After nearly seven years of constant controversy, it certainly looks like Guantánamo's days are numbered after President-elect Obama reiterated his campaign pledge to close the prison camp at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The debate has now shifted away from the simple argument about whether it should be closed and now focuses on how the Obama administration will actually do it.

Major decisions remain on whether to keep, modify, or scrap trial by military commissions, leading to further questions about when, how, where, and even if some detainees can be put on trial. Serious obstacles loom in the path of any effort to transfer other detainees back to their native countries as some can not simply be sent back home and little progress has been made to date finding other countries willing to accept them.

Please join our distinguished panel, each of whom have authored reports on closing Guantánamo, for a discussion of these and other challenges facing the incoming Obama administration.

InThe Tyranny of Dead Ideas, Matt Miller offers a unique blend of insights from history, psychology, and economics to illuminate where today’s destructive conventional wisdom came from and how it holds our country back. He also introduces us to a new way of thinking - what he calls "tomorrow's destined ideas" - that can reinvigorate our economy, our politics, and our day-to-day lives. These destined ideas may seem counterintuitive now, but they will coalesce in the coming years in ways that will transform America.

A strikingly original assessment of our current dilemma and an indispensable guide to our future, Miller's provocative and path-breaking book reveals why it is urgent that we break the tyranny of dead ideas, for it is only by doing so that we can move beyond the limits of today's obsolete debates and reinvent American capitalism and democracy for the twenty-first century.

Copies of The Tyranny of Dead Ideas will be available for purchase at the event.

Confronting the growing economic crisis will be the first order of business for the new Congress and the incoming Obama administration. Should the incoming administration work to deliberately increase the size of a federal deficit already projected by the Congressional Budget Office to exceed $1.2 trillion for the current year? How big should a stimulus package be? How should it be structured?

These are the questions that a Center for American Progress panel on fiscal stimulus will grapple with at an upcoming event. Part of the discussion will involve what the Labor Department's December employment report (to be released an hour and a half before the beginning of the event) will tell us about the future course of the economy and the need for stimulus.

The incoming Obama administration and the new 111th Congress will have a historic opportunity to boost U.S. economic competitiveness and broad-based economic growth through targeted reforms of our country's patent system and scientific research-and-development and workforce development programs. Our patent system and today’s federal programs were designed to address 20th-century problems, not the new challenges posed by globalization and worldwide economic distress.

The latest edition of the CAP's Science Progress journal presents the results of two roundtables convened to consider ways to reform our patent system and encourage the growth of regional centers of innovation around the country. Those recommendations will be unveiled in Science Progress along with two panel discussions on the topics. Please join our distinguished panelists, including participants of our two roundtables and authors of some of our new policy recommendations.

Matt Miller, host of KCRW's "Left, Right & Center" and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, will discuss his provocative new book, The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, in which he lays bare the greatest threat to our economic future: the things we think we know – but don't.

InThe Tyranny of Dead Ideas, Matt Miller offers a unique blend of insights from history, psychology, and economics to illuminate where today’s destructive conventional wisdom came from and how it holds our country back. He also introduces us to a new way of thinking - what he calls "tomorrow's destined ideas" - that can reinvigorate our economy, our politics, and our day-to-day lives. These destined ideas may seem counterintuitive now, but they will coalesce in the coming years in ways that will transform America.

A strikingly original assessment of our current dilemma and an indispensable guide to our future, Miller's provocative and path-breaking book reveals why it is urgent that we break the tyranny of dead ideas, for it is only by doing so that we can move beyond the limits of today's obsolete debates and reinvent American capitalism and democracy for the twenty-first century.

Copies of The Tyranny of Dead Ideas will be available for purchase at the event.

During the 2008 campaign, President-Elect Barack Obama repeatedly voiced themes of change, unity, and innovation. How will the new administration bring those themes to bear on a topic as divisive as reproductive rights? How will it balance Obama's commitment to the reproductive rights recognized in Roe v. Wade with his commitment to a new, less divisive politics? Are there areas of common ground where meaningful progress can be achieved and issues that should never be compromised?

Join us for a lively discussion of these and other pressing questions.

