A charlatan (also called swindler or mountebank) is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception.

The word comes from French ''charlatan,'' a seller of medicines who might advertise his presence with music and an outdoor stage show. The best known of the Parisian charlatans was Tabarin, who set up a stage in the Place Dauphin, Paris in 1618, and whose ''commedia dell'arte'' inspired skits and whose farces inspired Molière. The word can also be traced to Spanish; ''charlatán'', an indiscreetly talkative person, a ''chatterbox''. Ultimately, etymologists trace "charlatan" from either the Italian ''ciarlare'', to prattle; or from ''Cerretano'', a resident of Cerreto, a village in Umbria, known for its quacks.

Details

In usage, a subtle difference is drawn between the charlatan and other kinds of confidence people. The charlatan is usually a salesperson. He does not try to create a personal relationship with his marks, or set up an elaborate hoax using roleplaying. Rather, the person called a charlatan is being accused of resorting to quackery, pseudoscience, or some knowingly employed bogus means of impressing people in order to swindle his victims by selling them worthless nostrums and similar goods or services that will not deliver on the promises made for them. The word calls forth the image of an old-time medicine show operator, who has long since left town by the time the people who bought his "snake oil" or similarly named tonic realize that it does not perform as advertised. In reported spiritual communications, a charlatan is a person who fakes evidence that a spirit is "making contact" with the medium and seekers. This has been challenged successfully by skeptics who wrote passwords and gave them to people of trust, containing a password that should be spoken by the person if he ever tried to make contact, to validate the truth of the claim. No such claim has been verified. Notable people who have successfully debunked the claims of purported supernatural mediums include Brazilian writer Monteiro Lobato and magician Houdini.

Synonyms for "charlatan" include "mountebank", "shyster", and "quack". "Mountebank" comes from the Italian ''montambanco'' or ''montimbanco'' based on the phrase ''monta in banco'' - literally referring to the action of a seller of dubious medicines getting up on a bench to address his audience of potential customers.

"Quack" is a reference to "quackery" or the practice of dubious medicine.

Famous charlatans

John R. Brinkley, the "goat-gland doctor" who implanted goat glands as a means of curing male impotence, helped pioneer both American and Mexican radio broadcasting, and twice ran unsuccessfully for governor of Kansas.

Albert Abrams, the advocate of radionics and other similar electrical quackery who was active in the early twentieth century.

Italian Alessandro Cagliostro (real name Giuseppe Balsamo) who claimed to be a count.

The mystical Count of St. Germain.

Charles Ponzi, for whom the "Ponzi scheme" is named, a scam that relies on a "pyramid" of "investors" who contribute money to a fraudulent programme.

See also

Cerreto di Spoleto

Confidence trick

Fraud

Impostor

Poseur

Quackery

Specialty studies

Humbertclaude, Eric. ''Récréations de Hultazob'' Paris: L'Harmattan 2010, ISBN 978-2-296-12546-9 (sur Melech August Hultazob, médecin-charlatan des Lumières Allemandes assassiné en 1743)

References

Category:Deception Category:Pseudoscience

bg:Шарлатан de:Scharlatan es:Charlatán fa:شارلاتان fr:Charlatan hr:Šarlatan io:Sharlatano it:Ciarlatano he:שרלטן nl:Charlatan no:Sjarlatan sv:Charlatan

name	Richard Dawkins
birth name	Clinton Richard Dawkins
birth date	March 26, 1941
birth place	Nairobi, Kenya Colony
nationality	British
education	MA, DPhil (Oxon)
alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
doctoral advisor	Nikolaas Tinbergen
doctoral students	Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley
occupation	Ethologist
years active	1967–present
employer	University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of Oxford
organization	Fellow of the Royal SocietyFellow of the Royal Society of Literature
known for	Gene-centered view of evolution, concept of the meme, as well as advocacy of atheism and science.
notable works	''The Selfish Gene'' (1976)''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982)''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1986)''The God Delusion'' (2006)
influences	Charles Darwin, Ronald Fisher, George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, Daniel Dennett, Bertrand Russell
spouse	Marian Stamp Dawkins (m. 1967–1984)Eve Barham (m. 1984–?)Lalla Ward (m. 1992–present)
children	Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984)
parents	Clinton John DawkinsJean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner)
awards	Faraday Award (1990)Kistler Prize (2001)
website	The Richard Dawkins Foundation
footnotes	}}

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book ''The Selfish Gene'', which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term ''meme''. In 1982 he introduced an influential concept into evolutionary biology, presented in his book ''The Extended Phenotype'', that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.

Dawkins is an atheist and humanist, a Vice President of the British Humanist Association and supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book ''The Blind Watchmaker'', he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a ''blind'' watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book ''The God Delusion'', Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—a fixed false belief. As of January 2010 the English-language version has sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages, making it his most popular book to date.

Biography

Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya. His father, Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), returning to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited Over Norton Park, which he turned from a country estate into a commercial farm. Both his parents were interested in natural sciences; they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms.

Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing". Though he began having doubts about the existence of a god when he was about nine years old, he was persuaded by the argument from design, an argument for the existence of a god or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, or design in nature, and embraced Christianity.

He attended Oundle, a Church of England school, Dawkins' research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.

From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities. He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 taking a position as a lecturer, and in 1990, as a reader in zoology. In 1995 he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field", and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.

Since 1970 he has been a fellow of New College. He has delivered a number of inaugural and other lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), T.H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), Tinbergen Lecture (2004) and Tanner Lectures (2003). In 1991 he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures for Children. He has also served as editor of a number of journals, and has acted as editorial advisor to the ''Encarta Encyclopedia'' and the ''Encyclopedia of Evolution''. He is a senior editor of the Council for Secular Humanism's ''Free Inquiry'' magazine, for which he also writes a column. He has been a member of the editorial board of ''Skeptic'' magazine since its foundation.

He has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards, and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2004 Balliol College, Oxford instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities". In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in 'anti-scientific' fairytales."

Personal life

On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married fellow ethologist Marian Stamp in Annestown, County Waterford, Ireland; they divorced in 1984. Later that same year, on 1 June, he married Eve Barham (19 August 1951–28 February 1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford). Dawkins and Barham divorced; she died of cancer. In 1992 he married actress Lalla Ward in Kensington and Chelsea, London. Dawkins met her through their mutual friend Douglas Adams, who had worked with her on the BBC's ''Doctor Who''.

Work

Evolutionary biology

In his scientific works, Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene-centred view of evolution. This view is most clearly set out in his books ''The Selfish Gene'' (1976), where he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities", and ''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982), in which he describes natural selection as "the process whereby replicators out-propagate each other". In his role as an ethologist, interested in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he advocates the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution.

Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin) and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism. This behaviour appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own fitness. Previously, many had interpreted this as an aspect of group selection: individuals were doing what was best for the survival of the population or species as a whole, and not specifically for themselves. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton had used the gene-centred view to explain altruism in terms of inclusive fitness and kin selection − that individuals behave altruistically toward their close relatives, who share many of their own genes. Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation. Dawkins popularised these ideas in ''The Selfish Gene'', and developed them in his own work.

He has also been strongly critical of the Gaia philosophy theory of the independent scientist James Lovelock.

Critics of Dawkins' approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of ''selection'' − of a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce − is misleading, but that the gene could be better described as a unit of ''evolution'' − of the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population. In ''The Selfish Gene'', Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams' definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency." Another common objection is that genes cannot survive alone, but must cooperate to build an individual, and therefore cannot be an independent "unit". In ''The Extended Phenotype'', Dawkins suggests that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, from an individual gene's viewpoint all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted.

Advocates for higher levels of selection such as Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, and Elliot Sober suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning ''The Selfish Gene'', has criticised gene selection, memetics and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist and suggests that the popularity of Dawkins' work is due to factors in the Zeitgeist such as the increased individualism of the Thatcher/Reagan decades.

In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (the so-called 'Darwin Wars'), one faction was often named after Dawkins and its rival after the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of pertinent ideas. In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical. A typical example of Dawkins' position was his scathing review of ''Not in Our Genes'' by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and Richard C. Lewontin. Two other thinkers on the subject often considered to be allied to Dawkins are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology. Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book ''A Devil's Chaplain'' posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year.

Dawkins' book ''The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution'' expounds the evidence for biological evolution. All of his previous works dealing with evolution had assumed its truth, and not explicitly provided the evidence to this effect. Dawkins felt that this represented a gap in his oeuvre, and decided to write the book to coincide with Darwin's bicentennial year.

Meme

Dawkins coined the word ''meme'' (the behavioral equivalent of a gene) to describe how Darwinian principles might be extended to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. This has spawned the field of memetics. Dawkins' ''memes'' refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or a complex of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes are not always copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes, which may themselves prove more, or less, efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes. Since originally outlining the idea in his book ''The Selfish Gene'', Dawkins has largely left the task of expanding upon it to other authors such as Susan Blackmore.

Although Dawkins invented the specific term ''meme'' independently, he has not claimed that the idea itself was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon. In 1904 Semon published ''Die Mneme'' (which appeared in English in 1924 as ''The Mneme''). This book discussed the cultural transmission of experiences, with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent also found the term ''mneme'' used in Maurice Maeterlinck's ''The Life of the White Ant'' (1926), and has highlighted the similarities to Dawkins' concept.

Criticism of creationism

Dawkins is a prominent critic of creationism (the religious belief that humanity, life and the universe were created by a deity, without recourse to evolution). He has described the Young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood," and his 1986 book, ''The Blind Watchmaker'', contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argued against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the 18th-century English theologian William Paley in his book ''Natural Theology''. Paley argued that, just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, nonintelligent, ''blind'' watchmaker.

thumb|left|Dawkins at the 34th annual conference of American Atheists, 2008In 1986 Dawkins participated in a Oxford Union debate, in which he and English biologist John Maynard Smith debated Young Earth creationist A. E. Wilder-Smith and Edgar Andrews, president of the Biblical Creation Society. In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of ''engaging'' with them at all." He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public."

In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know". When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word ''theory'', Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English."

Dawkins has ardently opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one". He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler", a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and he plans—through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science—to subsidise the delivery of books, DVDs and pamphlets to schools, in order to counteract what he has described as an "educational scandal".

Advocacy of atheism

Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and a prominent critic of religion. In an interview with Thomas Bass for a book published in 1994 he described himself as a 'fairly militant atheist'. In 1996, when asked if he'd prefer to be known as a scientist or a militant atheist, he replied "Bertrand Russell called himself the Passionate Sceptic. It's aiming high, but I'll shoot for that." Dawkins is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, a vice-president of the British Humanist Association (since 1996), a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society of Scotland, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In 2003 he became a signatory of the humanist manifesto ''Humanism and Its Aspirations'', published by the American Humanist Association. As a result of his advocacy of atheism, Dawkins has sometimes been described as a vocal, militant rationalist, and as "the UK's Chief Atheist".

Dawkins believes that his own atheism is the logical extension of his understanding of evolution and that religion is incompatible with science. In his 1986 book ''The Blind Watchmaker'', Dawkins wrote:

{{blockquote| An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. }}

In his 1991 essay "Viruses of the Mind" (from which the term ''faith-sufferer'' originated), he suggested that memetic theory might analyse and explain the phenomenon of religious belief and some of the common characteristics of religions, such as the belief that punishment awaits non-believers. According to Dawkins, faith − belief that is not based on evidence − is one of the world's great evils. He claims it to be analogous to the smallpox virus, though more difficult to eradicate. Dawkins is well-known for his contempt for religious extremism, from Islamist terrorism to Christian fundamentalism; but he has also argued with liberal believers and religious scientists, from biologists Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins to theologians Alister McGrath and Richard Harries. Dawkins has stated that his opposition to religion is twofold, claiming it to be both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence. However, he describes himself as a "cultural Christian", and proposed the slogan "Atheists for Jesus".

