William McDonough, architect and environmentalist.
Our World is Faced With a Major Design Flaw. There is No Validity to Products Designed To End Up As Waste.
Margaret MacKenzie, medical anthropologist.
The Medical Community Can Reduce A Client's Weight in Only 5% of All Cases, Yet Everyone Blames the Client For the Failure.
Burton Mack, historian of religion.
In Galilee During Jesus' Life, The Influence of Greek Cynics Was Probably Greater Than Jewish Influence.
Phil McManus, Peace Team activist.
The Rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico Uses Non-Violent Strategy Successfully, Relentlessly.
George McRobie, intermediate technologist.
Soil and Science Are an Explosive Mixture.
Martin Malia, Russian Historian.
In Russia There are No Reformers, Only Those For the Old Way and Those Who Know A New Way Is Necessary.
Jerry Mander, advertising executive.
Television May Destroy the Eskimo's Ability to Survive and Ours, Too.
Michael Mann, sociologist, UCLA.
The Totalitarian Ideologies That Dominated Half Of This Century, Communism and Facism are Probably Gone.
Harvey Mansfield, professor of government.
Enlightened Self-Interest is not a Sufficient Primary Value On Which to Build a Liberal Society --We also need passions and aspirations.
Clare Cooper Marcus, landscape architect.
We Are Far Behind Scandinavia in Housing For Single Parents.
Malcolm Margolin, Native American researcher.
These People Still Live Among Us and See the Hawks.
Howard Margolls, professor of public policy.
When the Pope Censored Galileo, He Got Unintended Long- Term Policy Results for His Church.
Alice Tepper-Marlin, social researcher.
Information at the Right Moment Can Change History.
John Tepper-Marlin, economist.
A City's Health Depends on Civic Cohesion.
Deanna Marquart, policy analyst.
Recent Technological Changes Leave Pesticide Residues on Frozen Strawberries .
Martin Marty, religious historian.
Fundamentalism Began to Have New Problems As It Filled Its Political Wish List.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews, environmentalist.
It Is Possible For Science, Which Includes Much Uncertainty, To Be The Basis For Strong Policy and Regulation.
Douglas McDonald, Abt Assoc.
We Know Little or Nothing About Reducing Crime, Still We Have to Design a Prison System That Serves Some Set of Goals.
William McDonough, architect and environmentalist.
Our World is Faced With a Major Design Flaw. There is No Validity to Products Designed To End Up As Waste.
Henry I. Miller, researcher on biotechnology in public policy.
To Deal With The Risks of Biotechnology We Need Research That Targets The Highest Type of Risk in Each Specific New Plant and Animal Product.
Mark Crispin Miller, social critic, professor of media studies. Transcript of Interview (click here)
(1) Many of the Emotional Elements in the Design of Shopping Malls are Derived from Television.
(2) There is a New TV Effect On Society. We Now Run Wars On a TV Plot Line, Using Comparable TV Emotional Patterns.
Michael Moffat, professor of anthropology.
Anthropology is More Cautious Than Ever About What Observers Can See and Understand in Another Culture.
Nancy Morita, environmentalist.
Some Advertising Spots Promote 'Nature' as Romantic, While Others Promote the Abhorrence of Dirt.
Calvin Morris, professor of divinity.
Martin Luther King Jr. Derived His Leadership From the Core Tradition of the Black Baptist Church.
David B. Morris, writer.
The Discovery of Ether as a Surgical Anesthetic in 1846 Has Altered Our View of Life.
Milton Moskovitz, business writer.
Most American Multi-National Businesses Really Aren't Multi-National.
Charles Murray, political scientist.
Rent Control Laws and Barriers to Tenant Eviction Actually Decrease Community Diversity.
Laura Nader, anthropologist.
In Other Cultures, American Women are Used as Examples of the Terrible Consequences of Feminism.
Ralph Nader, consumer activist. Transcript of Interview (click here)
With So Many Women in the Work Force, There is Almost No One Left to Carry on Our Civic Life.
Jacob Needleman, philosopher.
The Meaning of Life Is Becoming a More Urgent Question in Public Debate.
Tony Nelesson, urban planner.
Many Towns and Neighborhoods are Using Simple Democratic Practices to Choose Their Zoning Plans with Successful Outcomes.
Gregory Noble, political scientist.
The Only Three Countries With Effective Post-War Land Reform Are the Fastest Growing Nations: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Michael Novak, moral philosopher.
Commerce Suits Our Republic Perfectly.
Robert Nozick, philosopher.
We Can Create a Meaningful Life If We Carefully Examine Our Values.
