How to Change the World

How can we use the things we share in common to address some of the most challenging problems facing the world? This course examines issues concerning poverty, the environment, technology, health care, gender, education and activism to help us understand better how to initiate positive change.

• What are Social Goods? From the Commons to Moral Revolutions
• Discussion about what our social good is, how we define it and how it can be sustainably used.
• Poverty and Development
• Discussion about poverty and the relationship of poverty to philanthropy and to foreign aid, actions taken to mitigate the effects of poverty, of major theorists and economists working in this area and , also, a new approach to this subject through randomized experimentation.
• Climate Change and Sustainability
• Discussion about political and economic ramifications of climate change, including how to think big about sustainability
• Disease and Global Health Care
• Discussion about health care and poverty, considering major challenges that disease presents around the world and the global role of healthcare
• Women, Education and Social Change
• Discussion of gender issues and the upward mobility of women, across business and education.
• Looking Back, Looking Foward
• Reflections on where we have been and where we are going