Following the 11 September 2001 attacks, when asked how the world might have changed, Dawkins responded:

{{blockquote| Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful! }}

Dawkins has especially risen to prominence in contemporary public debates relating science and religion since the publication of his 2006 book ''The God Delusion'', which has achieved greater sales figures worldwide than any of his other works to date. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist, central to a recent rise in the popularity of atheistic literature. ''The God Delusion'' was praised by among others the Nobel laureates Sir Harold Kroto and James D. Watson and by psychologist Steven Pinker. In the book, Dawkins suggested that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. He sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination. These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term ''Bright'' as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a naturalistic worldview. Dawkins notes that feminists have succeeded in arousing widespread embarrassment at the routine use of "he" instead of "she". Similarly, he suggests, a phrase such as "Catholic child" or "Muslim child" should be considered just as socially absurd as, for instance, "Marxist child": children should not be classified based on their parents' ideological beliefs. According to Dawkins, there is no such thing as a Christian child or a Muslim child, as children have about as much capacity to make the decision to become Christians or Muslims as they do to become Marxists. Critics have said that the programme gave too much time to marginal figures and extremists, and that Dawkins' confrontational style did not help his cause and exhibited similarities with the approaches of religious fundamentalists more than with the approaches of the dispassionate, analytic approach of 'hard' science; Dawkins rejected these claims, citing the number of moderate religious broadcasts in everyday media as providing a suitable balance to the extremists in the programmes. He further remarked that someone who is deemed an "extremist" in a religiously moderate country may well be considered "mainstream" in a religiously conservative one. The unedited recordings of Dawkins' conversations with Alister McGrath and Richard Harries, including material unused in the broadcast version, have been made available online by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Dawkins' work has been controversial, and a number of Christian thinkers have responded to it. For example, Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of ''The Dawkins Delusion'' and ''Dawkins' God'') maintains that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?", and − in the paperback edition of ''The God Delusion'' − he refers to the American biologist PZ Myers, who has satirised this line of argument as "The Courtier's Reply". Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 ''Sunday Times'' Literary Festival.

Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other". He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria. In an interview with ''Time'' magazine, Dawkins said:

I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.

Astrophysicist Martin Rees, who has described himself as an unbeliever who identifies with Christianity from a cultural perspective, has suggested that Dawkins' attack on mainstream religion is unhelpful. Regarding Rees' claim in his book ''Our Cosmic Habitat'' that "such questions lie beyond science", Dawkins asks "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?" Elsewhere, Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation." He has said that the publication of ''The God Delusion'' is "probably the culmination" of his campaign against religion.

In 2007 Dawkins founded the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly and proudly. Inspired by the gay rights movement, Dawkins hopes that atheists' identifying of themselves as such, and thereby increasing public awareness of how many people hold these views, will reduce the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority.

In September 2008, following a complaint by Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar, a court in Turkey blocked access to Dawkins' website ''richarddawkins.net''. The court decision was made due to "insult to personality". As of 8 July 2011, ''richarddawkins.net'' is no longer blocked in Turkey.

In October 2008, Dawkins officially supported the UK's first atheist advertising initiative, the Atheist Bus Campaign. Created by Guardian journalist Ariane Sherine and administered by the British Humanist Association the campaign aimed to raise funds to place atheist adverts on buses in the London area, and Dawkins pledged to match the amount raised by atheists, up to a maximum of £5,500. However, the campaign was an unprecedented success, raising over £100,000 in its first four days, and generating global press coverage. The campaign, started in January 2009, features adverts across the UK with the slogan: "''There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.''" Dawkins said that "this campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think — and thinking is anathema to religion."

In 2010 Dawkins supported legal efforts to charge Pope Benedict XVI with crimes against humanity. Dawkins and fellow anti-religion campaigner Christopher Hitchens were believed to have explored the option of attempting to have the Pope arrested under the same legal principle that saw Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested during a visit to Britain in 1998. Dawkins has given support to the idea of an atheists' "free thinking" school, that would teach children to "ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded".

On 15 September 2010, Dawkins, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in ''The Guardian'', stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI making a ''State'' visit to the United Kingdom.

Richard Dawkins Foundation

In 2006 Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS), a non-profit organisation. The foundation is in developmental phase. It has been granted charitable status in the United Kingdom and the United States. RDFRS plans to finance research on the psychology of belief and religion, finance scientific education programs and materials, and publicise and support secular charitable organisations. The foundation also offers humanist, rationalist and scientific materials and information through its website.

Other fields

In his role as professor for public understanding of science, Dawkins has been a critic of pseudoscience and alternative medicine. His 1998 book ''Unweaving the Rainbow'' takes John Keats' accusation that, by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton had diminished its beauty, and argues for the opposite conclusion. He suggests that deep space, the billions of years of life's evolution, and the microscopic workings of biology and heredity contain more beauty and wonder than do "myths" and "pseudoscience". Dawkins wrote a foreword to John Diamond's posthumously published ''Snake Oil'', a book devoted to debunking alternative medicine, in which he asserted that alternative medicine was harmful, if only because it distracted patients from more successful conventional treatments, and gave people false hopes. Dawkins states that "there is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work."

Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the planet's human population, and about the matter of overpopulation. In ''The Selfish Gene'', he briefly mentions population growth, giving the example of Latin America, whose population, at the time the book was written, was doubling every 40 years. He is critical of Roman Catholic attitudes to family planning and population control, stating that leaders who forbid contraception and "express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation" will get just such a method in the form of starvation.

As a supporter of the ''Great Ape Project'' – a movement to extend certain moral and legal rights to all great apes – Dawkins contributed the article "Gaps in the Mind" to the ''Great Ape Project'' book edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer. In this essay, he criticises contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous, speciesist imperative".

Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and weblogs on contemporary political questions; his opinions include opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the British nuclear deterrent and the actions of U.S. President George W. Bush. Several such articles were included in ''A Devil's Chaplain'', an anthology of writings about science, religion and politics. He is also a supporter of the Republic campaign to replace the British monarchy with a democratically elected president. Dawkins has described himself as a Labour voter in the 1970s and voter for the Liberal Democrats since the party's creation. In 2009 he spoke at the party's conference in opposition to blasphemy laws, alternative medicine and faith schools. In the UK general election of 2010, Dawkins officially endorsed the Liberal Democrats, in support of their campaign for electoral reform and for their "refusal to pander to 'faith'."

In the 2007 TV documentary ''The Enemies of Reason'', Dawkins discusses what he sees as the dangers of abandoning critical thought and rationale based upon scientific evidence. He specifically cites astrology, spiritualism, dowsing, alternative faiths, alternative medicine and homeopathy. He also discusses how the Internet can be used to spread religious hatred and conspiracy theories with scant attention to evidence-based reasoning.

Continuing a long-standing partnership with Channel 4, Dawkins participated in a five-part television series ''The Genius of Britain'', along with fellow scientists Stephen Hawking, James Dyson, Paul Nurse, and Jim Al-Khalili. The five-episode series was broadcast in June 2010. The series focussed on major British scientific achievements throughout history.

Dawkins presented a More4 documentary entitled 'Faith School Menace' in which he argued for "us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which... bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children."

In 1998 Dawkins expressed his appreciation for two books, famous for their criticism of postmodernism in US universities, in departments like literary studies, anthropology and other cultural studies; the two books are ''Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science'' (by Gross and Levitt) and ''Intellectual Impostures'' (by Sokal and Bricmont), both related to the Sokal affair hoax. In the same occasion Dawkins also criticised Cambridge University for awarding philosopher Jacques Derrida an honorary doctorate.

In 2011 Dawkins joined the professoriate of the New College of the Humanities, a new private university in London established by A. C. Grayling, which is scheduled to open in September 2012.

Awards and recognition

Dawkins was awarded a Doctor of Science by the University of Oxford in 1989. He holds honorary doctorates in science from the University of Huddersfield, University of Westminster, Durham University, the University of Hull, and the University of Antwerp, and honorary doctorates from the University of Aberdeen, Open University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and the University of Valencia. He also holds honorary doctorates of letters from the University of St Andrews and the Australian National University (HonLittD, 1996), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and the Royal Society in 2001. He is one of the patrons of the Oxford University Scientific Society.

In 1987 Dawkins received a Royal Society of Literature award and a ''Los Angeles Times'' Literary Prize for his book, ''The Blind Watchmaker''. In the same year, he received a ''Sci. Tech'' Prize for Best Television Documentary Science Programme of the Year, for the BBC ''Horizon'' episode ''The Blind Watchmaker''.

His other awards have included the Zoological Society of London Silver Medal (1989), Finlay innovation award (1990), the Michael Faraday Award (1990), the Nakayama Prize (1994), the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year Award (1996), the fifth International Cosmos Prize (1997), the Kistler Prize (2001), the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic (2001), the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow (2002) and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (2009).

Dawkins topped ''Prospect'' magazine's 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up. He has been short-listed as a candidate in their 2008 follow-up poll. In 2005 the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded him its Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his "concise and accessible presentation of scientific knowledge". He won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2006 and the Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year Award for 2007. In the same year, he was listed by ''Time'' magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and he was ranked 20th in ''The Daily Telegraph'''s 2007 list of 100 greatest living geniuses. He was awarded the Deschner Award, named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner.

Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year. It is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins' own work.

In February 2010 he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.

Media

Selected publications

(Scheduled to publish on 4 October 2011)

Documentary films

''Nice Guys Finish First'' (1986)

''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1987)

''Growing Up in the Universe'' (1991)

''Break the Science Barrier'' (1996)

''The Root of All Evil?'' (2006)

''The Enemies of Reason'' (2007)

''The Genius of Charles Darwin'' (2008)

''Faith School Menace'' (2010)

Other appearances

''Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth'' (2008) – as himself

''Doctor Who: The Big Bang'' (2010) – as himself

Notes

b. The debate ended with the motion "That the doctrine of creation is more valid than the theory of evolution" being defeated by 198 votes to 115.

References

External links

General

Official website

Richard Dawkins' page on Academia.edu

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

Video

National Geographic Interviews – A series of video interviews with National Geographic Channel with Richard Dawkins on Darwin, Evolution and God.

TED Talks: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism at TED in 2002

TED Talks: Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe at TED Global in 2005

Video interview with Riz Khan for Al Jazeera English

Video interview at Big Think

Selected writings

Viruses of the Mind (1993) – Religion as a mental virus.

The Real Romance in the Stars (1995) – A critical view of astrology.

The Emptiness of Theology (1998) – A critical view of theology. (Alternative link at RDFRS.)

Snake Oil and Holy Water (1999) – Suggests that there is no convergence occurring between science and theism.

What Use is Religion? (2004) – Suggests that religion may have no survival value other than to itself.

Race and Creation (2004) – On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved.

The giant tortoise's tale, The turtle's tale and The lava lizard's tale (2005) – A series of three articles written after a visit to the Galápagos Islands.

Dawkins' ''Huffington Post'' articles

Audio

Richard Dawkins on RadioLIVE's Weekend Variety Wireless – Richard Dawkins appears live on New Zealand's RadioLIVE, taking calls from the audience.

Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century biologists Category:21st-century biologists Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Atheism activists Category:British republicans Category:Criticism of religion Category:English atheists Category:English biologists Category:English humanists Category:English sceptics Category:English science writers Category:Ethologists Category:Evolutionary biologists Category:Fellows of New College, Oxford Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Gifford Lecturers Category:New College of the Humanities Category:Old Oundelians Category:People from Nairobi Category:Presenters of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures Category:Recipients of the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic Category:Statutory Professors of the University of Oxford Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty

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name	Deepak Chopra
birth place	New Delhi, India
birth date	October 22, 1946
occupation	physician, public speaker, writer
spouse	Rita Chopra
parents	Dr. (Col) K. L. Chopra, Pushpa Chopra
children	Mallika Chopra and Gotham Chopra
nationality	American (born Indian)
website	deepakchopra.com }}

Deepak Chopra (; born October 22, 1946) is a Indian medical doctor, public speaker, and writer on subjects such as spirituality, Ayurveda and mind-body medicine. Chopra began his career as an endocrinologist and later shifted his focus to alternative medicine. Chopra now runs his own medical center, with a focus on mind-body connections. He is also a lecturer at the Update in Internal Medicine event, sponsored by Harvard Medical School's Department of Continuing Education and the Department of Medicine.

Chopra was a top assistant to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before launching his own career in the late 1980s by publishing self-help books on New Age spirituality and alternative medicine.

A friend of Michael Jackson for 20 years, Chopra came to widespread public attention in July 2009 when he criticized the "cult of drug-pushing doctors, with their co-dependent relationships with addicted celebrities," saying he hoped Jackson's death, attributed to an overdose of a prescription drug, would be a call to action.

Family history

Chopra was born in New Delhi, India. His father, Krishan Chopra, M.D. (1919–2001) was a prominent Indian cardiologist. He was head of the department of medicine and cardiology at Mool Chand Khairati Ram Hospital, New Delhi, for over 25 years, and a lieutenant in the British army. His paternal grandfather was a sergeant in the British Army, who sought treatment for his heart condition from Ayurveda when it did not improve through medical means.

Chopra's younger brother, Sanjiv, is a Professor of Medicine and Faculty Dean for Continuing Medical Education at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Early life and education

As a young man, Chopra's desire was to become an actor or journalist but he reports that he was inspired by a character in ''Arrowsmith'' by Sinclair Lewis and became a doctor.

Chopra completed his primary education at St. Columba's School in New Delhi and graduated from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). After immigrating to the US in 1968, Chopra began his clinical internship and residency training at Muhlenberg Hospital in Plainfield, New Jersey. He had residency terms at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts, and at the University of Virginia Hospital.

He earned his license to practice medicine in the state of Massachusetts in 1973 and received a California medical license in 2004. Chopra is board-certified in internal medicine and specialized in endocrinology. He is also a member of the American Medical Association (AMA), a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.

Career

Chopra taught at the Tufts University and Boston University Schools of Medicine. He became Chief of Staff at the New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts, later known as Boston Regional Medical Center, before establishing a private practice.

After reading about the Transcendental Meditation technique, Chopra and his wife learned the practice in 1981, and two months later they went on to learn the advanced TM-Sidhi program. Sources also describe a 1981 meeting between Chopra and Ayurvedic physician Brihaspati Dev Triguna in Delhi, India, in which Triguna advised Chopra to learn the TM technique.

In 1985, Chopra met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who invited him to study Ayurveda. In that same year, Chopra left his position at the New England Memorial Hospital and became the founding president of the American Association of Ayurvedic Medicine, and was later named medical director of the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center for Stress Management and Behavioral Medicine. He was initially the sole stockholder of Maharishi Ayurveda Products International, but divested after three months. He has been called the TM movement's "poster boy" and "its leading Ayurvedic physician". In 1989, the Maharishi awarded him with the title "Dhanvantari (Lord of Immortality), the keeper of perfect health for the world".

In its May 22/29, 1991 issue, the ''Journal of the American Medical Association'' (''JAMA'') published an article coauthored by Chopra: ''Letter from New Delhi: Maharishi Ayur-Veda: Modern Insights Into Ancient Medicine''. ''JAMA'' editors claimed that Chopra and his co-authors had financial interests in "Maharishi Vedic Medicine" products and services. In the August 14, 1991 edition of ''JAMA'', the editors published a financial disclosure correction and followed up on October 2, 1991 with a six-page Medical News and Perspectives exposé. An article discussing this chain of events was authored by Andrew A. Skolnick in the Newsletter of the National Association of Science Writers. A 1992 defamation lawsuit brought against the article's author and the editor of JAMA was dismissed in 1993. Media reports published four years later saying that there had been a monetary settlement of the case were later withdrawn as untrue.

By 1992, Chopra was serving on The National Institutes of Health Ad Hoc Panel on Alternative Medicine. In 1993, Chopra became executive director of the Sharp Institute for Human Potential and Mind–Body Medicine with a $30,000 grant from the Office of Alternative Medicine in the National Institutes to study Ayurvedic medicine. Chopra's institute also maintained affiliation with Sharp Healthcare, in San Diego. That same year Chopra moved with his family to Southern California where he lives with his wife and near his two adult children, Gotham and Mallika.

Chopra left the Transcendental Meditation movement in January 1994. According to his own account, Chopra was accused by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of attempting to compete with the Maharishi's position as guru. Todd Carroll said Chopra left the TM organization when it “became too stressful” and was a “hindrance to his success”.

In 1995, Chopra was the recipient of the Toastmasters "International Top Five Outstanding Speakers" award. In 1997 Chopra was given the Golden Gavel Award by Toastmasters.

He was presented the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic awarded by the Pio Manzu International Scientific Committee. In the citation committee chairman and former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev referred to Chopra as ‘one of the most lucid and inspired philosophers of our time’. Esquire Magazine designated him as one of the "top ten motivational speakers in the country".

In 1996, Chopra parted company with the Sharp Institute. That same year, Chopra and neurologist David Simon, M.D., founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, which incorporated Ayurveda in its regimen, and was located in La Jolla, California. The University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine and American Medical Association have granted continuing medical education credits for some programs offered to physicians at the Chopra Center. In 2002, Chopra and Simon relocated the Chopra Center to the grounds of La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California,continuing to offer mind-body wellness programs, medical consultations, and instruction in meditation, yoga, and Ayurveda.

Chopra and Simon also revived an ancient mantra-based meditation practice, traveling to India to study the origins of this technique, known as Primordial Sound Meditation. This form of meditation is now taught at the Chopra Center and by certified instructors who receive their training through Chopra Center University.

Since 2000 Chopra has sat as an advisor for the National Ayurvedic Medical Association.

In 2005 Chopra was made a Senior Scientist at The Gallup Organization. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Executive Programs at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Chopra has a Sirius XM weekly radio show where he interviews prominent scientists and leaders in the development of human potential on Sirius//XM Stars Radio show Wellness Radio He is also a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, a regular contributor to the Washington Post's ''On Faith section'' and a prolific contributor to the Huffington Post.

Dr. Chopra is also a monthly contributor for the Times of India Speaking Tree.

In 2006, Chopra launched Virgin Comics LLC with his son Gotham Chopra and entrepreneur Richard Branson. The company's purpose is to "spread peace and awareness through comics and trading cards that display traditional Kabalistic characters and stories". Chopra was awarded the 2006 Ellis Island Medal of Honor by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations.

He was the recipient in 2009 of the Oceana Award. Also in 2009, Chopra established the Chopra Foundation with a mission to advance the cause of mind/body spiritual healing, education, and research through fundraising for selected projects. In 2010 the Chopra Foundation sponsored the first Sages and Scientists Symposium with prominent scientists philosophers and artists from around the world.

In 2010, Chopra received the Cinequest Life of a Maverick Award for his collaborations with filmmakers Shekhar Kapur and his son, Gotham Chopra. The award goes to "inspirational individuals who touch the world of film while their greater lives exemplify the Maverick spirit".

Chopra is heavily featured in UniGlobe Entertainment's cancer docudrama titled ''1 a Minute'' talking about mind, body, spirit and the mystery of life and death. The documentary is directed by actress Namrata Singh Gujral and also features cancer survivors Olivia Newton-John, Diahann Carroll, Melissa Etheridge, Mumtaz (actress) and Jaclyn Smith.

He received the 2010 Humanitarian Starlite Award "for his global force of human empowerment, well-being and for bringing light to the world." Chopra is the recipient of the 2010 GOI Peace Award.

In September 2010, Chopra published a criticism of Stephen Hawking's book ''The Grand Design''.

In February 2011 the Chopra Foundation sponsored the second annual Sages and Scientists Symposium with eminent physicists, geneticists and social scientists from around the world. .

In conjunction with Menas Kafatos, Ph.D and Rudolph E.Tanzi,Ph.D. Chopra published a paper in the Journal of Cosmology Vol. 14 April-May 2011, titled "How Consciousness Becomes the Physical Universe."

In June 2011 Deepak Chopra wrote an op-ed for the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics titled "Medicine’s Great Divide—The View from the Alternative Side"

In the summer of 2011 Deepak Chopra was ranked #1 influencer of all Indians in the world, both resident and non-resident.

Criticism

According to a 2008 article in ''Time'' magazine, Chopra is “a magnet for criticism” primarily from those involved in science and medicine. Some critics say that Chopra creates a false sense of hope in sick individuals which may keep them away from effective medical care. The ''Time'' article summarized Chopra's reception and popularity thus: "Of all the Asian gurus…, Chopra has arguably been the most successful at erasing apparent differences between East and West by packaging Eastern mystique in credible Western garb. …[H]is quest to construct a pleasing and seamless model of the universe tends to jump to easy conclusions and to spackle over problematic gaps and inconsistencies in the ideas he presents — is obvious to all but his most starry-eyed fans. But grousing about such crimes — as many do — does little to explain his enormous popularity. Chopra is as rich as he is today not because he has been dishonest with anyone, but because his basic message — that love, health and happiness are possible, that mystery is real and that the universe is ultimately a friendly and benevolent place where orthodoxies old and new can meet and make peace with one another — is one that he wants to believe in just as sincerely as his readers do."

Chopra was sued for plagiarism by Robert Sapolsky for using a stress endocrine chart without proper attribution, after the publication of Chopra’s book, ''Ageless Body, Timeless Mind''. An out of court settlement resulted in Chopra attributing material that was researched by Sapolsky. Chopra acknowledges that his thought has been inspired by Jiddu Krishnamurti and others.

In 1996, the ''Weekly Standard'' of London published an article which accused Chopra of “plagiarism and soliciting a prostitute”; however, Chopra sued and the paper withdrew its statements and published an apology.

Chopra has been criticized for his frequent references to the relationship of quantum mechanics to healing processes, a connection that has drawn skepticism from some traditional physicists who say it can be considered as contributing to the general confusion in the popular press regarding quantum measurement, decoherence and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. In 1998, Chopra was awarded the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in physics for "his unique interpretation of quantum physics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness". According to the book, ''Skeptics Dictionary'', Chopra's "mind-body claims get even murkier as he tries to connect Ayurveda with quantum physics.” Chopra also participated in the Channel 4 (UK) documentary ''The Enemies of Reason'', where, when interviewed by scientist Richard Dawkins, he admitted that the term "quantum theory" was being used as a metaphor and that it has little to do with the actual quantum theory in physics.

In August 2005, Chopra wrote a series of articles on the creation-evolution controversy and Intelligent design which were criticized by science writer Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society.

In March 2010, Chopra and Jean Houston debated Sam Harris and Michael Shermer at Caltech on the question "Does God Have a Future?" Shermer and Harris criticized Chopra's use of scientific terminology to expound unrelated spiritual concepts. Harris has said that Chopra is "the very definition of what we mean by pseudoscience".

In April 2010, Hindu American Foundation co-founder Aseem Shukla, on a ''Washington Post''-sponsored blog on faith and religion, criticized Chopra for suggesting that yoga did not have origins in Hinduism but merely is an Indian spiritual tradition which predated Hinduism. Later on, Chopra tried to explain yoga as rooted in "consciousness alone" which is a universal, non-sectarian eternal wisdom of life expounded by Vedic rishis long before historic Hinduism ever arose. He further accused Aseem Shukla of having a "fundamentalist agenda". Dr. Shukla in a rejoinder titled "Dr. Chopra: Honor thy heritage" termed Deepak Chopra as an exponent of the art of "How to Deconstruct, Repackage and Sell Hindu Philosophy Without Calling it Hindu!" and to the allegation of "fundamentalist" he responded by accusing Dr. Chopra of raising the "bogey of communalism" in frustration to divert the argument.

Message

According to ''Business Week'', one of Chopra's main messages is that by ridding oneself of negative emotions and developing intuition by listening to signals from the body, health can be improved. According to Chopra, slowing down or reversing the aging of the mind through his methods can increase one's lifespan up to the age of 120 years. As a result of his writings and lectures in this area, he is thought by some to be "one of the pre-eminent leaders of the mind-body-spirit movement".

Publications

Chopra has written more than 65 books with 18 New York Times bestsellers. His books have been translated into 35 languages and sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. His book, ''Peace Is the Way'' won the Quill Awards and ''The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of your Life'' received the Nautilus Award. FINS - Wall Street Journal, mentioned his book, “The Soul of Leadership”, as one of five best business books of 2011 to read for your career. Chopra is represented in the United States by the literary agency, Trident Media Group. His first book, ''Creating Health'', is credited with helping to create initial, international recognition for Chopra.

