Posted by Site Administrator on June 29, 2009 - No Comments

By Britney Wilkins

Now that President Obama has laid out plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, everyone’s waiting to see what Iran’s next move will be. The Middle Eastern country is acting like a tipping point for economic and political change, and the U.S. has much interest in its influence over other countries in the region in terms of oil production, the current election controversy, and more. In order to understand what comes next for Iran and the Middle East, check out these 50 lectures that will help you understand the country’s religious history, social culture, political traditions, and more.

Religion

These lectures on Iran and Islam shed light on the unique culture, history and political structure of the country.

1. Islam and Constitutional Democracy in Iran: Said Amir Arjomand from SUNY Stony Brook explains how religion and politics are intertwined in Iran.
2. Islamic Law and Feminism: Opening a Dialogue: Listen to this lecture to understand how feminism and Islam are sometimes at odds.
3. Interpreting Islam: Politics, the Media and the Academy: Discover the multi-faceted nature of Islam.
4. Islam and Modernity: The Problem with Paradise: Ziauddin Sardar reflects on how Islam and progress can be reconciled and what modernity means to Muslims.
5. Islam and Modern Science: This lecture from MIT studies the relation between Islam and modern science.
6. Radical Islam and the Western Media: How Accurate is the Portrayal?: This lecture challenges Westerners to be more critical when listening to media interpretations of Islam.
7. Religious and Cultural Politics in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Read summaries of a lecture series from St. Antony’s College about religion’s place in Iran’s new society.
8. Islamic Political Philosophy: Understand how all of these forces work together.
9. Islam: A Truly American Religion?: Jane Smith addresses Middlebury College and considers how Muslims are immigrating to the U.S. and influencing its own religious culture.
10. God, Nature or Man: Whose Law for a Free People? The Experience of Islam: This Princeton University lecture aims to clarify the ideologies of Islam.
11. Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam: Learn more about religious extremists and their call to jihad.

Culture and Society

Persian culture has long influenced other societies around the world, and these lectures pay homage to Iran’s literature, music, and more.

12. Iran Musical Culture in Central Asian Environment: Learn about Persian music and how it is a microcosm for a study of Iran’s geopolitical significance.
13. In Search of the Secret of Survival: Reflections on the Khurasanian Cultural Resurgence: This lecture explains how this cultural group survived.
14. The Origins of Literary Persian: Learn about Persia’s strong literary history when you read this lecture.
15. Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Iran: Foreign correspondent Jonathan Lyons explores faith’s place in Iranian society.
16. Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Dissent: Study the American tradition of freedom of expression and dissent, and then consider what it would be like to live in a society without those freedoms.
17. Persian Influence on Literary and Sufi Traditions in South Asia: Consider how the Persian influence stretches from music to literature to politics and beyond.

History and Politics

Check out the lectures in this list for a review of Iran’s political history and its current policies.

18. The Islamic Republic of Iran After 30 Years: Find out how the Iran revolution is affecting other nations in the Middle East.
19. In Sickness and in Power: The last Shah of Iran is used as an example for studying how illness affects heads of government.
20. Europe and the Middle East: Future Partners in a Free World?: This lecture from the American University in Cairo takes a look at the relationship dynamics between Europe and the Middle East.
21. New Trends in Acheamenid History: Learn about this ancient Persian empire and its significance in Mediterranean history.
22. The Current Crisis in the Middle East: Noam Chomsky discusses the Middle East conflict in 2006 at MIT.
23. Is There an Ultimate Use for Historians? Reflections on Safavid History and Histriography: Consider why an understanding of history is relevant to mapping out the future.
24. China and Iran: Ancient Partners in a Post-imperial World: Learn more about the partnership of China and Iran.
25. Iran: War or Peace?: In 2007, Kenneth Pollack speculated about the possibility of war between the U.S. and Iran.
26. Power, Faith and Fantasy: History of the U.S. in the Middle East: Micael Oren, senior fellow at the Shalem Center, gives a crash course in the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
27. Brokering Peace in the Middle East: Middle East ambassador Dennis Ross, along with the Boston Globe’s former London Bureau Chief Kevin Cullen, discuss the history and political dynamics of the Middle Eastern conflict.
28. How War in Iraq Strengthened America’s Enemies: Peter W. Galbraith looks at the failures and effects of going to war with Iraq.
29. How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance: Yale law professor Amy Chua references the ancient Persian empire when discussing hyperpowers and the future of the U.S.
30. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University: Read a transcript of Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s lecture to Columbia University from 2007.
31. Is Democracy a Universal Value?: Listen to this talk as a way to question whether or not democracy could and should work for everyone.
32. Obama’s War: Why We Are Stuck in Iraq: Consider the U.S. presence in the Middle East from another angle, and try to predict what’s next for the region in terms of policy and conflict.

