E. N. Thompson Forum Archives

A cooperative project of the Cooper Foundation and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues began in 1988 as part of a mission to promote better understanding of world events and issues by Nebraskans. For more information about the Forum, visit the E.N. Thompson Web site. Click anywhere on the lecturer's name or lecture title to view an archived video file of the lecture in Real Media (2001-2002 through 2005-2006), Windows Media (2006-2007 through 2008-2009), or Flash Video (current season). If you are unable to view a file with your current browser plug-ins, you may need to download or update your media player(s).
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Beginning with the 2005-2006 series, we will be podcasting the forums and making an audio-only version of the lecture available in MP3 format. To subscribe to podcasts of the series, visit either our NET Podcast page or our dedicated E. N. Thompson Forum Podcast page for subscription options. If you experience problems, please e-mail the Webmaster.

Europe's rapid colonization of Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came to be known as the "Scramble for Africa." Is China's increasing involvement in Africa the 21st century version? From Algeria to Zambia, from aluminum up the resource ladder to zinc, Behar, an award-winning investigative journalist, will discuss an economic model that is at once formidably efficient and tragically flawed and how China's new "scramble for Africa" is interlocked with America's economy.

Richard Behar has garnered 20 journalism awards over a career spanning 25 years. He was called "one of the most dogged of our watchdogs" by the late syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. Behar spent nine years with Fortune magazine, preceded by six years at Time and six years at Forbes. Prior to that, he was a stringer/researcher at the New York Times. Behar has also done assignments for BBC, CNN, FoxNews.com, Fast Company, and PBS.

Once a sleeping giant, China today is the world's fastest growing economy -- a dramatic turn-around that alarms many Westerners. Shirk's 2007 book, China: Fragile Superpower, explored the troubling paradox faced by China's leaders: the more developed and prosperous the country becomes, the more insecure and threatened they feel. Shirk, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for China, knows many of today's Chinese rulers personally and has studied them for three decades. In her Thompson Forum lecture, Shirk will give an update on the state of China's internal politics and the fears that motivate its leaders. Susan L. Shirk is Director of the University of California's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and Professor at UC-San Diego's Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. A leading authority on China, she has written numerous books and articles on this subject, including pieces that have appeared in Washington Post, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal.

Tibet, the Olympic Torch Run, the Olympics... the year 2008 offered unprecedented opportunities for Chinese and Anglophone Internet users to communicate. They were standing nose to virtual nose, but they were not, by any means, seeing eye-to-eye. Using the Internet as a starting point, Kaiser Kuo delves into a number of issues at the heart of disagreements on the people-to-people level.

Born in the U. S. to Chinese parents, Kuo lives in China and identifies equally as American and Chinese. Formerly director of digital strategy for the Beijing office of a global advertising agency, Kuo has worked as a technology and business writer for publications such as Time, TimeAsia, China Economic Review, Asia Inc., and the South China Morning Post, and currently serves as an advisor for Youku.com, a leading video sharing company in China. Kuo co-founded China's most famous rock band, Tang Dynasty, and continues to be active in the Chinese music scene.

The persistent issue of the United States' trade deficit with China is becoming more controversial as American manufacturing jobs are lost. Within that controversy lies the less-examined issue of the role of foreign investment in and the contribution of China's Asian neighbors to Chinese exports. Couple that with China's increasing focus on enhancing its soft power - often defined as the ability of a country to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion - and interesting questions arise. Is increasing Chinese soft power a zero sum game for the U.S.? Is the Chinese model of economic growth and political stability increasing attractive to the developing world? Doug Bereuter is uniquely qualified to provide insights into these questions and more.

As President and CEO of The Asia Foundation, Bereuter oversees an organization with 17 offices across Asia focused on improving civil society, women's empowerment, economic reform and development, international relations and more. Bereuter joined The Asia Foundation in 2004 following his resignation as Congressman representing Nebraska's First District, a position he held for 26 years. While in Congress, Bereuter co-founded the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and chaired a task force on the transition of Hong Kong and the House Delegation to the 40-country NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

The idea of "global citizenship" is old as Athens. But, to this day, it remains a political ideal, not a practical reality. The "world" does not issue you a passport or guarantee you rights. Yet, the values implied by global citizenship - broad awareness, intelligent engagement - have become more compelling than ever. In the final lecture of the Thompson Forum's 20th Anniversary season, Colin G. Campbell will discuss citizenship and its history, the development of American citizenship and the challenges (and potential) of citizenship in the era of globalization.

