Exclusive with LSE President: Social sciences must guide science to solve global crises

Free Malaysia Today

Larry Kramer of the London School of Economics says understanding how societies work is key to tackling global issues like climate change and inequality.  Read More:   Laporan Lanjut:   Free Malaysia Today is an independent, bi-lingual news portal with a focus on Malaysian current affairs.    Subscribe to our channel - http://bit.ly/2Qo08ry   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check us out at https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com Follow FMT on Facebook: https://bit.ly/49JJoo5 Follow FMT on Dailymotion: https://bit.ly/2WGITHM Follow FMT on X: https://bit.ly/48zARSW  Follow FMT on Instagram: https://bit.ly/48Cq76h Follow FMT on TikTok : https://bit.ly/3uKuQFp Follow FMT Berita on TikTok: https://bit.ly/48vpnQG  Follow FMT Telegram - https://bit.ly/42VyzMX Follow FMT LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/42YytEb Follow FMT Lifestyle on Instagram: https://bit.ly/42WrsUj Follow FMT on WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/49GMbxW  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download FMT News App: Google Play – http://bit.ly/2YSuV46 App Store – https://apple.co/2HNH7gZ Huawei AppGallery - https://bit.ly/2D2OpNP  #FMTExclusive

Transcript

00:00science and technology have given us extraordinary progress but alongside it they've unleashed new

00:12crises climate catastrophe broken trust in truth growing inequality these are not problems of

00:21invention they are problems of humanity and the discipline that helps us make sense of them is

00:27the social sciences because social sciences are what humanize our choices

00:34fmt recently sat down with london school of economics president and vice chancellor larry

00:40kramer in kuala lumpur to discuss how social sciences can help navigate global challenges

00:47larry welcome to chaos pleasure to have you thank you it's good to be here well it's your second

00:51time here isn't it yeah yeah i came last year i i hope i can come at least once a year maybe twice

00:57well you know as a former lse student as an lse grad where i spent some of my fondest years

01:02it's really a privilege to be able to welcome you to my home city and i hope that you know we can

01:07have an interview which really brings forth the the time that you've had at lse and what you most

01:13enjoy about it well i'm looking forward i mean it's a you know great opportunity for me personally

01:18to get to talk to our alumni but also you know to the larger community here is really a privilege so

01:23i'm excited to do it and look forward to the conversation well we'll have a little bit of a

01:28chat about maybe a few legal issues because that's obviously what the both of us share a little bit

01:32of but also about the wider lse context is that all right yeah that would be great i love the chance

01:37to talk about law and lse

01:44larry i think lse has a very special unique position in the academic world as a university that

01:50really focuses on the social sciences you've spoken at length throughout the course of your career

01:56about the challenges that social sciences face could you expand a little bit on where we are today

02:02in terms of those challenges and what you see the next 10 20 years bringing sure so if you think about

02:08it the last four or five decades have really been you know what we would describe as stem focused right

02:14which is there's been a steady stream of scientific innovations new breakthroughs new technologies that

02:19have just transformed our lives in amazing ways they've also generated huge problems and the

02:25upsides and downsides aren't in the technologies themselves they're all completely in how we use

02:30them and how we choose to implement them and that's what the social sciences are about so the next couple

02:35of decades i think are going to have to be social science decades or we're going to really really have

02:42trouble the social sciences don't tell us how to build machines they tell us how to build societies

02:49this year for the second year running british daily the times and its sunday times good university

02:56guide named the london school of economics the number one university in the uk although it's only

03:03130 years old 130th anniversary this year only um only well in universities that can be especially

03:09in the uk you know you've got universities that are a thousand years old um it's had an incredible impact

03:15uh both in the intellectual world and in the political world the ranking measures more than

03:20prestige it looks at teaching quality student satisfaction research graduate prospects inclusion

03:29and global impact in other words not just knowledge for its own sake but knowledge that humanizes

03:36and improves society so universities have a really unique and important role in addressing this and

03:43it really has four different kinds of things first um you know we are the places where the ideas can

03:48be developed um second we're educating the next generation of leaders who are going to go out into the

03:53world and and make this work or not work for better or worse um third um we're a place um from which

04:01ideas can be promulgated out into into the society and then lastly we're incredibly good places for

04:06convening people from all different places i don't think any institution in society can play them as

04:12well as universities have in the past and can today universities are society's testing grounds where

04:19ideas are shaped challenged and shared to keep us human the challenges that we recognize you know at lse

04:27are all built around that recognition and they're really five and they're interlocking so the future

04:31of popular government is one the future of political economy doing those first two things sustainably

04:38within ecological limits that we now know we need to respect the fourth challenge relates to systemic

04:45inequalities and then lastly is thinking about how we're going to deploy the new technologies themselves

04:51democracy economy sustainability inequality technology these are not abstract problems they are human

05:01questions about fairness trust and how we live together what role can alumnus play um in in this cause

05:12in this journey so i i i mean this alumni are the foundation on which it all rests it's the beginning

05:19of your participation in what should be a live and living community that can do good in the world

05:25from kuala lumpur to new york alumni carry human insight into leadership shaping governments economies

05:32and communities well let's turn a little bit to lse in southeast asia where we are right now um we have

05:40the pleasure of welcoming you to kale i think which in which is your second trip yeah can you give us a

05:45little bit of insight or background about how southeast asian ideas concepts researchers is being

05:52really implemented in the lse framework and and how this is going to grow yeah sure so you know the one

05:59of the most unique features of lse compared to any university in the world is the breadth and depth of its

06:04international presence and that's particularly true for south and east asia so we have a large alumni

06:10community here uh we have a large contingent of students from here every year we have faculty

06:16from here and that's really where the connections take place southeast asia is more than a region

06:25it is a living example of how societies adapt humanize and innovate under pressure

06:31when i started at lse i think it was in the autumn of 2010 um and i remember i was in the first year

06:40of lse 100. do you guys still have this course which is this interdisciplinary multi-disciplinary

06:45course across the social sciences and problem solving it's a really it's an introduction to give

06:49people a sense of multi-disciplinary work and yeah so i think we were a pilot year or maybe it was the

06:54first year or something along these lines um and i found myself being you know so in a way

07:00surprisingly interested in things like anthropology um geography which i probably would never you

07:06know have gotten chance to study how important do you think um learning about other disciplines and

07:12how they interlink and problem solve um in the university experience and how is how key is it to

07:19you know young adults flourishing we used to think of education as like an l right you would go very deep

07:26in a single subject and uh in the you know the world that you're coming into today that is not an

07:32adequate education so you know i think of education it needs to be kind of like a tea

07:40lse 100 shows that real education is not just technical it is human it broadens horizons and prepares

07:48students to connect across disciplines and lives the future won't be saved by science alone it will be saved

07:56by how we humanize it and that is the work of the social sciences hanakam fmt

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended