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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

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Boston University

Boston University is one of the leading private research and teaching institutions in the world today, with two primary campuses in the heart of Boston and programs around the world. Celebrating our legacy Boston University was chartered in 1869 by Lee Claflin, Jacob Sleeper, and Isaac Rich, three successful Methodist businessmen whose abolitionist ideals led them to envision and create a university that was inclusive, and engaged in service to and collaboration with the city of Boston. From the day of its opening, Boston University has admitted students of both sexes and every race and religion. More than any other institution in our society, the modern university exists to serve the future. Boston University does this by educating individuals for fulfilling, productive lives and by creating solutions to pressing or anticipated problems through research. As a major research university, Boston University is both a repository for accumulated knowledge and experience and a testing ground for critically examining received wisdom, where groundbreaking research is conducted in a wide variety of fields and across disciplines. Taught by inspired, committed, and creative faculty, our programs combine the enduring value of a liberal arts education with the skills and experience offered by professional schools, to ensure that our students are engaged, adaptable, and equipped for successful careers and fulfilling lives.

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    Marie Howe: Poetry Reading

    Fri, Mar 18, 2016
    Former New York poet laureate **Marie Howe** reads from her poetry collections and speaks about the role of spirituality and imagination in her work. An acclaimed poet, Howe is the author of three poetry collections: _The Good Thief_ (1988), _What the Living Do_ (1997), and _The Kingdom of Ordinary Time_ (2008). Howe's work deals with themes of faith, loss, and family: the secular and the sacred, childhood and living. She grew up in a Catholic family, the eldest of nine children, and has said that the nuns who provided her education also shaped her theology: "I began to appreciate that spirituality could be rigorous. It could be imaginative." In _What the Living Do_, she faces the death of her brother from AIDS and writes about his loss with what the Boston Globe has described as "a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation." (Photo: Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York (Poetry in Motion: The Poet is In) [[CC by 2.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 "CC")], via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poetry_in_Motion-_The_Poet_is_In_(17060822750).jpg "Marie Howe poet is in"), image cropped)
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston University

  • What Retirement Means to Me

    Thu, Oct 23, 2008
    A panel of senior economists responds to questions about money management and retirement posed by PBS Newshour economics correspondent Paul Solman and by audience members. We live in a time of great changes to the way that Americans save, invest, and manage the risks posed to their standard of living. Economists have been studying consumers' optimal saving and investing decisions for many decades. Since the 1950s there has been enormous progress in the underlying theory, and since the 1970s major innovations in the financial markets and advances in technology have facilitated implementation of that theory. In the last two decades, research in behavioral economics and finance has considerably advanced our understanding of how consumers actually make saving and investment decisions. Life-cycle saving and investing have become a science, or at least the foundations have been laid for such a science. This conference is the second in a series that brings together academic researchers, expert practitioners, and public-sector policymakers to explore what the modern science of life-cycle finance implies for households, businesses, and government. In the first conference, the focus was on the pre-retirement phase of the life cycle. This second conference focuses on the retirement phase and aims to encourage the adoption of best practices in the development of both new financial products and future public policies.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston University

  • Anti-Americanism: A New Global Attitude?

    Wed, Oct 1, 2003
    A panel discusses the ways terrorism, the conflict in Iraq, a sluggish economy, and religious, cultural, and social differences have combined to create pressure on international relationships, and to make Anti-American attitudes more prevalent. These experts share their perspectives on global attitudes toward America. They discuss current trends, US public policy implications, the importance of the media, and America's prospects for the future. Otto Lerbinger from Boston University's College of Communication provides an introduction.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston University
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    Centenary Tribute to Elizabeth Bishop

    Thu, Feb 10, 2011
    Poets and scholars gather to pay tribute to the poet Elizabeth Bishop. She was born 100 years ago, yet Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry remains as fresh now as it was when she wrote it. “Her poetry speaks to many issues that are urgent today: gender identity, our difficult relationship to foreign cultures and postcolonial realities, the way that science and reason can sometimes do violence to the world,” says Bonnie Costello, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences professor of English and author of *Elizabeth Bishop: Questions of Mastery*. Bishop, who died in 1979, is the subject of a centennial celebration. The event brings together 17 poets, critics, and editors, who read aloud some of Bishop’s best loved poems, including “In the Waiting Room,” “Sandpiper,” “Shampoo,” and “First Death in Nova Scotia.” Speakers at this centenary tribute include: Frank Bidart, Olga Broumas, Peter Campion, Dan Chiasson, Henri Cole, Bonnie Costello, Maggie Dietz, David Ferry, Erica Funkhouser, Jonathan Galassi, Melissa Green, Saskia Hamilton, George Kalogeris, Gail Mazur, Alice Quinn, Christopher Ricks, Peter Sacks, Mary Jo Salter, Lloyd Schwartz, and Meg Tyler.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Boston University