Sydney Ideas

Uncertainty, like insecurity, is as much a subjective state of mind as it is an objective condition of reality, raising new and troubling questions for those trying to assess its global impact. Are uncertainty, volatility and precarity actually on the rise? Do repeated efforts to measure, record and represent uncertainty only amplify the condition? Is uncertainty the result of a single person or state, or more of a global trend in politics and the media? Who benefits from and who is harmed by the spread of uncertainty? A diverse group of leading international security scholars address the topic from their own unique perspectives and research areas. - Professor Rita Abrahamsen, University of Ottawa - Professor Thomas Biersteker, Graduate Institute of Geneva - Professor Lene Hansen, University of Copenhagem - Professor Michael Williams, University of Ottawa Presented by Sydney Ideas on 27 April 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/CISS_global_forum_2017.shtml

From building walls, to stopping boats, to attempts to ‘trade’ refugees between countries, we are witnessing unprecedented efforts by national governments to externalise their borders, absolving rich countries of their international obligations, and often shifting the burden to poorer countries. Our panel will examine the current policies of the United States and Australia and offer observations about the implications of such policies – for those who cannot move, for those who remain unprotected, and for those who try to respond. The panel will be preceded by a photography exhibition featuring the work of Syrians living the ‘Trapped In/Pushed Out’ experience, curated by Maher Jamous, a Syrian producer and filmmaker who fled Syria in 2012. SPEAKERS: - Professor David FitzGerald, Professor of Sociology, University of California San Diego
 - Graham Thom, Refugee Coordinator, Amnesty International
 - Michelle Peterie, PhD candidate (Sociology), University of Sydney
 - Behrouz Boochani, journalist, currently i

On September 14, 2015, scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration observed the collision and fusion of the two black holes by directly measuring their gravitational waves. This detection came 100 years after Einstein developed the general theory of relativity that predicted gravitational waves, and 50 years after scientists began searching for them. This discovery has truly profound implications, and opens a new window on the cosmos. Gravitational waves provide unique information on the most energetic astrophysical events, revealing insights into the nature of gravity, matter, space, and time. David Reitze talks about how they made the detection and discusses how gravitational astronomy promises to change our understanding of the universe. SPEAKER: David Reitze, Executive Director of the LIGO Laboratory at the Caltech and a Professor of Physics at the University of Florida Presented by Sydney Ideas on 11 April 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/david_re

North Korea has survived the end of the Cold War, massive famine, numerous regional crises, punishing sanctions, and international stigma. Why is it still here? In this talk, Associate Professor Justin Hastings, of the University of Sydney, explores the puzzle of how the most politically isolated state in the world nonetheless sustains itself in large part by international trade and integration into the global economy. SPEAKER: Justin Hastings, Associate Professor in International Relations and Comparative Politics at the University of Sydney Presented by Sydney Ideas on 10 April 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/assoc_professor_justin_hastings.shtml

Sydneysiders have just sweltered through the hottest summer on record. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the mean summer temperature in the city was about three degrees above average. As Sydney’s population expands in the next few decades, how can we protect and promote health in this changing climate? What are the options for managing the heat, and how will this influence the choices we make in the future? PANELLISTS: - Dr Tony Capon, Professor of Planetary Health, Sydney School of Public Health, Researcher of Climate Adaptation & Health Project Node, Charles Perkins Centre - Dr Adrienne Keane, Director, Master of Urbanism, Urban Planning and Policy, Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning - Dr Ollie Jay, Thermoregulatory Physiologist and Director of Thermal Ergonomics Laboratory, Faculty of Health Sciences; Lead Researcher of Climate Adaptation & Health Project Node, Charles Perkins Centre - Dr Jennifer Mae Hamilton, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Gender and Cultural Studies

Professor George Sugai is a world leader in positive behaviour support (PBS), a behaviour management system used to understand what maintains an individual's challenging behaviour, and establishing goals for change. For this presentation he outlines how PBS is just one part of prevention-based multi-tiered systems approach that can be used to support the academic and social behavioural goals of schools. SPEAKER: Professor George Sugai, Center for Behavioral Education and Research Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut. Presented by Sydney Ideas for the University of Sydney School of Education and Social Work Dean's lecture series on 4 April 2017 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/ESW_deans_lecture_series.shtml

What has happened to the bipartisan consensus on the importance of protecting public health and the environment with environmental law in the United States? P Robert L Glicksman from the George Washington University Law School, updates us on what is happening in the US. SPEAKER: Professor Robert L Glicksman is the J B & Maurice C Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at the George Washington University Law School, is an authority on environmental, natural resources, and administrative law. Presented by Sydney Ideas and the Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law, Sydney Law School at the University of Sydney, on 4 April 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/professor_robert_glicksman.shtml

Dr Duncan Green of Oxfam joins Sydney Ideas to share the ideas in his latest book How Change Happens, exploring the topic of social and political change from the perspective of international development. SPEAKER: Dr Duncan Green is Oxfam Great Britain’s Senior Strategic Adviser. He teaches on international development at the London School of Economics, where he is a Professor in Practice. His blog is one of the most widely read on international development, From Poverty to Power blog (http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/). Presented by Sydney Ideas on 3 April 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/duncan_green.shtml

Corruption in the post-Tiananmen era exhibits distinct characteristics not found in the 1980s, such as astronomical sums of money looted by officials, their family members, and their cronies in the private sector, large networks of co-conspirators, and the sale of public office. By examining the evolution of Chinese economic and political institutions since the early 1990s, we can trace the emergence of crony capitalism to two critical changes in the control of property rights of the assets owned by the state and the personnel management of the officials the ruling Communist Party. The insights from a sample of 260 prosecuted cases of corruption involving multiple officials and businessmen suggest that crony capitalism in China has evolved into a decentralised kleptocracy with its own market rules and dynamics. SPEAKER: Professor Minxin Pei, Claremont McKenna College, US Presented by Sydney Ideas and the China Studies Centre on 29 Mar 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/professor_minxin_

The Dawkins reforms to higher education in the late 1980s roused passions at many universities across the nation, over fears for the academic enterprise and Australia’s system of free, public university education. What was the impact of the Dawkins reforms, particularly at the University of Sydney? SPEAKERS: - Emeritus Professor Deryck Schreuder, 4th Challis Professor of History at The University of Sydney during the era of the Dawkins White Paper, and then Deputy Vice-Chancellor at Macquarie University, Vice-Chancellor of UWS and a Member of the new Australian Research Council, during its implementation. He was later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, President of the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee and Chair of the ‘Australian Universities Quality Agency’. He is now an Emeritus Professor and writes about history and higher education. - Julia Horne was a PhD student during the implementation of the Dawkins reforms. She is now Associate Professor of History and University Histor

A Sydney Ideas conversation co-presented with the Sydney School of Entrepreneurship A serial entrepreneur, Ryan Holmes started his first business in high school, ultimately opening a string of ventures - from a pizza restaurant to a digital media agency – before starting Hootsuite in 2008. As founder and CEO, he has helped grow Hootsuite into the world’s most widely used social relationship platform, with 15-million-plus users, including more than 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies. Ryan Holmes is in discussion with Nick Kaye, Chief Executive Officer, Sydney School of Entrepreneurship. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 23 March 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/ryan_holmes.shtml

Professor Pavel Pevzner from the University of California, San Diego, shares the concerns about the quality of early, primitive MOOCs, which have been hyped by many as a cure-all for education. At the same time, he believes that much of the criticism of MOOCs stems from the fact that truly disruptive educational resources have not been developed yet. He proposes to transform MOOCs into a more efficient educational product called a Massive Adaptive Interactive Text (MAIT) that can prevent individual learning breakdowns and even outperform a professor in a classroom. For this special Sydney Ideas event, Pevzner argues that computer science is a unique discipline where this transition is about to happen and describes the first steps towards transforming a MOOC into a MAIT that has already outperformed teachers. Introduction by Associate Professor Uri Keich, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney. A Sydney Ideas event on 23 March 2017 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/l

As Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network from 2008 to 2011, Wadah Khanfar was in a unique position to observe war, uprisings and revolution in one of the most turbulent regions in the world, the Middle East. He is now President of Al Sharq Forum, an independent think-tank dedicated to developing long-term strategies for political development, social justice and economic prosperity of the people of the Middle East. Wadah Khanfar joins Sydney Ideas for a conversation about the rapidly evolving nature of our news consumption, its relationship to the complex world of political strategy and diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa, and the complexities of identity and representation in this situation. Response by Zainab Jasim, PhD student at the University of Sydney, researching aspects of Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Arab Spring. Co-presented by the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures and the National Centre for Cultural Competence at the University of Sydney Presented by Sydney Ideas on 1