Michael O'Hare, professor of public policy.
There May Be No Difference Between Innovation in Public Policy and Replication.
Mancur Olson, economist.
Business Prosperity Depends on Long-term Political Stability and Effective Restraint on Government.
Tony Oettinger, director of information resources program.
Many parts of the Information Society Are Very Slow to Change.
Frank Ostaseski, hospice director.
Dying Can Be a Fullfilling Process for the Individual But It Would Have to Reflect "Progress", in Some Way, to Be Valued in Our Society.
Elaine Pagels, professor of religion. Transcript of Interview (click here)
Satan in the Old Testament Was an Angel Who Played the Role of Skeptic. The New Testament Satan is an Evil Force.
Eva Paterson, civil rights attorney.
The Rehnquist Supreme Court Took Us Back 40 Years in Civil Rights.
Fran Peavey, community organizer. (Personal note)
Asking The Right Question Can Help People To Understand Their Social Roles and Responsibilities.
Barbara Phillips, urban sociologist. Transcript of Interview (click here)
A City Is Always Described From a Highly Personal Viewpoint.
Michael Phillips, independent intellectual.
(1) We Perceive Our World Through the Institutions of Language, Occupation, Education, Our Historic Era and Geographic Location. Our Identity Is the By-Product of Our Specific Institutions.
(2) The New Discipline of Social Thought May Have Developed in the End of the 20th Century in Response to the Holocaust.
(3) There are Three Kinds of Commerce and They Co-Exist in Our Lives Simultaneously- Trade has never gone away just because the Industrial form has grown rapidly
Richard Pipes, Russia historian.
The Soviet Union in the 70 Years After the 1917 Revolution Was Very Similar to Russia Under the Czars.
Bill Porter, writer and Chinese translator.
After 5,000 Years The Hermit Tradition Is Alive and Vigorous in 20th Century China, Supported By Villagers and Teaching Tao and Zen To Visitors.
Neil Postman, Dept. of Culture and Communication, NYU.
Transcript of Interview(click here)
Television Has Destroyed the Concept of Childhood, Which is Why Eleven-Year-Olds are Being Tried as Adult Criminals.
Ralph Potter, professor of social ethics.
Our Society is Creating More Ethical Niches Where Separate Ethical Systems Operate -- Professionals, Experts and Top Managers-- a shift from etiquette and customs to greater legalism.
Ghillean Prance, director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew England.
The Absence of Seasons is What Makes the Tropical Rain- Forest So Valuable For Pharmaceuticals.
Gustav Ranis, international economist.
Taiwan Became a Rich Nation Because Farmers Stayed on Their Farms.
Jonathan Rauch, author & political scientist.
Our Democracy Has Inherent In Its Structures and Public Values The Gridlock in Government That We All Dread.
Robert B. Reich, political economist.
Japan-Bashers Commonly Use Metaphors of Pearl Harbor.
Karlene Roberts, professor of business administration.
The U.S. Navy Has One of the Most Effective and Advanced Organizational Structures for Handling Dangerous Environments.
Paul Robinson, historian.
For the Last Twenty Years the Nature of Childhood Sexuality Has Been Denied in America. Children Are Very Sexual.
Thomas Rohlen, professor of international studies.
Japan's Model of Power in the World Is to Have the Best Trained Citizens.
Richard Rorty, philosopher.
A Successful Relativist Society Can be Built on Each Individual's Sense of Irony.
James Rosenau, professor of international affairs.
The Same Forces That Led To The Breakup Of The Soviet Union Are Creating Problems In Somalia, The Former Yugoslavia And Liberia.
Maggie Rubenstein, sexologist
Since the Kinsey Reports Nearly Fifty Years Ago, There Has Been a Significant Increase in Our Professional and Popular Knowledge of Sexuality, But Very Little Change in Practice.
Richard Rubenstein, professor of conflict resolution.
Conflict Resolution Is An Alternative to The Ineffectiveness of Power Battles And Legal Adjudication.
Patricia Ryan, drama teacher.
Every Social Interaction Involves Status
Paul Saffo, futurist.
A Technology Takes 30 Years to Go From "Gee Whiz" to a Solid Industry.
Edward Said, professor of humanities. Transcript of Interview (click here)
The Common English Word 'Oriental' Incorporates an Entir Ideology of Greed and Colonialism.
Margo St. James & Gail Pheterson, feminists.
Society Punishes Prostitutes As A Warning to All Women Who Act Independently.
Martin Sanchez-Jankowski, sociologist.
