The Bryan Series®

Bruce Stewart Joins Meet the Press Conversation on Improving Education

2009-11-15T16:27:15-05:00

On Meet the Press Nov. 15, alumnus Bruce Stewart, former head of school at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., offered thoughts on improving education by recruiting better teachers.

Host David Gregory (Bryan Series April 13) played Stewart's pre-recorded interview during a discussion about improving education with Newt Gingrich, Al Sharpton and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Stewart said, in part, "If you look at Singapore, look at Finland, the reason they consistently are testing their population of students in the top levels of international exams, it's the teaching force."

Stewart retired from the Sidwell post earlier this year. He graduated from Guilford in 1961 and returned to teach and serve as an administrator. He was invited commencement speaker in 2008.

Gregory's oldest child is a student at Sidwell.

Post-event Survey for Krugman Program Produces Nearly 300 Comments

2009-11-13T10:31:38-05:00

Bryan Series subscribers offered constructive comments about their experience at the Paul Krugman program Nov. 3 in a post-event e-mail survey.

About 42% of subscribers responded to the survey. 69% of respondents were very satisfied with the speaker's presentation and 71% were very satisfied with the event overall.

About 290 comments were offered, falling into three major categories:

9% of respondents offered suggestions for improving the Q&A, including submitting questions after the talk.
4% said they had difficulty hearing the program.
4% said they thought the speaker offered no new information, could have used visuals and could have given a longer talk. (Others thought Krugman was right on target).

Some thoughts: We continue to consider how to give more of an opportunity for attendees to submit questions after hearing what the speaker has to say. Currently, our format does not include an intermission between the talk and Q&A. When we have had an interlude, some people choose to leave. We are wondering if attendees would be interested in texting questions during the talk. Think about it, and let us know. We will be reviewing the sound system setup again before February's program and addressing other issues that are common to all three post-event surveys thus far.

Thanks again for your post-event survey responses!

Bill Moyers Interviews Anna Deavere Smith on "Journal" Nov. 13

2009-11-12T17:20:34-05:00

Bill Moyers will interview Anna Deavere Smith on "Bill Moyers Journal" Friday, Nov. 13. The program airs on UNC-TV at 11 p.m. and on UNC-MX at 9 p.m.

The promotion for this week's program states, "While politicians and the media war over 'the public option' and 'bending the cost curve,' acclaimed actress-playwright Anna Deavere Smith gives voice to questions of life and death, sickness and healthcare" through her one-woman show "Let Me Down Easy."

Smith is quoted on the program's Web site, saying, "I think every culture needs room for the language that's not official and that language is often in art. When I hear the official language, it makes me suppose that this is a time when we need a lot more art that's not going to have answers that are in black and white.

She adds, "That's not going to have answers and language that is vetted, edited and put before focus groups and everything else so that it sounds exactly right. That we need to have the real stories of real people and that's, I guess, what my work is -- trying to find those stories that don't fit in any one category and don't necessarily fit in one side."

Moyers spoke in the Bryan Series in March 2006 and Smith will speak Sunday, Feb. 28 (3:30 p.m.).

Anna Deavere Smith Tackles End-of-Life Issues in "Let Me Down Easy"

2009-11-10T12:27:15-05:00

In its third story in two months on Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman play, "Let Me Down Easy," the New York Times on Nov. 9 lauds her treatment of health care and end-of-life issues. The play has been extended through Dec. 6 at the off-Broadway Second Stage Theater.

The play was nine years and 300 interviews with famous and not-so-famous Americans and originated about a decade ago when the chairman of the department of medicine at Yale invited her to interview doctors and patients and perform their words for the medical staff, Smith says.

"I try to embody America by embodying its words," she says about her plays. In this case, they are words about the deepest human experiences: mortality and nobility of character, perseverance, hope and acceptance.

Smith will speak in the Bryan Series Sunday, Feb. 28 (3:30 p.m.).

