Summer 2007 | Public lectures and events | Audio and pdf London School of Economics and Political Science

Contributor(s): Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Patrick Cockburn, Tim Finch, Baroness Margaret Jay, Professor Mary Kaldor | Following a series of hearings, Channel 4 aired the findings of the Channel 4/ Foreign Policy Centre Iraq Commission in a special programme presented by Jon Snow on Saturday 14 July 2007. The Commission, the equivalent of the US Iraq Study Group, is an independent, cross-party Commission which has produced recommendations on the future of Britain's role in Iraq.

Contributor(s): The Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, Shami Chakrabarti, Nick Clegg MP, Peter Facey Dominic Grieve QC MP, Professor Robert Hazell, Gus Hosein, Henry Porter, Justice Robert Sharpe, Roger Smith, Michael Willis MP | In what will be his first major speech since taking on leadership of constitutional reform, the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw, will deliver a keynote address at the launch of the LSE's Future Britain project. The project is a two-year initiative to explore the best and most appropriate processes for constitutional reform in the UK. The Future Britain website, www.futurebritain.org, will go live on Monday 16 July 2007, with more about the project.

Contributor(s): Professor Mary Kaldor, Yahia Said, George Soros, Professor Sir Nicholas Stern | This event seeks to encourage a more holistic approach towards thinking about energy security, and will mark the launch of the publication Oil Wars, edited by Mary Kaldor, Terry Karl and Yahia Said.

Contributor(s): Mark Wilson, James Deane, Gerald Milward-Oliver | How can the media hold governments in developing countries to account? How can more effective media development improve development more widely? What is the impact of the digital revolution in Africa? Are there fragile states in which media development must be abandoned altogether? This report sets out the POLIS view of 'networked journalism' for fostering media development in Africa.

Contributor(s): Sir Nicholas Stern | Professor Stuart Corbridge is head of the Development Studies Institute, LSE. Mr Anwar Hasan, is managing director of Tata Ltd.UK. Professor S Parasuraman is Director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Professor Sir Nicholas Stern is the IG Patel Professor of Economics & Government and director of the Asia Research Centre at LSE.

Contributor(s): Professor Axel Honneth | This lecture develops Freud's implicit idea of the freedom of the will. For Freud, the 'healthy' person is very often determined by the same kind of irrational powers to which the neurotic personality is subjected. On the basis of a 'normalised' concept of repression, Freud has to explain how a normal subject should be able to gain emancipation from these unconscious constraints of his or her will. What conception of the individual self-relationship will enable us to solve this problem? How might we clarify the link Freud established between individual autonomy and the reflexive appropriation of one's own past?