1987 ''Creating Health'' ISBN 0-395-75515-8

1988 ''Return of the Rishi'' ISBN 0-395-57420-X

1989 ''Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine'' ISBN 0-553-34869-8

1991 ''Unconditional Life: Mastering the Forces That Shape Personal Reality''

1991 ''Perfect Health: The Complete Mind/Body Guide'' ISBN 0-517-58421-2

1993 ''Ageless Body, Timeless Mind : The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old'' ISBN 0-517-59257-6

1993 ''Creating Affluence: Wealth Consciousness in the Field of All Possibilities''ISBN 1-880032-42-2

1994 ''The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfilment of Your Dreams''

1995 ''The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons in Creating the Life You Want'' ISBN 0-517-70434-X

1995 ''The Return of Merlin: A Novel'' ISBN 0-449-91074-1

1995 ''Journey into Healing'' ISBN 1-4000-8069-X

1995 ''The Path to Love: Spiritual Strategies for Healing''

1996 ''Perfect Weight'' ISBN 0-517-88458-5

1996 ''Restful Sleep'' ISBN 0-517-88457-7

1996 ''Raid on the Inarticulate'' ISBN 1-882971-16-7

1997 ''The Path to Love: Renewing the Power of Spirit in Your Life'' ISBN 0-517-70622-9

1997 ''The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents: Guiding Your Children to Success and Fulfillment

1997 ''Perfect Digestion'' ISBN 0-609-80076-0

1998 ''Overcoming Addictions'' ISBN 0-609-80195-3

1998 ''The Love Poems of Rumi''ISBN 0-609-60243-8

1998 ''Healing the Heart'' ISBN 0-609-60035-4

1999 ''Everyday Immortality: A Concise Course in Spiritual Transformation'' ISBN 0-609-60484-8

1999 ''On the Shores of Eternity: Poems from Tagore on Immortality and Beyond'' ISBN 0-609-60564-X

1999 ''A Deepak Chopra Companion'' ISBN 0-609-80454-5

1999 ''Daughters of Joy''ISBN 0-451-20935-4

1999 ''Lords of Light: A Novel'' ISBN 0-312-96892-2

2000 ''The Angel is Near: A Novel'' ISBN 0-312-97024-2

2000 ''How to Know God : The Soul's Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries'' ISBN 0-609-60078-8

2001 ''The Deeper Wound: Recovering the Soul from Fear and Suffering, 100 Days of Healing''

2001 ''Grow Younger, Live Longer: 10 Steps to Reverse Aging'' ISBN 0-609-60079-6

2001 ''The Soul in Love: Classic Poems of Ecstasy and Exaltation'' ISBN 0-609-60648-4

2002 ''Manifesting Good Luck Cards: Growth and Enlightenment

2003 ''Golf for Enlightenment: The Seven Lessons for the Game of Life''

2003 ''The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence'' ISBN 0-609-60042-7

2003 ''Synchrodestiny: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence to Create Miracles'' ISBN 1-84413-221-8

2003 ''Manifesting Good Luck: Love and Relationships, 50 Card Deck

2003 ''The Chopra Center Cookbook'' ISBN 0-471-45404-4

2004 ''The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life'' ISBN 0-517-70624-5

2004 ''Fire in the Heart: A Spiritual Guide for Teens'' ISBN 0-689-86216-4

2005 ''Peace Is the Way : Bringing War and Violence to an End'' ISBN 0-307-23607-2

2005 ''The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga: A Practical Guide to Healing Body, Mind, and Spirit

2005 ''Magical Beginnings Enchanted lives: A Holistic Guide to Pregnancy'' ISBN 0-517-70220-7

2005 ''Teens Ask Deepak'' ISBN 0-689-86218-0

2006 ''Ask The Kabala: Oracle Cards/Kabala Guidebook'' ISBN 978-1-4019-1039-6

2006 ''Power Freedom and Grace: Living from the Source of Lasting Happiness'' ISBN 978-1-878424-81-5

2006 ''Life After Death: The Burden of Proof'' ISBN 0-307-34578-5

2006 ''Kama Sutra: Including the Seven Spiritual Laws of Love'' ISBN 978-1-85227-385-9

2007 ''Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment'' ISBN 978-0-06-087880-1

2007 ''Boundless Energy: The Complete Mind/Body Program for Overcoming Chronic Fatigue'' ISBN 0-609-80075-2

2007 ''Freedom From Addiction'' ISBN 0-7573-0578-4

2008 ''The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore'' ISBN 978-0-307-33831-0

2008 ''Why Is God Laughing? The Path to Joy and Spiritual Optimism''

2008 ''Jesus: A Story of Enlightenment'' ISBN 978-0-06-144873-7

2009 ''Reinventing The Body, Resurrecting The Soul''

2009 ''The Ultimate Happiness Prescription: 7 Keys to Joy and Enlightenment''

2009 ''Chopra Center Herbal Handbook'' ISBN 0-307-45233-6

2010 ''The Shadow Effect'' ISBN 0-06-196265-1

2010 ''Muhammad: A Story of the Last Prophet'' ISBN 978-0-061-78242-8

2010 ''The Soul of Leadership: Unlocking Your Potential for Greatness'' ISBN 978-0-307-40806-8

2011 ''The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes: Harnessing Our Power to Change the World'' with Gotham Chopra ISBN 978-0062059666

2011 ''The War of the Worldviews'' with Leonard Mlodinow ISBN 978-0-30-788688-0 (October 2011 publication date)

Music CDs/audio books

1986 ''Total Health: The Rediscovery of Ayurveda'' ASIN B-000-K06QY-4

1994 ''Journey Into Healing'' ISBN 0-679-44089-5

1994 ''Power Talk!:The Power of the Human Paradox'' with Anthony Robbins ISBN 1-55927-267-8

1996 ''Crescent Moon: Prose Poems of Rabindranath Tagore'' ISBN 1-878424-20-3

1998 ''Synchrodestiny'' ISBN 1-905953-04-6

1997 ''Transformation of Mind'': Deepak Chopra, Christopher Franke, ASIN: B000003KW4

1998 ''A Gift of Love: Love poems inspired by Rumi'' ASIN B-000-GRQX8-A

2000 ''All About God: A Dialogue Between Neale Donald Walsch and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-735-X

2000 ''Wisdom of the Sufi: A Dialogue Between Hidayat Inayat-Kahn and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-734-1

2000 ''The Spiritual Journey : A Dialogue Between Richard Moss, M.D., and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-739-2

2000 ''Spiritual Insights into the Genius of Leonardo da Vinci: A Dialogue Between Michael J. Gelb, M.D., and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-738-4

2000 ''The Art of Everyday Ecstasy: A Dialogue Between Margot Anand and Deepak Chopra '' ISBN 1-56170-737-6

2000 ''The Conscious Universe'' ISBN 1-56170-744-9

2000 ''Pathways to God: A Dialogue Between Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-736-8

2000 ''Unleash Your Potential'' with Marianne Williamson and Sarah Ban Breathnach ISBN 0-671-77180-9

2000 ''The Path to Enlightenment: Insights into Buddhism / A Dialogue Between Robert Thurman, Ph.D., and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-732-5

2001 ''Healing the Planet: A Dialogue Between Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-743-0

2001 ''Self-Coaching Secrets for Success'' ISBN 1-56170-827-5

2001 ''Awakening the Goddesses Within: Deepak Chopra, M.D., Presents Agapi Stassinopoulos'' ISBN 1-56170-837-2

2001 ''Tell Me a Story: A Dialogue Between Lisa Suhay and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-874-7

2001 ''Sacred Sexuality: A Dialogue Between Felice Dunas and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-823-2

2001 ''Relationships As a Bridge to Divine Love : A Dialogue Between Barbara De Angelis, Ph.D., and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-742-2

2001 ''Training the Mind, Healing the Body'' ASIN B-000-BGT8K-6

2001 ''Soul of Healing Meditations – A Simple Approach to Growing Younger'' ASIN B-000-05TZS-K

2001 ''The Higher Self'' ISBN 0-7435-0921-8

2001 ''The New Physics of Healing'' ISBN 1-56455-919-X

2001 ''Science And Soul: The Survival of Consciousness After Death, A Dialogue Between Gary Schwartz and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-822-4

2002 ''The Yoga of Love and Devotion'' with Shree Ma ISBN 1-56170-838-0

2002 ''Integrating The Masculine And Feminine In The Spiritual Traditions Of Judaism and Vedanta: A Dialogue Between Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-824-0

2002 ''Quantum Physics of Quantum Healing: A Dialogue with Amit Goswami, Ph.D., and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-920-4

2002 ''The Evolving Human: A Dialogue Between Jean Houston, Ph.D., and Deepak Chopa'' ISBN 1-56170-916-6

2002 ''Rituals As a Path to the Divine: A Dialogue Between Stephen Huyler, Ph.D., and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-841-0

2002 ''Healing Your Relationships : A Dialogue Between Kenny and Julia Loggins and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-840-2

2002 ''The Soul and Relationship: A Dialogue Between Shakti Gawain and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-56170-917-4

2002 ''Yoga as a Form of Meditation'' with Yogi Amrit Desai ISBN 1-56170-839-9

2002 ''A Gift of Love II: A Musical Valentine to Tagore'' ASIN B-000-06IZP-E

2003 ''Magical Mind, Magical Body'' ISBN 0-7435-3013-6

2003 ''Journey to the Boundless'' ISBN 0-7435-3016-0

2004 ''Chakra Balancing: Body, Mind, and Soul'' ASIN B-000-667GN-W

2004 ''Sacred Verses, Healing Sounds, Volumes I and II: The Bhagavad Gita, Hymns of the Rig Veda'' ISBN 1-878-42478-5

2004 ''The Ultimate Deepak Chopra Collection'' 20 CDs ASIN B-000-BGV45-I

2004 ''Whispers'' with Eckhart Tolle, Jack Canfield and Don Miguel Ruiz ISBN 1-559-61722-5

2005 ''The Power of Intuition'' ISBN 1-401-90622-2

2005 ''Living Beyond Miracles''with Wayne Dyer ISBN 1-878-42479-3

2005 ''The Cosmic Mind and Submanifest Order of Being'' ISBN 1-401-90450-5

2005 ''Living Without Limits'' ISBN 1-878-42496-3

2005 ''An Ancient Magical Prayer'' ISBN 1-401-90447-5

2006 ''Escaping the Prison of the Intellect'' ISBN 1-878-42456-4

2007 ''Creating Your World the Way You Really Want It To Be'' with Wayne Dyer ISBN 1-602-52748-2

2007 ''Meditations for Healing: A Dialogue Between Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. and Deepak Chopra'' ISBN 1-561-70922-0

2008 ''Whispers of Spirit & Happiness'' with Don Miguel Ruiz ISBN 1-559-61945-7

2008 ''The Soul of Healing Affirmations A-Z Guide to Reprogramming the Software of the Soul'' ASIN B-001-2SAT7-S

2008 ''Grow Younger Live Longer'' Dave Stewart and Deepak Chopra ASIN: B0012GMXFQ

2009 ''The Soul Of Healing Meditations'' ASIN B-000-05TZS-K

2011 ''Stress Free with Deepak Chopra (Meditations) ASIN: B004JU157O

2011 ''The Secret of Healing: Meditations for Transformation and Higher Consciousness'' ASIN: B004K35UWG

Videos

1995 ''Seven Spiritual Laws of Success''

1995 ''The Way of the Wizard''

2003 ''God and Buddha - a dialog''

2004 ''Soul of Healing - Body, Mind, and Soul Vol. 1''

2008 ''The Love Guru''

2010 ''1 a Minute''

Other published work

2008 Introduction to Kim Feinberg's ''A Mother's Legacy'' Chopra co-authored ''Ask the Kabala'' with Mike 'Zappy' Zapolin and Alys Yablon, which is a set of 22 cards, each one representing a story or character from the Old Testament and a life lesson based on that story from a Kabalistic perspective. Chopra co-authored a blog in 2009 with Richard Barrett titled Can Values Save the Economy?

