Category Archives: Events

Cambridge Forum current event schedule

What Is Healthcare: Is it a public or personal responsibility?

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WHAT IS HEALTHCARE?
Tuesday, March 26 at 5 pm

Cambridge Forum takes a look at our current health care to see how it is changing.  Ask anyone who has fallen off mainstream medical coverage and into the dark recesses of illness to discover what a scary place it is to land. Where is the good guidance, the support and infrastructure?  As ever, not everyone has the same ideas about how to fix the broken system. 

Susannah Fox’s solution has been tracking the expert networks of patients, survivors and caregivers who have witnessed the cracks in the system and come up with a way forward.  Fox believes that the next wave of health innovation will come from the front lines of a “patient-led revolution in medical care” and she has written a book about this new trend, entitled REBEL HEALTH

Susannah Fox helps people navigate health and technology. She served as Chief Technology Officer for the US Department of Health and Human Services, where she led an open data and innovation lab. Prior to that, she was the entrepreneur-in-residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and directed the health portfolio at the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project.

Everyone seems to agree on one thing – the dire shortage of doctors and professional carers available to patients.  In an age of increasing techno-medicine, many feel that no amount of tech can replace hands-on care and human support.  Everyone appears to want the latest treatment options, yet patients complain about the lack of personal interaction and compassion. 

Dr. Allen Sussman, is a retired endocrinologist and Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Washington. He served as director of Alternative Medicine Services at Valley Medical Center working to systemize standards of practice within alternative medicine. His writing is full of wisdom and everyday observations about the role of the physician and the limits of AI.

 "I am not just a statistic" is the cry of those who feel that the delivery of high-quality care has become sterile and clinical. The practice of medicine requires humility and collaboration, listening with the heart and heeding inner wisdom. The focus is not the drug. Nor is it simply curing the patient. It is being with the patient.
SAVING THE ART OF MEDICINE.

Are you satisfied with your current health care – what most needs improving?

Russia’s New Recklessness

Russia will always matter, said Fiona Hill, former White House Russian expert, at the Harvard Kennedy School, only last month. This is due to its strategic location, it enormous land mass and its environmental impact, all of which make Russia impossible to ignore.  The sudden death of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s opposition leader, coupled with Ukraine’s recent setbacks, America’s political turmoil and the coming presidential elections in Russia, have all conspired to boost Putin’s reckless confidence.  Is he anticipating a new phase of global aggression, perhaps? And does his current political posturing signal the death knell for democracy?

Cambridge Forum considers what future prospects exist for Russia, post-Navalny, pre-election and what the global response should be in light of America’s ambivalence about the future of NATO.  Can anything substantial be done to strengthen the democratic values of the Western alliance and counter the creeping worldwide shift toward autocratic regimes?

This week saw several thousand Russians brave the extreme cold and the real risk of arrest, to attend Navalny’s funeral in Moscow, giving mixed messages to the Kremlin. Was this gesture indicative of a deep political rift with Putin’s presidency or merely a last-ditch attempt to register dissent against all odds?

What should America’s role be in the Ukraine? Do you fear an escalation if we do not act decisively?

Peter Pomerantsev is a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of the Arena Initiative.  Born in Kyiv, Ukraine  Peter grew up in the U.K.  He is the author of three books about Russian and other authoritarian propaganda, his latest, How to Win an Information War, The Propagandist who Outwitted Hitler has just been published.

Alexandra Vacroux is Executive Director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. She lived in Moscow from 1992-2004.

A Long Time Coming: The Role Of Race In American History

Ray Anthony Shepard has put together an award-winning book for young readers to counter what he says are “years of sanitized Black History months and schoolbooks.” He has chosen instead to tell the story from the inside – examining the question of race through the lyrical biographies of six prominent American heroes, all of whom challenged and changed the racial barriers of their day – Ona Judge, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Ida B Wells, MLK and Barack Obama.

Shepard intertwines his academic research with personal memories of his mother’s stories about her enslaved father, accounts informed by his own experiences of living through eight decades from the era of Jim Crow to the present day. He provides a refreshing and corrective understanding of the role of race in American life – Black and White. As a retired history teacher and textbook editor, he now writes books “that didn’t exist when I was in the classroom and books I couldn’t publish as an editor.