Economics

Understand Iran’s economic significance when you read, watch or listen to these lectures.

33. A Perspective on Iran’s Post-Revolution Political Economy: Jahangir Amuzegar lectures about Iran’s economic status after the revolution in 1979.
34. Religion and the Market: Are They in Conflict?: By studying how religion and economics impact one another, you may have a better understanding of how Iran’s market operates.
35. The Perfect Economic Storm: Ron Cooke credits Iran as "storm cell 3" in the perfect economic storm that is to come.
36. The Rise of "The Axis of Oil" — Big Trouble for the United States: In 2006, Richard Bell includes Iran in the big fight for oil.

Global Relationships

This group of talks considers how Iranian politics and culture influence and are influenced by other countries like the U.S.

37. The World’s Third Space: Neither Global Nor National: Saskia Sassen’s lecture considers the effects of globalization, including terrorism, politics and more.
38. PW Singer on military robots and the future of war: Discover the future of technology’s impact on war, including how it will be used in Iraq and Iran.
39. After Liberation: The Challenge of Iraq: Consider what could happen to Iran if the U.S. decided to send troops to Iran.
40. U.S. Policy Toward the Middle East: Take a look at how the U.S. addresses countries in the Middle East.
41. Noam Chomsky Lectures on Modern-Day American Imperialism: Middle East and Beyond: Noam Chomsky addresses a student group at Boston University and discusses the American influence over the Middle East.
42. Challenges for U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Hillary Clinton addresses Princeton University and discusses U.S. foreign policy.
43. Islam and Open Societies: Emory professor Vincent Cornell discusses how Islam identifies itself in open societies.
44. Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism: Discover how Iran was viewed by the Pentagon after September 11, 2001.

Future

These lecturers aim to predict what’s next for Iran and the Middle East.

45. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predicts Iran’s future: Find out Bruce Bueno’s methodology and ideas on what Iran is going to do in the next few years.
46. The Future of Iran: Ken Pollack from the Brookings Institution considers the future of Iran.
47. The Future of Islam in the West: Discover how Islam is influencing Western culture.
48. Iran: Grand Bargain, Grand Ambition: Ted Galen Carpenter from the Cato Institute discusses Iran’s "nuclear ambitions."
49. Iran: We Will Know Soon: Richard Heinberg’s lecture ponders a potential conflict between Iran and the U.S.
50. Iran: Another Puzzle Piece: Read this lecture to get a hypothesis on Iran’s defense strategies in the future.

Posted by Site Administrator on March 10, 2009 - 5 Comments

By Britney Wilkins

In our modern, scientific world it is sometimes easy to forget that human progress often comes attached to some spectacular intellectual clashes between different ways of looking at things and differing interpretations of what is seen. There have been some notable intellectual mind-fights over the millennia, the following are ten such academic fights, the outcome of which changed the world into what we know of it today.

