Restoration Roundtable


America's Crumbling Foundation And The People Who Might Fix It

TED's Curator Responds on Inequality

By Jim Tankersley  //  May 17, 2012 | 3:05 p.m.
"Today TED was subject to a story so misleading it would be funny... except it successfully launched an aggressive online campaign against us."

Thus begins a blog post from TED curator Chris Anderson, responding directly to NJ's reporting on the decision not to post Nick Hanauer's talk on income inequality. (A talk which, incidentally, Anderson has now posted on YouTube.) Anderson had previously only responded to NJ's questions with a written statement.

In his blog post, Anderson writes that "a non-story about a talk not being chosen, because we believed we had better ones, somehow got turned into a scandal about censorship. Which is like saying that if I call the New York Times and they turn down my request to publish an op-ed by me, they're censoring me.

"For the record, pretty much everyone at TED, including me, worries a great deal about the issue of rising inequality. We've carried talks on it in the past, like this one from Richard Wilkinson. We'd carry more in the future if someone can find a way of framing the issue that is convincing and avoids being needlessly partisan in tone."

Read the whole Anderson post here. 

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About Restoration Calls

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his first inaugural address, told a country struggling under the weight of the Great Depression that the nation needed to take action to rebuild and rejuvenate itself. He said: "Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now." It was a time not unlike our own, where misbehavior on Wall Street fed a widespread credit and confidence crisis that swept like a tornado through the U.S. and global economy. And as in 1933, Washington again faces the time-sensitive task of diagnosing how its institutions are ill-equipped to fix the nation's problems, and then building a new system responsive to America's new needs. This project will tell that story, through the eyes of the Americans affected.

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