Digital Badging Announcement with Bill Clinton, HASTAC, Mozilla, and the MacArthur Foundation at CGI America

Time:

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At the Clinton Global Initiative conference in Chicago, June 13, President Clinton acknowledged the work to create Open Badging for Learning by UCHRI/HASTAC (David Theo Goldberg, Director of UCHRI and co-founder with Cathy Davidson of HASTAC), Mozilla (Mark Surman, Executive Director), and the MacArthur Foundation (Connie Yowell, Director of Education).

Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative America (CGI America) meeting, an annual event of the Clinton Global Initiative that seeks innovative solutions for economic recovery, Clinton said three partners – the MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, and HASTAC – have created the commitment to Open Badges. Outreach and technical assistance will be provided to help employers and universities across the country incorporate Open Badges in hiring, promotions, admissions, and credit over the next three years.

Clinton added, “The unemployment rate among returning military veterans persisted for years after the financial crisis at about 25% higher than the national average. [...] Veterans were repeatedly required to go back to college and get degrees in subjects where the study involved far less scope of responsibility than they had already shouldered as members of the military. So it may be that some of the principle beneficiaries of this are people who have served our country in the various military services, and their ability to flow more quickly into appropriate jobs in the economy will benefit all of us.”

For more: http://www.macfound.org/press/press-releases/better-futures-2-million-americans-through-open-badges/

Project:Connect – Hacking for a Better Web

Location: New York, NY | Time: May 9, 2013
Project:Connect – Hacking for a Better Web

Facebook, MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, and the Family Online Safety Institute Launch Project:Connect

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, and the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) today announced a series of activities to advance healthy online experiences so young people can more easily make smart and responsible choices on the Internet.

Under the banner Project:Connect, the four partners will launch an all-day “hackathon” in New York City on Thursday, May 9. The event will bring together programmers, designers, and educators to develop prototypes for social tools, including apps, badges, and curriculum in pursuit of a better Web.

“Supporting healthy online communities is a top priority for MacArthur,” said Connie Yowell, Director of Education at the MacArthur Foundation. “Research shows us that the Internet has become a place where young people are learning and growing. The online world is rapidly becoming a hub for civic activity and lifelong learning, and we need to give youth the tools they need to become engaged and responsible digital citizens.”

Surfacing Innovative Ideas – The Project:Connect Hackathon

Borne out of a shared belief that technology can advance a dialogue about what it means to participate responsibly in a digital world, Project:Connect’s May 9 hackathon will award prizes in the following areas:

  • Social Tools for Social Good – Enabling people to create a culture of kindness and respect that enhances civic participation.
  • Social Tools that Enable Control of Information – Helping people understand how to control their information, and manage privacy and security.
  • Social Tools that Enable Literacy – Helping people build, access, and understand or make components of the Web.

Top concepts, as identified by a panel of expert judges, will be awarded cash prizes.

”We’re thrilled to partner with the MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, and FOSI to promote innovative solutions that can help parents, teachers and teens connect and share safely and do good online,” said Marne Levine, Vice President for Global Public Policy at Facebook. By encouraging digital literacy and responsible online behavior, we can enable teens to use technology as a vehicle for opportunity, learning, and social change.”

Continuing Momentum For Youth During The Summer

The May 9 hackathon will be followed by a series of events at museums and libraries around the country for youth and their families to learn new skills related to digital literacy and civic engagement.

“The beauty of the Web is that when you want to make it better, you don’t have to sit back and wait for someone to fix it for you,” said Mark Surman, Executive Director of Mozilla. “You can build it yourself. We’re thrilled to come together with such great partners to help people make the Web what they want it to be.”

A Platform for Good

In addition to monetary awards, winners of the May 9 hackathon will have their social tools featured on FOSI’s A Platform for Good (aplatformforgood.org), a site dedicated to helping parents, teachers, and students connect, share and do good. A Platform for Good is supported by MacArthur and leaders across several industries, including social media, telecommunications, software and the Internet.