10. Intellectual Property Rights vs. Nature: Can Anyone "Own" Life?

A controversy is ongoing today between biological researchers and broader society on the issue of patenting the genes and genomes of living organisms. In 1980 the first patent on a genetically engineered bacteria was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court and the rush was on to patent the "products of nature." Soon patents were being issued on discovered ‘new’ species of plants and animals even when they weren’t genetically engineered. Isolated and cloned DNA sequences encoding useful proteins are also patentable at present, despite the fact that they are ubiquitous in nature. This legal and commercial situation has led to giant pharmaceutical companies obtaining patents on genes, gene products and even things like vitamins. Some indigenous people have discovered that the stranger who took that blood test now owns their entire genome! The National Institutes of Health tried in the early 1990s to patent more than 2,000 gene segments sequenced by Craig Venter during the Human Genome Project, even though neither NIH nor Venter knew what their function was. This controversy will not be going away soon, and the biotech industry risks losing public support due to its dismissal of important ethical concerns.

9. Steady State vs. Big Bang: Hoyle’s Derogatory Terms

In 1912, just three years before Albert Einstein published his theory of General Relativity [GR], Vesto Slipher measured the Doppler shift of a spiral galaxy and determined that almost all of these celestial ‘nebulae’ were receding from the earth at great speed. A decade later Alexander Friedmann derived equations from GR that showed the universe might be expanding. Two years after that Georges Lemaitre put these findings together and predicted that the recession of distant nebulae was due to the expansion of the universe. It was Fred Hoyle who coined the term "Big Bang" in 1949 to describe the idea that the universe had a beginning, a derogatory term that stuck better than his own cosmological model, which he called "Steady State." Hoyle postulated that new matter was being created as the universe expanded, so that it always remained roughly the same at any point in time. With confirmation of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation in 1964 the Big Bang became the ’standard cosmological model’ after half a century of scientific argumentation and theoretical turf-wars.

8. Einstein vs. QT: The Gambling God

"God does not play dice with the universe," said the man who became an icon of physics with his theories of special and general relativity, Albert Einstein. In 1927 Einstein began a series of debates with quantum explorer Niels Bohr about quantum indeterminism, its epistemological basis and interpretation. The arguments revolved around what is known as the measurement problem and whether or not particles in the quantum state were really both wave and particle at the same time until measurements were made. Einstein wanted to insist that the apparent indeterminacy at the quantum level was just a (temporary) inability to measure certain properties, while Bohr maintained the impossibility of determining precise values of certain properties because at the quantum level the values were by nature uncertain. Bohr eventually won on the striking results of the Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen [EPR] experiment which arose from these debates and established the phenomenon of quantum non-locality.

7. Tesla vs. Edison: AC-DC’s Greatest Hits

In 1856 a boy was born in Croatia who became both a genius and an enigma during a time of great scientific, technological and social change. His name was Nikola Tesla and his passion was electricity and electromagnetism. The rivalry between Tesla and native born genius Thomas Edison at the turn of the 20th century became the stuff of scientific legend. Tesla worked as an assistant to Edison when he first came to America. He designed a DC (direct current) system for Edison, who then refused to pay him the bonuses he’d promised. So Tesla struck out on his own to develop AC (alternating current) transmission. By 1915 the New York Times reported that the Nobel Prize in Physics was to be jointly shared by Tesla and Edison, though so strong was their personal animosity toward each other that both refused to accept it if the other was named. The prize went instead to two other researchers for work on X-ray crystallography. Six months after Tesla died penniless in 1943 the US Supreme Court invalidated 1909 Nobel winner Marconi’s most important patent for radio transmission and recognized Tesla as the inventor.

6. The Great Devonian Controversy: Plowing Darwin’s Road

The nineteenth century heralded many important advancements in scientific theory, including the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859. The idea of evolution had been floating around in the scientific community for some time, with camps arguing for traditional creationism and the inheritance of acquired traits versus an ancient earth timeline and the transmutation of life forms over deep time. Darwin’s theory of natural selection enjoyed the increasing support of science as the debate over geological data developed during the 1830s to establish various ages of rock strata according to the type of fossils that could be found embedded in those layers. Darwin had worked with geologist Adam Sedgwick before his journey to the Galapagos Islands, and found his theory dependent on stratigraphy as it steadily developed a scientific consensus in the intervening years. The controversy and Darwin’s theory initiated search for what became known as "transitional fossils," a search that continues to this day.

