Justice Goes Global - Thomas Friedman - nytimes.com
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| Michael J. Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University |
Excerpt: Besides being educational, the classes make great theater — so much so that Harvard and WGBH (Boston’s PBS station) filmed them and created a public television series that aired across the country in 2009. (My wife, Ann, and I were among the many donors to the PBS broadcast.) The series, now freely available online (at www.JusticeHarvard.org), has begun to stir interest in surprising new places.
Last year, Japan’s NHK TV broadcast a translated version of the PBS series, which sparked a philosophy craze in Japan and prompted the University of Tokyo to create a course based on Sandel’s. In China, volunteer translators subtitled the lectures and uploaded them to Chinese Web sites, where they have attracted millions of viewers. Sandel’s recent book — “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” — has sold more than a million copies in East Asia alone.