Recorded 2/27/2024

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The Role Of Race In American History

Ray Anthony Shepard graduated from the University of Nebraska and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The conversation will be moderated by Jude Nixon, Professor of English and former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Salem State University.

SAVING OURSELVES: From Climate Shocks To Climate Action

Recorded 2/13/2024

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Dana R. Fisher is a renowned climate researcher and a self-proclaimed ‘apocalyptic optimist’ who believes that we can no longer wait for governments to pass the laws we need, for businesses to do the right thing, or for technological silver bullets to maintain a livable planet.  Each of us, Fisher says, must take action to save ourselves and save the planet.

“After 28 years of failed climate negotiations, scientifically informed emissions reductions set by governments have languished. Consequently, the pace at which the world is mitigating and adapting to the threat of climate change is far too slow to meet the challenge. Carbon concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise quickly, as the ice sheets melt and climate shocks—like droughts, floods, and heatwaves—increase in frequency and intensity.  

Meanwhile, leadership of the climate negotiations at this late hour has been relegated to petro-states and former fossil fuel executives, which has helped make it impossible to agree upon, let alone implement, policies that could save us from the worst of the climate crisis. The writing is on the wall: the only way for things to get better is after they get much worse. Lives will be lost, and social conflict driven by climate migration and competition for increasingly scarce resources will proliferate. These look like insurmountable odds, and in many ways they are. But there is a slim chance that we can slow climate change enough to preserve our planet and minimize the catastrophe that is just around the corner.” 

Adapted from Saving Ourselves

Dana R. Fisher is Director of the Center for Environment, Community & Equity and a Professor in the School of International Service at American University.  She has written several books and her latest is Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action. 

PENNIE OPAL PLANT (Yaqui, undocumented Cherokee and Choctaw) is a lifelong activist whose focus is on ensuring that the sacred system of life continues in a manner that is safe, sustainable and healthy.  In 1980, she began working on nuclear issues, including uranium mining, nuclear energy, and weapons.  She is co-founder of several grassroots actions groups including No More SF Bay; Movement Rights, an Indigenous women-led organization aligning human law with the laws of Mother Earth; and founder of The Society of Fearless Grandmothers which trains people in non-violent direct action.  

KATHLEEN SULLIVAN says she really “woke up” to climate activism two years ago when she joined Bill McKibben’s organization, Third Act and helped found the Maine chapter. She has subsequently formed Freeport Climate Action Now which now has 1,000 members.  

“It is about much more than my own grandchildren, it has to do with the deeper question of how we think of ourselves as human beings in relation to the earth.  We have a moral responsibility to do the right thing.”

Is Our Junk Food Addiction Killing Us?

An astounding 60% of a typical American diet is made up of ultra-processed foods – like cereals, breads, yoghurts and frozen dinners plus sweets and soda.  Now there’s mounting scientific evidence that UPFs are not just potentially addictive but also linked to our rocketing rates of obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.  We know that food can be either medicine or toxin; so how do we recognize “junk” food and make better eating choices? 

We examine the links between diet and disease, zoning in on the addictive alchemy of certain combinations that make up HPF (hyper-palatable foods) which are irresistible to our taste buds.  We ask three experts in the field for their advice.

L to R:  Jerry Mande, Tera Fazzino and Larissa Zimberoff.

Jerry Mande is CEO of Nourish Science and Adjunct Professor of Nutrition, at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.  Mande has a wealth of experience in national public health and food policy. He served in senior policymaking positions for three presidents at USDA, FDA, and OSHA helping lead landmark public health initiatives. In 2009, he was appointed by President Obama as USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety, In 2011, he moved to USDA’s Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services, where he spent six years working to improve the health outcomes of the nation’s $100 billion investment in 15 nutrition programs. During the Clinton administration, Mande was Senior Advisor to the FDA commissioner where he helped shape national policy on nutrition, food safety, and tobacco.

Tera Fazzino is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and Treatment at the University of Kansas. She is an experimental psychologist who studies processes involved in addiction, obesity, and eating disorders. 

