Thursday, May 12, 2011

Taft Symposium Keynote Event to Feature Debate about "the Commons" - May 12th!

From UC News:

Michael Hardt of Duke University and Raj Patel of UC Berkeley will debate who owns "the commons" — the air, water, land and knowledge that make up the commonwealth of all humanity.

Date: 5/5/2011 12:00:00 AM
By: Kim Burdett
Phone: (513) 556-8577

UC ingot   Renowned theorists Michael Hardt of Duke University and Raj Patel of University of California-Berkeley will be the keynote speakers at the 2010-2011 Taft Annual Symposium next Thursday, May 12. The lecture, "The Commons: What It Is, How to Reclaim It - A Dialogue and Debate Between Michael Hardt and Raj Patel" will take place at the MainStreet Cinema in Tangeman University Center at the University of Cincinnati's Uptown campus.

Raj Patel. (Photo courtesy of Eliot Khuner, Berkeley)
Raj Patel (Photo courtesy of Eliot Khuner, Berkeley)

Who: Michael Hardt (Duke University) and Raj Patel (University of California-Berkeley)
What: 2010-2011 Taft Annual Symposium Keynote Event
When: 5 p.m. Thursday, May 12
Where: MainStreet Cinema, Tangeman University Center (TUC) on University of Cincinnati's Uptown campus

The event is free and open to the public.

More about the event:
Who owns the earth’s riches? Radical notions of the Commons suggest that air, water and land, as well as knowledge and digital technology, constitute the commonwealth of all humanity. The Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati announces a thought-provoking public discussion of this issue by theorists Michael Hardt and Raj Patel, the keynote speakers at the Taft Center’s three-day Annual Symposium.

Michael Hardt.
Michael Hardt

More about the speakers:

Michael Hardt (Duke University) is co-author with Antonio Negri of "Commonwealth" (2009), "Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire" (2004) and "Empire" (2000). 

Raj Patel (University of California-Berkeley), is author of New York Times bestseller "The Value of Nothing" (2010) as well as "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System" (2008). 

More about the Taft Research Center:
The Charles Phelps Taft Research Center promotes scholarly research, fosters critical conversations across disciplines, and creates and sustains an intellectual community for the exchange of ideas. Above all, the center hopes to fulfill and further Annie Sinton Taft's own vision of sustaining a "concentration of interest in the development of ideas."

For more information, contact Suzanne Warren at 513-556-0675 or warrensz@mail.uc.edu.