Colin G. Campbell is Chairman and President of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation which, in 2007, convened the World Forum on the Future of Democracy. Since then, the Foundation has used both technology and face-to-face contact to engage thousands of people worldwide in a conversation about the roles, responsibilities and rights of citizens in a democracy.

Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the United States range from 11 million to more than 20 million. Most recommendations for immigration reform center on the issue of a path to citizenship for these people. Opponents say this is amnesty, a strategy which proved ineffective in previous immigration legislation. Supporters say legalization is both a necessity and a moral obligation. In the second annual Wilson Dialogue, Dr. Michael Olivas, William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law at the University of Houston, and Dr. Vernon Briggs, Professor Emeritus in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, will discuss the issue of a path to citizenship.

Sarah Chayes has been living and working in Kandahar, Afghanistan since 2001, when she covered the fall of the Taliban for National Public Radio. In 2002 she left journalism to help rebuild the shattered country whose fate will help determine the shape of the 21st century, working first with Afghans for Civil Society, and currently with Arghand, a cooperative producing fine skin-care products from local fruits, nuts and botanicals. The Washington Post described her book, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, as "sharply observed, fearlessly told." Prior to her assignment in Afghanistan, Chayes reported for NPR in the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East. Along with members of her NPR team, she was recognized by the Foreign Press for her reporting in Kosovo.

During his time as president of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk released Nelson Mandela from prison, and initiated and presided over the dismantling of apartheid, the adoption of South Africa's first fully democratic constitution and the first-ever multiracial elections. In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize. One of the most influential statesmen of our time, de Klerk founded and is currently chairman of the Global Leadership Foundation, a consortium of former heads of state dedicated to promoting peace, democracy and development worldwide by providing confidential peer-to-peer advice to governments around the world.

Theodore C. 'Ted' Sorensen, former special counsel and adviser to President John F. Kennedy and a widely published author on the presidency and foreign affairs, practiced international law for over 36 years as a senior partner, and now of counsel, in the prominent U.S. law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. Former chairman of the firm's International Practice Committee, he has represented U.S. and multinational corporations in negotiations with governments all over the world and advised and assisted a large number of foreign governments and government leaders, ranging from the late President Anwar El Sadat of Egypt to former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. Sorensen is a Lincoln native and graduate of UNL and the University of Nebraska College of Law. His memoirs, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, were published in May, 2008.

Ronald Dworkin has a unique ability to tie together abstract philosophical ideas and arguments with concrete everyday concerns in law, morals and politics. Dubbed "Mr. Justice" by the Times of London, Dworkin's pioneering scholarly work has had worldwide impact. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University and a Professor of Law at University College London. In 2007, Dworkin was awarded the prestigious Holberg International Memorial Prize by the University of Bergen, Norway for outstanding scholarly work in the humanities. Dworkin has written influential articles on matters of public political controversy for many years. Among his many acclaimed books are: Taking Rights Seriously, Justice in Robes and Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for New Political Debate.

Commentator, editor, teacher, public servant, best-selling author and adviser to presidents, David Gergen has been an active participant in American national life. He served as director of communications for President Ronald Reagan and also held positions in the Nixon, Ford and Clinton administrations. Gergen currently serves as editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report and as a regular television commentator. He is also a professor of public service at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and director of its Center for Public Leadership. In 2000, he published the best-selling book Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton.

Bruce Babbitt was Governor of Arizona from 1978-87 and Attorney General of Arizona from 1975-78. As governor, he brought environmental and resource management to the forefront in the state. He negotiated and steered to passage the Arizona Groundwater Management Act of 1980, which remains the most comprehensive water regulatory system in the nation. He was also responsible for creation of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

Appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Clinton, Babbitt led the creation of the forest plan in the Pacific Northwest, restoration of the Florida Everglades, passage of the California Desert Protection Act, and legislation for the National Wildlife Refuge system. As a certified fire fighter, he brought his front line experience to creating a new federal wild land fire policy that emphasized the role of fire in maintenance and restoration of natural ecosystems. He pioneered the use of habitat conservation plans under the Endangered Species Act and worked with Clinton to create 22 new national monuments. He is the author of Cities in the Wilderness, recently issued by Island Press, in which he lays out a new vision of land use in America. He currently serves as a director of the World Wildlife Fund.

Known as "The Green Evangelist," Reverend Richard Cizik calls climate change a crisis of "biblical proportions." Cizik is vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). His responsibilities include setting NAE's policy direction on issues before Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court, as well as serving as a national spokesman on issues of concern to evangelicals. A conservative both politically and religiously, Cizik is on a mission to convert tens of millions of Americans to the cause of conservation, using a right-to-life framework and spreading the doctrine of "creation care" to evangelical Christians. Thanks to his leadership, NAE released a manifesto urging its members to adopt eco-friendly living habits and exhorting the government to lighten America's environmental footprint. The organization also circulated a charter calling on its member network and top-level Beltway allies to fight global warming. Educated in political science and public affairs, Cizik also received a Master of Divinity from Denver Seminary and an honorary Doctorate of Ministry in Christian Leadership from the Methodist Episcopal Church. Rev. Cizik was ordained by the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in 1992 and, in addition to his work for NAE, maintains an active preaching and speaking schedule.

Physicist Amory Lovins is the Co-founder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), an independent think-and-do-tank that creates abundance by design. RMI works with individuals and organizations of every imaginable kind to help them use energy and resources efficiently while being ever-better stewards of the environment.

Published in 29 books and hundreds of papers, Lovins' work has been recognized by a MacArthur Fellowship and a Time "Hero for the Planet" Award among many others. He advises governments and major firms worldwide on advanced energy and resource efficiency, and has led the technical redesign of $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors to achieve very large energy savings at typically lower capital cost. The Wall Street Journal named Mr. Lovins one of thirty-nine people worldwide "most likely to change the course of business in the '90s"; Newsweek has praised him as "one of the Western world's most influential energy thinkers"; and Car magazine ranked him the twenty-second most powerful person in the global automotive industry.

Douglas Durante has worked in the fields of energy, transportation, and the environment since 1977. He was the Director of Public Affairs for the National Alcohol Fuels Commission and served as a Special Assistant in the Office of Alcohol Fuels at the U.S. Department of Energy. Mr. Durante has served on numerous state and federal advisory committees, including Chair of the Fuels Subcommittee of the Federal Biomass Advisory Committee and on the Governors' Ethanol Coalition's Biomass Advisory Committee. He also served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Fuels Advisory Committee, and the Department of Energy's Business Roundtable Advisory Group. In 1987, Durante helped form the Clean Fuels Development Coalition (CFDC), a non-profit organization. The CFDC works in support of renewable alcohols and has a broad-based membership including automotive, agricultural, and other alternative energy interests.

Jerry Taylor is the most widely cited and influential right-of-center critic of federal energy and environmental policy in the nation. Taylor is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and National Review and has published op-eds in the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and virtually every other important newspaper in the country. He is a regular guest on CNBC and Bloomberg Radio and has also appeared frequently on the major news networks as well as CNN, NPR, MSNBC, Fox News, Public Radio International, and the BBC. Taylor has served on numerous congressional advisory bodies and has testified frequently on Capitol Hill regarding various energy and environmental policy matters. He is the author or coauthor of numerous policy studies and has contributed to several anthologies, including Energy & American Society - 13 Myths, Market Liberalism: A New Paradigm for the 21st Century, The Cato Handbook for Congress, China as a Global Economic Power: Market Reforms and the New Millennium, and Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet.

A life-long Nebraskan, photographer Joel Sartore has covered everything from the remote Amazon rainforest to beer-drinking, mountain-racing firefighters in the United Kingdom. In addition to his celebrated work for National Geographic, which often focuses on conservation, endangered species, and land use issues, Sartore's work has been featured in Time, Life, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and numerous books. Sartore and his career have been the subject of several national broadcasts, including "National Geographic Explorer," the "NBC Nightly News," NPR's "Weekend Edition," and "CBS Sunday Morning," as well as an hour-long PBS documentary, At Close Range.

Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Surgery at the Yale University School of Medicine and a Fellow at Yale's Institute for Social and Policy Studies. He is the author of nine books, including Doctors: The Biography of Medicine, The Wisdom of the Body, The Mysteries Within, Lost in America: A Journey with My Father, and The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis. His book How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter won the National Book Award and spent thirty-four weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.

Clyde Prestowitz is founder and President of the Economic Strategy Institute, a Washington think-tank influential in the areas of international trade policy and specialized in how key sectors of the U.S. and world economy adapt to change, in particular the effects of globalization. Mr. Prestowitz served as counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration and led many U.S. trade and investment negotiations with Japan, China, Latin America, and Europe. His latest book, Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East, deals with the economic rise of Asia and the upcoming rebalancing of the world economic order and its impact on the United States. He is also the author of Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions and the best-selling book on U.S.-Japan relations, Trading Places.

George McGovern was a United States Congressman, Senator, and the Democratic nominee for the 1972 presidential election. After leaving the Senate in 1980 he was a visiting professor at a number of institutions, including Columbia University, Northwestern University, Duke University, Cornell University and the University of Berlin. He served as President of the Middle East Policy Council from 1991-1998, when President Bill Clinton appointed him U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. In 2001, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan named him honorary United Nations Global Ambassador on World Hunger.

Azar Nafisi, author of the national bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, is the director of the Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., where she is a professor of aesthetics, culture, and literature, and teaches courses on the relation between culture and politics. She held a fellowship from Oxford and taught English literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai University in Iran.

John R. Bolton was appointed by President George W. Bush as United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations on August 1, 2005. Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Bolton served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from May 2001 to May 2005. He was Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise and spent many years of his career in public service, serving as Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs at the Department of State, 1989-1993; Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice, 1985-1989; Assistant Administrator for Program and Policy Coordination, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1982-1983; and General Counsel, U.S. Agency for International Development, 1981-1982.

The Lewis E. Harris Lecture on Public Policy and the E.N. Thompson Forum present Peter G. Peterson, chairman and co-founder of The Blackstone Group and founding president of The Concord Coalition, a bi-partisan citizen's group dedicated to building a constituency of fiscal responsibility. Peterson was Assistant to President Nixon for International Economic Affairs and was named Secretary of Commerce by Nixon in 1972. Peterson is the author of several books, including Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do about It (2004).

T.R. Reid is the Rocky Mountain bureau chief for The Washington Post. He has become one of the nation's best-known correspondents through his coverage of global affairs. Reid has written six books in English and three in Japanese. His most recent book, The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy (2004) has become a national best-seller.

The Kripke Lecture, a collaboration between the Thompson Forum and the UNL Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies, presents Dr. Michael Walzer a leading American political theorist and professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey since 1980. His recent books include Arguing about War (2004) and Politics and Passion (2005).

(NOTE: By contractual arrangement with Dr. Pagels, this archived file is available only to UNL and its associated research centers and extension offices. If you try to download this file from an Internet address outside UNL, you will be denied access.)

Dr. Elaine Pagels is a preeminent scholar of religious history and is the Harrington Spear Pain Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Her best-selling books, The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, use new research into the early history of Christianity to raise provocative questions about the basic beliefs of the Christian tradition and the social role of religion in the modern world.

Mr. Ruggie is the Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs and Weil Director, Center for Business and Government, at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Ruggie was U.N. assistant secretary-general and chief adviser for strategic planning to Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 1997 to 2001.

Ms. Power is the Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and adjunct lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Power is the author of A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and National Book Critics Circle award.

Foreign editor for Newsday and Jennings Randolph senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Former Washington-based correspondent for Newsweek, Pulitzer-prize winner for international reporting on "ethic cleansing" in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The Kripke Lecture, a collaboration between the Thompson Forum and the UNL Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies presents Leon Wieseltier, a literary editor of The New Republic since 1983 and author of Nuclear War Nuclear Peace, Against Identity, and Kaddish.