Larissa Zimberoff is a freelance journalist who covers the intersection of food, technology, and business; also the author of Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change What We Eat.

Join the discussion about who is responsible for the food environment we find ourselves in and whether the FDA should do more to regulate the labelling of highly addictive foodstuffs with health warnings. 

Recorded January 30, 2024

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Is The American Century Over?

At the beginning of an uncertain New Year, Cambridge Forum considers America’s position on the international stage with the help of Joseph Nye, one of the country’s foremost thinkers on American foreign policy.  For the past eight decades, we have lived in “the American Century” – a period during which the US has enjoyed unrivalled global power – be it political, economic or military.  Born on the cusp of this new era, Nye has spent a lifetime illuminating our understanding of the changing contours of America power and world affairs.  His many books on the nature of power and political leadership have earned him his reputation as one of the most current and influential world scholars.  
 
Joseph Nye shares his own personal memories of living through the American century. From his early years growing up on a farm in rural New Jersey to his time in the State Department, Pentagon and Intelligence Community during the Carter and Clinton administrations where he witnessed American power up close, shaping policy on key issues such as nuclear proliferation and East Asian security.  After 9/11 drew the US into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nye remained an astute observer and critic of the Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies. Today Nye brings a fresh and insightful perspective about America’s future role in the world; its primacy may be changing, but is it for the better?  Join the discussion about what 2024 might hold for the declining arc of American power.

Recorded January 16, 2024

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Joseph Nye is a world-renowned authority on American power in the modern era whose work has influenced generations of scholars and policy-makers. His books Soft Power, The Future of Power, The Power to Lead, Is the American Century Over? and Do Morals Matter: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump are widely acclaimed and his writings have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the NYT among others. 

Single-Minded: Can You Live A Happy Satisfied Life, Alone?

Consider the state of singlehood:  Lots of health research indicates that people who live alone have higher health risks and are generally unhappier. Not so, according to Bella DePaulo, author of a new book, Single At Heart.  DePaulo is a 70-year old psychologist, who in addition to being single all her life, has also studied the state of being single from a professional standpoint and she is adamant that there are multiple myths about her chosen way of living.

“I could be living at a time or in a place where the prospects for staying single for life would have been much more daunting. Maybe it would have been nearly impossible for me to support myself financially without a spouse. Maybe attitudes toward single people would have been even more disparaging than they are now.  That would have been a profound loss. For people like me who are single at heart, the risk is not what we’ll miss if we do not organize our lives around a romantic partner, but what we’ll miss if we do. We would miss the opportunity to live our most meaningful, fulfilling and psychologically rich lives by living someone else’s version of a good life instead of our own. We would not get to be who we really are.” 

Bella DePaulo

Joining the conversation will be Fenton Johnson, who has written extensively about the state of marriage and the state of solitude. He’s author of three novels and four works of creative nonfiction, most recently At the Center of All Beauty:  Solitude and the Creative Life, a New York Times Editors’ Pick. 

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Crushed Wild Mint: Language Rooted In Landscape

Explore some indigenous thinking mixed with a little magic as Jess Housty shares her debut poetry collection, Crushed Wild Mint.

Jess Housty is a Haíɫzaqv parent, writer, and land-based educator from the community of Bella Bella, BC.  Housty lives in unceded ancestral homelands where she works in community building, food sovereignty, and leadership development. She is a freelance contributor to The Tyee in addition to her debut poetry collection from Nightwood Editions.

Housty’s writing is enmeshed in her indigenous roots and values, “wealth is measured not by what you’ve accumulated but by what you give away.  True abundance comes from community and turning a gift into more gifts”. She demonstrates this beautifully in Sixty-Eight Plums, a surprise bag of plums appears on her doorstep and provides an opportunity for her to carry the joy forward by making jars of plum jam to leave at neighbors’ doors.

Sixty-Eight Plums 

When sixty-eight golden plums appear like a bowl of phosphorescence on your stoop, look both upward
and all around you
when you give a little thanks. 

It is no small feat
that they have arrived here: 

Someone planted trees,
smiling to themselves at the foolishness of growing plums in this climate
where the rain makes everything soft— makes everyone soft. 

