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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

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  • Daniel C. Dennett, the author of *Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Freedom Evolves (Viking Penguin, 2003) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Simon &Schuster, 1995)*, is a university professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He was born in Boston in 1942 and received his BA in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed the D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. He taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, and the cole Normale Suprieure in Paris. His first book, *Content and Consciousness*, appeared in 1969, followed by *Brainstorms (1978), Elbow Room (1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), Kinds of Minds (1996), and Brainchildren: A Collection of Essays 1984-1996 (MIT Press and Penguin, 1998). Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness*, was published in 2005 by MIT Press. He co-edited *The Mind's I* with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981. He is the author of over three hundred scholarly articles on various aspects on the mind, published in journals ranging from Artificial Intelligence and Behavioral and Brain Sciences to Poetics Today and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He gave the John Locke Lectures at Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (in 1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston.
  • Hugh Herr directs the Biomechatronics group at The MIT Media Lab. His research program seeks to advance technologies that promise to accelerate the merging of body and machine, including device architectures that resemble the body's musculoskeletal design, actuator technologies that behave like muscle, and control methodologies that exploit principles of biological movement. His methods encompass a diverse set of scientific and technological disciplines, from the science of biomechanics and biological movement control to the design of biomedical devices for the treatment of human physical disability. Professor Herr's work impacts a number of academic communities. He is associate editor for the *Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation*. He has been invited to participate in joint funding proposals from other universities and corporations, and has served on research review panels including the National Institute of Health, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. His work has been featured by various national and international media, including *Scientific American Frontiers*, *Technology Review*, *National Geographic*, and the *History Channel*.
  • Carol Thompson was appointed the High's first Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art in September 2001. Since her arrival at the High, she has curated Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art (2007), African from the Glassell Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2004), and For this World and Beyond: African Art from the Fred and Rita Richman Collection (2002). Thompson has taught at New York University, Vassar College, City College in Harlem, Fashion Institute of Technology and other institutions. Thompson's in-progress dissertation at New York University studies African art as p across diverse contexts both within Africa and beyond. She received her M.A. in art history with a specialization in African Art from the University of Iowa (1988) and her B.A. in art history from Hamline University in Minnesota (1980). She is the author of *African Art Portfolio: Masterpieces from the 11th to the 20th Century*(1993) and *For this World and Beyond: African Art from the Fred and Rita Richman Collection* (2002). Thompson is a Research Fellow at the Center for Public Scholarship, Emory College
  • Kai Ryssdal took the reins as host of Marketplace in August 2005. He previously hosted the *Marketplace Morning Report* for more than four years. Before joining *Marketplace*, Kai was a reporter and substitute host for* The California Report*, a news and information program distributed to public radio stations throughout California by KQED-FM in San Francisco. His radio work has won first place awards from the Radio and Television News Directors Association and the national Public Radio News Directors Association. After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Kai spent eight years in the United States Navy, first flying from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, and then as a Pentagon staff officer. Before his career in public radio, Kai was a member of the United States Foreign Service and served in Ottawa, Canada, and Beijing, China.
  • Jonathan Spector is a Boston-based pediatrician, and member of the Section on International Child Health, who has actively translated his global child health interests into clinical practice with Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders. Dr. Spector first traveled to the field with Doctors Without Borders in the fall of 2002, immediately following completion of his residency. Doctors Without Borders assumed a lead role in the major international relief effort that rapidly ensued. Dr. Spector worked in Central Angola, in the town of Bailundo, at a large nutritional rehabilitation center treating approximately 500 children at any given time. This Therapeutic Feeding Center (TFC) approach provides severely malnourished children with their full nutritional requirements and medical support. The TFC offers two levels of care: an intensive 24-hour treatment area for initial management of the complications of malnutrition, and a day unit where nutritional treatment continues and medical follow-up is administered. In his four months on mission, Dr. Spector also cared for children suffering from a variety of tropical illnesses including malaria, measles, tuberculosis, scurvy, and filariasis. Dr. Spector then returned to the field with Doctors Without Borders last summer, this time to West Darfur, Sudan. The political context was different, but health effects on the pediatric population were strikingly similar. Extreme living conditions and chronic food insecurity had led to high rates of malnutrition, diarrhea, and respiratory infections. Dr. Spector again worked in a TFC and pediatric ward; daily census averaged 100 children with thirty discharges and new admissions each week. As is the case with many relief projects abroad, Dr. Spector was joined by only a few internationals and worked primarily with a large number of local staff consisting of physicians, nurses, nutritionists, cooks, drivers, cleaners, and watchmen. The meaningful personal relationships that he developed with patients, fellow staff, and the community-at-large conferred an additional sense of import to the work he was doing.
  • James Hanken studies the evolution of morphology, developmental biology, and systematics. Most work by his group focuses on amphibians but otherwise addresses a wide range of topics, taxa, and methodologies. His current subjects include the evolution of craniofacial patterning in vertebrates; the developmental basis of life-history evolution; systematics, taxonomy and evolution of African frogs and neotropical and Asian salamanders; and amphibian declines and conservation. His active field programs are maintained in Mexico, Argentina, China, Africa, and Sri Lanka, and his laboratory serves as a community research facility for NSF's AmphibiaTree project.
  • Joe Conason is national correspondent for *The New York Observer*, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the Director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. His books *Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth*, and *The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, with Gene Lyons*, were both national bestsellers. His latest book, *It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush*, was released in February 2007. His writing and reporting have appeared in many publications, including *Harpers*, *The Guardian*, *The Nation*, and *The New Republic*. He also appears frequently on television and radio (notably as a regular Friday guest on "Air America's The Al Franken Show"). He lives with his wife in New York City.
  • Charles Euchner is the author or editor of eight books on politics and sports, including *Playing the Field: Why Sports Teams Move and Cities Fight to Keep Them* (1993), *Extraordinary Politics: How Protest and Dissent Are Changing American Democracy* (1996), *Urban Policy Reconsidered: Dialogues About the Problems and Prospects of American Cities* (coauthored with Stephen McGovern, 2003), *The Last Nine Innings* (2006), and *Little League, Big Dreams* (2006). He is now working on a book about the civil right movement and a guide to writing nonfiction narrative and analysis. He also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines. He was the founding executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard University and once directed the comprehensive planning process for the city of Boston.
  • Alan has been the most visible Worcester presence, representing an ownership group which has worked tirelessly to bring quality professional baseball back to Worcester and Central Massachusetts. Prior to assuming these responsibilities, Alan was a pioneer in the New England legal recruitment field, and a practicing attorney. His background includes a pre-law career in public relations in New York City and Washington, DC. For the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, he traveled nationally with Jesse Owens, arranging Canadian/American media events with National Hockey League and North American Soccer League teams. Alan holds degrees from Tufts University, Boston College Law School and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. For many years, Alan has been an active coach and participant in youth sports activities, particularly Weston (Mass.) Little League.
  • Nanda Chitre, Communications Director for Enough, has worked in the executive and legislative branches of the US government, in national public-policy and political campaigns, as a consultant to international campaigns and television and Hollywood programs, and as a visiting lecturer at Tufts University. She was deputy director for Rx for Child Survival, part of the Rx for Survival A Global Health Challenge project, which included a six-hour documentary, a multimedia initiative, and a social impact campaign, produced by WGBH Boston with funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She served as Assistant Spokesperson for the United States Department of State and as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Press Secretary in the White House until 2001. Chitre worked in both Clinton-Gore presidential campaigns and the Presidential Transition. Her entertainment writing includes the show The West Wing and consulting for films in development. She also worked at US Department of Justice in the Criminal Division's Office of International Affairs, and for the Judiciary Committee of the US Senate. Ms. Chitre is an attorney admitted to the bar in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
  • Rex Archer is a longstanding pioneer in the movement to make workplaces, hotels, bars and restaurants smoke free. He worked to pass significant smoke free legislation passed in Michigan, Maryland and now Kansas City. Leading the Kansas City Health Department, he has researched and adopted new cardiac resuscitation protocols which are saving the lives of people who have heart attacks. His goal is to get this research published, ultimately leading to nationwide adoption.