Crowd Cheers Gorbachev at Commemoration of Fall of Berlin Wall

2009-11-09T16:40:52-05:00

On Nov. 9, former Soviet leader and Bryan Series speaker Mikhail Gorbachev was cheered at an event commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.

The New York Times reported that Gorbachev and Lech Walesa joined German chancellor Angela Merkel in making a symbolic walk across the Bornholmer Strasse bridge. They were retracing the steps of the first East Germans, Merkel included, surging to West Berlin when the wall crumbled.

"The bridge was packed shoulder to shoulder with people, and the biggest cheer came when Mrs. Merkel thanked Mr. Gorbachev for the reforming attitude he brought to the Soviet leadership. The crowd chanted, 'Gorby, Gorby, Gorby,'" the Times reported.

Gorbachev spoke in the Bryan Series in October 2004.

America Moving "A Few Steps Back from the Brink," Krugman Says

2009-11-04T18:11:28-05:00

Though Guilford didn’t deliberately schedule Paul Krugman’s Bryan Series talk on Election Night, the timing offered a nice bit of symmetry. Krugman, the New York Times columnist who received the Nobel Prize in Economics a little over a year ago, offered his perspective on the financial crisis that exploded just in time for last year’s election season – what caused it, what we’ve done right to dull its potential impact and when it might end.

Krugman’s talk last night reminded me an awful lot of the Bryan Series appearance almost a year ago of CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and her husband, former State Department official James Rubin. In both cases, you have speakers who are breathtakingly insightful about their chosen areas, and yet able to translate complex, theoretical concepts for a person like me.

Watching Krugman – as professorial and unassuming as he is – break down the "great recession" last night was riveting, due in large part to his emphasis on socio-historic and even geographic influences. For instance, the real estate bubble in Europe rivaled that of the U.S. - as Krugman put it, "Spain = Florida" – and the unsustainable levels of capital pouring into Eastern Europe meant that "We had some of the biggest trade deficits in history in places like Latvia and Estonia."

Speaking of trade deficits … According to Krugman, recessions of the level we’ve seen in the U.S. over the past year may technically end once the economy starts growing again, but unemployment levels can take years to return to pre-recession levels – unless one of two things happens. The first is an "export-driven" recovery like the one South Korea enjoyed in 1998, where "the route to recovery is a big trade surplus."

The other is something unforeseen that’s too explosive and attractive not to invest in – railroads in the 19th Century, the Internet, etc. Krugman thinks that green technologies could act as that type of game-changer this time around, saying that it “could drive a recovery if the right incentives were there.”

In Krugman’s analysis, our economy has taken at least a few steps back from the brink. With creativity – and boldness – we’ll make it back to safety.

--Sara Butner

Krugman: Stimulus Package "Too Little of a Good Thing"

2009-11-02T16:47:42-05:00

In his New York Times op-ed column Nov. 2, "Too Little of a Good Thing," Paul Krugman says more federal stimulus is needed to improve economic conditions.

He's not certain that's going to happen, but his conviction remains very strong.

He says:

"Spending more on recovery will lead to a stronger economy, both now and in the future — and a stronger economy means more government revenue. Stimulus spending probably doesn’t pay for itself, but its true cost, even in a narrow fiscal sense, is only a fraction of the headline number."

We look forward to seeing what Krugman has to say about this and other economic and political topics when he speaks in the Bryan Series tomorrow night.

Some Wanted "More Music, Less Talk," but Response to Yo-Yo Ma is Strong

2009-10-31T23:50:41-04:00

Bryan Series subscribers were quite positive about the Yo-Yo Ma program Oct. 26, and they offered some very constructive comments in the post-event e-mail survey.

About 60% of the subscribers who purchased tickets to the bonus event responded to the survey. 79% of respondents were very satisfied with the speaker's presentation and 72% were very satisfied with the event overall.

