Want to know what western elites are thinking about global terrorism? Head to the Kennedy School of Government. Iason Athanasiadis in The Guardian:
A course about al-Qaida and the rise of international terrorism was one of the most popular last term at Harvard’s elite Kennedy School of Government. The international students crowding into the school’s largest auditorium for the twice-weekly classes were a cross-section of Americans, Europeans and Middle Easterners, including current members of the US army and intelligence community on sabbatical leave. Simply attending it gave me a sense of where tomorrow’s western and westernised elites stand vis-a-vis “the long war”.
The instructor for the course was Peter Bergen, the journalist who bagged Osama bin Laden’s first face-to-face interview on CNN. In the 1990s, long before Islamist activism dominated the thinking of western intelligence organisations, Peter Bergen interviewed several jihadist in the Middle East and Europe about their views. His book, The Osama Bin Laden I Know, made him sought-after in the aftermath of September 11, as his international relations colleagues scrambled to shed backgrounds in Soviet studies and switch to the geopolitics of the Middle East. Bergen became a transnational terrorism analyst who challenged the tendency to lump all terrorists into one group. Instead, he classified them by generation, regional provenance and the conflict that shaped their intellectual outlook.
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From the Harvard alumni Magazine 02138:
Liz Mermin (right), an acclaimed London/New York-based independent filmmaker who specializes in international social issues, has directed and produced Shot In Bombay, released in UK in January.
The documentary is a behind-the-scenes drama of the making and release of a Bollywood film, Shootout at Lokhandwala, featuring Bollywood screen legend Sanjay Dutt in his last film before serving a six-year prison sentence for illegal arms possession.
Mermin graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in literature (French, African, and American), and has a Masters degree in cultural anthropology from New York University.
More about Liz Mermin and the documentary:
A Channel4 review:
In Harvard Magazine, profile of Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, professor of applied mathematics:
“Just because something is familiar doesn’t mean you understand it. That is the common fallacy that all adults make-and no child ever does,” says Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, England de Valpine professor of applied mathematics. Mahadevan enjoys explaining mathematically the phenomena of everyday life: practicing the old-fashioned method of scientific inquiry called natural philosophy, where one wonders about everything.
…Mahadevan, who grew up in India, tells a traditional story about Krishna where mud becomes metaphor. “In Hindu mythology, Krishna is divine,” he begins. “However, because there was a prophecy that he would overthrow an evil king, his origins when he was a baby were hidden from almost everybody. So when Krishna was born, his mother surreptitiously sent him away to be brought up by a foster mother who didn’t know who he was. As in all mythologies, there were premonitions [of greatness], but growing up with his foster mother, he would go out like all children and play in the mud. One day he started to eat the mud, putting it in his mouth. And his [foster] mother, from afar, said, ‘Don’t do it.’” Krishna kept eating the mud. “Again [she] said, ‘Don’t do it,’ and yet he continued. So she came up to him, and when she opened his mouth to take out the mud, she looked-and she saw the universe.
More: [via 3quarksdaily]
