Zócalo Public Square

Teachers are among the biggest influences on a student’s education. Most parents and educators would say teacher performance should be evaluated. Yet no one agrees on how to do it. From a teacher’s method in the classroom to his or her willingness to spend extra hours with individual students, attaching a number to teacher performance isn’t easy. Some favor a “value-added” teacher ranking system, which measures instructors by whether or not their students beat expectations, while others argue the system is unfair. Does it work, and can a teacher’s effectiveness truly be measured? Zócalo and the California Community Foundation invited a panel of education specialists including education reporter Louis Freedberg, Los Angeles Unified School District Deputy Superintendent John Deasy, UCLA Center X Director of Research Karen Hunter Quartz and Families in Schools Vice President Oscar E. Cruz to ask whether teacher rankings work, how we should create them, and whether they make for better schools.

California’s rate of births to teenage mothers has hit a historic low. For years, rates were on the decline around the country, throughout the sex-obsessed 1990s — when parents rallied around the V-chip, fretted about Internet obscenity, and shielded impressionable eyes from strutting pop starlets. Credit went to many factors, from increased access to contraceptives and improved sex education to teens simply waiting longer to have sex. But in recent years, as the pregnancies of political daughters and TV stars have brought broad attention to the subject once more, teen pregnancy rates have started rising everywhere except California, which has pursued robust state-supported teen pregnancy prevention efforts. What changed around the country, and what is California doing right? Zócalo invited a panel including moderator Emily Bazar, sociologist Mark Regnerus, author of the forthcoming Premarital Sex in America, Connie Kruzan, director of Adolescent Services at North Hollywood's Valley Community Clinic, and Fran

British writer Christopher Isherwood arrived in Los Angeles after a long, slow bus ride from New York, where he had emigrated with his friend W.H. Auden. After unforgettably chronicling the underworld of interwar Berlin, Isherwood settled into L.A. and its circle of European émigrés, writers, painters, and spiritual seekers — Aldous Huxley, Truman Capote, David Hockney, and Don Bachardy, who would become Isherwood’s longtime partner after a chance meeting on Valentine’s Day on the beach. Isherwood wrote for Hollywood — and unlike so many novelists, enjoyed it — translated Hindu scripture, hung out at Musso and Frank’s, and captured L.A. in some of his most acclaimed works, like A Single Man. To celebrate the release of Christopher Isherwood’s The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969, Zócalo hosted a panel with Don Bachardy, artist Peter Alexander, and Huntington Library curator of manuscripts Sara Hodson to consider the life, work, and legacy of Christopher Isherwood in Los Angeles.

Humans have long struggled to explain the trait that makes us human: self awareness. Ancient Greeks and Christian theologians posited a soul separate from a body. A long line of philosophers have argued that we’re defined by our thinking human minds, distinct and higher than our physical selves. Scientists today see evidence of something like minds and cultures in social animals, but they still seek to explain why human consciousness rises to become knowledge of a self, why we have been able to create such complex identities and cultures. How did we come to be our selves? Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, director of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and author of Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, visited Zócalo to argue against the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, presenting compelling new scientific evidence that consciousness is in fact a biological process created by living organisms.

The latest innovations in medicine seem like the stuff of science fiction: edible pills that can sense, monitor, and report on vital signs from within the body; a stick-on heart monitor that communicates wirelessly with patient and doctor; robotic surgical tools that reduce or eliminate invasive procedures. Medical advances past — from the discovery of antibiotics to the development of organ transplant procedures — certainly transformed the practice of medicine, but today’s technologies could revolutionize care, taking it out of hospitals and doctors’ offices. How will new technologies change the way we manage, receive and conceptualize healthcare, and are doctors ready for the change? Zócalo invited a panel including moderator Sarah Varney, Proteus Biomedical’s Greg Moon, USC bioethicist Michael Shapiro, and Leslie Saxon of the USC Center for Body Computing to explore the vanguard of medical technology, and how it will transform our health. This event was made possible by a generous grant from the California

In the last 20 years, the Internet has transformed the way we live, easing communication, speeding connections, spreading information, and spurring activism. But its power has prompted governments and corporations to seek to control its uses and limit access. If they succeed, it wouldn’t be the first time a new technology has revolutionized the world before being clamped down. From telephones to radio to television, information mediums have long been consolidated and regulated, often in ways that limit how we communicate and connect. Could the Internet be next, and what would it mean for our lives, our jobs, and our economy? Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, visited Zócalo to trace the century-long struggle between flowing information and corporate control, and to ask whether the Internet will stay free.

