Can science and reason be used to develop ethical judgments? Many theists claim that without religious foundations, "anything goes," and social chaos will ensue. Scientific naturalists believe that secular societies already have developed responsible ethical norms and that science and reason have helped us to solve moral dilemmas. How and in what sense this occurs are vital issues that need to be discussed in contemporary society, for this may very well be the hottest issue of the twenty-first century.

Speaker: Paul Kurtz, PhD, Fellow AAAS, Founder of the Council for Secular Humanism

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Distinguished historian of 19th-century American book covers, Sue Allen, will deliver the 2007 Lieberman Lecture at the Grolier Club of New York. Sue Allen is the foremost historian of 19th-century American book covers. Since the 1970s she has extensively studied these bindings and taught classes at Rare Book School. Her research, lectures, and writings have raised awareness and appreciation of American book designers' art among librarians, conservators and collectors, to ensure that these fragile items are saved for posterity. in the 1890s, the English illustrator Walter Crane visited America and was invited by Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin to illustrate any book of his choice on their remarkable backlist. He chose Hawthorne's Wonder Book for Boys and Girls, a sunny retelling of ancient Greek myths. There is much to wonder about the book's publication history. Open to the public.

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Architecture & Recovery: The Guardians Institute in New Orleans
with Kate Stohr, Architecture for Humanity and Jens Holm, Rockwell Group
Moderated by Martin C. Pedersen of Metropolis Magazine
with special guest Herreast Harison, Guardians Institute, New Orleans

From Brad Pitt’s star-studded "Make it Right" campaign to quieter relief efforts, architecture and design are emerging from the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s disastrous aftermath as an opportunity for innovation, optimism and concrete solutions. The non-profit organization Architecture for Humanity was founded in 1999 to promote architectural and design solutions to humanitarian problems. Co-founder Kate Stohr will present her organization’s work and that of architects and designers who have found inspiration and creativity in their responses to humanitarian and natural disasters. She will be joined by Jens Holm of Rockwell Group, who is currently creating plans for The Guardians Institute, a cultural and educational organization built as a community resource in the Upper 9th Ward of New Orleans. The organization was founded by Herreast Harrison to preserve and teach the culture and craft of the Mardi Gras Indians. Ms. Harrison will be presenting her beaded costumes and answer questions about the Guardians Insitiute. The design and construction of the Guardians Institute is a joint project of Architecture for Humanity and the Rockwell Group.

About Kate Stohr
Kate Stohr is co-founder and program director of Architecture for Humanity. As a freelance journalist, her work has appeared in a number of national publications including The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, The Christian Science Monitor, Dwell, Architectural Record and Time Digital. Her documentary production credits include: Biography (A&E); History Detectives (PBS), Escape from Death Row (A&E), and Night Court (MSNBC). With Cameron Sinclair she is the editor of Design Like You Give A Damn.
http://ww.architectureforhumanity.org/

About Jens Holm and the Rockwell Group
Jens Holm is an Associate at Rockwell Group and has been with the office since 2004. Prior to joining the team at Rockwell Group, he worked with Rem Koolhaas in the Netherlands & New York for OMA / AMO. Holm’s recent work includes the Coney Island master plan, exhibition design of the American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Cirque Casino in Montreal and Pacific City Resort in Huntington Beach, California. He received his Master of Architecture at the Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark in 2000.

Founded more than 20 years ago by David Rockwell, Rockwell Group is an award-winning, cross-disciplinary, 220-person architecture and design practice based in New York. The firm specializes in hospitality, culture, theater, film and product design. David Rockwell’s monograph, Pleasure: The Architecture and Design of Rockwell Group, was published by Universe, a division of Rizzoli Books, in 2002. Spectacle, with Bruce Mau, was published by Phaidon Press in October 2006.
http://www.rockwellgroup.com

About Guardians Institute and Herreast Harrison
The Guardians Institute’s prime directives are to uphold the distinct cultural traditions of New Orleans, promote literacy and encourage physical well-being. These goals are met through conducting educational workshops for K-12 students in New Orleans to teach them the traditional art of beading and crafting Mardi Gras Indian suits; offering lessons in drumming, song construction and traditional dance, and conducting book club meetings. The Institute was founded by Herreast Harrison and her children in loving memory of their father, Donald Harrison, Sr., the celebrated chief of the Mardi Gras Indian group, Guardians of the Flame. For the past 20 years the family has been actively involved in keeping Mardi Gras Indian culture alive and exposing neighborhood children to all facets of this tradition through education and demonstration. 
http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/node/639

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Dedicated to the voices of women in architecture, The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union presents The Third Annual Eleanore Pettersen Lecture "On the Bright Side of Architecture," by Elizabeth Wright Ingraham, FAIA. Elizabeth Wright Ingraham Architects is a small, high service architectural firm established in 1970. Prior, Ms. Ingraham was a principal with Ingraham & Ingraham, Architects. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, she attended the University of California at Berkeley and Illinois Institute of Technology. She moved to Colorado Springs with her family to begin the practice of architecture in 1950. The founder and director (1972-1983) of the Wright-Ingraham Institute, a Colorado think-tank for environmental education located on an innovative 640 acre campus, she is also an author and has served on numerous boards and commissions, including the State Board of Examiners of Architects; Advisory Board of Consultants; University of Colorado School of Architecture & Planning; Institute of International Education Board of Trustees; Visiting Professor, Environmental Design College, University of Colorado, Boulder; 2002 President, AIA Colorado.

In 1999 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado. In 1976, Ingraham co-founded the Colorado Women's Forum and is an active member of the International Women's Forum. Ingraham has traveled and lectured internationally.

Organized by: The lecture series was initiated with a generous gift to The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union in Ms. Eleanore Pettersen’s name, a lasting tribute to her significant impact in the world of architecture and her love of The Cooper Union. Pettersen, who had worked as an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright and would later design the post-White House home of Richard M. Nixon, became one of the first women to be licensed as architects in New Jersey.

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Timothy J. Reiss is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Distinguished Scholar in Residence, NYU; author of Against Autonomy: Global Dialectics of Cultural Exchange; Mirages of the Selfe: Patterns of Personhood in Ancient and Early Modern Europe.

"From the birds I learned ...": Jean de Léry on Violence, Religion, and the Colonial

Contact Francine Goldenhar/212.998.8750.

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Jorge Contesse is the Crowley Fellow in International Human Rights, at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, at Fordham Law School. He holds an LL.M. degree from Yale Law School (2005) and is currently working on his JS.D. dissertation, also at Yale, focusing on the rights of indigenous peoples in Chile and the inter-American human rights system.

Before coming to the United States, he was an Assistant Professor and Lecturer at the Human Rights & Public Interest Law Clinic at the Diego Portales School of Law (Santiago, Chile). He has published on human rights, constitutional law, and legal theory. Mr. Contesse has also been a consultant to the Ford Foundation's Southern Cone and Andean Region Office, a researcher for the Justice Studies Center of the Americas, a researcher for the International Council on Human Rights Policy, and a consultant to Human Rights Watch’s Americas Division.

Lunch will be served.

To request a copy of the speaker's paper, please contact Jorge Contesse (646.312.8237).

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The TV LAB at WNET/13 nurtured video art, created reality television made with half-inch portable video equipment, and offered fresh local and global perspectives from new voices. TV Lab - Funding Creativity documents this extraordinary period of innovation centered at WNET/13 in New York from 1972 to 1984.

Howard Weinberg is an award-winning independent documentary film and television producer who has created significant public and commercial television programming. His innovative reporting and imaginative producing have contributed to the successes of major figures in American journalism.

Hosted by Media Studies Prof. Deirdre Boyle, author of Subject to Change: Guerilla Television Revisited, a history of '70s Video Collectives.

Free, no tickets or reservations required.

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In collaboration with the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAAP) of Columbia University and Studio Olafur Eliasson, this three-part program reviews and critiques contemporary cultural theories of color that have emerged from artistic and scientific practice. The program follows a progressive, three-platform model, each session taking place at a distinct venue associated with what could be understood as the "production of reality": the museum, the university, and the artist's atelier. Discussions and presentations will seek to build a contemporary epistemology of color based on current and recent artistic and scientific experiments and cognitive research on color perception, with an emphasis on the role that color plays in the physical environment. The MoMA portion of the event (Friday, April 18) features Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator of Media, and Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, and organizers of the exhibition; Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, MoMA; and Olafur Eliasson in conversation with Mark Wigley, Dean, GSAAP, Columbia University.

The Friday evening session at the Museum will be followed by a day-long symposium at Columbia University. The subsequent session at Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin will be webcast live in May 2008.

Art and Perception Series
This multidisciplinary series of discussions features prominent artists, art historians, scientists, conservators, and others as they provide a variety of perspectives on the complex process of experiencing art. Discussions explore the ways in which the perception of a single artwork evolves over time, how artists adopt optical and perceptive strategies as a means of influencing a particular sensorial experience, and the impact of recent scientific research and color theory on art and architecture.

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The Student Protests at Columbia in April 1968
What did they mean then?
What do they mean now?

Sponsored by the University Seminar on the History of the University and the Columbia University Libraries

10:30 am - The History of Student Protest at Kings College - Columbia University

12:30 pm - Lunch (reservations required - 212-854-2389)

1:30 pm - The Student Protests at Columbia in 1968

3:30 pm - A Conversation with Alumni of the Student Strike

5:00 pm - Reception at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, 6th floor
Display of documents and other materials from the Spring of 1968

For further information regarding this event, please contact Alice Newton by sending email to an2113@columbia.edu / 212-854-2389.

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This panel will address the effects of the "mega art fair" on today's art market. Alexandra Peers, Wall Street Journal editor, will be among the panelists, and Peter Duhon, executive editor of Art Comments, will moderate.

Admission is free for SVA students, faculty, staff and ATOA members; $7 regular admission; $3 for SVA alumni, non-SVA students and seniors.

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In recent years, the fields of management and business have developed a range of trenchant discourses that have broken new ground in our understanding of the elusive nature of innovation and creativity. Much of this work explicitly adopts jazz and other forms of improvised music as an animating metaphor for everyday-life practices that foreground choice, risk, agency, and contingency. This public Conversation, representing possibly the first-ever collaboration between the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and the Columbia Business School, brings together a diverse array of the nation’s leading scholars and activists in the field of business, in an examination of the possibilities that the study of improvisation can provide for forging new models of organization and leadership.

R. Keith Sawyer, Department of Education, Washington University

With
Flores A. Forbes, author and urban planner
Sheena S. Iyengar, Columbia Business School
Damon J. Phillips, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business

Introduced and moderated by Paul Ingram, Kravis Professor of Business, Columbia Business School

Reception to follow, at which Dr. Sawyer will be available to sign copies of his latest book, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration.

Contact Yulanda Denoon: ym189@columbia.edu / 212-851-1633.

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This conference has been organized by the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, on the occasion of the exhibition Take your time: Olafur Eliasson at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Part of a series of events held in collaboration with MoMA and Olafur Eliasson Studio, this event will bring together scholars doing some of the most creative and thought-provoking work related to color and the brain.

Mark Wigley, Dean, GSAPP, Columbia University

Barry Bergdoll, Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art

Jonathan Crary, Art History Department, Columbia University

Brian Greene, Institute for Strings, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Columbia University

David Eagleman, Laboratory for Perception and Action, Baylor College of Medicine

Robert Shapley, Center for Neural Science, New York University

Pireeni Sundaralingam, Poet/cognitive scientist

Aniruddha Das, Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University

Steven Holl, Architect, Columbia University

Olafur Eliasson, Artist

No tickets required.For further information regarding this event, please contact Benjamin Prosky: bp2171@columbia.edu / 212-854-9248.

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Linda Nochlin is Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU; author of Realism and Tradition in Art, 1848-1900; The Politics of Vision; Representing Women; Courbet.

Contact Francine Goldenhar/212.998.8750.

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Emerging infectious diseases are those that have newly appeared in a population or that have existed but are rapidly increasing in incidence or geographic range. Recent examples include HIV/AIDS, Lyme disease, and hepatitis C. The New York Academy of Sciences is proud to host the Emerging Infectious Diseases Discussion Group, part of our continuing lecture series. This discussion group features keynote presentations by principal investigators, along with short presentations by promising graduate students and postdocs.

Speakers: Michael Doyle, University of Georgia; Robert Tauxe, CDC; Robert Buchanan, FDA; Chuck Gerba, University of Arizona; Ewen Todd, MSU
Sponsored by Emerging Infectious Diseases Discussion Group
Organized by Barry Kreiswirth, Public Health Research Institute; Michael Doyle, University of Georgia.

Reception to follow.

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City plans now underway will give New Yorkers hundreds of new public playgrounds. These timely developments comes as scholars, educators, and designers are reexamining the way children play today. An international panel of play and design experts will analyze the factors that influence playground design and explore tested approaches for integrating unstructured play and elements of risk to foster enjoyment and informal learning. Panelists include, Julian Richter of Richter Spielgerate GmbH, Roger Hart of the Children's Environments Research Group at CUNY Graduate Center, and Nadine Levick, MD, MPH, of Objective Safety. The panel will be moderated by James Clark Chermayeff, interpretive planner and recreation consultant, and Charles McKinney of the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

Seating is limited and reservations are encouraged. RSVP to info@jcca-nyc.com.

