did the universe have a beginning? i'm robert lawrence kuhn and closer to truth is my journey to find out. traditionally, in both science and theology, the cosmos was from everlasting - without beginning - until, in the mid 20th century, big bang cosmology became accepted. beginnings bring meaning - and i start with the science. when we want to understand something - anything we often ask, "where did it come from?" "how did it start?" but some say the universe is different. because the universe is not "some thing" - it's the whole thing! that's why - first - we must ask, whether the universe had a beginning? i begin with a cosmologist who focuses on the early universe, the associate scientific director of the foundational questions institute, fqxi anthony aguirre. i am attending an fxqi conference on time, at sea in more ways then one, on a ship cruising between norway and denmark. anthony, what i thought was an easy question was did the universe begin? now i hear it's not such an easy question. help me. so it used to b

at the university of houston, it's all in the tradition. washington state, a public university has a jacuzzi that holds 50 student thought he saw the lead to a -- student bodies. a nice little college in ohio, this is a $70 million athletic emporium that has a 20 allain a swimming pool -- 20-lane a swimming pool. what is paying for this? that's why to mission is going up. >> i want to get to the reform proposals in the second but i believe to if you can address this question on higher education which is why is it the institutions which aren't answerable to the shareholders do not have a bottom line in the corporate cents behave in such a rapacious fashion as you described they are exploiting their adjunct professors it's very much a sweat shop environment in a number of schools and as you just described they are up selling their consumers and there's a tremendous even among the faculty tremendous inequality system like you might find in the private sector so i'm wondering what are the dynamics that turn the nonprofit institutions into instit

we thought peer is the center of the universe and then it is not the center of the universe but pretty close to that and then we thought okay, the galaxy, the milky way, still pretty great but now the galaxy is one of billions of galaxies out there and not only is that true but most of the stuff out there is not even the stuff we are made of. we are not even the center of the universe in terms of what makes it. and conceptually that is a pretty big deal. most of the universe is something else. we are a rare saying in a number of ways in the universe. peoples a difference between dark matter and dark energy, dark matter is the much more pedestrian of the two. it acts with vaguely like ordinary matter, close together in bad it -- in galaxies, more dark matter in the milky way than outside the milky whereas there kennedy appears to be completely uniform throughout the universe, totally the same. stock energy appears to be energy of space, empty space itself actually has a certain amount of energy said that affects the dynamic of the rest differently in that causes it to expand more rapidl

of ways in the universe. what is the difference between dark matter a and dart energy? dark matter is much more pedestrian in tax vaguely like ordinary matter and clusters together so there is a more inside the milky way that outside but dark energy appears to be completely uniform throughout the universe and dark energy is the energy of space, and the space has a certain amount of energy so that affects the dynamics differently which causes it to expand more rapidly. dark matter has been around as long as we can tell part of the building blocks of galaxies but the energies space at this point in the history of the universe starting to push the universe apart faster and faster and faster. there are a lot of things that we don't know. like why they have the densities' they have or there is as much dark matter as there is there what it is made out of we are good at calculating energy you can ask how much is there a dark energy and the answer is infinity. [laughter] that is wrong. it is 120 times larger. and then

that's why - first - we must ask, whether the universe had a beginning? i begin with a cosmologist who focuses on the early universe, the associate scientific director of the foundational questions institute, fqxi anthony aguirre. i am attending an fxqi conference on time, at sea in more ways then one, on a ship cruising between

some critics say that the tuition may fall if university presidents were not paid so much. but as reported, the pay of college pst have to do with raise. >> kayla smith waits tables at night after working in a downtown columbus office for a non-profit group. >> if you need anything -- >> it is the only way she can payoff the 40,000 dollars in student loans that came with her degree. the recent ohio state university grad is one of a growing number of people outraged, salaries of rising. >> it does make me very angry. >> the median pay for a public university president reached 440,000 last academic year up 4.7%. the highest paid was former penn state president who pocketed nearly $3 million after leaving them in a scandal. ohio state university, retired with a final pay of nearly 2 million. >> i don't think that they're necessarily worth that much. >> overall, roughly 35 public and private college presidents earned more than a million dollars last year. these academic leaders typically run very complex r prices with major research teams and sport teams like the ohio state buck

