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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

Funding provided by:

Harvard Graduate School of Education

The Askwith Education Forum, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is endowed through the generosity of Patricia Askwith Kenner and other members of the Askwith family, and acts as a galvanizing force for debate and conversation about education in its narrowest and broadest perspectives. Each year, the Forum welcomes a number of prominent people from diverse fields to speak about issues relevant to education and children. Recent topics have included immigration, values, affirmative action, education reform, and the arts. All of these events are free and open to the public.break

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/askwith

W.B. Yeats: The Arch-Poet

Wed, Dec 10, 2003

Roy Foster speaks about the final volume in his acclaimed biography W.B. Yeats, A Life, Volume II: The Arch-Poet 1915-1939. **Roy Foster**is the Carroll professor of Irish history at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Hartford College. He is author of numerous books including Charles Stewart Parnell and Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life.

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
Louis Menand: Pragmatism's Three Moments

Thu, Feb 12, 2004

Louis Menand lectures on pragmatism, a distinctly American philosophy based on experience and experiment rather than fixed principles. Louis Menand, professor of English and American literature and language in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty, is the author of *The Metaphysical Club* (2001), an exploration of American pragmatism that examines the transformation of American intellectual thought from 1865 to 1919 and explores the development of the pragmatism philosophy.

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
Liberal and Conservative Theories on Urban School Change

Mon, Mar 15, 2004

Charles Payne of Duke University, and author of *I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Movement* discusses "A Curse on Both Their Houses: Liberal and Conservative Theories of Urban School Change."

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
18,190 Days: Brown v. Board of Education

Fri, Mar 5, 2004

On the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, this panel discussion considers the topic "18,190 Days of (de)Segregation: How Far Have We Come?" with Angelo Ancheta, Mitchell Chang, Vanessa Siddle Walker, and Charles Willie.

Civil Rights Movement Series

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson

Thu, Nov 20, 2003

In "Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson", author Gore Vidal takes readers to a time when America's founding fathers fought and worked to create a new country. Among Vidal's revelations: Benjamin Franklin believed the Constitution was flawed and predicted it eventually would fail; that the Revolution was kept alive only by the force of Washington's personality and "the cleverness of our diplomats" (including Franklin, Jefferson and Adams) in convincing France to come to America's aid.

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
College Sports and Educational Values

Mon, Dec 1, 2003

William Bowen and Sarah Levin disentangle the admissions and academic experiences of recruited athletes, walk-on athletes, and other students, as described in their book, *Reclaiming the Game*. Over the last four decades, the athletic-academic divide on elite campuses has widened substantially. They examine the forces that have been driving this process and presents concrete proposals for reform. Thanks to an expansion of the College and Beyond database that resulted in the highly influential studies *The Shape of the River* and *The Game of Life*, the authors are able to analyze in great detail the backgrounds, academic qualifications, and college outcomes of athletes and their classmates at 33 academically selective colleges and universities that do not offer athletic scholarships. They show that recruited athletes at these schools are as much as four times more likely to gain admission than are other applicants with similar academic credentials. The data also demonstrate that the typical recruit is substantially more likely to end up in the bottom third of the college class than is either the typical walk-on or the student who does not play college sports. Even more troubling is the dramatic evidence that recruited athletes "under-perform." In other words, they do even less well academically than predicted by their test scores and high school grades.

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
Technology as a Force for Education Reform

Thu, Oct 2, 2003

Milton Chen, executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, and 2003 HGSE Visiting Technology Fellow, discusses technology as a force for systemic change and its implications for K-12 teaching and learning including professional development and classroom modeling.

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
Essential Conversation: Between Parents and Teachers

Tue, Oct 28, 2003

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education, MacArthur fellow, and author of eight books including *Balm in Gilead, The Good High School,* and *I've Known Rivers,* discusses her newest book, *Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn From Each Other.*

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning

Wed, Apr 7, 2004

Abigail Thernstrom, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom, discuss their new book about the racial gap in academics.

Forum Network

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Harvard Graduate School of Education
(Not) Talking About Race Talk

Wed, May 5, 2004

Mica Pollock discusses race talk dilemmas with local educators, as presented in her new book, Colormute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School.

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Harvard Graduate School of Education