Street Gangs Are Primarily Economic Organizations.
Michael Sandel, professor of government.
When We Demand Rights We Automatically Expand the Federal Role.
Robert A. Scalapino, East Asian scholar.
China Will Always Be a Communal Society Centered Around Family and Village Structures.
Elaine Scarry, professor of English, Harvard University.
One Person Can Be Suffering Internal Pain While No Other Person Around Her Is Aware of It.
Andrei Schleifer, economist.
Margaret Thatcher Was the Pioneer Thinker in Shaping the Privatization of Eastern Europe.
Peter Schwartz, management consultant.
Social Change, Like Evolutionary Change, Occurs Rapidly but Rarely.
David Schwartz, educator.
Little Progress in Moving Education From an Industrial Model to a Personal One.
Joan Wallach Scott, social scientist.
The Idea of Universal Human Values Presents a Serious Problem for Feminists Because the Universal Representative is a White Male.
Michael Scott Morton, professor of management.
Large Organizations May Be Doomed in a Business Where Information Technology Leads To Rethinking Organizational Structure.
John Searle, philosopher.
We Do Not Have to Choose Human Society as the By-Product of, Biologically Limited Brains or as a Social Construct.
Peter Sherrill, entrepreneur and communciation theorist. Transcript of Interview (click here)
Scientific Practice in the Natural Sciences Has Become So HeavilyStatistical That It Resembles Social Science.
Earl Shorris, author.
The Concept of 'Macho' as Used in Aztec Society Has Parallels to 'Virtue' as Used in Renaissance Europe.
David Sibbet, meeting expert.
In Los Angeles, People Come to a Public Meeting to Work -- But They Don't Want to Come Back a Second Time.
Ronald Siegel, research professor, UCLA School of Medicine.
Paranoia Can Be Found in Everyone in Various Degrees and It Is Communicable Like Coughing and Scratching.
Lani Silver, Holocaust Oral History Project.
Survivors of the Holocaust Seldom Find Friends or Family Willing to Listen to Their Stories.
Margaret T. Singer, professor of psychology.
Regarding Cults, Most People Focus On the Charisma of the Leader, But the Important Concern is the Vulnerability of Each of Us to Influence.
Arlene Skolnick, research psychologist.
There Are Two Main American Stories of Human Development Describing the Growth From a Troubled Childhood to Adulthood.
Neil Smelser, sociologist emeritus. Transcript of Interview (click here)
Three Ideas Determine the Structure of All Major American Institutions from Universities to Health Care Legislation -- Individualism, Equality of Opportunity and Democracy.
Mark Smith, president of California Healthcare Foundation.
Popular Hostility to HMOs is Strange. Most People as Individuals are Very Proud of Their Own Healthcare, But View Healthcare in General With Anxiety.
Michael L. Smith, historian.
In 1969, the Only Place the American Flag Could Be Erected Without Being Torn Down Was on the Moon.
Thomas Sowell, scholar.
Blacks in America Are Following an Assimilation Pattern Very Similar to the Irish.
Judith Stacey, sociologist and professor of womens studies.
Americans Love Marriage, We Do It Often. As A Result We Have Replaced The One Marriage Structure.
Paul Starr, sociologist and co-editor of The American Prospect.
The Public Awe of Science At the Turn of the Century Gave Medicineand Doctors Astounding Power In Our Society -- Long-Term Power.
Francis Stewart, British international economist.
Current Third World Development Programs Bring the Wrong Capital and Increase Dependence.
John R. Stilgoe, historian of landscape.
As Our Young Generation Becomes More Flabby, the Beach Becomes a Less Desirable Place to Visit.
Lawrence Stone, historian, Princeton University,
From the Time of Shakespeare to Dickens, the Average English Husband Had Casual Sex with Servants at Will and Left His Wife by "moving on" to the next county.
Jeffrey Stout, philosopher and professor of religion.
The Moral Issues of Everyday Life are Not Addressed in Popular or Academic Discourse on Morals.
Heather M. Sutherland, consultant.
Canadians Appreciate Immigrants, We Don't.
Kazuo Takahashi, Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Tokyo.
Developing Countries Often Have Fragile Societies.
Kazuaki Tanahashi, artist.
Artists Behave According to the Expectations of Their Culture .
Nathan Tarcov, historian of political thought.
The Founding Fathers Were Divided on the Same Foreign Policy Issues That We Struggle With Today.
David Teece, professor of business.
In the 1990's, the Main Corporate Asset Is Information Processing Skill.
Thomas Thornton, professor of Asian studies.