the same thing. you've got central missouri university. went there and they've partnered with local high schools and community colleges so that their students can show up at college and graduate in half the time because they're already starting to get college credits while they're in high school or while they're in a two-year college so by the time they get to a four-year college they're saving money. universities like carnegie mellon, arizona state, they're starting to show that online learning can help students master the same material in less time and often at lower costs. georgia tech which is a national leader in computer science, just announced it will begin offering an online masters degree in computer science at a fraction of the cost of a traditional class. but is just as rigorous and it's producing engineers who are just as good. so a lot of other schools are experimenting with these ideas to keep tuition down. they've got other ways to help students graduate in less time at less costs while still maintaining high quality. the po

the university of san francisco of today looks like tomorrow's california. the school of law more than 55% of our students are women. over 52% of our incoming class of students of color. we are preparing all of you to be successful contributors to your future employers, and communities, and strong and caring leaders. ethical professionals. you are preparing each other. we all change the world from here. in the year 2029 children who are starting kindergarten this week will be your age now. will they have benefited from integrated quality schools and be ready in the science and technology or other fields of that era? will they be able to interact, appreciate and love and more diverse setting than we've ever seen before? our job today is for the answer and 2029 to be not just, yes we can, but yes, we did. it is now my honor to introduce the mayor of our great city and county of san francisco, and lee. i've known him and admired him since his days as a civil rights attorney at the asian law caucus. mayor lee has worked hard to keep the economy and economic recov

[applause] mary berry at the university of pennsylvania. [applause] barbara ransby is the author of a tiger free of ella baker of eslanda robeson and jeanne theoharis the author of the new biography on rosa parks. [applause] we want to start the conversation by talking about rosa parks.

-- at the national tsing hua university. lcome to the program, father jean-pascal. >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be here. i'm happy to have the opportunity to share what we are doing with the taiwanese students. it is the 60 year i'm going to take a team to sierra leone -- sixth year i'm going to take the team to sierra leone. there will be two other teams going to tanzania and one from tsing hua university in july to mid-august. i look forward to sharing that with you. >> let's backtrack. tell us about yourself. you were born in france. why did you decide to come to taiwan in 1998? >> i belonged to an international group of priests. during the course of my formation, i went to tanzania for two years as an experiment to discover if that is the kind of life that i want to live. then i went along with my studies and towards the end, when i was about to be a priest, i was invited to apply for the country to serve. i had three countries in mind. tanzania was number one because i knew the language. taiwan was number two. it was

>> [applause] >> i have been around the university for a long time. too long. what has been too long but it's been a long time. i can of course number the events of the civil rights movement. i was actually on this campus the day dr. king died and we all cried. you know, in those days all was on university were trying to do our thing. if we wanted to do we could do the big things we did our little things. on this campus i was the first chair of the psu. in many ways oh well. >> [applause] >> we must have some dsu members. now you know who started this whole thing. in those days we were trying to do what we could to be part of the movement. the movement that was all the adults and then there was a whole bunch of youth were involved. last sunday on a radio show i had a use spoken word artists that came on. [inaudible] all these adults in the program it's a use for such a big part. you've seen those old videos. when dr. king finally said, look, we need young people out here to oppose move this thing forward. so representing all the youths were involved in movement

. >> i'm from the university of missouri columbia and right now i am working to advocate against and hoping to stop common core. what is the detriment facing the common core? >> first i think it involves a dumbing down. common core advocates say we are actually raising the standards for a certain number of states. that is true that the idea is to find a kind of middle ground that you can pull the lowest performers up to but also effectively lowers the standards for the rest of the country. it sounds crazy when you tell people this. why would anyone want to lower standards and the reason, again i think it is a misplaced idea of equity and fairness that there is some sense that too many people who have a certain amount of money were litany certain place are getting into swap more and how we change that? if anybody gets a less quality education of people tell the difference and if people start getting randomly distributed at the universities this is a crazy idea of equity whereas if you look at massachusetts, which has the best curriculum in the country, they were middle performers and a

