Boston Flora

Tag: Director’s Lecture Series

  • Monday, February 24, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Food Waste Policy: Using Systems Change to Stop Squandering One of Our Greatest Resources

    More than enough food is produced to feed every person, yet nearly 40% of food is wasted in the United States. This waste squanders our natural resources and has negative impacts on the environment and the economy. The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic has been at the forefront nationally in terms of educating about the relevant laws, supporting innovative models to increase food recovery, and driving policy change at the federal, state, and local levels to align incentives to reduce food waste. Emily Broad Leib will share the key knowledge developed by FLPC, providing an overview of the causes of food waste, the key legal and policy opportunities, and a snapshot of current trends in federal and state government approaches to the issue. on February 24 at 7 pm as part of the Directors Lecture Series at the Arboretum.

    Emily Broad Leib founded Harvard’s Food Law and Policy Clinic and is recognized as a national leader in Food Law and Policy. She was named by Fortune and Food & Wine to their list of 2016’s Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink. The list highlights women who had the most transformative impact on what the public eats and drinks. Broad Leib was one of the inaugural recipients of Harvard President Drew Faust’s Change Solutions Fund in 2015.

    Fee Free. Members only. Registration required as seating is limited. The Director’s Lecture Series is a benefit of membership. Become a member of the Friends of the Arnold Arboretum.

  • Monday, March 26, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – The Fingerprints of Sea Level Change in a Warming World

    Each winter, Director William (Ned) Friedman and the Arnold Arboretum present the Director’s Lecture Series, featuring nationally recognized experts addressing an array of topics related to Earth’s biodiversity and evolutionary history, the environment, conservation biology, and key social issues associated with current science. The Director’s Lecture Series is open to current Arnold Arboretum members only; visit http://arboretum.harvard.edu for information on becoming a member. Lectures take place in the Hunnewell Building Lecture Hall. Parking will be available along the Arborway and in front of the Hunnewell Building on lecture nights.

    On Monday, March 26 at 7 pm, Jerry X. Mitrovica, PhD, the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, will speak on The Fingerprints of Sea Level Change in a Warming World. Sea level changes are a particularly dramatic consequence of global warming and estimates of the average rise in sea level over the past decade are routinely reported in the media. However, such estimates obscure the fact that observed sea level changes vary dramatically around the globe. Professor Jerry Mitrovica will describe the sources of this variability and focus on the unique patterns – or fingerprints – of sea level change that follow the melting of ice sheets and glaciers. Those of us who live on the US east coast should be far more concerned about the fate of the distant Antarctic Ice Sheet than the future of our neighbor, the ice sheet that now covers Greenland.  Image from www.sciencedaily.com.

    Register at https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/news-events/directors-lecture-series/

  • Tuesday, February 13, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – A Field for Women’s Work

    Each winter, Director William (Ned) Friedman and the Arnold Arboretum present the Director’s Lecture Series, featuring nationally recognized experts addressing an array of topics related to Earth’s biodiversity and evolutionary history, the environment, conservation biology, and key social issues associated with current science. The Director’s Lecture Series is open to current Arnold Arboretum members only; visit http://arboretum.harvard.edu for information on becoming a member. Lectures take place in the Hunnewell Building Lecture Hall. Parking will be available along the Arborway and in front of the Hunnewell Building on lecture nights.

    On Tuesday, February 13 at 7 pm. Dava Sobel, author and science reporter, will speak on A Field for Women’s Work. In the late 19th century, botany was the science generally deemed acceptable for a woman to pursue. At the Harvard College Observatory, however, women were welcomed as computers, observers, and discoverers of new celestial phenomena. They attracted international attention as they created a taxonomy for the stars and found a way to measure distances across space. Dava Sobel, author of The Glass Universe, Galileo’s Daughter, and Longitude among others, will speak about the women of the Observatory, their careers devoted to the heavens, and their passions encompassing plants and all things natural.

    Register online at https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/news-events/directors-lecture-series/

  • 2018 Director’s Lecture Series at the Arnold Arboretum – Advance Notification

    Each winter, Director William (Ned) Friedman and the Arnold Arboretum present the Director’s Lecture Series, featuring nationally recognized experts addressing an array of topics related to Earth’s biodiversity and evolutionary history, the environment, conservation biology, and key social issues associated with current science. The Director’s Lecture Series is open to current Arnold Arboretum members only; visit http://arboretum.harvard.edu for information on becoming a member. Lectures take place in the Hunnewell Building Lecture Hall. Parking will be available along the Arborway and in front of the Hunnewell Building on lecture nights.

    This year’s four lectures, on January 22, February 26, March 26, and April 30, will be individually featured as posts on this website in the coming months, but because the series tends to “sell out” quickly, we suggest visiting https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/news-events/directors-lecture-series/ right now and signing up for one or more of these stunningly diverse lectures. Ned Friedman will begin with a talk on the history of photosynthetic life, Dava Sobel will talk about women in the Harvard College Observatory, taken from her book The Glass Universe, Jerry Mitrovica discusses sea level change, and Randall Fuller will present on Henry David Thoreau and Charles Darwin.

