Recent Seminars

2010 Seminars and Moderators

 San Francisco Salon
November 19-20, 2010
San Francisco, CA

Sustainable Communities: Designing Places that Thrive
How can fresh ways of thinking about design, energy, transportation, and agriculture come together in sustainable communities? How can we create places where people can care about and learn from their environment to form viable communities? How do we define sustainable communities? What elements of our communities do we value most? The design, re-shaping & evolution of our communities will be correlated with changes in how we consume energy, move around, put food on the table, manage health and well being, encounter each other and thrive.   What roles do personal initiative, technology and cultural assumptions play in advancing sustainability and meeting needs of a growing population and changing planet?  Can we become more efficient and reduce our resource use quickly enough?   What changes will most enable us to move to more sustainable practices? In this seminar, we will examine our communities and discuss what is necessary to ensure that citizens of a community can thrive. 

Moderators: Michelle Lapinski, Director of Corporate Practices, The Nature Conservancy, and Founding Principal of SustainBiz, and Donlyn Lyndon, Eva Li Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Urban Design, UC Berkeley

Senate Staff Seminar
October 22-24, 2010
Wye River Conference Center, Queenstown, MD
The seminar is offered to Congressional staffers and a limited number of the public at the Institute's Wye River conference center in Queenstown, MD.

Are Demographics Destiny? Population Shifts and their Impact on Foreign Policy, National Identity, and Competition
The United States, and the entire world, are facing major demographic changes in the coming decades that will profoundly affect American citizens. This seminar will discuss three major trends: Aging in the U.S., international migration pressures, and global population trends affecting international security. Each trend raises major policy concerns - how to be fair to different generations while still financing health care and retirement for the aging? How to preserve America's way of life and identity in the face of a rapidly growing immigrant population? And how to maintain America's influence, military readiness and prosperity in the face of a global shift in economic growth to the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China), combined with rapildy growing populations in unstable states? This Socratic roundtable will introduce the data and estimates behind these trends, discuss possible policy responses, and consider the historical experience of periods of similar demographic change.

Moderators: Clive Crook, senior editor, The Atlantic, columnist, National Journal, and commentator, the Financial Times, and Jack A. Goldstone, Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr. Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University School of Public Policy

Socrates Summer Seminars
July 2-5, 2010
Aspen, CO

Click here to go to 2010 Socrates Benefit Dinner page

Photos

Weekend Schedule

China and America: The Case for Partnership and Competition
The relationship between the United States of America and the people’s Republic of China has been of growing importance, both strategically and economically, since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s famous “opening” to China in 1972. In the past decade, China plus America – “Chimerica”, as Niall Ferguson named it for short – was the engine of growth for the world economy as whole. Accounting for 12 per cent of the world’s land surface, a quarter of its population and a third of its gross domestic product, Chimerica accounted for more than two fifths of all global growth between 1998 and 2007. It seemed like a marriage made in heaven: The Chinese saved, Americans consumed. The Chinese exported, Americans imported. The Chinese invested, Americans shopped. Yet this unusual symbiotic relationship is anything but a stable one. Arguably, the channeling of Chinese savings into the U.S. as a result of Beijing’s policy of currency intervention was one of the key drivers of the U.S. real estate bubble that finally burst in 2007, with such devastating consequences not just for America but for the world economy as whole. And in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, there are signs that the Chimerican marriage is headed for the rocks. Is the end nigh for Chimerica? Are we approaching a time of escalating Sino-American antagonism? Or will the world’s most important relationship remain cordial?
Moderator: Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School

Soft Power: US Leadership in a Hardball World
Conventional wisdom says that the global balance of power is shifting. US power is declining and Asia is rising. Europe, Japan and Russia are on the way down. How would we know? What do we mean by “Power”?  We will explore various dimensions of power – military, economic, soft, cyber – and how they are changing under the impact of the information revolution and globalization. Then we will look at how various countries fare on these different dimensions. Finally, we will discuss a grand strategy for American power and how the Obama Administration measures up against it.
Moderator: Joseph Nye, University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

The Great Conversation in a Global Society 
Three modules comprise this seminar: Human Nature, the Burden of Power and Leadership Strategies. In the tradition of the Aspen Institute's Great Conversation, we will move from views of humanity held by the Ancient Greeks to modern work in genetics: from the Rwandan Genocide to Virginia Woolf on women and war; from the Italian Renaissance to the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. The readings and discussion aim to elicit participant views on 1) what it means to be human; 2) how human nature and historical circumstance shape our behavior in a global society; and 3) the forms leadership may take.
Moderator: Leigh Hafrey, Senior Lecturer, Communication and Ethics, MIT Sloan School of Management

Between Islam and Politics
Islam has at least two faces: A religious face and a political one. The first is a source of spirituality for over a billion and a half people worldwide. The latter is Islam as an ideology as it relates to power and governance; the relationship between the individual and the collective; the Islamic polity; family life and particularly the position of women; the position of minorities; the concept of war (domestic and foreign affairs); the economy and culture.

Students of Islam treat it too often as a religion, isolated from other political theories. But, to understand the importance of Islam as a political force, it should be compared with other political systems such as a democracy. Is Islam compatible with Western ideas about individual freedom and democracy? Is it possible simultaneously to be a good Muslim and a good American? Is Islam as a political ideology a threat to democracy, or might democracy actually promote Islam? And what are the best remedies we can offer to check the spread of Islam as a political theory?
Moderator: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

The Impact of Technology on Democracy around the World
Changes in technology are posing stark challenges to our constitutional values in democracies around the world. From free speech to privacy, from liberty and personal autonomy to the right against self-incrimination, basic constitutional principles are under stress from technological advances unimaginable even a few decades ago, let alone in the founding era. In the seminar, we will identify the range of options that judges, technologists, and legislators have as they struggle to respond to technological shifts and to offer an analytical blueprint for translating democratic values into the twenty-first century.
Moderator: Jeff Rosen, Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School and legal affairs editor, The New Republic

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Teen Socrates Seminar
July 2-5, 2010
Aspen, Colorado 

Teen Socrates Schedule

What Next? The Teenager's Guide to Repairing the Economy
Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers almost broke the global economy during the financial crisis of 2008. And the truth is that nobody really knows exactly how to put it back together again. How will today's teenagers be affected by the recession and the financial crisis? Our shared economic future rests in no small part on the lessons we all learn about the Great Recession and the global financial crisis of the past couple of years. Teenagers will have to live, learn and, if possible, thrive in a global economy that is being shaped. There are many important questions to be asked about today's decisions that will have an impact on their future. In this seminar we will discuss the proper role of government in a market economy, American competitiveness with newly rising economic powers, and if it will be possible for today's teens to find ways to be personally and economically fulfilled.
Moderated by: Kai Ryssdal, public radio host, Marketplace from American Public Media

Socrates Salon DC
May 7 - 8, 2010
Washington, DC

Can the U.S. Survive the U.S. Health Care System?
Although the U.S. spends at least 50% more per capita on health care than any other nation, we don’t have the health status to show for it. The U.S. ranks 45^th in the world in life expectancy and 29^th in infant mortality. Behind those average numbers, in fact, we have a three-decade difference in life expectancy, with some in the population experiencing the longest life expectancy in the world, and others who have the life expectancy of people in developing nations. More than 90 million Americans suffer from chronic illness; nearly two thirds of the adult population is overweight or obese. And unless changes flowing from the recently enacted health reform legislation succeed in slowing the rate of growth in health spending, over the next 75 years, an estimated 119 percent of the growth in per capita gross domestic product could end up being used for health care. Can we possibly survive these two trends of worsening health for large segments of the population, along with a skyrocketing rate of increase in costs? We will address these questions in this seminar with a focus on how we are going to advance health care and the health of our population.
Moderated by: Susan Dentzer, Editor-in-Chief, Health Affairs