Many of us turn to Google at the first sign of sickness, and over the past few years, more and more doctors have started to meet us there. Boutique practices promise easy e-mail correspondence with doctors — along with unlimited in-person access — for a flat fee of a few grand. Kaiser guarantees 24-hour response times for any inquiries made to doctors online. And countless websites, from WebMD to ailment-specific chat rooms, offer easy medical advice, sometimes over webcams. But for all the ease of access — and the improved care it could bring to rural or poor patients — most doctors don’t get paid for online consultations, and medical advice sites aren’t clearly regulated. What are the opportunities and dangers of online care? Zócalo invited a panel including Health 2.0 co-founder Indu Subaiya, co-chair of the Society for Participatory Medicine and e-Patients.net blogger Dave de Bronkart, One Medical Group Founder and CEO Thomas Lee, and MedSimple founder Francis Kong to consider how the Internet is changing

Only eight days after German tanks rolled into Paris, silent and deserted in the summer of 1940, France accepted defeat and foreign occupation. But even though a swastika flew over the city, cultural life survived and even flourished. Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf sang for French and German audiences. Pablo Picasso painted in his Left Bank apartment, even though his work was officially banned. Over 200 French films were produced, including the classic “Les Enfants du Paradis”, and thousands of books were published by authors as politically divergent as the anti-Semite Céline and the anti-Nazi Jean-Paul Sartre. But as Jews, including artists, fled or were deported to concentration camps, many French intellectuals began to join the resistance and debate the role of artists in war. Were artists saving or betraying their country by continuing to work? Journalist Alan Riding, author of And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris, visited Zócalo to explore the life, work, and moral responsibility

American maps of the modern world centrally and prominently locate the global powers of the 20th century, and the arenas of their wars: the U.S. and Western Europe, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But the 21st century has already begun to see a shift in geopolitical focus to an area generally relegated to the edges of our maps: the Indian Ocean. From the Horn of Africa to the Indonesian archipelago, the Indian Ocean region is home to a striving new middle class, young populations tempted by extremism, weak governments and infrastructures, not to mention nuclear weapons. The struggles for world power, democracy, energy independence, and religious freedom will be won or lost there. Atlantic national correspondent Robert Kaplan, author of Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, visited Zócalo to ask whether the U.S. is ready for the rising challenges of the next century.

Over the next 20 years, hundreds of millions of people will move to cities, demanding the economic opportunities and material comforts of urban life: air conditioning, personal computers, rich diets, cars, cell phones. In 1950, only 30 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas; by 2030, that figure will rise to 60 percent. While cities have long propelled economic growth and brought prosperity to their residents, how will they fare as populations increase, temperatures rise, natural disasters threaten, and resources grow scarce? In an event co-presented with the UCLA School of Public Affairs Luskin Center for Innovation, UCLA Luskin Scholar and professor at the School of Public Affairs Matthew Kahn, author of Climatopolis: How Our Cities Will Thrive in the Hotter Future, visited Zócalo to explain what Los Angeles will look like in a few decades and how we can best prepare for the urban future.

When George W. Bush declared the Iraq War finished in May 2003, it was far from over. Over the next several years, terrorism and sectarian conflict continued and American troop levels increased. Now, after Barack Obama’s own speech declaring the combat mission complete, conflict wears on. As the U.S. turns its forces toward Afghanistan, how can America learn to bring conflicts to an end? Driven by ideology or constrained by domestic politics, presidential administrations throughout the 20th century have botched postwar planning, and successive leaders have failed to learn from the past. In an event co-presented with the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs and author of How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle, visits Zócalo to chat with Burkle Center director Kal Raustiala and explain how to conclusively and effectively end our wars.

Over the past 50 years, religion in America has radically transformed. The 1960s saw a drop in religious observance and spurred a conservative reaction that, over the next 20 years, created the Religious Right. In the 1990s, younger generations, put off by the deepening link between faith and conservative politics, began to abandon organized religion altogether. Because it has long inspired volunteerism, philanthropy, and community engagement, the decline of religion threatens to impoverish civic health. But despite these trends, religious tolerance seems to be on the rise: up to one-half of all American marriages are interfaith; even deeply religious Americans believe people of other faiths can go to heaven; and one-third of Americans have switched religions. Where does religion stand today, and what does it mean for our civic health? In an event co-presented with UCLA’s Center for Civil Society, groundbreaking political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and the forthcoming American Grace, vis

Americans may worship success, but we’re also good at failing. Nearly three-quarters of all Americans have considered starting their own businesses — compared to fewer than half of Europeans. Silicon Valley executives highlight rather than bury their collapsed start-ups on their resumes. Our corporate and personal bankruptcy systems are the most generous in the world, and New Deal-era financial safeguards let banks collapse without destroying sound institutions or personal wealth. But has the latest economic crisis left us longing for a failure-free system — one in which some organizations are too big to fail, and one that is immune from the natural and corrective cycles of the market? New America Foundation fellow and Atlantic magazine business and economic editor Megan McArdle visited Zócalo to explain why failure — and the ability to do it gracefully — is an essential part of the American economy.

