Each year, the Institute offers a wide range of events that are open to the public, from concerts and concert talks to scholarly lectures.  Many of these have been videotaped and are accessible for viewing on the website.  Below is a list of recent public events held at the Institute, and links to video, where available. 

Academic Year 2008-09

Friday, November 14 and Saturday, November 15, 2008

Edward T. Cone Concert Series: Tradition Redefined
Cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Geoffrey Burleson
8 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall
Matt Haimovitz is a musical pioneer who has inspired classical music lovers and won over countless new listeners to the genre by bringing  his artistry to concert halls and clubs, outdoor festivals and intimate coffee houses.  Geoffrey Burleson has performed to wide acclaim throughout Europe and North America.  Equally active as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, and jazz performer, he is the winner of the Silver Medal in the International Piano Recording Competition.
For more information on the concert series, visit www.ias.edu/air.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Faculty Lecture: Compromises and Rotten Compromises
Avishai Margalit, George F. Kennan Professor, School of Historical Studies
4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall
Albert Einstein is credited with the warning: "Beware of rotten compromises." In this talk, Avishai Margalit, George F. Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies, attempts to explain and support this principle. Professor Margalit discusses peace, and more specifically, the "rotten compromises" that he argues we are not allowed to make for its sake. Professor Margalit expands on two historical examples: the Munich Agreement and the agreement on slavery that enabled the American Constitution.
For additional information, please see the news release.

Monday, October 27, 2008
Public Policy Lecture: "Human Rights Challenges in the Next Decade"
Mary Robinson, Chair, Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative; former President of Ireland; former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall
Robinson's talk is part of the Institute's series, Lectures on Public Policy, which features speakers who elucidate and weigh in on issues relevant to contemporary politics and social conditions and address scientific matters of broad import.  As we mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Robinson takes stock of current challenges and setbacks while identifying the key issues over the next decade.
For additional information, please see the news release.

Friday, October 24, 2008
Faculty Lecture: "The 'P vs. NP' Problem: Efficient Computation, Internet Security, and the Limits of Human Knowledge"
Avi Wigderson, Herbert H. Maass Professor, School of Mathematics
6:00 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall
The "P vs. NP" problem is a central outstanding problem of computer science and mathematics.  In this talk, Professor Wigderson will attempt to describe its technical, scientific, and philosophical content, its status, and the implications of its two possible resolutions.
For additional information, please see the news release.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Faculty Lecture: "The Fifth Element: Astronomical Evidence for Black Holes, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy"
Scott Tremaine, Richard Black Professor, School of Natural Sciences
4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall
One of the remarkable successes of twentieth century astronomy was the demonstration that the laws of physics derived in the laboratory can successfully describe a wide range of astronomical objects and phenomena. One of the great hopes of twenty-first century physics is that astronomy can return the favor, by allowing us to explore physics that cannot be studied in the laboratory. As examples, Professor Tremaine described three exotic forms of matter that (so far) are known to exist only from astronomical observations: black holes, dark matter, and dark energy.
For additional information, please see the news release.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Art as Knowledge: Sculpture and Urbanism in Grand Ducal Florence
Michael Cole, Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania
5:00 p.m. in McCormick Hall at Princeton University
The Institute has partnered with Princeton University on an innovative lecture series for the 2008-09 academic year entitled Art as Knowledge, organized by Yve-Alain Bois, Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute, and Christopher Heuer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology at the university.  For additional information, please see the news release.

Saturday, October 11, 2008
Edward T. Cone Concert Series: Tradition Redefined
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra performed a concert at 6:30 p.m. that was repeated at 8:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall. The Grammy Award-winning group is internationally renowned for its fine artistry and distinctive approach to music-making, with a performing and recording legacy spanning 35 years. They performed the premiere of Institute Artistic Consultant Paul Moravec's Brandenburg Gate and Haydn's Symphony No. 59, the Fire Symphony. 

Academic Year 2007-08

Monday, June 2 - Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Special Conference:  Justice, Culture and Tradition

The work of Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Science, was recognized at a conference that explored his contributions to the ethical and political philosophy of the twentieth century.  A range of speakers and talks offered penetrating discussion into Walzer's broad philosophical interests and how these ideas intersect and interrelate. Walzer has written extensively on a variety of topics in political theory and moral philosophy. His most acclaimed work to date, Just and Unjust Wars (1977), is the classic contemporary text on the morality of war.