Socrates Winter Seminars
February 12 -15, 2010
Aspen, Colorado 

Photos 

Agenda

Energy Controversies: How can the United States manage its interests and obligations to help solve the global energy problem and address the climate change challenge?
Must nuclear be part of the mix? Can nuclear, including the waste cycle, be made safe? Is coal clean now, or can it be made clean? When and at what cost?  Can efficiency and new generating capability keep up with increasing demand from China and India?  What are the  risk tradeoffs with the possibility of catastrophic climate change? How can we accelerate the transition to a more stable energy future?  
Moderator: Sue Sheridan, adjunct professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and former Chief Counsel to the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality

The Global Financial Crisis and the Developing World: How has the global economic crisis affected the world's emerging economies?
Can emerging markets prosper when developed markets suffer? How has the meltdown in the global markets altered the role between governance and the market in poor economies? How much more aid is needed to protect emerging economies in troubling times, where will it come from, and who should be monitoring its use? Which emerging countries will likely reemerge as economic leaders?
Moderator: Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School

Changing Models of Culture and Communication in the Web 3.0 World
This seminar explores how Web 3.0 phenomena such as Facebook, Linked-in, and Twitter are changing the expectations and models for communication and collaboration. New media models from YouTube, iTunes, and Pandora are changing our models of the video and music arts. How have blogs, newsfeeds, and tag clouds changed our notions of how we get our news and form our opinions about the world? 
Moderator: Elizabeth Stark, Visiting Fellow, Yale Information Society Project

2009 Seminars and Moderators

Socrates Salon New York
21st Century Energy - Can it be Clean, Secure, and Affordable, Or Must We Choose?
November 13 - 14, 2009
New York, New York

The way we produce and use energy -- principally but not exclusively for the generation of electricity and for transportation -- is at the nexus of three major sets of issues that confront us and future generations.  First, can we produce energy cleanly?  And in these days that includes not only traditional ecological concerns about air quality and the like but also the question of CO2 emissions and climate change.  Second, can we produce it securely?  Our security is affected not only by the foreign sources of oil and the possibility of oil cut-offs or terrorist attacks on the oil infrastructure but also by the fragile nature of our electricity grid -- vulnerable both to tree branches touching power lines and to intentional cyber- or physical attack.  And third, energy's affordability affects not only our own prosperity but particularly the prospects for economic development in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America -- can African villagers count on expensive imported oil and huge power projects to supply them with the energy they need? In the midst of these uncertainties governments seem frozen into repeating what they have done in the past, and three giant industries -- oil, electricity, and automotive -- generally plod forward implementing their 19th-century business plans. Yet the circumstances in which we find ourselves would not seem to warrant relaxed confidence that little needs to change.

In this seminar we will address the key challenges and opportunities of producing reliable, cost-effective, clean and secure energy. How will climate change affect energy resources? What are the risks imposed by war and terrorism? What are our national and global energy alternatives, and do those interests conflict?

Moderator: R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence 

Socrates Salon Los Angeles
Lessons Not Learned: Wall Street and the Crisis Next Time
October 23 - 24, 2009
Los Angeles, California

Predictions about when the economy will actually start to recover keep slipping -- first it was the first half of this year, then it was the second half. Then it was early 2010, and now it's mid-2010. Everyone agrees we'll get there eventually, but it'll take a while. What few people are willing to guess at is whether we'll be able to prevent another financial crisis like this from happening again? So far the Obama Administration and Congress have promised sweeping overhaul of the regulations governing Wall Street, the financial industry, and consumer financial services. For a time, even the biggest Wall Street bankers seemed chastened. But with the recent revival in bank fortunes -- profits up 35 percent or more, repayment of TARP money and the renewed promise of six figure bonuses -- it seems only fair to ask whether what we have here is a crisis wasted? Has the federal government missed an opportunity to re-align the interest of the financial industry with the rest of the economy?