“This hackathon is a great way to highlight the best new thinking around digital citizenship and we are excited to host some of the winners on ‘A Platform for Good’,” said Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute. “Events like this allow for collaboration on some of today’s biggest challenges and show how technology can be used to do great things.”

For more information about Project:Connect, please visit http://dmlcompetition.net/project-connect.

About Facebook

Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them. To find out more about Facebook, visit our website at www.facebook.com.

About The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. Since 2004, MacArthur has invested more than $100 million in research, design, and practice to better understand how digital media are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life, and what that means for learning and the institutions that support it.  More information: www.macfound.org/reimagine.

About Mozilla

Mozilla is a global non-profit that promotes openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web. It strives to make the Web a force for good, while encouraging the users of the Web to also become makers of the Web.


About the Family Online Safety Institute

The Family Online Safety Institute is an international, non-profit organization that works to make the online world safer for kids and their families. FOSI convenes leaders in industry, government and the non-profit sectors to collaborate and innovate new solutions and policies in the field of online safety. Through research, resources, events and special projects, FOSI promotes a culture of responsibility online and encourages a sense of digital citizenship for all.

Working at Living: The Social Relations of Precarity

Location: Multicultural Center Theater, UC Santa Barbara | Time: May 9, 2013
Working at Living: The Social Relations of Precarity

Based on the work of a UC Humanities Network working group on the Humanities and Changing Conceptions of Work, “Working at Living: The Social Relations of Precarity” explores the sociality of precarious labor, both formal and informal, from an interdisciplinary, global, and intersectional approach that considers how sociocultural inequalities are and have been magnified and countered during times of financial crises, technological development, and increasing unemployment. Attentive to social contexts that shape, even as they are shaped by, constructs of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, ability, age, and citizenship, we consider categorical questions of what counts as work and who counts as a worker from feminist, ethnic, and cultural studies perspectives. We bring to the conversation insights from the humanities sometimes missing from investigations of the informal sector and too often ignored in discussions of the global economic and employment crisis.

Public presentations by the members of the UC Humanities Network working group, “Working at Living: The Social Relations of Precarity.”A tentative webinar is scheduled with National Domestic Workers Alliance activists.

Sponsored by the UC Humanities Network Mellon Foundation Grant on the Humanities and Changing Conceptions of Work, the Hull Chair in Feminist Studies, and the Multicultural Center.

Details: http://www.femst.ucsb.edu/news/event/385-042213

Commoning Precarity: No Work, Refusal, Autonomy

Location: McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB, UC Santa Barbara | Time: May 10-11, 2013
Commoning Precarity: No Work, Refusal, Autonomy

Today precarity, a life without any guaranteed work, is becoming the condition of millions of people worldwide. The conference focuses on the social and affective costs of precarity, but also on what possibilities it may open. Can we think of precarity as more than a form of neoliberal governance, and rather see it as a means of insurgent politics, aimed at reclaiming the common? How can the Autonomists’ idea of the refusal of work help us rethink precarity in the present moment?

Speakers will include Kathi Weeks, (Women’s Studies, Duke University), R.Radhakrishnan, (Comparative Literature, UC Irvine), Douglas Kellner (Education,UCLA), and George Caffentzis (Philoshophy, University of Southern Maine). Moroccan filmmaker Leila Kilani will be screen and discuss her new film “On The Edge”.

Sponsored by the UCHRI, the IHC, COMMA, the Center on Modern Culture, Materialism and Aesthetics, the Dept. of English,  the Comparative Literature Program, the Center for the Middle East, the Dept. of Art History and History of Architecture, and the Dept. of Film and Media Studies.

Details: http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/commoning-precarity/

After Secularization

Location: 1010 Humanities Gateway, UC Irvine | Time: see agenda below | March 1-2, 2013
After Secularization

This conference features the dissertation research of an interdisciplinary group of young scholars from around the country who are investigating the secular and secularism after the failure, or at least refiguring, of the secularization thesis. Their projects are grounded in a wide range of contexts — historical, literary, and social scientific. With support from the Social Science Research Council’s Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, the panelists met in 2010 to assess the state of the field and to refine their initial research plans. The participants now reconvene with senior scholars to present their advanced research and offer future directions for inquiry into the secular.