5. Newton vs. Leibniz: Fluxions and Fluents

Sir Isaac Newton was an intellectual scrapper of considerable repute who was never shy of throwing power around or taking ideas and data from others without attribution. The long fight between Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who discovered calculus is the most famous. Leibniz was unarguably the first to publish on the subjects of differential and integral calculus, 20 years before Newton. Yet letters from Newton expounding his theories of "fluxional" calculus exactly coincide with Leibniz’s work. A major scientific bruhaha ensued, with defenders in both camps. Leibniz appealed to the Royal Society, allowing Newton as its president to appoint the investigating committee from among his friends, and even to write the committee’s report accusing Leibniz of plagiarism. Historians of science now credit both Leibniz and Newton with the discovery of calculus, probably because neither Newton nor Leibniz are around to argue about it any more.

4. Galileo vs. The Church: Our Sunny Neighborhood

Galileo Galilei published in 1610 his observations through his telescope to argue in favor of the Copernican sun-centered cosmological model against the then-predominant Ptolemaic view. He demonstrated his telescope to the Jesuit College and encountered little resistance. Then, in 1632 he published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and quickly found himself summoned to appear before the Inquisition on charges of heresy. Galileo was forced to recant his support for the Copernican model and spent the rest of his life under house arrest, though with rather lenient travel and visitation allowances. His works were finally dropped from the Index of prohibited books in 1835. In 1992 Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the "Galileo Affair" was handled, officially conceding on the part of the church that the earth is not stationary and that the planets orbit the sun.

3. Martin Luther vs. The Church: Reformation

In the year 1517 the Catholic monk Martin Luther nailed a copy of his 95 Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany to argue against the doctrine and practice of selling indulgences. These arguments were quickly translated from Latin into German and widely disseminated with the help of the newly-invented printing press, and led to Luther’s excommunication in 1520. The great Reformation quickly ensued. Pope Leo X issued a lengthy rebuttal to Luther’s charges in an encyclical reiterating Church doctrine, which didn’t sway public sentiment in Germany and other parts of Northern Europe. Protestantism became firmly rooted as a sort of declaration of independence from the control of Rome. This in turn led to tremendous social changes along with the decline of feudalism and the rise of commercialism as well as conflicts between Catholic and Protestant claims to territories in the New World.

2. Paul vs. James: Universalizing The Faith

Surely the Council of Jerusalem [circa 50 c.e.] has to be counted among the most important of intellectual arguments, for the philosophical sub-discipline of theology. It was a clash between James the Just and the great evangelist Paul within two decades of the crucifixion of Jesus. It was about whether or not Christians would be held to the strictures of Judaic Law. James was titular head of the Church in Jerusalem, while Paul was busy establishing congregations across the Mediterranean portion of the Roman empire among gentiles. The primary issue appears to have been a requirement for circumcision, but others related to dietary provisions, etc. were also present. While some of these issues are still debated today, the consensus is that Paul ‘won’ the debate so that Christians are not held to Judaic Law which was "fulfilled" by the figure of Christ. The rest, as they say, is history.

1. Socrates vs. The Gods: Triumph of Reason

Greek philosophy helped to shape the metaphysics of the civilized world in the last half of the first millennium b.c.e. There were many divergent schools of philosophy competing with one another by the time the Sophists came along maintaining that truth was entirely a matter of persuasion by argument rather than something absolute. Socrates rose from among Sophist ranks and became famous for walking the talk so well that he made some enemies in high places. Socrates taught that ethics were not a matter of divine decree, but are best the result of human reason and individual conscience. Socrates was charged with impiety (disbelief in the state’s gods, corrupting the morals of the youth), convicted by a margin of 6 out of 50 votes, and committed suicide by drinking poison. Through his student Plato and Plato’s student Aristotle, the intellectual tools of reason and logic lived on to become part of the guiding philosophy of the Enlightenment and science.