The Bryan Series®

Bruce Stewart Joins Meet the Press Conversation on Improving Education

On Meet the Press Nov. 15, alumnus Bruce Stewart, former head of school at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., offered thoughts on improving education by recruiting better teachers.

Host David Gregory (Bryan Series April 13) played Stewart's pre-recorded interview during a discussion about improving education with Newt Gingrich, Al Sharpton and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Stewart said, in part, "If you look at Singapore, look at Finland, the reason they consistently are testing their population of students in the top levels of international exams, it's the teaching force."

Stewart retired from the Sidwell post earlier this year.  He graduated from Guilford in 1961 and returned to teach and serve as an administrator.  He was invited commencement speaker in 2008.

Gregory's oldest child is a student at Sidwell.

Post-event Survey for Krugman Program Produces Nearly 300 Comments

Bryan Series subscribers offered constructive comments about their experience at the Paul Krugman program Nov. 3 in a post-event e-mail survey.

 

About 42% of subscribers responded to the survey.  69% of respondents were very satisfied with the speaker's presentation and 71% were very satisfied with the event overall.

 

About 290 comments were offered, falling into three major categories:

• 9% of respondents offered suggestions for improving the Q&A, including submitting questions after the talk.
• 4% said they had difficulty hearing the program.
• 4% said they thought the speaker offered no new information, could have used visuals and could have given a longer talk.  (Others thought Krugman was right on target). 

Some thoughts:  We continue to consider how to give more of an opportunity for attendees to submit questions after hearing what the speaker has to say.  Currently, our format does not include an intermission between the talk and Q&A.  When we have had an interlude, some people choose to leave. We are wondering if attendees would be interested in texting questions during the talk.  Think about it, and let us know.  We will be reviewing the sound system setup again before February's program and addressing other issues that are common to all three post-event surveys thus far.

 

Thanks again for your post-event survey responses!

Bill Moyers Interviews Anna Deavere Smith on "Journal" Nov. 13

Bill Moyers will interview Anna Deavere Smith on "Bill Moyers Journal" Friday, Nov. 13.  The program airs on UNC-TV at 11 p.m. and on UNC-MX at 9 p.m.

The promotion for this week's program states, "While politicians and the media war over 'the public option' and 'bending the cost curve,' acclaimed actress-playwright Anna Deavere Smith gives voice to questions of life and death, sickness and healthcare" through her one-woman show "Let Me Down Easy."

Smith is quoted on the program's Web site, saying, "I think every culture needs room for the language that's not official and that language is often in art. When I hear the official language, it makes me suppose that this is a time when we need a lot more art that's not going to have answers that are in black and white.

She adds, "That's not going to have answers and language that is vetted, edited and put before focus groups and everything else so that it sounds exactly right. That we need to have the real stories of real people and that's, I guess, what my work is -- trying to find those stories that don't fit in any one category and don't necessarily fit in one side."

Moyers spoke in the Bryan Series in March 2006 and Smith will speak Sunday, Feb. 28 (3:30 p.m.).

Anna Deavere Smith Tackles End-of-Life Issues in "Let Me Down Easy"

In its third story in two months on Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman play, "Let Me Down Easy," the New York Times on Nov. 9 lauds her treatment of health care and end-of-life issues.  The play has been extended through Dec. 6 at the off-Broadway Second Stage Theater.

The play was nine years and 300 interviews with famous and not-so-famous Americans and originated about a decade ago when the chairman of the department of medicine at Yale invited her to interview doctors and patients and perform their words for the medical staff, Smith says.

"I try to embody America by embodying its words," she says about her plays. In this case, they are words about the deepest human experiences: mortality and nobility of character, perseverance, hope and acceptance. 

Smith will speak in the Bryan Series Sunday, Feb. 28 (3:30 p.m.).

Crowd Cheers Gorbachev at Commemoration of Fall of Berlin Wall

On Nov. 9, former Soviet leader and Bryan Series speaker Mikhail Gorbachev was cheered at an event commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.

The New York Times reported that Gorbachev and Lech Walesa joined German chancellor Angela Merkel in making a symbolic walk across the Bornholmer Strasse bridge.  They were retracing the steps of the first East Germans, Merkel included, surging to West Berlin when the wall crumbled.

"The bridge was packed shoulder to shoulder with people, and the biggest cheer came when Mrs. Merkel thanked Mr. Gorbachev for the reforming attitude he brought to the Soviet leadership. The crowd chanted, 'Gorby, Gorby, Gorby,'" the Times reported.

Gorbachev spoke in the Bryan Series in October 2004.

America Moving "A Few Steps Back from the Brink," Krugman Says

Though Guilford didn’t deliberately schedule Paul Krugman’s Bryan Series talk on Election Night, the timing offered a nice bit of symmetry. Krugman, the New York Times columnist who received the Nobel Prize in Economics a little over a year ago, offered his perspective on the financial crisis that exploded just in time for last year’s election season – what caused it, what we’ve done right to dull its potential impact and when it might end.

Krugman’s talk last night reminded me an awful lot of the Bryan Series appearance almost a year ago of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and her husband, former State Department official James Rubin. In both cases, you have speakers who are breathtakingly insightful about their chosen areas, and yet able to translate complex, theoretical concepts for a person like me.

Watching Krugman – as professorial and unassuming as he is – break down the "great recession" last night was riveting, due in large part to his emphasis on socio-historic and even geographic influences. For instance, the real estate bubble in Europe rivaled that of the U.S. - as Krugman put it, "Spain = Florida" – and the unsustainable levels of capital pouring into Eastern Europe meant that "We had some of the biggest trade deficits in history in places like Latvia and Estonia."

Speaking of trade deficits … According to Krugman, recessions of the level we’ve seen in the U.S. over the past year may technically end once the economy starts growing again, but unemployment levels can take years to return to pre-recession levels – unless one of two things happens. The first is an "export-driven" recovery like the one South Korea enjoyed in 1998, where "the route to recovery is a big trade surplus."

The other is something unforeseen that’s too explosive and attractive not to invest in – railroads in the 19th Century, the Internet, etc. Krugman thinks that green technologies could act as that type of game-changer this time around, saying that it “could drive a recovery if the right incentives were there.”

In Krugman’s analysis, our economy has taken at least a few steps back from the brink. With creativity – and boldness – we’ll make it back to safety.

--Sara Butner

Krugman: Stimulus Package "Too Little of a Good Thing"

In his New York Times op-ed column Nov. 2, "Too Little of a Good Thing," Paul Krugman says more federal stimulus is needed to improve economic conditions.

He's not certain that's going to happen, but his conviction remains very strong.

He says:

"Spending more on recovery will lead to a stronger economy, both now and in the future — and a stronger economy means more government revenue. Stimulus spending probably doesn’t pay for itself, but its true cost, even in a narrow fiscal sense, is only a fraction of the headline number."

We look forward to seeing what Krugman has to say about this and other economic and political topics when he speaks in the Bryan Series tomorrow night.