Over the past few years, Americans have heaped blame for the financial crisis on hedge funds. These mysterious but powerful organizations have, in just a few decades, invented previously unheard-of financial instruments, created new markets, and rewritten the rules of capitalism. By studying everything from economics to physics, hedge fund managers also seemed to accomplish the impossible — beating the market, and surviving repeated financial panics, from the stock market slump of the early 1970s to the bond market downturn of the 1990s to the dot-com collapse in 2000. How will hedge funds — and the controversial, commanding men and women who run them — pull through the latest crisis, and how will they determine the future of finance? Sebastian Mallaby, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow and author of More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, visited Zócalo to reveal the hidden history and workings of hedge funds, and the way they’ll shape the future booms and busts of our econom

For 80 years the Los Angeles River has been less a river than a flood control channel winding from Simi Valley to Long Beach. Its concrete-lined course seemingly carries little more than a trickle of water, and its banks lie largely fallow and off limits despite long-running efforts to restore public access to and green spaces along its edges. Now, an ambitious plan to turn 125 acres of an under-utilized downtown rail yard into a thriving public space could transform not just the river but the entire city, uniting its residents as well as its urban and natural environments. As architects and planners grasp the rare opportunity to work on a site in the heart of the city, they’re focusing on a broader question: what would an integrated, healthier city look like? Zócalo invited a panel including Cal Poly Pomona’s Michael Woo, Marc Salette of Chee Salette Architecture, Jim Stafford of Perkins+Will, Mia Lehrer of Mia Lehrer + Associates, and Michael Maltzan of Michael Maltzan Architecture to discuss the promise of

Unscrupulous lenders, mysterious new financial products, and shadowy banks might have taken most of the blame for the economic crisis, but the problem begins with a type of business that has troubled the U.S. since its founding: the monopoly. Over the last 30 years, regulation of monopolies has eased, leaving the companies commanding governments, courts, wars, resources, and even patents to the human genetic code. As consolidation proceeds largely unchecked across every sector — crushing entrepreneurs, stifling innovation, and inflating prices — monopolies threaten our economy and our democracy. Financial Times contributor Barry C. Lynn, author of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, visited Zócalo to illuminate the workings of monopolies and how they might be stopped.

Hospitals and clinics are not generally considered well-designed places for today’s healthcare needs. Work spaces for doctors and nurses can be crowded, too close to patient treatment areas, and missing new technology that would streamline care. At hospitals, patient rooms often lack windows or privacy. They can be cramped and far from waiting areas and cafeterias, making it more difficult to visit easily with family. But a growing number of hospitals and clinics are taking design and architecture into consideration with an eye toward patient outcomes and quality of care. The shifts have been shown to aid recovery, boost morale, decrease hospital-caused infections that can cost billions of dollars a year, calm patients, and create better communication between doctors, nurses, families, and patients. They have also helped clinics expand their services beyond primary care. Could good design make for good health, and save money in the process? Zócalo invited journalist Dana Dubbs, James Theimer, principal archit

Chefs have always had a knack for fame — from Julia Child to Napoleon’s personal chef, who published lucrative cookbooks and invented the tall white chef’s hat. But today, thanks in part to the Food Network, several seasons of "Top Chef" and "Hell’s Kitchen," and a burgeoning foodie culture, chefs are full-fledged celebrities. Besides running top restaurants across the country, they publish enough books to overwhelm the shelves — and abilities — of most any home cook. They host TV shows that rely on outsized personality as much as inventive recipes. And they lend their names and talents to chain eateries and bottled grocery-store sauces. Are celebrity chefs over exposed and over extended, and how have they transformed food? Pulitzer Prize winning LA Weekly food critic Jonathan Gold visited Zócalo with a panel of star chefs — including Nancy Silverton of Mozza, "Top Chef" Season Two winner Ilan Hall, and "Top Chef Masters" stars Ludovic Lefebvre of LudoBites and Susan Feniger of Border Grill and Street — to fi

After a long and bruising legislative battle, President Barack Obama signed national healthcare reform into law. The plan promises coverage to the uninsured, lower healthcare costs for small businesses, and tighter regulation of insurance companies, preventing them from denying care to the sick. The reform comes at a crucial time for California. The economic crisis has left the state considering cuts to its healthcare programs, particularly for the elderly and the disabled. With nearly one in four of its residents lacking access to care, California has the highest number of uninsured people of any state. What does national healthcare reform mean for California? Zócalo invited the L.A. Times’ Duke Helfand, the California HealthCare Foundation's Marian Mulkey, Jan Spencley of San Diegans for Healthcare Coverage, Small Business Majority Founder and CEO John Arensmeyer, and Lucien Wulsin of the Insure the Uninsured Project to consider how reform will help Californians, how it will impact local businesses, insurer

Salomón Huerta is known for revealing identity by obscuring it. He has painted collections of finely detailed portraits of the backs of heads, florid but unemotional masked lucha libre wrestlers, and unassuming suburban homes stripped of individuality. Huerta, who was born in Tijuana and raised in Boyle Heights, has exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, the Gagosian Gallery, and LACMA, and is beginning to paint new works with no unifying theme. But Huerta remains committed to his unusual creative process — destroying each piece several times with a sander, and then repainting on the same canvas. In an event made possible by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts, Huerta visited Zócalo to discuss with art critic David Pagel his method and what it says about art, ego, and creativity.