Is public higher education still a powerful force for shaping society? This program brings together scholars and practitioners from around the world to talk about the impact of public higher education on social mobilization and economic development in the 21st century.
Featuring James J. Duderstadt, President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan; Deborah Davis, former director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization; Enrique Dussel Peters, Professor of Economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico; and Yu Lizhong, President of East China Normal University. William Kelly, President of the Graduate Center, moderates.
Bio
Deborah Davis
Deborah S. Davis is Professor of Sociology at Yale University specializing in the study of contemporary Chinese society. Using materials from fieldwork in China, she is currently completing two research projects, one focused on the social and political consequences of privatizing urban housing and one on poverty, wealth, and social stratification.
Davis is currently a member of the National Committee on US China Relations and in 2004 helped launch the Yale China Health Journal. At Yale she has served as Director of Academic Programs at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Chair of the Department of Sociology, Chair of the Council of East Asian Studies, and Director of Graduate Studies in both East Asian Studies and Sociology.
She received a MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard and a Ph.D. in sociology from Boston University.
James Duderstadt
Dr. James J. Duderstadt is President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. A graduate of Yale (B.S., 1964) and the California Institute of Technology (M.S., Ph.D. 1967), Dr. Duderstadt joined the faculty at Michigan in 1968 and has served as dean of engineering and provost as well as president of the university.
Dr. Duderstadt's teaching, research, and publishing activities include nuclear science and engineering, applied physics, computer simulation, science policy, and higher education. He has served on and chaired numerous boards and study commissions including the National Science Board, the National Academies of Science and Engineering, and various federal advisory committees in areas including nuclear energy, space science, atmospheric science, science policy, and science education. Most recently he served as a member of the Spellings Commission and currently chairs the advisory committee on cyberinsfrastructure for the National Science Foundation. Dr. Duderstadt has received numerous awards for his teaching, research, and service, including the nation's highest award, the National Medal of Technology.
At the University of Michigan he currently directs the program in Science, Technology, and Public Policy as well as the Millennium Project, a research center exploring the impact of over-the-horizon technologies on society.
Enrique Dussel Peters
Enrique Dussel Peters is a Professor of Economics at the National Autonomous University in Mexico (UNAM) where he directs the China Mexico Institute. His teaching, research and consultancy work has concentrated in the theory of industrial, development, political economy and economic development organization, as well as in the manufacturing sector, international and regional commerce development in Mexico.
He has received several distinctions, including the 1998 James H. Street Visiting Latin American Scholar, which was given by the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) of the Allied Social Science Association and, in 2004, the distinction from the National University for Young Academics in the Economic-Administrative Science Area, granted by the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
William P. Kelly
William P. Kelly was appointed president of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on July 1, 2005. From 1998 through June 2005, he served as the Graduate Center's provost and senior vice president, a tenure that was marked by the recruitment of a remarkable cadre of internationally renowned scholars to the school's faculty.
A distinguished American literature scholar and an expert on the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Dr. Kelly's books include Plotting America's Past: Fenimore Cooper and the Leatherstocking Tales (Southern Illinois University Press), and a work in progress, Exhibiting Nature: Scientific Culture and The American Museum of Natural History.
His numerous articles and reviews have appeared in a broad range of publications including the New York Times Book Review, The American Scholar, and the Journal of Western History, and he is the editor of the Random House edition of The Selected Works of Washington Irving and the Oxford University Press edition of The Pathfinder.
Dr. Kelly graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1971, where he won the David Bowers Prize in American Studies. He was named Outstanding Graduate Student in English at Indiana University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1976. Dr. Kelly also holds a diploma in intellectual history from Cambridge University and in 1980 received a Fulbright Fellowship to France, where he subsequently became visiting professor at the University of Paris.
He was also executive director of the CUNY/Paris Exchange Program and, in 2003, was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the French Ministry of Education in recognition of his contributions to Franco-American educational and cultural relations.
Yu Lizhong
Yu Lizhong is President of East China Normal University. Dr. Yu received his Ph.D in Environmental Magnetism from the University of Liverpool in 1989. He has published extensively in his field and has received several awards for his academic work.
He has won grants for his research from groups such as the British Counsel and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Dr. Yu's many affiliations include the Science and Technology Board of the Ministry of Education, the executive council of the Chinese Anti-disaster Association, and the Chinese Higher Education Society.
Yeah, indeed skroot. As a personal experience i can tell you of my being learning from fota.tv, youtube. For example, in youtuve i found complete classes of econometrics.
As much as this video was interesting and relevant to me, as a non-ivy-league college student -- I feel it only touched briefly on the largest medium that is transforming the way people of the world are becoming educated: the Internet. Taking, for quick example, something like Wikipedia, or like fora.tv itself -- I'd argue that you can learn more than you ever could without stepping foot in a classroom. I think universities are slow to realise that the current system is becoming outdated, and replaced by universal knowledge mediums that exist outside of expensive textbooks and curricula.
member. 