Professor Stuart Kauffman is one of the most distinguished scholars of complexity and the author of several acclaimed books, including The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution (1993), At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1995), and Humanity in a Creative Universe (2016). In this Sydney Ideas talk, he proposes that the ever-changing phase space of evolution means we can write no laws of motion for evolution, and it is thus not reducible to physics. The evolving biosphere is the most complex system we know in the universe. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 1 March 2017. See the webpage for more about this lecture and to access the lecture slides: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/professor_stuart_kauffman.shtml

A panel presents fresh perspectives on museums approaches to human rights and the Holocaust, exploring and explicating contemporary international debates. Experts from various disciplinary backgrounds alongside museum practitioners analyse, challenge, and critically assess existing approaches, while considering possible future directions for these increasingly influential institutions. For while human rights museums with a Holocaust core or theme proliferate internationally, this burgeoning area of museology has not yet been subject to systematic scholarly study. By comparing and contrasting the unique combination of advocacy (human rights) with memory (the Holocaust), the ARC Linkage project Reverberations: The Holocaust, Human Rights and the Museum is setting the agenda for theory, practice, and policy with regard to human rights and Holocaust museums in the 21st century. Chaired by Dr Avril Alba, a Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilisation, and Director (Acting) of the Museums and He

How do theatre plays, such as The Trouble with Harry contribute to advancing contemporary transgender issues? A post-performance Q&A co-presented with the Seymour Centre as part of the 2017 Mardi Gras. The playwright Lachlan Philpott is joined by the University of Sydney PhD candidate Rillark Bolton whose research explores the experiences of identity formation and community creation for trans masculine individuals, and Dr Anna Hickey-Moody, Associate Professor in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Together they discuss the history of transgender (the term that did not yet exist in the time of Harry Crawford), the politics of the play and the role of the performing arts in shaping contemporary thought and opinion on trans issues. The discussion is chaired by Charles O'Grady. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 23 February 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/transgender_forum.shtml

International insights on achieving affordability with quality density. Real estate development expert Professor Richard Peiser at Harvard University and guests of the Cities Leadership Institute at the University of Sydney, spoke on how to achieve quality, affordable housing drawing on case studies and strategies from the United States. They discussed ways that we can better finance loans for key workers in affordable housing, new tenure strategies, and trends in commercial and residential real estate. Professor Peiser also suggests how we can better integrate jobs and transport into the delivery process of and international best practices of density and accessibility. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 23 Feb 2017 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/professor_richard_peiser.shtml

Efforts to reconcile theories and practices of democracy with environmental sustainability have long been central to environmental political thought. Since this first wave of scholarship on ecological democracy, there have been numerous crucial developments that pose a range of challenges. On the environmental side, we have seen the acceleration of climate change, arguments for setting planetary boundaries around humanity’s environmental impacts, and widespread acknowledgement that the Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. On the political side, we have had the growth of environmental and climate justice movements, the proliferation of institutions for global environmental governance, and the anti-environmental and post-truth era. This panel of distinguished contributors to the ecological democracy debate will examine what theories of ecological democracy have offered, and, looking forward, how (or if) they might respond to the current set of ecological, and democratic, challenges. SPEAKERS: -

Contemporary governments frame surveillance and secrecy as evils necessary to ensure our security. Individual privacy has been trumped by the need for covert behaviour on the part of states and corporations who collect and store our personal metadata and monitor our activities via new technologies without our knowledge or consent. We ask: how does the gathering and suppression of information subvert our right to know and preclude the media from exposing wrongdoing and holding officials accountable? What are the existing accountability mechanisms, and what are the challenges current surveillance measures pose to these? Panellists: - Ian Shaw, political geographer at the University of Glasgow, UK - Felicity Ruby, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney - Peter Fray, professor of journalism practice at the University of Technology Sydney, the founder of the fact-checking website PolitiFact Australia and the former editor-in-chief or editor o

In 2010 environmentalist David de Rothschild sailed from San Francisco to Sydney in 'The Plastiki' , a unique 18.3-metre catamaran made from approximately 12,500 reclaimed plastic soft drink bottles, sails of recycled PET, and masts made from aluminium irrigation piping and consist of 98 per cent post-consumer billet. In his talk for Sydney Ideas, with inventor, educator and adjudicator Sally Dominguez, David de Rothschild explained the technology used on board and revealed what he and crew learnt on their four-month journey about plastic in our oceans. A Sydney Ideas event on 29 July, 2010 For more information http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2010/david_de_rothschild.shtml