Moderator: Kai Ryssdal, Host of Marketplace

YPO-Socrates Society Seminars
October 12 - 15, 2009
Aspen, Colorado

The Impact of Technology on Democracy around the World
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, breathtaking changes in technology are posing stark challenges to our constitutional values in democracies around the world. From free speech to privacy, from liberty and personal autonomy to the right against self-incrimination, basic constitutional principles are under stress from technological advances unimaginable even a few decades ago, let alone in the founding era. The seminar on Technology and the Constitution will ask questions such as the following:

• Is privacy obsolete in an age of ubiquitous cameras and unlimited data storage and processing, or can the law somehow restrict surveillance without crushing innovation and hobbling government?
• How vigorously should society respect the autonomy of individuals to manipulate their genes and design their own babies?
• Does the Constitution restrict the government’s ability to look within our brains, and should it?
• Should it place restrictions on governmental power to investigate people’s DNA?
• How can we protect free speech in a world in which most speech is online and suddenly subject to regulation by governments and companies, worldwide?
• Is online privacy hopeless or is some protection possible?
• Is the Internet solely responsible for an explosion of democratic participation, or is it also undermining checks on democracy that are
 necessary for individual rights to flourish?

There is no question that democracies around the world will change in response to developing technology, as they have always changed in the past. But it is far from clear how that change will take place, what form it will take, and how effective it will be. In the seminar, we will identify the range of options that judges, technologists, and legislators have as they struggle to respond to technological shifts and to offer an analytical blueprint for translating democratic values into the twenty-first century.
Moderator: Jeff Rosen, professor of law, The George Washington University Law School

21st Century Energy: Can it be Clean, Secure, and Affordable, or Must we Choose?
The way we produce and use energy -- principally but not exclusively for the generation of electricity and for transportation -- is at the nexus of three major sets of issues that confront us and future generations.  First, can we produce energy cleanly?  And in these days that includes not only traditional ecological concerns about air quality and the like but also the question of CO2 emissions and climate change.  Second, can we produce it securely?  Our security is affected not only by the foreign sources of oil and the possibility of oil cut-offs or terrorist attacks on the oil infrastructure but also by the fragile nature of our electricity grid -- vulnerable both to tree branches touching power lines and to intentional cyber- or physical attack.  And third, energy's affordability affects not only our own prosperity but particularly the prospects for economic development in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America -- can African villagers count on expensive imported oil and huge power projects to supply them with the energy they need? In the midst of these uncertainties governments seem frozen into repeating what they have done in the past, and three giant industries -- oil, electricity, and automotive -- generally plod forward implementing their 19th-century business plans. Yet the circumstances in which we find ourselves would not seem to warrant relaxed confidence that little needs to change.

In this seminar we will address the key challenges and opportunities of producing reliable, cost-effective, clean and secure energy. How will climate change affect energy resources? What are the risks imposed by war and terrorism? What are our national and global energy alternatives, and do those interests conflict?

Moderator: R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence 

Senate Socrates Seminar
Afghanistan and Pakistan: Short-Term Crises vs. Long-Term problems
September 25 - 27, 2009
Aspen Wye River Conference Center, Queenstown, Maryland

The seminar will explore the background to America’s present military engagement in Afghanistan and our relationship over the last decade to  nuclear-armed but unstable Pakistan.   It will examine mistaken priorities and misplaced resources, and also how The U.S. failed to take into account the costs, complexity, and duration of military and political commitments to both states, as well as America’s lack of understanding of deeper social, cultural, and ideological trends in both states. The loss of faith and confidence of the Afghan people in their government and international community will be considered, as will the extent of Pakistan’s support for the Taliban insurgency and its response to its own radical Islamist insurgency. Looking ahead, the participants will evaluate the options the US faces in the next year in Afghanistan, and beyond that in Pakistan, exploring the military, economic, and political  strategies it will take to stabilize both states, or at least to avoid catastrophe (defined as total state collapse, further nuclear proliferation, and/or the accelerated rise of Islamic extremism and terrorism) . The seminar will explore the costs and risks of an early departure of US forces from Afghanistan and the proposed long-term economic and military assistance programs to Pakistan.

Moderators: Stephen Cohen, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution and Marvin Weinbaum, Scholar-In-Residence, Middle East Institute

For more information about Socrates, please contact:
Melissa Ingber 
Director, Socrates Society