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Writings, talks and video

  • Why Movements Matter
    Vivien Labaton and me, pre-Occupy Wall Street, on why political setbacks of recent years make investment in social movements even more urgent.
  • Reclaiming the Moral Life of Philanthropy | MIT World
    Video of my lecture at MIT last fall arguing for a restoration of moral language in philanthropy and in other spheres, like government.
  • PhilanTopic: A 'Flip' Chat With...Gara LaMarche, Senior Fellow, NYU Wagner School of Public Service
    Foundation Center interview with me on the state of human rights ten years after 9/11/01
  • FORA.tv - Building Open Societies: Soros in Conversation
    Conversation I conducted with George Soros and Aryeh Neier in May 2011 on the occasion of the publication of Chuck Sudetic's book about George's philanthropy. I had fun, and George and Aryeh were as relaxed and expansive as they get.
  • FORA.tv - A Conversation with Jeff Raikes and Gara LaMarche
    A conversation at Philanthropy New York in May 2011 between me and the President of the Gates Foundation, Jeff Raikes. He's great, it turns out my mike was off so you can barely hear what I am saying, but fast forward to whenever Jeff is on the screen!
  • How Vast the Left-Wing Conspiracy
    Transcript of a November 30 panel at the Hudson Institute with me, Rob Stein of the Democracy Alliance and Byron York of the National Review.
  • The crisis of democracy in America Gara LaMarche - openDemocracy
    Article I published in mid-2005 in Open Democracy, a British-based global web journal, about endangered institutions in the U.S. -- the media, the academy, the courts.
  • Putting the "Human" Back in Human Rights
    Talk I gave earlier in July to the International Human Rights Funders Group, opening with a somewhat shaggy story about the time I presented at my then-kindergarten-aged daughter's class "Career Day."
  • Georgetown Forum on Philanthropy
    Panel I was on with Emmett Carson, Chair of the Council on Foundations, Cecilia Munoz of National Council of La Raza, William Schambra of the Bradley Center on Philanthropy, and Pablo Eisenberg, former director of the Center for Community Change and longtime progressive critic of philanthropy. I agreed more with Bill than Pablo, which makes me worry...
  • Immigrant Communities in the Crossfire
    Talk I gave to San Francisco Bay Area funders. Read it to find out which U.S. President lamented that a weakness of the American character is that there are so few "growlers and kickers" among us.
  • Kennedy Library Forum: Human Rights: Then and Now
    Transcript of a forum a few years ago at the Kennedy Library, where I was on a panel to mark the publication of my friend Jeri Laber's memoir about her work in the human rights movement. Moderated by John Shattuck, an old ACLU colleague who served in various posts in the Clinton State Department and now heads the JFK Library and Foundation. Like most transcripts, my comments read much less coherently than I thought I sounded at the time.
  • Gara LaMarche
    Profile of me from UC-Irvine's Social Science Journal, from an interview I did a year ago when I gave a lecture there. Makes me sound much more noble than I actually am.
  • American Prospect piece on human rights in the United States
    You should check out the special issue of The American Prospect about the growing movement -- ever more urgents in the wake of Abu Ghraib -- to make the United States adhere to international human rights standards. I have a short article surveying a bunch of reports -- all available on the web, with links provided -- that are pioneering in looking at U.S. rights problems through that lens. The rest of the issue is great, too, with pieces by Anthony Lewis, Cass Sunstein, former U.N. High Commissioner and Irish President Mary Robinson, and many others.
  • School of Social Sciences Distinguished Speaker Series
    Apparently there is a video here of the democracy speech I gave at UC-Irvine in January. I'm afraid to look.
  • When Foundations Should Lead -- and When They Should Get Out of the Way
    Speech I gave to the Donor Forum of Wisconsin, containing some thoughts I have been developing about the responsibility of "elites" to speak out, and more familiar -- in the "trade" -- stuff about why foundations should engage in public policy and do more general, multi-year funding of organizations.
  • The Council on Foundations - Remarks Accepting Ylvisaker Award
    Why I was not too popular with the Texas host committee at the Council on Foundations annual meeting in Dallas last year.
  • Speech and Equality: Do We Really Have to Choose?
    1996 NYU Press collection of essays, edited by me, on perceived tensions between free speech and equality: abortion clinic protests, "hate speech," sexual harassment laws. I thought I had bought up all the unsold copies of this extremely low-selling book, but I see they list it on their website. If not available there, I'll sell you one for $11.99 or best offer...
  • The virtues and vices of philanthropy
    Article in a conservative philanthropy journal about what foundations do well and poorly.
  • Compassionate Aversionism
    2001 Nation review of two books connected with the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based conservative think tank. Still seems highly relevant, more than three years into Bush II.
  • Suppose We Had a Real Democracy in the United States? A Time for Imagination
    Speech I gave at the University of California at Irvine, January 28, 2004.

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March 06, 2006

And the greatest of these is love

That's from St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, for you non- or non-observant Christians.  I know it because I had to read it at my cousin's and sister's weddings. (And my disastrous ten-minute toast as best man at my cousin's wedding, which none of the guests heard because of the air-conditioning, was a riff on it, but that's another story.)  I lead with it because love is the theme of the first encyclical issued by Pope Benedict.  And guess what?  It's worth reading, which will come as a surprise to anyone who remembers my extremely critical posts on Benedict at the time of his election last year.   Benedict is a real scholar -- no surprise -- and an elegant writer.  What he has to say about the difference between charity and justice, between the role of the church and the role of the government, is interesting.  Not as far from my views as I might have expected, though I disagree with some of it.  What he has to say about love -- leave aside for the moment his presumed lack of expertise in certain aspects of it -- is surprising, and at a time when religion is a cloak for much violence and discrimination (including, let's not forget, his own church, in what some of its benighted doctrines do to women), welcome and overdue.

Posted at 10:28 PM in Religion |

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