Free and open to the public. Sponsored by the University of California Humanities Research Institute and the Social Science Research Council. Please contact Joseph Blankholm at jlb2210@columbia.edu with any questions.

Conference Agenda:

Friday, March 1, 2013

3:15 PM

Welcome and Introductory Remarks, Prof. Jonathan Sheehan, Dept. of History (UC-Berkeley)

3:30 – 5:00 PM

Panel 1: Negotiating the Secular
Panelists: Hikmet Kocamaner (University of Arizona), James Robertson (NYU)
Respondent: Prof. James Gelvin, Dept. of History (UCLA)

Saturday, March 2, 2013

9:30 – 11:00 AM
Panel 2: Pious Secularists in Global Affairs
Panelists: David Buckley (Georgetown University), Justin Reynolds (Columbia University)
Respondent: Prof. Cecelia Lynch, Dept. of Political Science (UCI)

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Roundtable Discussion: Debating the Post-Secular

1:00 – 3:00 PM

Panel 3: Secularizing Theologies
Panelists: CJ Gordon (UCI), Alex Hernandez (UCLA), Sarah Shortall (Harvard University)
Respondent: Prof. Jane Newman, Dept. of Comparative Literature (UCI)

3:30 – 5:00 PM

Panel 4: The Religious Surplus of Secularization
Panelists: Joseph Blankholm (Columbia University), Annie Hardison-Moody (Emory University)
Respondent: Prof. Lilith Mahmud, Dept. of Anthropology (UCI)

5:30 PM
Closing Remarks, Prof. Vincent Pecora, Dept. of English (University of Utah)

Transnational and Diasporic Citizenship Across the Americas

Location: 4000 Humanities Gateway, UC Irvine | Time: January 17, 2013 | 3:00-4:30 PM
Transnational and Diasporic Citizenship Across the Americas

4000 Humanities Gateway, UC Irvine | January 17, 2013 | 3:00-4:30 PM
State interests in emigrant populations have become more salient in Latin America in the past decade and many Latin American governments have formulated new policies to include their migrant populations abroad in national polities. These policies have come to replace older models of residential citizenship with more flexible options for membership and belonging although not necessarily less exclusionary. Yet the ability of people to act as citizens in certain transnational spaces is mediated by inequalities along the axes of gender, race, nationality, and class, both in source and destination countries as well as transnationally. In this talk we draw on examples from case studies from Mexico, El Salvador, Peru, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. to discuss the particularities of migrant-state relationships in various settings while also pointing to new general trends in emigrant citizenship.

Public / Not Public: Making the Humanities Count

Location: 135 Humanities Instructional Building, UC Irvine | Time: 5-7PM | January 23, 2013

Please join us for a panel discussion on The University We Are For.

uwer4-web

In this era of dwindling public support, what and who do public universities stand for? What forms of knowledge are rightfully represented in the public academy? How and for what do we train our students? How and by whom are these choices to be made?

Join us as this distinguished panel of visionaries from science, engineering, economics, art and architecture and the humanities take on the hard questions, offering different – often clashing – perspectives on the university we should be for.

We will film this event to be added at a later date to the events section of UCHRI’s YouTube Channel.


ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

John Seely Brown is the Independent Co-Chairman of the Deloitte’s Center for the Edge and a visiting scholar and advisor to the Provost at University of Southern California (USC). Prior to that he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)—a position he held for nearly two decades. While head of PARC, Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as the management of radical innovation, organizational learning, complex adaptive systems, and nano technologies. He was a cofounder of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL). His personal research interests include digital youth culture, digital media and institutional innovation.

