Boston area. The series provides context to the historical, current, and future state of equity and social justice in health and health care, and engages and equips participants with tools to take action. ESJ events focus on four areas: (1) History and Context, (2) Culture and Environment, (3) Health Disparities, and (4) Leadership and Skills Development.
Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies—Online
On the six-month anniversary of the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan, this Negotiation Task Force virtual event, moderated by NTF Fellow Fara Abbas, explores Afghanistan under Taliban rule. Together with our expert panel of speakers, we will address the political, economic, and security developments in Afghanistan and the way forward. The consequences of a Taliban failure to govern are far reaching.
This event will address the following questions: What can be expected from the...
Technology is now part of our lives in ways that were not possible only 10-20 years ago. Smart devices, like watches, phones, and speakers, can gather vast amounts of information about their users, often without the user’s knowledge or consent. As technology continues to improve, many of these devices may also be leveraged to serve diagnostic functions. Technologies such as Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant can ambiently and continually monitor a variety of information about an individual’s location, voice, and movement. As this technology merges with wearables, such as the Apple...
Join us for two consecutive panels and a conversation with internationally renowned artist Krzysztof Wodiczko.
In this joint panel, we will first explore how creative practices and institutions navigate audience participation and how they enter into spaces of co-production. Artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer will discuss how his practice, use of technology, and processes of community participation are in dialogue with Krzysztof Wodiczko’s own practice. In her presentation, Jill Medvedow, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, will discuss the role of...
How can schools, educators, and families navigate the continued politicization and tensions around teaching and talking about race, racism, diversity, and equity? As laws banning critical race theory are passed, and the rhetoric grows intense, we'll discuss what educators and families can do to make sure students are supported, learning, and prepared with the knowledge they need to understand their own histories and the diverse and global society they’ll enter.
Join Harvard Law School for a book talk on "Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality" by HLS Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin with panelists Kenneth Mack, Sheryll Cashin, and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham.
Scientists, health leaders, and politicians alike have described COP26 as our last, best chance to slow global warming and stave off some of the worst health effects of climate change. But the political environment remains fraught. And it’s unclear how rhetoric will translate into action.
Our expert panel brings together leading voices in the fight against climate change, fresh from the halls of the COP26 Summit. They’ll talk through key outcomes and next steps. Bring questions!
The early education landscape continues to shift under the weight of pandemic impacts. Join us as we take a look at where things stand for our young learners, their families, and the early educators who are trying to serve their needs.
We’ll highlight all that we know about the current challenges in early learning that need critical attention. We'll explore how our caregivers are managing their own stresses and helping young children navigate disruption and instability. And we’ll also offer strategies for perseverance and even innovation, focusing in on the solutions that...
This conversation is part of the series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker is Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker staff writer.
Few have covered the climate crisis as deeply and as thoughtfully as Elizabeth Kolbert. Her work includes Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2007), the Pulitzer-prize winning The Sixth Extinction (2016), and her latest Under a White Sky (2021), “a book about people trying to solve problems caused by people...
Join us for a one-hour webinar exploring the legacy of Eileen Southern, author of The Music of Black Americans: A History and founder and editor of The Black Perspective in Music. In 1976, Eileen Southern became the first African American woman tenured in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). Southern played an important institutional role at Harvard. She was central in developing the Department of Afro-American Studies (now African and African American Studies), serving as an early chair, and was on the faculty of the Department of Music, where she taught...
Heralding the exhibition "Interrogative Design: Selected Works of Krzysztof Wodiczko," the artist joins architectural historian and GSD professor Erika Naginski for an exploration of architecture's role in the construction and performance of memory (12pm) and art historian Rosalyn Deutsche to discuss the role of trauma, healing, and survival in his work over the last five decades (2:30pm).