  • Monday, March 20, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – The Biographical Stories of the 19th-Century Women Who Launched the New Genre of Popular Science Writing

    Richard Holmes is an award-wining British author best-known for his biographical studies of major figures of British and French Romanticism. Recent books include Falling Upwards, How We Took to the Air: An Unconventional History of Ballooning, and The Age of Wonder, both winners of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books. Holmes’ other books include Footsteps, Sidetracks, Shelley: The Pursuit, Coleridge: Early Visions, Coleridge: Darker Reflections, and Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage. He was awarded the OBE in 1992, and is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the British Academy. His new book, This Long Pursuit, is a confessional chronicle and pilgrimage that takes him across three centuries, through much of Europe and into both his intellectual passions as well as the lively company of many earlier biographers. Central to his book is a powerful evocation of the lives of women—both scientific and literary. He is the former Professor of Biographical Studies at University of East Anglia, UK, and will speak as part of the Director’s Lecture Series on Monday, March 20 at the Arnold Arboretum. Fee Free. Arboretum members only. Registration required as seating is limited.

    Register online at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

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  • Tuesday, October 4, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Responses to Anthropogenic Climate Change: Predicting the Future Requires Knowing the Past

    The Arnold Arboretum’s Director’s Lecture Series kicks off Tuesday, October 4 at 7 pm in the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum with a talk by Camille Parmesan, Professor, School of Biological Sciences, Plymouth University, UK, and the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin. Camille’s work focuses on the impacts of climate change on wildlife, from field studies of American and European butterflies to synthetic analyses of global impacts on a broad range of species on land and in the oceans. She has participated in US and international assessments of climate change impacts and provided formal testimonies for the US House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and the Texas Senate Natural Resources Committee. Camille has served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which in 2007 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Fee Free. Arboretum Members only. Registration required as seating is limited.

    Register online at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

  • Monday, April 20, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Environmental Lawlessness

    What happens when laws and regulations don’t keep pace with changes in technology, science, and society? The answer, according to Harvard Law School Professor Richard Lazarus, is lawlessness. Come learn some of the history and circumstances behind the country’s current but outdated environmental laws, how the original scope and intentions of these laws may no longer match the scope of the problems we face today, and the lawmaking challenges we now face as we seek to address the mounting environmental risks posed by deepwater drilling, natural gas fracking, and climate change.

    Professor Lazarus, who teaches environmental law, natural resources law, Supreme Court advocacy, and torts at Harvard Law School, was the principal author of Deep Water – The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling (GPO 2011), the Report to the President of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission. On Monday, April 20, from 7 – 8:30 at the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum, he will speak of lessons learned from this environmental disaster and how new regulations in line with current technologies are needed to better protect the environment as we tap our natural resources. This free lecture is part of the Director’s Lecture Series, but registration is required at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?EventID=1.

  • Monday, March 23, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – China, Biodiversity, and the Global Environment

    China boasts not only the largest percentage of the world’s population (19%) but also one of the Earth’s richest, most diverse floras. Yet its economic rise as an industrial nation and its population density, with the associated environmental degradation, put this biodiversity at risk. Add in climate change and it is a recipe for disaster. Professor Peter Raven, a leading botanist, advocate for the conservation of biodiversity, and one of the co-editors of The Flora of China, a joint Chinese-American census of all the plants of China, is uniquely qualified to assess the consequences of over-population, industrial pollution, economic inequalities, and natural resource exploitation in China—consequences not limited to that country but affecting the entire global environment. In this Director’s Lecture Series talk on Monday, March 23, from 7 – 8:30 at the Arnold Arboretum, he will consider what it means for humanity to lose thousands of species to extinction, many before they are known or described by scientists. He’ll present his thoughts on reversing environmental degradation in China and around the globe and what is required to move all people toward an ethic of conservation and securing sustainability. Free, but registration required at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?EventID=1.

  • Monday, March 2, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – The Oldest Living Things in the World

    Since 2004 Rachel Sussman has been researching, working with biologists, and traveling the world to photograph continuously living organisms 2,000 years old and older. Her work spans disciplines, continents, and millennia: it is part art and part science, has an innate environmentalism, and is underscored by an existential incursion into Deep Time. Her original index of millennia-old organisms has never before been created in the arts or sciences. Enjoy her awe-inspiring photographs and hear what it means to bear witness to organisms that perhaps precede human history and that may survive well into future generations. Her book, The Oldest Living Things in the World, will be available for purchase and signing. This free evening at the Arnold Arboretum is part of the Director’s Lecture Series, takes place Monday, March 2 from 7 – 8:30 in the Hunnewell Building, and registration is required. Visit http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?EventID=1.

  • Arnold Arboretum Director’s Lecture Series 2015

    Each year, Director William (Ned) Friedman and the Arnold Arboretum present the Director’s Lecture Series, featuring nationally recognized experts addressing an array of topics related to Earth’s biodiversity and evolutionary history, the environment, conservation biology, and key social issues associated with current science. Lectures take place in the Hunnewell Building Lecture Hall. Parking will be available in front of the building and along the Arborway. These free lectures become completely subscribed early, and right now, through December 15, Arboretum members may register online prior to general registration thereafter. Visit http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?EventID=1 to sign up.

    The schedule is as follows: On Monday, January 12, hear Ned Friedman himself discuss Mutants in Our Midst: Darwin, Horticulture, and Evolution. Photographer Rachel Sussman speaks on Monday, March 2 on The Oldest Living Things in the World, Peter Raven, PhD and President Emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden comes on Monday, March 23 to lecture on China, Biodiversity, and the Global Environment, and finally, on Monday April 20, hear Richard Lazarus, Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law at Harvard University, who will discuss Environmental Lawlessness.