the rest of the three doctorate degrees are all from korean universities. , you know, it is happy to know that she has, the president, she has some things in mind for the university. during the ceremony she invited the board chairman of the university to attend. this is a barry special relationship. during the five terms of assembly in korea, she has several times been invited by mr. -- minister. if she has any special thoughts in her mind, it would help to look over to the international political constance. it is quite different, you know. >> china and south korea both have new leaders. how good you think relationship will be between the countries? >> preferring to call us free china instead of tie 1. korean newspapers, they still say this. saying that she prefers to call us free china. exit -- >> is it until today? >> it is different. >> how is it different? how will the relationship be different? >> i think at least we have -- we can tell koreans what happened, we have a big change. i think the correa still worries about political issues. if you want to t

the university of san francisco of today looks like tomorrow's california. the school of law more than 55%

the interesting thing at the mesa university hospital that i visited earlier today, they told us that yesterday around the morning time they got mass casualties and it was clear there was massive fighting going on in those areas where that alleged chemical weapon as tack took place. they said there was lots of bodies in and the loads had severe wounds and none of them showed any signs of being subjected to any sort of chemical agent. it was something i found very interesting. also, we managed to speak to a couple of people that live in neighborhoods adjacent to the ones where the attacks allegedly took place and also said, yes, there was a lot going on yesterday and war planes over head and artillery raining down on the areas. they said they did not feel any chemicals in the air and did not have any trouble breathe and didn't feel strain. they say they don't believe any chemicals were used. of course that doesn't disprove the images we're seeing, the horrible images that you were talking about before. we are of course reporting from the government controlled side of damascus and there

europe in the mid-1800s to make unique study of the german universities and we get the most radical secular enlightenment use brought back to america, and stocks in our universities. by the end of the 1800's it formed the foundation of our entire understanding of the intelligence pushed down to our culture. the law, the development of our law schools. that is all law schools got contaminated. you have to go back to the end of the 1800's to find that out. one of the things the imported was this bad idea from the 19,053rd french republic. >> your off the hook. >> liberalism, they tend to be tolerant, but there are so intolerant of religion. >> the least of certain kinds. there that tall -- no problem tolerating or any other religion but christianity. note that. they're is a reason for that. i read some articles. why can't liberals understand what islam is up to? because they have a long history of -- because liberalism is defined as directly against christianity it tried to come in the 18th and 19th centuries list of other religions as superior to warrant least equal to christianity. that is

the event of the university press in the back of the room, sue, thank you, and she and her colleagues took time to do their good work, and i'd like to also recognize richard mcharty who linked me up with the vanderbilt press, and it took a while for the press to do their work, but the better answer is the research, all the interviews, you know, that took me -- it was fun to do taking me back to the reporter days, and in some ways, the book is as much about journalists as it is politicians, and that took awhile. we started interviews five years ago, people were patient with me. >> i'll ask the last question. i'll ask the senator. i know these were six tough unforgettable hours. as only you said, the worst day of our life. what about today's following? how did what happened that day impact your administration over the next four years? >> well, it's tough for the country, but if every united states senator serving today had a six hour boot camp like i had how to get along with the opposite party in the country, we'd be better off. [applause] you know, this did not occur to me until we ta

they had just successfully integrated the university of alabama. ident kennedy addressed the nation in his famous speech on race. and hours after that, medgar evers was shot and killed in his driveway. >> now, it was only the intervention of nicholas katzenbach coming to the steps of the university and facing down george wallace. tell us more about that climactic moment when your sister tried to enter the university. >> yes. you know, they had been preparing for that moment for quite some time. but they -- up until that very last minute, they really didn't know what the governor was going to do. so that is why, you know, there is a lot of back and forth about whether or not they had to actually come back that day to confront the governor again because he didn't move the first time. so it was pretty dramatic. and i think people don't really understand how unscripted that moment really was. >> you were a toddler, but from conversations with your sister and your parents, what was the family decisionmaking like to decide to permit vivian malone 20 years