Ithiel de Sola Pool Lecture

The Ithiel de Sola Pool Lectureship on the Impact of Communications Technology on Society and Politics was established in 2003 through the generosity of Dr. Pool’s wife, Jean Mackenzie Pool.

Ithiel de Sola Pool, born in 1917, was a pioneer in the development of social science and network theory. Dr. Pool received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1952, and joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty in 1953, where he was the first chair of the political science department and a founder of the Center for International Studies. He remained a leader of MIT’s political science and international programs until his death in 1984. He edited the seminal work, The Handbook of Communication (1973), and his reputation as a leading authority on the social and political impact of communications technology was extended with such publications as Forecasting and Telephone (1983), and Communication Flows: A Census of Japan and the US (1984). His renowned works Technologies of Freedom (1983) and Technologies without Borders (1990) were defining studies of communications and human freedom, and visionary accounts of the ways in which emerging digital technologies might transform social and political life. Dr. Pool served on three faculties of Salzburg Global Seminar sessions: Session 45, American Society, in 1956; Session 77, American Foreign Policy, in 1962; and Session 203, Development, Communication and Social Change, in 1981.

THE ITHIEL DE SOLA POOL LECTURERS

2003    José-Maria Figueres Olsen, Inaugural Lecturer
2005    William Edwards
2007    Christopher Mohn
2009    Stephen Jukes
2012    Charles M. Sennott and Dana Priest
2012    Neil MacGregor, Nazia Hussain, Anwar Akhtar and Yousif al-Khoei 
2013    Eric Gordon
2015    Lucio Mesquita Filho
2017    Robin Wright 
2018    Daniela Rea
2019    Anastassia Lauterbach
2023    Robert Putnam