Cathy Davidson teaches at Duke University, where she co-directs the Ph.D. Lab in Digital Knowledge and holds two distinguished chairs (Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies). She served as Duke’s first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies and helped to create the Program in Information Science + Information Studies and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. She is a cofounder of the global learning network HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), and she was recently appointed by President Obama to the National Council on the Humanities. Her more than twenty books include Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji, Revolution and the Word, and The Future of Thinking (with HASTAC co-founder David Theo Goldberg). Her latest book, Now You See It:  How Technology and Brain Science Will Transform Schools and Business for the 21st Century (Viking, 2011) was named a “top 10 science book” of the year by Publisher’s Weekly. In October 2012, she and David Theo Goldberg received Educators of the Year awards from the World Technology Network in recognition of their visionary contribution to science and technology in education through their work as co-founders of HASTAC.

Ann Pendleton-Jullian is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Design at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University. She is an architect, educator, and writer of international standing. Her design work negotiates the overlap between architecture, landscape, culture, and technology and is motivated towards internationalism as both a concept and a reality. She obtained her BArch degree from Cornell University and her MArch from Princeton. As Director of the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University, her most recent work has focused on furthering the use of game design as a way to approach complex and emergent systems within architectural, urban and landscape design, both theoretically and in practice. And seeing education as its own design problem, she is also involved in thinking and writing about education for the 21st century, in practice.

Andrew J. Policano has been Dean of The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, since August, 2004.  Prior to arriving at UC Irvine, Policano was Dean of the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for 10 years.  He received his doctorate from Brown University in economics, and his work in macroeconomics has been widely published.  He has also published numerous papers on higher education and media rankings in addition to his recently completed book, Public No More: A New Path to Excellence for America’s Public Universities, from Stanford University Press. He was recently awarded the Dean’s Leadership Circle Professorship at UC Irvine for his many contributions to the School and University. In 2011, Policano was inducted into the inaugural Hall of Fame for the PhD Project for his work helping to increase the number of PhD candidates and therefore the number of business school faculty members from underrepresented minority groups by over 400%.

Larry Smarr is the founding Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), a UC San Diego/UC Irvine partnership, and holds the Harry E. Gruber professorship in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at UCSD’s Jacobs School. At Calit2, Smarr has continued to drive major developments in information infrastructure– including the Internet, Web, scientific visualization, virtual reality, and global telepresence–begun during his previous 15 years as founding Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Smarr served as principal investigator on NSF’s OptIPuter project and currently is principal investigator of the Moore Foundation’s CAMERA project and co-principal investigator on NSF’s GreenLight project. In October 2008 he was the Leadership Dialog Scholar in Australia.

For details, contact us at communications@hri.uci.edu or RSVP on Facebook.

Life-Times of Disposability in Global Neoliberalism: China and the Philippines

Location: UC Irvine | Time: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 | 3:00 PM
Life-Times of Disposability in Global Neoliberalism: China and the Philippines

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Talk by Neferti X. M. Tadiar, Professor of Women’s Studies, Barnard College

“Recent scholarly works have described the perceived shift from liberalism to neoliberalism concomitant with globalization in terms of a shift in the logic of constitution of forms of personhood and governmentality from one constructed around rights and property to another constructed around risk and security. Beyond political and economic practice and rationality, this identified shift in global hegemony is seen to produce and issue out of changed structures of lived subjectivity and feeling, social experience and imagination. In this paper I explore the question of disposability and temporal aesthetics in global neoliberalism as exemplified in the cinematic work of Jia Zhang-Ke and Brillante Mendoza, and therefore in the regional context shared by China and the Philippines. I look at the practices of attention of these filmmakers and the specific forms of rendering what I call “life-times” of disposability, life-producing practices of social experience of surplus populations that are at once the consequence and means of new forms of value-production in the financialized global economy. I consider the aesthetic forms of these works of Asian cinema and the broader economy in which they participate to think about the uneven dynamics of and differentiated political possibilities within the dominant cultural logic of global neoliberalism.”
Hosted by UCHRI’s Fall 2012 Residential Research Group, Imperial Legacies, Postsocialist Contexts: History, Ethics and Difference in a Neoliberal Age. Co-sponsored by the Critical Theory Emphasis, Asian American Studies, and Culture and Theory at UC Irvine. Free & open to the public. For details: aread@hri.uci.edu | 949.824.8900 | Download flyer (PDF)