The conference was organized by Professor Yitzhak Benbaji of Bar-Ilan University and Shalom Hartman Institute. The conference was made possible by the generous support of the following: Fritz Thyssen Stiftung; Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs; Institute for Advanced Study; Shalom Hartman Institute; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; Bar-Ilan University, Faculty of Law; and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Video of the conference are available here.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Public Lecture: "The Islamic World and the Radical Enlightenment: Toleration, Freethinking and Personal Liberty"
Jonathan Israel, Professor, School of Historical Studies 

In the 1660s and onward, the Radical Enlightenment pushed for full freedom of thought, religious freedom, and personal liberty together with democracy and the principle of equality.  In this lecture, Jonathan Israel addressed how this part of the Western Enlightenment used medieval Islamic freethinkers and their ideas, and interpreted the special features of Islamic society and politics to illustrate and broaden its own arguments for transforming the Western World.  In recent years, this intellectual movement has been much more intensively studied and better understood, and this lecture -- the outgrowth of a highly innovative colloquium recently held at the Institute, Islamic Freethinking and Western Radicalism -- highlighted recent research into what might be broadly termed the Democratic Enlightenment. 

This lecture was presented with support provided by the Dr. S.T. Lee Fund for Historical Studies. 

Video of the lecture is available here.

Friday, May 2, 2008
Faculty Lecture: "Mechanism Design: How to Implement Social Goals"
Eric Maskin, Albert O. Hirschman Professor, School of Social Science

Eric Maskin shared the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work in Mechanism Design Theory.  This is the study of how, given an economic or social goal, we can design a procedure or institution (that is, a mechanism) for achieving that goal.  In this lecture, he gave an introduction to mechanism design using several simple examples.  The lecture was nontechnical and suitable for a general audience. 

Video of the lecture is available here.

Friday, April 4, 2008
Special Concert: Graham Walker, Cello and Geoffrey Burleson, Piano

British Cellist Graham Walker has a flourishing career as a solo and chamber musician, playing throughout Europe and the United States.  This performance was part of his second American tour. Acclaimed pianist Geoffrey Burleson is equally active as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, and jazz performer. He is the recipient of the Silver Medal in the International Piano Recording Competition.

Wednesday, April 12, 2008
2008 Leon Levy Foundation Member Lecture: "The Lot of the Unemployed"
Alan B. Krueger, Leon Levy Foundation Member, School of Social Science 

The unemployment rate is rising and job growth turned negative in January 2008.  Some economists view unemployment as a minor concern while others argue it is a serious malady.  This lecture presented new evidence on the lot of the unemployed, in the U.S. and other countries, including the psychological well-being of the unemployed and how the unemployed spend their time, with a particular focus on time spent searching for a new job. The effect of unemployment benefits on job search activity was considered from both a theoretical and empirical perspective.

Video of the lecture is available here.

 

Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Faculty Lecture: "Solutions to Equations in Integers"
Peter Sarnak, Professor, School of Mathematics

Through the works of Fermat, Gauss, and Lagrange, we understand which positive integers can be represented as sums of two, three, or four squares. Hilbert's 11th problem, from 1900, extends this question to more general quadratic equations. Its complete solution relies on recent advances in number theory and related fields over the years. Professor Sarnak explained some of these developments, as well as certain far-reaching conjectures that the problem has inspired.

Video of the lecture is available here.

 

Friday, March 7, 2008
Tradition Redefined Concert Talk
"The High Male Voice: Castrato, Countertenor, and Male Alto"
Russell Oberlin, singer, educator, and pioneer of the early music revival in America

Video of the talk is available here.

 

Friday, March 7 and Saturday, March 8, 2008
Tradition Redefined
Edward T. Cone Concert Series
Quartet New Generation recorder collective, performing the music of Bach, Bruckner, Dowland, Tompkins, Moravec, and others.

For additional information, please see the news release. 

