8th GHI Forum Title: Athletes, Equality & Diplomacy Date: March 6, 2026, 10:00–11:30 AM EST Where: Online (Zoom Registration Link: https://mit.zoom.us/meeting/register/K1xD3FjiQ6KbpReKezqcxw) Speakers: Gregory Nagy, Leonard Muellner 【Abstract】 Leonard Muellner will discuss the political and social functions of Ancient Greek athletics in a cross-cultural perspective. Ancient Greece was a highly differentiated political space, consisting of a wide variety of city-states each with different religious calendars, law codes, constitutions, etc. These communities were in principle in a state of war with one another (understanding that 'war' could be ritualized combat rather than actual fighting), so that enabling participation in games across the city-states required a global truce. Greeks derived a common identity from their participation in athletics. However, there were no team games, only one person was awarded a prize in each contest, and the skills involved were at their core individualized warrior skills in a ritualized (that is, theoretically, non-fatal) context. Muellner will go on to compare this elitist way of gaming with the way sport functions in other cultures, including contemporary settings historically derived from it. The word stadium—or stadion in ancient Greek—originally did not refer to any colossal structure built for sports events. Rather, it referred to a sacred […]

Dear colleagues, students, and friends, Join us for a lecture and discussion with internationally renowned scholar, educator, and author Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, a leading voice on decolonial futures, global justice, and the profound transformations required in times of social and ecological breakdown. 4th Global Humanities Master Class Title: Hospicing and Outgrowing Modernity: Tuesday, March 17, 12:00 - 1:30 pm Location: The Nexus at Hayden Library, 14S-130, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti is the former Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. She is the author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity's wrongs and the implications for social activism and Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating complexity, complicity and collapse (August 2025), and one of the founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective. Her latest work, Burnout From Humans: A Little Book About AI That is Not Really About AI, explores AI as a mirror and metaphor for human systems and invites readers to rethink relationality amidst planetary crises. Co-sponsored by MIT Global Humanities Initiative, MITHIC, MIT Systems Awareness Lab, Indigenous Spirit at MIT, MIT Radius, MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, and the Presencing Institute. Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/4rSX7RR Looking forward to seeing you at our […]

"Gender, Empire and Al" is a symposium and design workshop to both reflect on critical questions and design generative paths forward to addressing them. The day will start with a keynote by award-winning journalist and MIT alumna, Karen Hao, on her book "Empire of Al". Select MIT faculty will facilitate discussion groups to unpack problems outlined in Hao’s talk and possible solutions. Over lunch, we will hear from our second keynote speaker, Paola Ricaurte, who leads the Latin American Feminist Al Research Network and was named as one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in Al in 2025. In the afternoon, we will hold hands-on design workshops to tackle specific issues like reproductive justice, Al and propaganda, and biases in medical imaging. We believe that together we can solve complex issues and generate more just and feminist visions for Al and society. For more information, to register, and questions regarding accessibility, contact wgs@mit.edu.. This event is free and open to the public with priority to the MIT community. Registration is required. Learn more here...   Keynote Speakers Karen Hao was formerly a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering American and Chinese tech companies, and a senior editor for […]

Presented by Daniel Smail Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of History Harvard University Date: Monday, March 30 Location: Building 14,  Room 14E-304 (map)* *Directions: From the Lewis Music Library stairs, take the third floor of Building 14, through the CMS/W doors. Alternatively, take the elevator to the 3rd floor, navigate to the opposite end of the 3rd floor hallway, and enter through the CMS/W doors. Abstract: Everywhere in late medieval Mediterranean Europe, it was possible, at least in theory, to purchase and hold an enslaved individual. The traffic in slaves began a noteworthy period of growth in the thirteenth century. In the second half of the fourteenth, the rise of the Black Sea trade led to a significant acceleration. Yet the practice of slavery was never uniform across the region. In some cities, as much as 15 percent of the population may have been enslaved. Elsewhere, the presence of enslaved individuals is scarcely detectable. The significant variation in the degree to which slavery implanted itself in the cities and towns of Mediterranean Europe is a historical phenomenon in search of explanation. Through a survey of practices of slavery in Marseille, a city located in the borderlands of the practice, this lecture seeks to frame […]