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Tracey Gurd is the associate legal officer in the International Justice Program at the Open Society Justice Initiative. She works actively on ECCC issues and she regularly visits Phnom Penh. Gurd serves as one of the expert commentators on Cambodia Tribunal Monitor (www.cambodiatribunal.org), an online consortium of academic, philanthropic and non-profit organizations committed to providing public access to the tribunal and open discussion throughout the judicial process. She has extensive experience with other international/ized courts, in international criminal/humanitarian law, and with gender crimes. She has previously worked as a legal academic, a journalist and also as an international policy advisor for the Australian government in both Australia and Central Europe.

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Gérard Liger-Belair is Associate Professor of Physical Sciences at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, in the heart of the Champagne wine region. He has been researching the physical chemistry of bubbles in carbonated beverages for several years, and his photographs have appeared in numerous exhibitions and art galleries. He works as a consultant for the research department of Champagne Moët & Chandon and is the author of Uncorked: The Science of Champagne, published by Princeton University Press.
Uncorked is the first book to quench our curiosity about the inner workings of one of the world's most popular drinks. Prized for its freshness, vitality, and sensuality, champagne is a wine of great complexity. Mysteries aplenty gush forth with the popping of that cork. Just what is that fizz? Can you judge champagne quality by how big the bubbles are, by how long they last, by how they behave before they fade? Why exactly does serving champagne in a long-stemmed.

The Science & the City Food Series

To the chef, there is no greater experiment than attempting a new recipe. Cooking involves balancing a slew of chemical variables, from the acidity of a chocolate chip cookie dough (which factors into browning) to the moisture content of cheese (which can affect Mozzarella's elasticity). A basic understanding of food science can illuminate even the darkest kitchen pantry.
For this reason, the New York Academy of Sciences presents this ongoing series, The Science of Food, to explore the chemical processes and factors that go largely unnoticed in our own kitchens everyday. Experts in food science, biochemistry, and nutrition discuss the science of champagne, chocolate, taste, and more - and share what they have learned about the complex interactions involved in every mouthful. Following each lecture, guests are invited to participate in a tasting of the food du jour.

Reception to follow.

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From Warhol's conceptual use of filmmaking in Empire to Olafur Eliasson's incorporation of cinematic effects in his environments and installations, the mechanics of the projected and perceived image have played a significant role in the art of recent decades. This program explores how contemporary artists address the interstice between film and photography by deconstructing the mediums through various conceptual uses, and how such elements are incorporated into exhibitions. Participants include Kerry Brougher, Acting Director and Chief Curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Chrissie Iles, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art; and Anthony McCall, artist. The program is moderated by Klaus Biesenbach and Roxana Marcoci, organizers of the exhibition.

This event is held in conjunction with the exhibitions Geometry of Motion 1920s/1970s, Take your time: Olafur Eliasson

Tickets ($10; members $8; students, seniors, and staff of other museums $5) can be purchased at the lobby information desk and the film desk.

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Models of equality and equilibrium (the processes through which equality is attained and maintained) exerted a profound influence in virtually every intellectual sphere within medieval thought. And yet, despite the central place held by these models (or, perhaps, because of their inescapable centrality), they were never brought to the fore as subjects of discussion in themselves. For this reason modern historians have so far failed to recognize equilibrium as a subject in itself or to imagine it as changing in form over historical time, shaped within specific cultural contexts. While the ideal of both equality and equilibrium remained constant over the medieval period, the definitions and processes denoted by these words changed profoundly, with a dramatic shift occurring over the period 1250 to 1375. After outlining some of the major shifts within the model of equilibrium over this period, this lecture will illustrate their presence in and importance to scientific speculation through an analysis of Jean Buridan’s adventurous speculations in the area of geological change.

Joel Kaye; Barnard College and New York Public Library Cullman Fellow.
Sponsored by: History & Philosophy of Science Section.
Please note this event is not being held at the New York Academy of Sciences. It is taking place at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Reception to follow: 7 - 7:30pm
Please RSVP for dinner with the speaker following the lecture, contact jdauben@gc.cuny.edu

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Jill Jonnes, author of Conquering Gotham: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels, will provide a historical account of the station's creation. Her presentation will address the engineering feat required for the subterranean tunnels and will also feature images that are not included in her book.

To contact: 212.935.2075

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French philosopher Jacques Rancière and W.J.T. Mitchell, Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago, discuss "The Future of the Image."

This event is free and open to the public. No Tickets, no reservations required. Seating is on a first come, first served basis.

Contact Jonah Cardillo by sending email to jgc92@columbia.edu .

For more info . . .