Journal of Cosmology Vol. 14 April-May 2011, "How Consciousness Becomes the Physical Universe." with Menas Kafatos, Ph.D and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D.

Chopra is a co-author of 2011 Consciousness and the Universe: Quantum Physics, Evolution, Brain & Mind along with Roger Penrose, Stuart Hameroff, Henry Stapp

See also

Alternative medicine

Quantum mysticism

Monistic idealism

Spiritual Naturalism

References

Further reading

External links

Official Site

VYou

The Chopra Center for Wellbeing

Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:Indian emigrants to the United States Category:American writers of Indian descent Category:Indian doctors Category:Indian self-help writers Category:Indian spiritual writers Category:Indian motivational speakers Category:New Age writers Category:People in alternative medicine Category:Recipients of the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic Category:Spiritualists Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners Category:Ayurvedacharyas Category:Ig Nobel Prize winners Category:American spiritual writers Category:People from New Delhi

bg:Дийпак Чопра de:Deepak Chopra es:Deepak Chopra fa:دیپاک چوپرا fr:Deepak Chopra ko:디팩 초프라 hi:दीपक चोपड़ा it:Deepak Chopra mr:दीपक चोप्रा nl:Deepak Chopra no:Deepak Chopra pl:Deepak Chopra pt:Deepak Chopra ru:Чопра, Дипак simple:Deepak Chopra fi:Deepak Chopra sv:Deepak Chopra ta:தீபக் சோப்ரா th:ดีพัค โชปรา

name	Lawrence Eagleburger
birthname	Lawrence Sidney Eagleburger
order	62nd
title	United States Secretary of State
president	George H. W. Bush
term start	December 8, 1992
term end	January 20, 1993Acting Secretary, Aug. 23, 1992 – Dec. 8, 1992
predecessor	James Baker
successor	Warren Christopher
order2	10th
title2	United States Deputy Secretary of State
term start2	January 20, 1989
term end2	August 23, 1992
president2	George H. W. Bush
predecessor2	John C. Whitehead
successor2	Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
order3	12th Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
term start3	February 11, 1982
term end3	May 1, 1984
president3	Ronald Reagan
predecessor3	Walter J. Stoessel, Jr.
successor3	Michael Armacost
birth date	August 01, 1930
birth place	Milwaukee, Wisconsin
death date	June 04, 2011
death place	Charlottesville, Virginia
signature	Lawrence Eagleburger Signature.svg
party	Republican
religion	Lutheran
spouse	Marlene Ann Heinemann(m. 1966–2010, her death)
children	Lawrence Scott EagleburgerLawrence Andrew EagleburgerLawrence Jason Eagleburger
alma mater	University of Wisconsin–Stevens PointUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison (B.A., M.A.)
profession	political analyst
branch	United States Army
serviceyears	1952-1954
rank	First Lieutenant }}

Lawrence Sidney Eagleburger (August 1, 1930 – June 4, 2011) was an American statesman and former career diplomat, who served briefly as the United States Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush. Previously, he had served in lesser capacities under Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. Eagleburger is the only career Foreign Service Officer to have served as the United States Secretary of State.

Education and personal life

Eagleburger was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of Helen (née Van Ornum), an elementary school teacher, and Leon Sidney Eagleburger, a physician. He graduated from P J Jacobs High School in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, then attended Stevens Point State College (now the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point), before earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. During his time at Wisconsin, he joined Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity. On May 6, 1995, he delivered the commencement address to the 1995 graduating class of James Madison University.

He was formerly a member of the Board of Visitors at the College of William and Mary.

Eagleburger also served in the United States Army (1952–1954), attaining the rank of First Lieutenant.

He had three sons, all of whom are named Lawrence Eagleburger, though they have different middle names. The eldest is from his first marriage, which ended in divorce. The other two are from his second marriage, which was to Marlene Heinemann from 1966 until her death in 2010.

Governmental career

In 1957, Eagleburger joined the United States Foreign Service, and served in various posts in embassies, consulates, and the Department of State. From 1961 to 1965 he served as a staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Starting in 1969, he served in the Nixon administration as an assistant to National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. He stayed in this appointment until 1971; thereafter he took on several positions, including advisor to the U.S. Mission to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, and, following Kissinger's appointment as Secretary of State, a number of additional posts in the State Department.

Following Nixon's resignation, he briefly left government service, but was soon appointed as ambassador to Yugoslavia by President Jimmy Carter, a post he held from 1977 to 1980.

In 1982, Reagan appointed him as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (the State Department's third-ranking position), a position he held for several years. In 1989, President George H. W. Bush appointed him Deputy Secretary of State (the Department's second-ranking position); he also served as the President's primary advisor for affairs relating to the quickly disintegrating Yugoslavia. On August 23, 1992, James A. Baker resigned as Secretary of State (to head up Bush's unsuccessful re-election campaign), and Eagleburger served as Acting Secretary of State until Bush gave him a recess appointment for the remainder of the Bush administration.

His period as advisor for Yugoslavian affairs from 1989 to 1992 was highly controversial. He gained a reputation for being a strong Serbian partisan, most controversially denying that Serbian paramilitaries and the Yugoslav National Army had committed atrocities in the breakaway republic of Croatia. This perceived partisanship led the European press to dub him ''Lawrence of Serbia'' (a reference to Lawrence of Arabia).

In 1991, President Bush awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal. He was a member of the board of directors of the International Republican Institute.

International Commission on Holocaust-Era Insurance Claims

Eagleburger became chairman of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, or ICHEIC, which was set up in 1998. The purpose of the Commission was to resolve unpaid Nazi-era insurance claims for survivors of the Holocaust. In 2005, Eagleburger announced that the ICHEIC was offering approximately 16 million dollars to Holocaust victims and their heirs, noting as he did so the research ability of the ICHEIC staff which allowed them to evaluate claims from companies which no longer existed. In the years prior to this there had been some controversy about the Commission, including reports that it was over-budgeted and too slow, and that insurance companies which had previously agreed to work with the ICHEIC had failed to disclose policyholder lists. Eagleburger responded to these accusations by saying, among other things, that it was difficult to work quickly when many of the claimants lacked basic information such as the name of the insurance company involved.

Stance on Middle Eastern conflict

After serving in the Foreign Service for 27 years, Eagleburger retained an interest in foreign policy and was a familiar figure on current events talk shows. He caused some discussion with public comments about President George W. Bush's foreign policy. In August 2002, Eagleburger questioned the timing of possible military action in Iraq, saying, "I am not at all convinced now that this is something we have to do this very moment." He did indicate he believed that Iraqi regime change could be a legitimate U.S. endeavor at some point, but that at that time he did not believe the administration was fully prepared for such a conflict. In April 2003, following warnings by the Bush administration to the government of Syria, Eagleburger condemned the possibility of military action in Syria or Iran, saying that public opinion would not support such a move and that "If President Bush were to try it now, even I would feel he should be skinned alive."

On January 5, 2006, he participated in a meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officials. On November 10, 2006 it was announced that he would replace Secretary of Defense designate Robert Gates in the Iraq Study Group.

After the election of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Eagleburger seemed to think that Iran was moving in a direction which may at some point call for military action, saying in an interview that while "we should try everything else we can first," at some point it would probably be necessary to use force to ensure that Iran did not obtain or use nuclear weapons.

He was Chairman of the Board of Trustees for The Forum for International Policy, and a member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Board of Advisors.

2008 Presidential election

Before Republican primaries, Eagleburger endorsed John McCain for President. In an NPR interview on October 30, 2008, he described McCain's running-mate Sarah Palin as "not prepared" for top office. He also stated that many Vice Presidents have not been ready. The next day, in an interview on Fox News, he retracted his comments about Palin.

On October 30, 2008, on the Fox News Channel, Eagleburger referred to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as a "charlatan", citing his fundraising methods and other aspects of his presidential campaign.

Death

Eagleburger died of pneumonia at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was 80 and had lived outside Charlottesville since 1990. He is survived by his three sons.

References

Sources

University of Virginia Health System — ''Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger''

External links

Sourcewatch article on Eagleburger.

Lawrence Eagleburger profile, NNDB.

Lawrence Eagleburger has been interviewed as part of Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, a site at the Library of Congress.

{{U.S. Secretary box| department=Secretary of State|president=George H.W. Bush| before=James Baker| after=Warren Christopher| years=August 23, 1992 – January 20, 1993 ''Acting until December 8, 1992''}}

Category:United States Secretaries of State Category:International Republican Institute Category:Reagan Administration personnel Category:American Lutherans Category:People from Milwaukee, Wisconsin Category:1930 births Category:2011 deaths Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Category:United States ambassadors to Yugoslavia Category:United States Career Ambassadors Category:Wisconsin Republicans Category:Presidential Citizens Medal recipients

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Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. (born March 31, 1948) served as the 45th Vice President of the United States (1993–2001), under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

Gore is currently an author, businessman, and environmental activist. He was previously an elected official for 24 years, representing Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives (1977–85), and later in the U.S. Senate (1985–93), and finally becoming Vice President in 1993. In the 2000 presidential election, Gore won the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes. However, he ultimately lost the Electoral College, and the election, to Republican George W. Bush when the U.S. Supreme Court settled the legal controversy over the Florida vote recount by ruling 5-4 in favor of Bush. It was the only time in history that the Supreme Court has determined the outcome of a presidential election.

He is a founder and current chair of the Alliance for Climate Protection, the co-founder and chair of Generation Investment Management, the co-founder and chair of Current TV, a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc., and a senior adviser to Google. Gore is also a partner in the venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, heading that firm's climate change solutions group. He has served as a visiting professor at Middle Tennessee State University, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Fisk University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Gore has received a number of awards including the Nobel Peace Prize (joint award with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2007), a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album (2009) for his book ''An Inconvenient Truth'', a Primetime Emmy Award for Current TV (2007), and a Webby Award (2005). Gore was also the subject of the Academy Award-winning (2007) documentary ''An Inconvenient Truth'' in 2006. In 2007 he was named a runner-up for ''Time's'' 2007 Person of the Year.

Early life

Albert Gore, Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., the second of two children of Albert Gore, Sr., a U.S. Representative who later served as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee, and Pauline LaFon Gore, one of the first women to graduate from Vanderbilt University Law School. Gore's paternal ancestors were Scots-Irish who first settled in Virginia in the mid 17th-century and moved to Tennessee after the Revolutionary War. His older sister Nancy LaFon Gore, who was born in 1938, died of lung cancer in 1984.

During the school year he lived with his family in The Fairfax Hotel in the Embassy Row section in Washington D.C. During the summer months, he worked on the family farm in Carthage, Tennessee, where the Gores grew tobacco and hay and raised cattle.

Gore attended the all boys' St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. from 1956 to 1965, a prestigious feeder school for the Ivy League. He was the captain of the football team, threw discus for the track and field team, and participated in basketball, art, and government. He graduated 25th in his class of 51, applied to only one college, Harvard, and was accepted.

They have four children, Karenna (b. 1973), Kristin Carlson Gore (b. 1977), Sarah LaFon Gore (b. 1979), and Albert Gore III (b. 1982).

In early June 2010, shortly after purchasing a new home, the Gores announced in an e-mail to friends that after "long and careful consideration," they had made a mutual decision to separate.

Harvard, Vietnam, journalism, and Vanderbilt (1965–1976)

Harvard

Gore enrolled in Harvard College in 1965, initially planning to major in English and write novels, but later deciding to major in government. Gore earned an A on his thesis, "The Impact of Television on the Conduct of the Presidency, 1947-1969", and graduated with an A.B. ''cum laude'' in June 1969.

Gore attended college during the era of anti Vietnam War protests. Though he was against that war, he disagreed with the tactics of the student protest movement, thinking it silly and juvenile to take anger at the war out on a private university. He and his friends did not participate in Harvard demonstrations. John Tyson, a former roommate, recalled that "We distrusted these movements a lot .... We were a pretty traditional bunch of guys, positive for civil rights and women's rights but formal, transformed by the social revolution to some extent but not buying into something we considered detrimental to our country." Gore helped his father write an anti-war address to the Democratic National Convention of 1968, but stayed with his parents in their hotel room during the violent protests.

