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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

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Boston College

Boston College is a coeducational university with undergraduate and graduate students hailing from every state and more than 95 countries. Founded in 1863, it is one of the oldest Jesuit, Catholic universities in the United States.

Since its founding in 1957, the Lowell Humanities Series has brought distinguished writers, artists, performers, and scholars to Boston College. Follow the series on Twitter at @BCLowellHS .

http://www.bc.edu

  • Charles Sennott is the Founder and Executive Director of The GroundTruth Project. He is an award-winning foreign correspondent, author, and editor with 30 years of experience in journalism. Sennott has reported on the front lines of wars and insurgencies in at least 15 countries, including the 2011 revolution in Cairo and the Arab Spring. Drawing from his years of experience reporting and working to train the next generation of journalist, Sennott discusses the crisis in the journalism field, the gap in local reporting, and the importance of covering truth from the ground of local communities. Learn more about: [The GroundTruth Project](http://thegroundtruthproject.org/ "The GroundTruth Project") Image: Presentation Slide
    Partner:
    Boston College
  • Kenneth Pomeranz is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His current projects include a history of Chinese political economy from the seventeenth century to the present. In this talk Pomeranz examines how and why contemporary China's huge land mass and population have wound up forming a single political unit.
    Partner:
    Boston College
  • Kurt Andersen takes the long view on fake news in his new book "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History", arguing that huckstering has always been part of America's DNA.
    Partner:
    Boston College
  • Author and journalist **Amitava Kumar** probes questions raised by the impact of the war on terror on immigrants going about their daily lives. In his book, *A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, * Kumar looks at the role entrapment has played both on the part of recruitment for terrorist organizations and on the part of the U.S. military, and he examines how the distance can be measured between dominant images of terrorists and the 'displaced provincials' who become involved on the front lines of terrorist organizations. _Part of the Institute for the Liberal Arts' 2010-2012 Race and Culture After 9/11 Lecture Series and Symposium. _ Kumar mentions the artist **Hasan Elahi** in his talk. You can learn more about the artist and how he responded to being placed on the FBI's watch list in [his Ted talk.](https://www.ted.com/talks/hasan_elahi?language=en "")
    Partner:
    Boston College
  • Journalist Patsy McGarry, of *The Irish Times* explores the politics, perceptions, and uniquely Irish aspects of the clergy sexual abuse scandal in Ireland. McGarry has reported extensively on the Catholic Church's response to various child sexual abuse scandals as documented by the Ferns, Ryan, and Murphy reports.
    Partner:
    Boston College
  • The nature of human language is still not completely understood. How do infants learn language? How does it fit in with other cognitive processes? Noam Chomsky, noted linguist, philosopher, and social critic explores the complexities of language and its study.
    Partner:
    Boston College
  • Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College, and Judith Wilt, the Newton College Alumnae Professor Emerita, discuss the role of literature in sustaining religious belief. It is not uncommon for modern American Christians to say that writers such as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, T. S. Eliot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and many others, have served as spiritual anchors, fulfilling a need not always met by pastors and theologians. Is this a recent development, and how did this state of affairs arise? What does its existence suggest about the condition of American religious belief and the role of literature in sustaining it? And, is this good or bad news for Christianity?
    Partner:
    Boston College
  • Andrew Sofer, associate professor of English at Boston College, reads from *Wave*, his recently published book of poems. Introduced by Maxim D. Shrayer, Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies.
    Partner:
    Boston College
  • Croatian-born author Dubravka Ugresic talks about her life during Communist rule in Eastern Europe, 20 years after its collapse. She discusses how we become "archivists of our own lives" and whether the treatment of the past is different in post-Communist countries.
    Partner:
    Boston College
  • "John Palfrey, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, delivers the keynote address at the Open Access Symposium. Open Access literature is digital, online, free to access, and free of most copyright restrictions. Palfrey argues that Open Access allows universities to share their research and make it more wildly available to the general public -- information that would otherwise only be available through paid scholarly journals."
    Partner:
    Boston College