India is Not Part of the American Consciousness Because We Have NotFought a War There, We Had Little Immigration From There and It Was Not a Target of Our Missionaries.
Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan studies.
(1) Military Power in Our Society Faces No Effective Countervailing Social Force.
(2) An Excellent Alternative to Rational Society Can be Found in Tibet, Modern in Concept Without Destroying the Environment.
Lester Thurow, economist.
In the Next Fifty Years We Must Either Become More Like Japan and Europe or Poorer and Envious.
Jane Tompkins, professor of English. Transcript of Interview (click here)
The Western Movie Displays an Open Rejection of Christianity and Communal Values.
David Tracy, theologian.
The Potential of Each Person to Be an Extremist Can Be Used to Help Us Understand Other Peoples' Extremism.
Roberto Mangebera Unger, professor of law.
The Traditional Forms of Property Rights and Politics Limit Our Vision of Possible Political Forms.
Michael Walzer, social scientist.
There Have Been Empires of Great Toleration, Roman, Persian, Ottoman, With Geographic Separation Between Religio-Ethnic Groups. Today Groups Intertwine and Toleration Applies to Individual Differences.
Timothy C. Weiskel, environmentalist.
1. The Current Environmental Crisis is Much More Serious and Dangerous Than We Perceive.
2. Secular Fundamentalism is a Prime Threat to Dealing With Environmental Disaster -- It Believes Science Can Always Save Us With a Technical Silver Bullet.
Gerald Weissman, professor of medicine.
There Are Intelligent Ways to Deal With Social Problems of Unknown Causes, Such as Crime.
Calvin Welch, San Francisco community organizer.
The traditions of San Francisco politics come from two streams, one comes from wobblies, unions and socialists -- the comes other from Catholic ward politics and ethnic coalitions.
William H Whyte, author of The Organization Man.
When Corporations Move To The Suburbs They Usually Locate Near The Chairman's Home.
Aaron Wildavsky, public policy analyst. Transcript of Interview (click here)
Nothing is Safe; The Concept of Safety Covers a Large Continuum.
Bernard Williams, professor of moral philosophy, Oxford University.
Much of Our Moral Life and Sense of Justice Derives From the Experiences of Shame and Guilt.
Richard E. Williams, sociologist.
Ethnic and Racial Groups Do Not Have a Smooth, Continuous Identity. - An Irish male in America before the Civil War was on the bottom rung.
Oliver E. Williamson, professor of business, economics and law.
Each Transaction in the Business World Has an Associated Cost and Understanding This Structure Explains Firm Size and Corporate Organization.
William Julius Wilson, sociologist.
Work is the Organizing Principal of Urban Daily Life. It Organizes Family and Values- In the urban black ghetto, work has largely disappeared for males.
Louis Winnick, former urban grants officer, Ford Foundation.
The Number of Poor People in America is Overstated Because of Flawed Government Data Collection.
Alan Wolfe, social scientist.
The Biological Model of Human Beings and The Post-Modern Model Are Both Anti-Humanistic.
Richard Wollheim, philospher.
In Art We Seek Understanding, Pleasure and Evaluation -- Understanding Precedes Pleasure.
Richard Saul Worman, designer.
There Are Only 5 Ways to Catalogue Information . . . One is Alphabetical.
Sylvia Wynter, professor of black studies.
We Now Think Of Ourselves As Biological Beings in Contrast to The Earlier View of Self as Spiritual. The self is created by our society -- we are products of the "words" that create dialog, meaning and culture.
Daniel Yergin, oil expert.
The History of Oil and the History of the 20th Century Are Very Similar and Intertwined.
Sonya Yoerg, animal behavior researcher.
We Now Find That All Known Animals Have to Be Carefully Trained In Their Infant and Juvenile Stage In Order to Survive.
Eviatar Zerubavel, sociologist.
Why Do We East Herring But Not Goldfish, Duck But Not Parrot? Why is a Hamburger With Cheese a Cheeseburger But With Lettuce its Not a Lettuceburger?
Yael Zerubavel, professor of history.
History is Shaped by Present Day Political Values, Even When There is Only One Documented Source for the Event Itself.- Masada is a good example.
Frank Zimring, director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute.
The Idea That Simple, Feasible Gun Control Can Reduce Violence in America Is Wrong.
Shoshana Zuboff, professor of business administration, Harvard Univ.
Management Skills in Our Society Are Not Appropriate for the Level of Information Technology That is in Place.
Paul Zurkowski, founder of the Information Industry Association.
The Information Economy is Too Young For Us to Establish an Equivalent to Public Libraries.
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