Military service

When Gore graduated in 1969, his student deferment ended and he immediately became eligible for the military draft. His father, a vocal anti-Vietnam War critic, was facing a tough reelection fight in 1970. Gore eventually decided that the best way he could contribute to the anti-war effort was to enlist in the Army, which would improve his father's reelection prospects. Although nearly all of his Harvard classmates avoided the draft and service in Vietnam, Gore believed if he found a way around military service, he would be handing an issue to his father's Republican opponent. According to Gore's Senate biography, "He appeared in uniform in his father's campaign commercials, one of which ended with his father advising: 'Son, always love your country.' Despite this, Al senior lost the election.

Gore has said that his other reason for enlisting was that he did not want someone with fewer options than he to go in his place. Actor Tommy Lee Jones, a former college housemate, recalled Gore saying that "if he found a fancy way of not going, someone else would have to go in his place." His Harvard advisor, Richard Neustadt, also stated that Gore decided, "that he would have to go as an enlisted man because, he said, 'In Tennessee, that's what most people have to do.'" In addition, Michael Roche, Gore's editor for ''The Castle Courier,'' stated that "anybody who knew Al Gore in Vietnam knows he could have sat on his butt and he didn't."

After enlisting in August 1969, Gore returned to the anti-war Harvard campus in his military uniform to say goodbye to his adviser and was "jeered" at by students. He later said he was astonished by the "emotional field of negativity and disapproval and piercing glances that ... certainly felt like real hatred".

Gore had basic training at Fort Dix from August to October, and then was assigned to be a journalist at Fort Rucker, Alabama. In April 1970, he was "Soldier of the Month".

His orders to be sent to Vietnam were "held up" for some time and he suspected that this was due to a fear by the Nixon administration that if something happened to him, his father would gain sympathy votes. He was finally shipped to Vietnam on January 2, 1971, after his father had lost his seat in the Senate during the 1970 Senate election, becoming one "of only about a dozen of the 1,115 Harvard graduates in the Class of '69 who went to Vietnam." Gore was stationed with the 20th Engineer Brigade in Bien Hoa and was a journalist with ''The Castle Courier.'' He received an honorable discharge from the Army in May 1971.

Of his time in the Army, Gore later stated, "I didn't do the most, or run the gravest danger. But I was proud to wear my country's uniform." He also later stated that his experience in Vietnam "didn't change my conclusions about the war being a terrible mistake, but it struck me that opponents to the war, including myself, really did not take into account the fact that there were an awful lot of South Vietnamese who desperately wanted to hang on to what they called freedom. Coming face to face with those sentiments expressed by people who did the laundry and ran the restaurants and worked in the fields was something I was naively unprepared for."

Vanderbilt and journalism

Gore was "dispirited" after his return from Vietnam. NashvillePost.com noted that, "his father's defeat made service in a conflict he deeply opposed even more abhorrent to Gore. His experiences in the war zone don't seem to have been deeply traumatic in themselves; although the engineers were sometimes fired upon, Gore has said he didn't see full-scale combat. Still, he felt that his participation in the war was wrong."

Although his parents wanted him to go to law school, Gore first attended Vanderbilt University Divinity School from 1971 to 1972 on Rockefeller Foundation scholarship for people planning secular careers. He later said he went there in order to explore "spiritual issues", and that "he had hoped to make sense of the social injustices that seemed to challenge his religious beliefs."

Gore also began to work the night shift for ''The Tennessean'' as an investigative reporter in 1971. His investigations of corruption among members of Nashville's Metro Council resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two councilmen for separate offenses.

He took a leave of absence from ''The Tennessean'' to attend Vanderbilt University Law School in 1974. His decision to become an attorney was a partial result of his time as a journalist, as he realized that while he could expose corruption, he could not change it. Gore did not complete law school, deciding abruptly in 1976 to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives when he found out that his father's former seat in the House was about to be vacated.

Congress and first presidential run (1976–1993)

Gore began serving in the U.S. Congress at the age of 28 and stayed there for the next 16 years, serving in both the House (1977–1985) and the Senate (1985–1993). Gore spent many weekends in Tennessee, working with his constituents.

House and Senate

At the end of February 1976, U.S. Representative Joe L. Evins unexpectedly announced his retirement from Congress, making the Tennessee's 4th congressional district seat to which he had succeeded Albert Gore, Sr. in 1953 open. Within hours after ''Tennessean'' publisher John Seigenthaler, Sr., called him to tell him the announcement was forthcoming, Gore decided to quit law school and run for the House of Representatives:

:Gore's abrupt decision to run for the open seat surprised even himself; he later said that 'I didn't realize myself I had been pulled back so much to it.' The news came as a 'bombshell' to his wife. Tipper Gore held a job in the ''Tennessean'''s photo lab and was working on a master's degree in psychology, but she joined in her husband's campaign (with assurance that she could get her job at the ''Tennessean'' back if he lost). By contrast, Gore asked his father to stay out of his campaign: 'I must become my own man,' he explained. 'I must not be your candidate.'

Gore won a seat in Congress in 1976 "with 32 percent of the vote, three percentage points more than his nearest rival." He won the next three elections in 1978, 1980, and 1982 where "he was unopposed twice and won 79 percent of the vote the other time." In 1984, Gore successfully ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate, which had been vacated by Republican Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. He was "unopposed in the Democratic Senatorial primary and won the general election going away," despite the fact that Republican President Ronald Reagan swept Tennessee in his reelection campaign the same year.

During his time in Congress, Gore was considered a "moderate" (he referred to himself as a "raging moderate") opposing federal funding of abortion, voting in favor of a bill which supported a moment in silence in schools, and voting against a ban on interstate sales of guns. His position as a moderate (and on policies related to that label) shifted later in life after he became Vice President and ran for president in 2000.

During his time in the House, Gore sat on the Energy and Commerce and the Science and Technology committees, chairing the latter for four years. He also sat on the House Intelligence Committee and in 1982 introduced the ''Gore Plan'' for arms control, to "reduce chances of a nuclear first strike by cutting multiple warheads and deploying single-warhead mobile launchers." While in the Senate, he sat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Rules and Administration, and the Armed Services Committees. In 1991, Gore was one of ten democrats who supported the Gulf War.

Gore was one of the ''Atari Democrats'' who were given this name due to their "passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the "greenhouse effect." On March 19, 1979 he became the first member of Congress to appear on C-SPAN. During this time, Gore co-chaired the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future with Newt Gingrich. In addition, he has been described as having been a "genuine nerd, with a geek reputation running back to his days as a futurist ''Atari Democrat'' in the House. Before computers were comprehensible, let alone sexy, the poker-faced Gore struggled to explain artificial intelligence and fiber-optic networks to sleepy colleagues." Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn noted that, "as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication.

Gore introduced the Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986. He also sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises."

As a Senator, Gore began to craft the ''High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991'' (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing the 1988 report ''Toward a National Research Network'' submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET (the ARPANET, first deployed by Kleinrock and others in 1969, is the predecessor of the Internet). The bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway."

After joining the U.S. House of Representatives, Gore held the "first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming." He continued to speak on the topic throughout the 1980s. In 1990, Senator Gore presided over a three-day conference with legislators from over 42 countries which sought to create a ''Global Marshall Plan,'' "under which industrial nations would help less developed countries grow economically while still protecting the environment."

First presidential run (1988)

Gore campaigned for the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States against Joe Biden, Gary Hart, Dick Gephardt, Paul Simon, Jesse Jackson, and Michael Dukakis (who eventually won the Democratic nomination). Gore carried seven states in the primaries, finishing third overall.

Although Gore initially denied that he intended to run, his candidacy was the subject of speculation: "National analysts make Sen. Gore a long-shot for the Presidential nomination, but many believe he could provide a natural complement for any of the other candidates: a young, attractive, moderate Vice Presidential nominee from the South. He currently denies any interest, but he carefully does not reject the idea out of hand." At the time, he was 39 years old, making him the "youngest serious Presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy."

After announcing that he would run, Gore ran his campaign as "a Southern centrist, [who] opposed federal funding for abortion. He favored a moment of silence for prayer in the schools and voted against banning the interstate sale of handguns."

CNN noted that, "in 1988, for the first time, 12 Southern states would hold their primaries on the same day, dubbed "Super Tuesday". Gore thought he would be the only serious Southern contender; he had not counted on Jesse Jackson." Jackson defeated Gore in the South Carolina Primary, winning, "more than half the total vote, three times that of his closest rival here, Senator Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee." Gore next placed great hope on Super Tuesday where they split the Southern vote: Jackson winning Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia; Gore winning Arkansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, Nevada, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Gore was later endorsed by New York City Mayor, Ed Koch who made statements in favor of Israel and against Jackson. These statements cast Gore in a negative light, leading voters away from Gore who only received 10% of the vote in the New York Primary. Gore then dropped out of the race. ''The New York Times'' said that Gore also lost support due to his attacks against Jackson, Dukakis, and others.

Gore was eventually able to mend fences with Jackson who supported the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992 and 1996, and campaigned for the Gore-Lieberman ticket during the 2000 presidential election. Gore's policies changed substantially in 2000, reflecting his eight years as Vice President.

Son's 1989 accident, 1992 election, and first book

On April 3, 1989 as the Gores and their six-year-old son Albert were leaving a baseball game, Albert ran across the street to see his friend and was hit by a car. He was thrown , and then traveled along the pavement for another . Gore later recalled: "I ran to his side and held him and called his name, but he was motionless, limp and still, without breath or pulse [...] His eyes were open with the nothingness stare of death, and we prayed, the two of us, there in the gutter, with only my voice." Albert was tended to by two nurses who happened to be present during the accident. The Gores spent the next month in the hospital with Albert. Gore also commented: "Our lives were consumed with the struggle to restore his body and spirit." This event was "a trauma so shattering that [Gore] views it as a moment of personal rebirth", a "key moment in his life" which "changed everything."

In August 1991, Gore announced that his son's accident was a factor in his decision not to run for president during the 1992 presidential election. Gore stated: "I would like to be President [...] But I am also a father, and I feel deeply about my responsibility to my children [...] I didn't feel right about tearing myself away from my family to the extent that is necessary in a Presidential campaign." During this time, Gore wrote ''Earth in the Balance'', a text which became the first book written by a sitting U.S. Senator to make the New York Times bestseller list since John F. Kennedy's ''Profiles in Courage''.

Vice presidency and second presidential run (1993–2001)

Vice presidency

Al Gore served as Vice President during the Clinton Administration. Gore was initially hesitant to accept a position as Bill Clinton's running mate for the 1992 United States presidential election, but after clashing with the George H. W. Bush administration over global warming issues, he decided to accept the offer. Clinton stated that he chose Gore due to his foreign policy experience, work with the environment, and commitment to his family.

Clinton's choice was criticized as unconventional because rather than picking a running mate who would diversify the ticket, Clinton chose a fellow Southerner who shared his political ideologies and who was nearly the same age as Clinton. The Washington Bureau Chief for ''The Baltimore Sun'', Paul West, later suggested that, "Al Gore revolutionized the way Vice Presidents are made. When he joined Bill Clinton's ticket, it violated the old rules. Regional diversity? Not with two Southerners from neighboring states. Ideological balance? A couple of left-of-center moderates. [...] And yet, Gore has come to be regarded by strategists in both parties as the best vice presidential pick in at least 20 years."

Clinton and Gore accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention on July 17, 1992. Known as the ''Baby Boomer Ticket'' and the ''Fortysomething Team,'' ''The New York Times'' noted that if elected, Clinton and Gore, at ages 45 and 44 respectively, would be the "youngest team to make it to the White House in the country's history." Theirs was the first ticket since 1972 to try to capture the youth vote. Gore called the ticket "a new generation of leadership".