About 350 comments were offered, falling into several major categories:

27% of respondents said they wanted to hear more music and less talk (for the record, Yo-Yo Ma spoke for 58 minutes and played for 19 minutes, with a 20-minute Q&A after the presentation).
11% said they had difficulty hearing the presentation.
6% said the program, or some element of it, was "too long."

Oh, and 99% of respondents said they would be interested in participating in focus bonus programs.

Some thoughts: Yo-Yo Ma agreed to present a lecture with a limited solo performance as part of a two-day trip to N.C. with a concert on the second night. As he indicated in the sound check prior to the program, this was his first full-fledged lecture--a rarity, indeed. The sound system was judged satisfactory by Yo-Yo Ma prior to the event, however, his generally soft voice did not project as well as we hoped and we regret that. In terms of the length of the program, the speaker is in control once the presentation starts. We would love to have a great program that runs 75 or 80 minutes each time.

Among the many positive comments we received was this one:

"Yo-Yo Ma's warm and humble stage presence and the way he used the Bach and his cello to present the message made me feel as if he were speaking directly to me. He helped me gain greater understanding of the power and importance of music flowing in and through all. I don't doubt that was the experience for most of those in the audience."

Thanks again for your post-event survey responses!

Gaining Solace from the Music of Yo-Yo Ma

2009-10-27T14:35:27-04:00

I was a little nervous about seeing Yo-Yo Ma’s lecture and solo performance Oct. 26, a bonus event in the Bryan Series. More accurately, I was nervous about seeing Ma in an auditorium full of 2,400 people who all know a great deal more about his work, and music in general, than I do.

A few days ago, I was joking with one of my co-workers that I could identify exactly one cello piece, and that was only because Ma had played it in a season two episode of “The West Wing.” I also think of this particular piece as “that Galapagos song,” because it also appears (again performed by Ma) in one of my favorite movies, “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.” So, an aficionado of classical music I am not. I hoped that, if I was very, very lucky, Ma would play my two-and-a-half minute Galapagos/West Wing song, and I, too, could hum along.

To my very pleasant surprise, Ma played the piece – the prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major – several times throughout the evening. Apparently, it was the first piece he learned to play as a four-year-old child. For Ma, the piece was both a teacher and a Rorshach test, changing as he himself grew and learned.

Ma related his somewhat rude awakening in college, when a teacher told him, “You play the instrument very well, but haven’t found your voice.” Ma said that he had to learn not to rely on instinct and technical perfection, but instead to pursue the emotional thread that the composer intended.

Later, as he created public television documentaries about other artists and collaborated with world musicians on the Silk Road Project, Ma says he learned even more about why and how they used certain techniques: Bach’s silent pauses in the music, Haydn’s surprise emotional peaks, a bagpiper’s drone. He clearly approaches his music intellectually, and I think that’s what keeps his music fresh after 50 years. Every time Ma played the Bach suite last night, it was a completely different piece of music.

When he first began performing the Bach Cello Suites professionally, Ma said he would get letters from people telling him how the selections gave them emotional comfort during difficult times. “I thought, that’s odd,” he said. “How could a piece of music have that transformative property? How could it give you solace? How could it heal?”

Well, this nervous classical music-novice may not have needed “healing” last night, but Ma’s performance certainly brought me a measure of solace, not to mention a greater appreciation for the subtleties of a piece of music I thought I knew so well.

--Sara Butner

Update: Yo-Yo Ma a hit in Charlotte concert.

Krugman: Health Care Reform will Pass and will Work

2009-10-26T13:18:38-04:00

In his New York Times op-ed column Oct. 26, Paul Krugman expresses his confidence that Congress will send a health-care bill to President Obama and that America will have reform after decades of consideration.

Citing Massachusetts' experience with reform, Krugman believes the national plan will have broad public support once it's in place. Chances for success will be greater if it has "a real public option to keep insurers honest," he says.

He writes: "The new health care system will be criticized; people will demand changes and improvements; but only a small minority will want reform reversed."

"This thing is going to work."