 

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Faculty Lecture: "What to Do with Sound-Bites: On Politics and Propaganda in the 21st Century"
Danielle Allen, UPS Foundation Professor, School of Social Science

The political season is upon us and so, if they were not before, our newspapers, radios, computer screens and televisions are now overfull with sound-bites; and countless people are complaining about the degradation of political conversation. But is a sound-bite really such a bad thing? In the Western context, Homer was the first purveyor of them and Aristotle offered the first theory of them, but he called them maxims. This lecture explored why sound-bites are a necessary and valuable part of political conversation, considered the ways in which they are also dangerous, and analyzed the particular challenges to political discourse presented by the new media of the 21st century. At the end of the day, it is listeners, not speakers, who have the most work to do to deal responsibly with sound-bites.

Video of the lecture is available here.

 

Friday, February 8, 2008
Tradition Redefined Concert Talk
"Confessions of a Critic"
Terry Teachout, music and drama critic, Commentary magazine and The Wall Street Journal
 
Video of the talk is available here.

 

Friday, February 8 and Saturday, February 9, 2008
Tradition Redefined 
Edward T. Cone Concert Series
Enso String Quartet, performing the music of Haydn, Moravec, Wolf and Ravel.

For additional information, please see the news release.

 

Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Faculty Lecture: "Tracking Influenza Virus Epidemics over the Past Century: Can We Predict Next Year's Epidemic?"
Arnold J. Levine, Professor, The Simons Center for Systems Biology, School of Natural Sciences

Influenza viruses are unusual because we can become infected by a similar virus almost every year during our lifetime and occasionally there are worldwide pandemics that can cause many fatalities. Why does our usually excellent immune system fail us? How does this come about?

Video of the lecture is available here.

 

Friday, November 30, 2007
Concert Talk: "A Composer's World Today"
Paul Moravec, Institute for Advanced Study Artist-in-Residence; University Professor, Adelphi University

Video of the talk is available here.

 

Friday, November 30 and Saturday, December 1, 2007
Tradition Redefined 
Edward T. Cone Concert Series
The Red Violin, Maria Bachmann with Simon Mulligan, performing the music of Debussy, Corigliano, Moravec, Enescu and Gershwin.

For additional information, please see the news release. 

 

Friday, November 9, 2007
Semi-staged Workshop and Discussion: Heart of Darkness
A new opera by composer Tarik O'Regan and librettist Tom Phillips , currently a Director's Visitor at the Institute.  Based on the novel by Jospeh Conrad. In association with American Opera Projects.

For additional information, please see the news release. 

 

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Faculty Lecture: "The History of Others: Foreign Peoples in Early Chinese Historiography"
Nicola Di Cosmo, Luce Foundation Professor in East Asian Studies, School of Historical Studies

This lecture provided an overview of the production and characteristics of alien history in early China, while acknowledging and attempting to gauge the cultural influence of these accounts among the alien people themselves, as "consumers" of histories they did not produce, but were used politically and in other ways. These reflections also served as a first step towards a comparative discussion, across the historiographic traditions of literate civilizations, about the fundamental issues of who wrote alien histories, why, and for whom.

Video of the lecture is available here.

Thursday, October 25, 2007
Public Lecture: "Space Tourist"
Charles Simonyi, Institute Trustee and President and CEO, Intentional Software Corporation

Space flight is still a very rare and exotic experience which has only recently been opened to "tourists," officially known as spaceflight participants. Dr. Simonyi was the fifth of these as the 450th person in space. Under a contract with Space Adventures and the Russian Space Agency, he rode a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft into orbit to visit the International Space Station (ISS), and returned on another Soyuz, landing in central Kazakhstan after a 14-day stay in space. Parts of the Soyuz system date back to the beginning of the Space Age, which started on October 4, 1957 with the launch of Sputnik I. Dr. Simonyi described the six month training process and the flight itself from the point of view of a knowledgeable civilian, with particular emphasis on the issues of system reliability, traditions, and health aspects.  

Video of the lecture is available here.

 

Friday, October 5, 2007
Concert Talk: "Jewish Music and the Electric Eclectic"
Mark Slobin , Professor of Music, Wesleyan University

Video of the talk is available here.

 

Friday, October 5 and Saturday, October 6, 2007
Tradition Redefined
Edward T. Cone Concert Series
Beyond Crossover, David Krakauer with Marija Stroke, Will Holshouser and Nicki Parrott

For additional information, please see the news release.