The time has come for the U.S. to renew its promise of global life sciences leadership. With the ascendancy of the Obama administration and a more progressive Congress, the opportunity for renewal has never been greater. The United States must now stake its claim as the world leader in regenerative medicine, which is almost certain to become a vital component of cutting edge biomedical innovation in the 21st century. To ensure that the research in this newly emerging field of the life sciences is conducted responsibly and ethically, the federal government must reform its stem cell research policy and fund embryonic stem cell research in a manner that is robust and comprehensive as well as cautious and principled.

The greatest potential for regenerative medicine lies in the ability of scientists to tap into the process of cell differentiation and development. This can only be achieved by tracing the development of human cells from the very beginning. To do so, scientists need to conduct research on embryonic stem cells so that they can discover how these all-purpose “pluripotent” cells can change into any one of over two hundred different cell types in the human body. Indeed, this research will provide us with unprecedented insights into human development, how it can go wrong, and how it can be fixed—perhaps leading to 21st century medicine's biggest paradigm shift.

Please join us for the release of CAP's new report, “A Life Sciences Crucible: Stem Cell Science and Innovation Done Responsibly and Ethically.” The release event will include a panel discussion featuring Amy Comstock Rick of the Coalition for Advancement of Medical Research and John Gearhart, professor of cell biology at the University of Pennsylvania. The event will be moderated by Michael J. Rugnetta, the Fellows Assistant for the Progressive Bioethics Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

The Bush administration has finished with a flurry of midnight regulation, completing more "significant" regulatory actions in the third quarter of 2008 than in any preceding quarter of the last eight years, according to a CAP paper by Anne Joseph O'Connell that will be released at the event. This spike in regulatory output is typical of most outgoing administrations. But perhaps no previous administration has been so driven to dismantle regulatory safeguards, from drug safety to environmental protection to family and medical leave. A new joint report from CAP and OMB Watch will also be released listing Bush midnight regulations. Now attention turns to how the Obama administration will respond.

Please join the Center for American Progress for an expert discussion that will explore ways to reverse Bush midnight regulation while launching forward with a positive regulatory agenda.

The Latino population is now so large, its trajectory of growth so rapid and its contrast in relative age to that of the general population so stark, that it will not be possible for the United States to advance without substantial, and so far unimagined, gains for the nation's Latino community. The Census Bureau's mid-range estimates for 2050 assert that the nation's Latino population will grow by 63 million people or a stunning 48% of total U.S. growth, and that Latinos will constitute 25% of the United States population in 2050.

Please join the Center for American Progress in hosting Henry Cisneros and Arte Público Press of the University of Houston to celebrate the launch of their new book, Latinos and the Nation's Future and take part in an engaging debate on what Latino growth means for our country, and what the next administration needs to do about it. Latinos and the Nation's Future is a landmark collection of essays by leading Latino figures such as Raul Yzaguirre, Lionel Sosa and Aida Alvarez, among others, about the most pressing issues facing Latinos today and how the future of the nation is inextricably linked to that of the Hispanic community.

Success in today's knowledge and innovation economy depends on education and skills development beyond high school, in postsecondary education. PSE is correlated with higher personal income, economic growth, and innovation. Additionally America is now tenth in the OECD rankings for college attainment among young adults ages 25 - 34, with 39 percent of the population with an associate degree/technical certificate or a bachelor's degree.

To regain our global leadership in postsecondary attainment, The Center for American Progress has set a bold goal, in the College Ready Students, Student Ready Colleges policy agenda, of increasing the number of 25 - 34 year olds with postsecondary education to 50 percent. As part of its ongoing series of higher education research, CAP will release two papers that explore the challenges enhancing academic preparation and creating a college going culture in America’s high schools.

The relationship between the United States and China may well be the most important bilateral relationship in the world. In recognition of that fact, the Center for American Progress is releasing a new report entitled, "Strategic Persistence: How the United States Can Help Improve Human Rights in China." The report provides both fundamental principles that should guide U.S. policymakers in their efforts to effect positive change in China's human rights practices and concrete recommendations to advance those efforts.

Please join us for a release event and panel discussion that will introduce the main concepts of this report.