Benjamin Barber  

The streaming video has just become available of Benjamin Barber Bridges to the Future Speech and if of excellent quality. Please watch it if you have time. This is precisely our kind of stuff: Social Contract, Social Capital, the Effect of Business on Democracy, etc. he is truly inspirational! Benjamin Barber Bridges to the Future speech

http://www.du.edu/c-vids/bridgesBarberLecture.html

 

Benjamin R. Barber is the Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, as well as president and director of the international NGO CivWorld, and its annual Interdependence Day event, and distinguished senior fellow at Demos. An internationally renowned political theorist, Dr. Barber brings an abiding concern for democracy and citizenship to issues of politics, culture and education in America and abroad. He consults regularly with political and civic leaders in the United States and around the world.

Benjamin Barber's 17 books include the classic Strong Democracy (1984) reissued in 2004 in a twentieth anniversary edition; the recent international best-seller Jihad vs. McWorld (1995 with a Post 9/11 Edition in 2001, translated into twenty languages) and Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in March, 2007.

Barber's honors include a knighthood (Palmes Academiques/Chevalier) from the French Government (2001), the Berlin Prize of the American Academy of Berlin (2001) and the John Dewey Award (2003). He has also been awarded Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Social Science Research Fellowships, honorary doctorates from Grinnell College, Monmouth University and Connecticut College, and has held the chair of American Civilization at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris.

He writes frequently for Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The American Prospect, Le Nouvel Observateur, Die Zeit, La Repubblica, El Pais and many other scholarly and popular publications in America and Europe. He was a founding editor and for ten years editor-in-chief of the distinguished international quarterly Political Theory. He holds a certificate from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an M.A. and Doctorate from Harvard University.