And for more than one hundred years the trees have probably not been tended but certainly been spared the axe
and the lightning and unhappy accidents, and survived to delight you. 

And this week, this week of softening
and relentless rain, someone lifted their hand level with their heart or higher—
sixty-eight times to the branches
while shaking the weather
out of their hair—
and doing this, they thought of you. 

So plunge your clean hands in the bowl (What else is there to do?)
and pick out the stems and leaves;
tear into the rain-soft flesh, 

the sun-bright flesh, to pry out the pits;
and think of how you will carry forward joy when you leave jars of warm jam
on many doorsteps in the morning. 

Recorded 12/5/23

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Building Bridges To Belonging

Are there simple steps we can all take in our everyday lives to promote empathy, overcome difference and forge lasting connections?  Yes, says Stanford psychologist Geoffrey L. Cohen, whose scientific research offers proof that concrete solutions exist and work.  His new book Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides reveals some of the causes and consequences of a sense of belonging in school, work, our politics, health care, and other arenas of social life.

SIGN UP for our Zoom event
WHAT IS HEALTHCARE?
Tuesday, March 26 at 5 pm

We all want to belong but most of us don’t fully appreciate that need in others.  Sometimes, inadvertently, we threaten others’ sense of belonging. Yet even small acts can establish connection, brief activities such as reflecting on our core values and practices that Cohen terms “situation-crafting” have been shown to lessen political polarization, improve motivation, combat racism and enhance health and wellbeing in ourselves and others.

Geoffrey Cohen is Professor of Organizational Studies in Education and Business at Stanford University.

Cohen’s work examines the processes that shape people’s sense of belonging and self, and implications for social problems. He studies the big and small threats to belonging and self-integrity that people encounter in school, work, and health care settings, and strategies to create more inclusive spaces for people from all walks of life. He says he’s inspired by Kurt Lewin, “The best way to try to understand something is to try to change it.”

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Out Of Sight

This forum accompanies two men, Mark Erelli, a musician and Andrew Leland, a writer, on their separate journeys from the world of sightedness to one of blindness.

Mark Erelli was performing in 2020, when he looked down at his guitar and couldn’t see his fingers on the frets. A subsequent diagnosis of RP (retinitis pigmentosa) provided some answers, but also new questions.  Does diminished eyesight decrease one’s insight? What does it mean to be ‘fully seen’ by oneself + others?  These questions, along with Erelli’s drive to regain his creative agency, formed the basis for Lay Your Darkness Down.

After Erelli learned that his RP – a degenerative condition which leads to legal blindness – has an uncertain timeline, he was terrified.

How was I supposed to write and sing my truth if I couldn’t observe the world around me?

In his isolation and out of force of habit, Erelli turned to songwriting, in the hope that his internal compass might guide him in assessing a radically-altered vision of his future.

I was exploring this new perspective accessible only because I was slowly and unpredictably losing my sight.”

Erelli began to record at home using a slower, more deliberate approach than in the past. Layering different colors and tones one at a time, he relished a process that felt more akin to oil painting than quick snapshots of fleeting moments.

I was attuned to a much deeper level of musical and technical detail this time around… as a way of compensating for the profound loss of control that I felt in the immediate wake of my new disability.

In 2018 By Degrees was nominated for Song of the Year at the Americana Honors and Awards; and most recently, Erelli has become an advocate for low-vision artists, working with venues to make spaces more accessible.  Written in the wake of his diagnosis with a RP, Erelli’s newest album Lay Your Darkness Down is the next step on Erelli’s journey, following up on 2020’s Blindsided.

Andrew Leland’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other outlets. From 2013-2019, he hosted and produced The Organist, an arts and culture podcast, for KCRW. He has been an editor at The Believer since 2003. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and son.

In THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND: a memoir at the end of sight, author Andrew Leland is suspended in the liminal state of the soon-to-be blind.  Leland embarks on a sweeping exploration of the state of blindness including his exploration of his changing relationships with his wife and son, and self.  His book represents his determination not to merely survive the transition but to grow from it – seeking out that which makes blindness enlightening.

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