The ticket increased in popularity after the candidates traveled with their wives, Hillary and Tipper, on a "six-day, 1,000-mile bus ride, from New York to St. Louis." Gore also successfully debated the other vice presidential candidates, Dan Quayle, and James Stockdale. The Clinton-Gore ticket beat the Bush-Quayle ticket, 43%-38%. Clinton and Gore were inaugurated on January 20, 1993 and were re-elected to a second term in the 1996 election.

At the beginning of the first term, Clinton and Gore developed a "two-page agreement outlining their relationship." Clinton committed himself to regular lunch meetings, recognized Gore as a principal adviser on nominations, and appointed some of Gore's chief advisers to key White House staff positions [...] Clinton involved Gore in decision-making to an unprecedented degree for a Vice President. Through their weekly lunches and daily conversations, Gore became the president's "indisputable chief adviser."

Gore had a particular interest in reducing "waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government and advocated trimming the size of the bureaucracy and the number of regulations." During the Clinton Administration, the U.S. economy expanded, according to David Greenberg (professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University) who said that "by the end of the Clinton presidency, the numbers were uniformly impressive. Besides the record-high surpluses and the record-low poverty rates, the economy could boast the longest economic expansion in history; the lowest unemployment since the early 1970s; and the lowest poverty rates for single mothers, black Americans, and the aged."

According to Leslie Budd, author of ''E-economy: Rhetoric or Business Reality'', this economic success was due, in part, to Gore's continued role as an ''Atari Democrat,'' promoting the development of information technology, which led to the dot-com boom (c. 1995-2001). Clinton and Gore entered office planning to finance research that would "flood the economy with innovative goods and services, lifting the general level of prosperity and strengthening American industry." Their overall aim was to fund the development of, "robotics, smart roads, biotechnology, machine tools, magnetic-levitation trains, fiber-optic communications and national computer networks. Also earmarked [were] a raft of basic technologies like digital imaging and data storage." Critics claimed that the initiatives would "backfire, bloating Congressional pork and creating whole new categories of Federal waste."

During the election and his term as Vice President, Gore popularized the term ''Information Superhighway'', which became synonymous with the Internet, and he was involved in the creation of the National Information Infrastructure. Gore first discussed his plans to emphasize information technology at UCLA on January 11, 1994 in a speech at The Superhighway Summit. He was involved in a number of projects including NetDay'96 and 24 Hours in Cyberspace. The Clinton–Gore administration also launched the first official White House website in 1994 and subsequent versions through 2000. The Clipper Chip, which "Clinton inherited from a multi-year National Security Agency effort," was a method of hardware encryption with a government backdoor. It met with strong opposition from civil liberty groups and was abandoned by 1996.

Gore was also involved in a number of initiatives related to the environment. He launched the GLOBE program on Earth Day '94, an education and science activity that, according to ''Forbes magazine'', "made extensive use of the Internet to increase student awareness of their environment". During the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Gore was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95–0) the Byrd–Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98). In 1998, Gore began promoting a NASA satellite that would provide a constant view of the earth, marking the first time such an image would have been made since ''The Blue Marble'' photo from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission. During this time, he also became associated with Digital Earth.

In 1996 Gore became involved in a finance controversy over his attendance at an event at the Buddhist Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, California. In an interview on NBC's ''Today'' the following year, Gore said, "I did not know that it was a fund-raiser. I knew it was a political event, and I knew there were finance people that were going to be present, and so that alone should have told me, 'This is inappropriate and this is a mistake; don't do this.' And I take responsibility for that. It was a mistake." In March 1997, Gore had to explain phone calls which he made to solicit funds for the Democratic Party for the 1996 election. In a news conference, Gore stated that, "all calls that I made were charged to the Democratic National Committee. I was advised there was nothing wrong with that. My counsel tells me there is no controlling legal authority that says that is any violation of any law." The phrase "no controlling legal authority" was criticized by columnist Charles Krauthammer, who stated: "Whatever other legacies Al Gore leaves behind between now and retirement, he forever bequeaths this newest weasel word to the lexicon of American political corruption." Robert Conrad, Jr. was the head of a Justice Department task force appointed by Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate Gore's fund-raising controversies. In Spring 2000, Conrad asked Reno to appoint an independent counsel to continue the investigation. After looking into the matter, Reno judged that the appointment of an independent counsel was unwarranted.

During the 1990s, Gore spoke out on a number of issues. In a 1992 speech on the Gulf War, Gore stated that he twice attempted to get the U.S. government to pull the plug on support to Saddam Hussein, citing Hussein's use of poison gas, support of terrorism, and his burgeoning nuclear program, but was opposed both times by the Reagan and Bush administrations. In the wake of the Al-Anfal Campaign, during which Hussein staged deadly mustard and nerve gas attacks on Kurdish Iraqis, Gore cosponsored the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988, which would have cut all assistance to Iraq. The bill was defeated in part due to intense lobbying of Congress by the Reagan-Bush White House and a veto threat from President Reagan. In 1998, at a conference of APEC hosted by Malaysia, Gore objected to the indictment, arrest and jailing of President Mahathir Mohammad’s longtime second-in-command Anwar Ibrahim, a move which received a negative response from leaders there. Ten years later, Gore again protested when Ibrahim was arrested a second time, a decision condemned by Malaysian foreign minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.

Soon afterwards, Gore also had to contend with the Lewinsky scandal, involving an affair between President Clinton and an intern, Monica Lewinsky. Gore initially defended Clinton, whom he believed to be innocent, stating, "He is the president of the country! He is my friend [...] I want to ask you now, every single one of you, to join me in supporting him." After Clinton was impeached Gore continued to defend him stating, "I've defined my job in exactly the same way for six years now [...] to do everything I can to help him be the best president possible."

Second presidential run (2000)

There was talk of a potential run in the 2000 presidential race by Gore as early as January 1998. Gore discussed the possibility of running during a March 9, 1999 interview with CNN's ''Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer''. In response to Wolf Blitzer's question: "Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley," Gore responded:

:I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

Former UCLA professor of information studies Philip E. Agre and journalist Eric Boehlert argued that three articles in ''Wired News'' led to the creation of the widely spread urban legend that Gore claimed to have "invented the Internet," which followed this interview. In addition, computer professionals and congressional colleagues argued in his defense. Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn stated that "we don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he 'invented' the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet." Cerf would later state: "Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill. It was very powerful. Housing went up, suburban boom happened, everybody became mobile. Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve credit." Former Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich also stated: "In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is – and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a "futures group" – the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen." Finally, Wolf Blitzer (who conducted the original 1999 interview) stated in 2008 that: "I didn't ask him about the Internet. I asked him about the differences he had with Bill Bradley [...] Honestly, at the time, when he said it, it didn't dawn on me that this was going to have the impact that it wound up having, because it was distorted to a certain degree and people said they took what he said, which was a carefully phrased comment about taking the initiative and creating the Internet to—I invented the Internet. And that was the sort of shorthand, the way his enemies projected it and it wound up being a devastating setback to him and it hurt him, as I'm sure he acknowledges to this very day."

Gore himself would later poke fun at the controversy. In 2000, while on ''The Late Show with David Letterman'' he read ''Letterman's Top 10 List'' (which for this show was called, "Top Ten Rejected Gore – Lieberman Campaign Slogans") to the audience. Number nine on the list was: "Remember, America, I gave you the Internet, and I can take it away!" In 2005 when Gore was awarded the ''Lifetime Achievement Award'' "for three decades of contributions to the Internet" at the ''Webby Awards'' he joked in his acceptance speech (limited to five words according to ''Webby Awards'' rules): "Please don't recount this vote." He was introduced by Vint Cerf who used the same format to joke: "We all invented the Internet." Gore, who was then asked to add a few more words to his speech, stated: "It is time to reinvent the Internet for all of us to make it more robust and much more accessible and use it to reinvigorate our democracy."

Gore formally announced his candidacy for president in a speech on June 16, 1999, in Carthage, Tennessee, with his major theme being the need to strengthen the American family. He was introduced by his eldest daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff. In making the speech, Gore also distanced himself from Bill Clinton, whom he stated had lied to him. Gore was "briefly interrupted" by AIDS protesters claiming Gore was working with the pharmaceutical industry to prevent access to generic medicines for poor nations and chanting "Gore's greed kills." Additional speeches were also interrupted by the protesters. Gore responded, "I love this country. I love the First Amendment [...] Let me say in response to those who may have chosen an inappropriate way to make their point, that actually the crisis of AIDS in Africa is one that should command the attention of people in the United States and around the world." Gore also issued a statement saying that he supported efforts to lower the cost of the AIDS drugs, provided that they "are done in a way consistent with international agreements."

Gore faced an early challenge by former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley. Bradley was the only candidate to oppose Gore and was considered a "fresh face" for the White House. Gore challenged Bradley to a series of debates which took the form of "town hall" meetings. Gore went on the offensive during these debates leading to a drop in the polls for Bradley. Gore eventually went on to win every primary and caucus and, in March 2000 even won the first primary election ever held over the Internet, the Arizona Presidential Primary. By then, he secured the Democratic nomination.

On August 13, 2000, Gore announced that he had selected Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as his vice presidential running mate. Lieberman became "the first person of the Jewish faith to run for the nation's second-highest office" (Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964, was of "Jewish origin"). Lieberman, who was a more conservative Democrat than Gore, had publicly blasted President Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair. Many pundits saw Gore's choice of Lieberman as further distancing him from the scandals of the Clinton White House. Gore's daughter, Karenna, together with her father's former Harvard roommate Tommy Lee Jones, officially nominated Gore as the Democratic presidential candidate during the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California. Gore accepted his party's nomination and spoke about the major themes of his campaign, stating in particular his plan to extend Medicare to pay for prescription drugs, to work for a sensible universal health-care system. Soon after the convention, Gore hit the campaign trail with running mate Joe Lieberman. Gore and Bush were deadlocked in the polls. Gore and Bush participated in three televised debates. While both sides claimed victory after each, Gore was critiqued as either too stiff, too reticent, or too aggressive in contrast to Bush.

Recount

On election night, news networks first called Florida for Gore, later retracted the projection, and then called Florida for Bush, before finally retracting that projection as well. Florida's Republican Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, eventually certified Florida's vote count. This led to the Florida election recount, a move to further examine the Florida results.

The Florida recount was stopped a few weeks later by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the ruling, ''Bush v. Gore'', the Justices held that the Florida recount was unconstitutional and that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by the December 12 deadline, effectively ending the recounts. This 7–2 vote ruled that the standards the Florida Supreme Court provided for a recount were unconstitutional due to violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and further ruled 5–4 that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed by the December 12 deadline. This case ordered an end to recounting underway in selected Florida counties, effectively giving George W. Bush a 537 vote victory in Florida and consequently Florida's 25 electoral votes and the presidency. The results of the decision led to Gore winning the popular vote by approximately 500,000 votes nationwide, but receiving 266 electoral votes to Bush's 271 (one District of Columbia elector abstained). On December 13, 2000, Gore conceded the election. Gore strongly disagreed with the Court's decision, but in his concession speech stated that, "for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession."

The 2000 election is the subject of a 2008 made-for-TV movie directed by Jay Roach, produced by, and starring Kevin Spacey called ''Recount.'' It premiered on the HBO cable network on May 25, 2008.

Post Vice Presidency

After maintaining an informal public distance for eight years, Bill Clinton and Gore reunited for the media in August 2009 after Clinton arranged for the release of two journalists who were being held hostage in N. Korea. The two women were employees of Gore's Current TV.

