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Events

Intellectual collaborations thrive in environments where ideas are shared, freely and respectfully, among people representing different backgrounds and perspectives. This is why the Neubauer Collegium regularly opens its inquiries and conversations to the public.

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Art, Revolution, and Exile: Mohammad Al Attar in Conversation with Lisa Wedeen

Discussion

Art, Revolution, and Exile: Mohammad Al Attar in Conversation with Lisa Wedeen

Al Attar discusses his artistic work and reflects on the Syrian past and future.

In conversation with Lisa Wedeen, Mohammad Al Attar will discuss his creative practice and some of the questions he and other Syrian artists in exile grapple with as they reflect on their country’s recent past and imagine possible futures: What bargains do we make to stay safe? Whose memories count as the truth about the past, and how do revolutionary narratives get authorized? What would justice be for Syrians around the world having to deal with their sense of helplessness and abandonment? And what is the role of art in these urgent political, legal, and ethical discussions?


About the Artist

Mohammad Al Attar is a playwright, dramaturg, and author celebrated for his work chronicling war-torn Syria and the aftermaths of the 2011 uprisings. Plays such as Yesterday’s Encounter (2024), Damascus 2045 (2021), The Factory (2019), Aleppo: A Portrait of Absence (2017), and While I Was Waiting (2016) take place at the boundary between fiction and documentary. They have been staged at theaters and festivals around the world.

Born in Damascus and now living in Berlin, Al Attar is in Chicago this spring as a Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow, hosted by the Reimagining Cosmopolitanism project with the support of the Neubauer Collegium and 3CT. During his time here, aside from working on a new play, he will take an active part in the project’s research into what it means to be a citizen of the world today.

Presented by the Neubauer Collegium and the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT), with support from the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights.

This event is free and open to the public, and registration is recommended.

Neubauer Collegium
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Suresh Naidu on the Evidence-Based Policy Path to Socialism

Lecture

Suresh Naidu on the Evidence-Based Policy Path to Socialism

This series of talks aims to foster a deeper understanding of various theoretical stances on economic planning.

State intervention into the economy is back on the political agenda. What might economic planning look like in the 21st century? What is the appropriate balance between democratic, technocratic, and market power in shaping economic life and responding to social and political challenges? Could economic planning help solve some of our most pressing problems, including global warming, economic stagnation, and the crisis of care? Or would a turn to planning today merely repeat the errors and tragedies of the 20th century?

This series of talks, sponsored by the Economic Planning and Democratic Politics research project at the Neubauer Collegium, aims to foster a deeper understanding of various theoretical stances on economic planning. Our speakers will draw on insights from Austrian economics, neoclassical economics, Keynesian, and democratic socialist perspectives.

About the Speaker

Suresh Naidu is Jack Wang and Echo Ren Professor of Economics and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He works on political economy and historical labor markets. Naidu is interested in the economic effects of democracy and non-democracy, monopsony in labor markets, the economics of American slavery, guest worker migration, and labor unions and labor organizing.

Other Events in the Series

Peter J. Boettke on the Austrian Perspective

J. W. Mason on Keynes, Carbon, and Socialism

Fikret Adaman and Pat Devine on Participatory Democratic Eco-Socialist Planning

Neubauer Collegium
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AI: What If We Succeed?

Stuart Russell head shot
Director's Lecture

AI: What If We Succeed?

At this Director's Lecture, Stuart Russell will consider the possibility of developing a new kind of AI that is more beneficial to humans.

The media are agog with claims that recent advances in AI put artificial general intelligence (AGI) within reach. Is this true? If so, is that a good thing? Alan Turing predicted that AGI would result in the machines taking control. At this lecture, presented as part of the Neubauer Collegium Director's Lecture series, Stuart Russell will argue that Turing was right to express concern but wrong to think that doom is inevitable. Instead, we need to develop a new kind of AI that is provably beneficial to humans. Unfortunately, we are heading in the opposite direction.

Following his talk, Russell will be joined in conversation with Rebecca Willett, Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at the University of Chicago and Faculty Director of AI at the Data Science Institute.

A livestream of this event will be available via Zoom.

About the Speakers

Stuart Russell is Professor (and formerly Chair) of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and holder of the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-chair of the World Economic Forum Council on AI and the OECD Expert Group on AI Futures, and he is a US representative to the Global Partnership on AI. His research covers a wide range of topics in artificial intelligence including machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, real-time decision making, multi-target tracking, computer vision, computational physiology, global seismic monitoring, and philosophical foundations. His textbook Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (with Peter Norvig) is used in over 1,500 universities in 135 countries. His current concerns include the threat of autonomous weapons and the long-term future of artificial intelligence and its relation to humanity. The latter topic is the subject of his book Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control.

Rebecca Willett is Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at the University of Chicago and Faculty Director of AI at the Data Science Institute. Her research is focused on machine learning, signal processing, and large-scale data science.

The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures
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A Conversation with Rick Lowe

Discussion

A Conversation with Rick Lowe

Neubauer Collegium Curator Dieter Roelstraete and Visiting Fellow Rick Lowe will discuss a new book about Lowe's artistic practice.

Houston-based artist Rick Lowe, a Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow, is widely known for his pioneering contributions to the development of “social practice art.” What few people realize is that he was originally trained as a landscape painter. In recent years, Lowe has increasingly turned back to painting, producing complex multi-panel and quasi-abstract images that are deeply rooted in thirty years of work creating “social sculptures,” recalling the urban fabric of cities around the world that have formed the backdrop of many of his community-based art projects. A new book jointly published by Gagosian and the Neubauer Collegium is the first dedicated to the work of this important American artist, focusing on his painterly practice and its origins in his work in the public sphere. At this event, hosted by the Seminary Co-op Bookstores, Neubauer Collegium Curator Dieter Roelstraete will discuss the book with Lowe.

Seminary Co-op Bookstore
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