Provocate.org

Four perspectives on American global power: (1) America is rapidly declining to irrelevancy (thank goodness); (2) America is facing the rise of new wannabe empires, so has to accommodate them in cooperative institutions; (3) reports of America’s decline have been rmapant since before the US rose, and are still premature (thank goodness); (4) like it or not, for good or for ill the US will be Top Dog for a long time, but that shouldn’t distract us from figuring out how we here can help solve global problems. Guess which is Provocate’s preferred position? (more…)

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An interesting convergence: Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams is a Lincoln scholar; he has drawn favorable parallels between Lincoln’s suspension of legal niceties during the Civil War and the Bush Administrations prosecution of the war on Islamic extremism; and he has been appointed the Chief Judge on the United States Court of Military Commission Review. Should be a very interesting talk. (more…)

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Find out if it’s possible to have a non-political, evidence based discussion of the costs of the Iraq War … and of how high a cost we should be willing to continue paying. (more…)

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The US and China may seem inevitably at odds over democracy, global leadership, treatment of dissent, and so on. Why does it seem as though their interests are so much in alignment? And is that a good thing? (more…)

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They set up projects in refugee camps in refugee camps in Syria to promote democracy in Iraq. They have established the most effective HIV/AIDS program in Africa, which also happens to be contributing to legal reform and ethnic healing in Kenya. They spend their vacations building orphanages in poor countries around the world. These are just a few ways ordinary Hoosiers are transforming the world. (more…)

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The emergence of India, China, Brazil, Egypt, and others on the world stage as increasingly more powerful actors is causing a major transformation of the global political system. What does it mean for the United States … and for Indiana. (more…)

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Who’s funnier, the comedian Billy Crystal or the neocon pundit Bill Kristol? Depends on how you like your humor. (more…)

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Johann Galtung is coming to Indy. The most influential living social scientist, he is the founder of the academic study of peace and conflict studies, a discipline now offered as a major or a minor on virtually every college in America and Europe. He’s the author of more than a hundred books and more than a thousand articles. He is reported to have served as a mediator in more than 40 internaitonal conflicts. Think of one degree of seperation: if an academic uses the word “peace,” either she has read Galtung or she studied withsomeone who read Galtung. But is it all just a “peace racket”? (more…)

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The Los Angeles Times says, “Zimmerman displays a lacerating wit and keen awareness of society’s foibles that bring to mind a latter-day Tom Lehrer.” Tom Lehrer himself says, “I congratulate Roy Zimmerman on reintroducing literacy to comedy songs. And the rhymes actually rhyme, they don’t just ‘rhyne.’” (more…)

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Since returning to Indianapolis, Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Bill Foley has deepened the community’s understanding of how photography can change our view of the world. (more…)

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