Criticism of Bush

Beginning in late 2002, Gore began to publicly criticize the Bush administration. In a September 23, 2002 speech given before the Commonwealth Club of California, Gore criticized President George W. Bush and Congress for the rush to war prior to the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq. He compared this decision to the Gulf War (which Gore had voted for) stating, "Back in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War [...] But look at the differences between the resolution that was voted on in 1991 and the one this administration is proposing that the Congress vote on in 2002. The circumstances are really completely different. To review a few of them briefly: in 1991, Iraq had crossed an international border, invaded a neighboring sovereign nation and annexed its territory. Now by contrast in 2002, there has been no such invasion." In a speech given in 2004, during the presidential election, Gore accused George W. Bush of betraying the country by using the 9/11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. The next year, Gore gave a speech which covered many topics, including what he called "religious zealots" who claim special knowledge of God's will in American politics. Gore stated: "They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against people of faith." After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Gore chartered two planes to evacuate 270 people from New Orleans and criticized the Bush administration's response to the hurricane. In 2006, Gore criticized Bush's use of domestic wiretaps without a warrant. One month later, in a speech given at the Jeddah Economic Forum, Gore criticized the treatment of Arabs in the U.S. after 9/11 stating, "Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it's wrong [...] I do want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country." Gore's 2007 book, ''The Assault on Reason,'' is an analysis of what Gore refers to as the "emptying out of the marketplace of ideas" in civic discourse during the Bush administration. He attributes this phenomenon to the influence of television and argues that it endangers American democracy. By contrast, Gore argues, the Internet can revitalize and ultimately "redeem the integrity of representative democracy." In 2008, Gore argued against the ban of same-sex marriage on his Current TV website, stating, "I think that gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men and women to make contracts, have hospital visiting rights, and join together in marriage." In a 2009 interview with CNN, Gore commented on former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration. Referring to his own previous criticism of the Bush administration, Gore stated: "I waited two years after I left office to make statements that were critical, and then of the policy [...] You know, you talk about somebody that shouldn't be talking about making the country less safe, invading a country that did not attack us and posed no serious threat to us at all."

Presidential run speculation

Gore was a speculated candidate for the 2004 Presidential Election (a bumper sticker, "Re-elect Gore in 2004!" was popular). On December 16, 2002, however, Gore announced that he would not run in 2004. Despite Gore taking himself out of the race, a handful of his supporters formed a national campaign to draft him into running. One observer concluded it was “Al Gore who has the best chance to defeat the incumbent president,” noting that “of the 43 Presidents, only three have been direct descendents of former Presidents:” John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison, and George W. Bush, that “all three won the office only after... anomalies in the Electoral College,” that the first two were defeated for re-election in a populist backlash, and finally that “the men who first lost to the presidential progeny and then beat them” (i.e. Andrew Jackson and Grover Cleveland) “each won a sort of immortality--having his image placed on a unit of US currency,” and that Gore should answer this call of history. The draft movement, however, failed to convince Gore to run.

The prospect of a Gore candidacy arose again between 2006 to early 2008 in light of the upcoming 2008 presidential election. Although Gore frequently stated that he had "no plans to run," he did not reject the possibility of future involvement in politics which led to speculation that he might run. This was due in part to his increased popularity after the release of the 2006 documentary, ''An Inconvenient Truth''. The director of the film, Davis Guggenheim, stated that after the release of the film, "Everywhere I go with him, they treat him like a rock star." After ''An Inconvenient Truth'' was nominated for an Academy Award, Donna Brazile (Gore's campaign chairwoman from his 2000 campaign) speculated that Gore might announce a possible presidential candidacy during the Oscars. During the 79th Academy Awards ceremony, Gore and actor Leonardo DiCaprio shared the stage to speak about the "greening" of the ceremony itself. Gore began to give a speech that appeared to be leading up to an announcement that he would run for president. However, background music drowned him out and he was escorted offstage, implying that it was a rehearsed gag, which he later acknowledged. After ''An Inconvenient Truth'' won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, speculation increased about a possible presidential run. Gore's popularity was indicated in polls which showed that even without running, he was coming in second or third among possible Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. Grassroots draft campaigns also developed with the hope that they could encourage Gore to run. Gore, however, remained firm in his decision and declined to run for the presidency.

Involvement in presidential campaigns

After announcing he would not run in the 2004 U.S. presidential election, Gore endorsed Vermont governor Howard Dean in December, 2003, weeks before the first primary of the election cycle. He was criticized for this endorsement by eight Democratic contenders particularly since he did not endorse his former running mate Joe Lieberman (Gore preferred Dean over Lieberman because Lieberman supported the Iraq War and Gore did not). Dean's campaign soon became a target of attacks and eventually failed, with Gore's early endorsement being credited as a factor. In ''The New York Times,'' Dean stated: "I actually do think the endorsement of Al Gore began the decline." The ''Times'' further noted that "Dean instantly amplified his statement to indicate that the endorsement from Mr. Gore, a powerhouse of the establishment, so threatened the other Democratic candidates that they began the attacks on his candidacy that helped derail it." Dean's former campaign manager, Joe Trippi, also stated that after Gore's endorsement of Dean, "alarm bells went off in every newsroom in the country, in every other campaign in the country," indicating that if something did not change, Dean would be the nominee. Later, in March 2004, Gore endorsed John Kerry and gave Kerry $6 million in funds left over from his own unsuccessful 2000 bid. Gore also opened the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

During the 2008 primaries, Gore remained neutral toward all of the candidates which led to speculation that he would come out of a brokered 2008 Democratic National Convention as a "compromise candidate" if the party decided it could not nominate one. Gore responded by stating that these events would not take place because a candidate would be nominated through the primary process. When Senator Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president on June 3, 2008, speculation began that Gore might be tapped for the vice presidency. On June 16, 2008 (a week after Hillary Clinton had suspended her campaign), Gore endorsed Obama in a speech given in Detroit, Michigan which renewed speculation of an Obama-Gore ticket. Gore stated, however, that he was not interested in being Vice President again. On the timing and nature of Gore's endorsement, some argued that Gore waited because he did not want to repeat his calamitous early endorsement of Howard Dean during the 2004 Presidential Election. On the final night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, shortly before Obama delivered his acceptance address, Gore gave a speech offering his full support. Such support led to new speculation after Obama was elected President during the 2008 Presidential election that Gore would be named a member of the Obama administration. This speculation was enhanced by a meeting held between Obama, Gore, and Joe Biden in Chicago on December 9, 2008. However, Democratic officials and Gore's spokeswoman stated that during the meeting the only subject under discussion was the climate crisis, and Gore would not be joining the Obama administration. On December 19, 2008, Gore described Obama's environmental administrative choices of Carol Browner, Steven Chu, and Lisa Jackson as "an exceptional team to lead the fight against the climate crisis."

Environmentalism

Overview

Gore has been involved with environmental issues since 1976, when as a freshman congressman, he held the "first congressional hearings on the climate change, and co-sponsor[ed] hearings on toxic waste and global warming." He continued to speak on the topic throughout the 1980s and was known as one of the ''Atari Democrats'', later called the "Democrats' Greens, politicians who see issues like clean air, clean water and global warming as the key to future victories for their party."

In 1990, Senator Gore presided over a three-day conference with legislators from over 42 countries which sought to create a ''Global Marshall Plan,'' "under which industrial nations would help less developed countries grow economically while still protecting the environment." In the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. He was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95–0) the Byrd–Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98), which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States".

In 2004 he co-launched Generation Investment Management, a company for which he serves as Chair. A few years later, Gore also founded The Alliance for Climate Protection, an organization which eventually founded the ''We Campaign''. Gore also became a partner in the venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, heading that firm's climate change solutions group. He also helped to organize the ''Live Earth'' benefit concerts.

Criticism

::::::: Gore's involvement in environmental issues has been criticized. For example, he has been labeled a "carbon billionaire" and accused of profiting from his advocacy; a charge which he has denied, by saying, among other things, that he has not been "working on this issue for 30 years... because of greed". A conservative Washington D.C. think tank, and a Republican member of Congress, among others, have claimed that Gore has a conflict-of-interest for advocating for taxpayer subsidies of green-energy technologies in which he has a personal investment. Additionally, he has been criticized for his above-average energy consumption in using private jets, and in owning multiple, very large homes, one of which was reported in 2007 as using high amounts of electricity. Gore's spokesperson responded by stating that the Gores use renewable energy which is more expensive than regular energy and that the Tennessee house in question has been retrofitted to make it more energy efficient. Philosopher A. C. Grayling defended Al Gore, arguing that Gore's personal lifestyle does nothing to impugn his message and that Gore's critics have committed the ad hominem fallacy.

Data in ''An Inconvenient Truth'' have been questioned. In a 2007 court case, a British judge said that while he had "no doubt ...the film was broadly accurate" and its "four main scientific hypotheses ...are supported by a vast quantity of research," he upheld nine of a "long schedule" of alleged errors presented to the court. He ruled that the film could be shown to schoolchildren in the UK if guidance notes given to teachers were amended to balance out the film's one-sided political views. Gore's spokeswoman responded in 2007 that the court had upheld the film's fundamental thesis and its use as an educational tool. In 2009, an interviewer asked Gore about the British court challenge and the nine "errors", and Gore responded, "the ruling was in my favour."

Organizations including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) criticized Gore for not advocating vegetarianism as a way for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint. Gore agreed that meat production contributes to increased carbon emissions, but did not want to "go quite as far as ... saying everybody should become a vegetarian". He said that although he is not a vegetarian, he has "cut back sharply" on his consumption of meat.

When asked by Bjørn Lomborg to debate whether spending on health and education should take priority over limiting carbon emissions, Gore responded that he would not debate because the “scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue . . . . It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture."

Awards and honors

Gore is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize (together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 2007, a Primetime Emmy Award for Current TV in 2007, a Webby Award in 2005 and the Prince of Asturias Award in 2007 for International Cooperation. He also starred in the 2006 documentary ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2007 and wrote the book ''An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It'', which won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2009.

See also

Al Gore and information technology

Al Gore and the environment

Gore effect

Selected publications

Books

''Know Climate Change'' and ''101 Q and A on Climate Change'' from 'Save Planet Earth Series', 2008 (children's books)

''Putting People First: How We Can All Change America.'' (with William J. Clinton). New York: Times Books, 1992 .

Articles

"Toward Sustainable Capitalism: Long-term incentives are the antidote to the short-term greed that caused our current economic woes. ''Wall Street Journal'', June 24, 2010.(With David Blood)

"We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change." ''New York Times'', February 27, 2010.

"The Climate for Change." ''New York Times'', November 9, 2008.

Vice President Al Gore's introduction to ''Earthwatch: 24 Hours In Cyberspace. February 8, 1996. ''24 Hours in Cyberspace''

"Foreword by Vice President Al Gore." In ''The Internet Companion: A Beginner's Guide to Global Networking (2nd edition)'' by Tracy LaQuey, 1994.

"Introduction. In ''Silent Spring'' by Rachel Carson. 1994. New York : Houghton-Mifflin.

''The Climate Change Action Plan.'' Washington, D.C.: The White House, October, 1993 (with William J. Clinton).

"Infrastructure for the global village: computers, networks and public policy." ''Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks,'' September 1991. 265(3): 150–153.

Notes

References

Agre, Phil. ''Who Invented "Invented"?:Tracing the Real Story of the "Al Gore Invented the Internet" Hoax''. October 17, 2000

Campbell-Kelly, Martin; Aspray, William. "Chapter 12." ''Computer: A History of the Information Machine.'' New York: BasicBooks, 1996.

Chapman, Gary and Marc Rotenberg. ''The National Information Infrastructure:A Public Interest Opportunity.'' In ''Computers, Ethics, & Social Values''. Deborah G. Johnson and Helen Nissanbaum (eds.). Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1995: 628-644.

Cockburn, Alexander. ''Al Gore: A User's Manual'' (2000) (with Jeffrey St. Clair) ISBN 1-85984-803-6

Kirk, Andrew G. ''Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism''. Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 2007.

Rheingold, Howard. "Afterword to the 1994 edition." ''The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (revised edition). '' Cambridge: MIT, 2000.

Stix, Gary. Gigabit Gestalt: Clinton and Gore embrace an activist technology policy. ''Scientific American'', May, 1993.

Turque, Bill, ''Inventing Al Gore'', Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000, ISBN 0-618-13160-4

External links

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 lecture at NobelPrize.org

Partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

;Articles

Ask Mr. Science: The moral flaws of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, Gregg Easterbrook, Slate magazine, May 24, 2006

A challenge to our moral imagination, interview with Al Gore 2007

FACTBOX: Al Gore since 2000 White House defeat, ''Reuters'', July 31, 2008

Al Gore addresses the inaugural The Times-Smith School Forum on Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, July 2009

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