One of the most distinguished social and political commentators in America, David Halberstam won a Pulitzer Prize at age 30 for his prophetic reporting in the early days of the Vietnam War. Reflecting his remarkably long tenure as a major analyst on the American scene, 38 years later his bestseller, War in a Time of Peace, was a runner-up for the Pulitzer. The Wall Street Journal called it "Riveting, merciless... indispensable to anyone interested in that confused period between the Cold War and the Terrorist War about to begin."

The new Thompson Professor of Modern World History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and prize-winning author and teacher, Thomas Borstelmann spent 12 years in the History Department at Cornell University.

The first female President of Ireland (1990-1997) and more recently, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Mary Robinson has spent most of her life as a human rights activist. As an academic, legislator, and barrister, she has always sought to use law as an instrument for social change. Now based in New York, Robinson is currently leading a new project, the Ethical Globalization Initiative, whose goal is to bring the standards of human rights into the globalization process and to support capacity building in good governance in developing countries, with an initial focus on Africa.

Israel's most distinguished literary figure and a founding member of Israel's Peace Now movement, Amos Oz established his reputation with his first book, Where the Jackals Howl. Many of his subsequent novels have been critically acclaimed best-sellers in Israel and around the world including his best known work, My Michael, and Black Box. Oz is the author of 11 novels, three volumes of nonfiction, and a children's book. He continues to devote his time to writing, teaching, and actively campaigning for the Israeli peace movement.

The Thompson Forum series for 2003-2004 opened with Benjamin Barber, author of the international best-seller Jihad vs. McWorld. An internationally renowned political theorist, Barber consults regularly with political/civic leaders and organizations in the United States and abroad. He was a founding editor and for 10 years editor-in-chief of the distinguished international quarterly Political Theory. Barber is renowned for his passionate defense of "strong democracy," a democratic theory that advances the role of robust democratic citizenship over formal constitutional mechanisms.

A Nebraska native and Lincoln resident, clinical psychologist, and the author of two best-selling books, Mary Pipher lectured on the subject of The Middle of Everywhere: The World's Refugees Come to our Town. While her book Reviving Ophelia looked at teenage girls and Another Country addressed aging, Pipher's most recent book The Middle of Everywhere: The World's Refugees Come to our Town describes the plight of refugees settling in Lincoln.

Profiled in the New Yorker as the good doctor and the 1993 winner of a MacArthur genius grant, Paul Farmer lectured on the subject of Infectious Diseases and Poverty: A View from Haiti. He is the co-director of the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, a chief consultant to the World Bank, and the founding Director of Partnership in Health. Shifting operations between Haiti, the United States, Paris, and Russia, Farmer's goal is at once simple and difficult: to heal of the world of preventable, treatable diseases.

The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues opened its fifteenth season as Nebraska's premier lecture series with author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. A foreign affairs columnist at The New York Times and the author of two bestsellers, he lectured on the subject of The Middle East and American Foreign Policy. He has also been three times a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.

The Thompson Forum series for 2001-2002 closed with an appearance by Andrew Nathan. He lectured on the subject of Is It Any of Our Business? Human Rights as an Issue in U.S.-China Relations. Civil and political rights in China are largely illusory, says Nathan, a professor of political science at Columbia University and an internationally renowned expert in U.S.-China relations. Nathan is the author of numerous books, including Negotiating Culture and Human Rights: Beyond Universalism and Relativism.

Former president of the Soviet Union from 1990-91 and General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1985-1991, Mikhail Gorbachev lectured on Russia: Retrospect and Prospect. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 for his role in promoting peace and change in the Soviet Union. He currently serves as president of the Gorbachev Foundation, which focuses on the challenges of the post-Cold War world. He also is president of an environmental organization, Green Cross International.

As a teenager, Rosmus uncovered a deeply buried Nazi past in her hometown of Passau, Germany. She has located and published the stories and artwork of Jews who once lived in the Passau area and has written five books on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. She has been awarded the highest honor of the German Jewish Community, the 1995 Galinski Prize, and is the subject of a documentary shown throughout Germany, The Nasty Girl in America.