Week Four — July 14–20

Markets and Morals

In a society burdened with inequalities, hard ethical questions arise concerning our civic virtue. What role should markets play in the social fabric of our communities and families, and in the way we provide healthcare and education, for example? In this week we will ask what opportunity, and perhaps what mandate for change, has the recent economic crisis revealed about economics as a value-neutral science.

Confirmed Lecturers

Monday 7/15	Tuesday 7/16	Wednesday 7/17	Thursday 7/18	Friday 7/19
E.J. Dionne	Peter A. Georgescu	Ali Velshi	Thomas C. Kinnear	Chris Hedges

Monday, July 15

E.J. Dionne

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University. Author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right, which was published by Princeton University Press, he is also the author of Why Americans Hate Politics, winner of the Los Angeles Times book prize and a National Book Award nominee; They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era; and Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge. He is the editor or co-editor of many other books, including the Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion & Public Life. Dionne graduated from Harvard University and received his doctorate from Oxford.

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Tuesday, July 16

Peter A. Georgescu

author; Chairman Emeritus, Young & Rubicam

Peter A. Georgescu is the author of The Constant Choice – An Everyday Journey from Evil toward Good. Chairman Emeritus of Young & Rubicam Inc., a network of preeminent commercial communications companies dedicated to helping clients build their businesses through the power of brands, he served as the company’s Chairman and CEO from 1994 until January 2000.

Under Mr. Georgescu’s leadership, Young & Rubicam successfully transformed from a private to a publicly-held company. During his tenure, Young & Rubicam built the most extensive database on global branding and, from its findings, developed a proprietary model for diagnosing and managing brands. Within the marketing community, he is known as a leading proponent of creating unified communications programs, agency accountability for measuring the impact of communications programs, and structuring value-based agency compensation. In recognition of his contributions to the marketing and advertising industry, Mr. Georgescu was elected to the Advertising Hall of Fame in 2001.

Mr. Georgescu immigrated to the United States from Romania in 1954. He was educated at Exeter Academy, received his B.A. cum laude from from Princeton and an MBA from the Stanford Business School. His belief in the power of education has fueled his involvement with organizations such as A Better Chance and Polytechnic University, both of which he has served as a member of their Boards of Directors. The University of Alabama and Cornell College in Iowa have awarded Mr. Georgescu honorary doctorate degrees, and he is also the recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

Mr. Georgescu continues to serve as a board member of a publicly registered company, Geeknet. Previously, he has served on the Boards of Levis Strauss, Toys R Us, EMI Recorded Music, International Flavors & Fragrances, and Briggs & Stratton. He is currently Vice-Chairman of New York Presbyterian Hospital, a Trustee of the Paul & Daisy Soros New American Fellowship Program, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 2006 Mr. Georgescu published his first book The Source of Success – asserting that personal values and creativity are the leading drivers of business success in the 21st Century. His second book, The Constant Choice – an Everyday Journey from Evil toward Good was published in January 2013.

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Wednesdsay, July 17

Ali Velshi

Former CNN Chief Business Correspondent; now with Al Jazeera America

Photo by Mark Hill

Ali Velshi is a Canadian television journalist best known for his work on CNN. Until recently he was CNN's Chief Business Correspondent, Anchor of CNN's Your Money, and a co-host of CNN International's weekday business show World Business Today. He has now joined Al Jazeera America, which will launch in Summer 2013.

Connecting the news through finance, global issues, contemporary governance, education, and big ideas, he executed several roles across CNN. In addition to his anchor responsibilities, Velshi frequently reported from the field on breaking news events, politics, and in-depth personal profiles that offer insights into global issues. His in-depth reporting for CNN’s “How the Wheels Came Off” was honored with a National Headliner Award for Business & Consumer Reporting in 2010. He anchored CNN’s breaking news coverage of the attempted terror attack on a flight into Detroit, delivering CNN’s worldwide newsgathering for which the network was nominated for a 2010 Emmy. He was also honored with a 2010 Alumni Achievement Award from his alma mater, Queen’s University.

Previously Ali Velshi was an anchor with CNNfn, where he hosted various interactive shows, including “Your Money,” “Businessey,” “Businessness Unusual,” “Insights,” “Street Sweep” and “The Money Gang.” Before joining CNNfn in 2001, he hosted “The Business News,” Canada’s first and only prime-time business news hour, airing nightly on Report on Business Television. Earlier in his career, Velshi worked as a business anchor for Cable Pulse 24 and sister station, CITY TV in Toronto, and as a reporter for CFTO-TV in Toronto, Canada’s most watched local television station.

In 1996, Velshi was awarded a fellowship to the U.S. Congress by the American Political Sciences Association, and worked with now-retired U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.). Born in Kenya and raised in Toronto, Velshi graduated from Queens University in Canada with a degree in Religion. A member of the Grand Challenges Advisor Committee for the National Academy of Engineering, he is the co-author of How To Speak Money, and author of Gimme My Money Back.

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Thursday, July 18

Thomas C. Kinnear

Thomas C. Kinnear is Eugene Applebaum Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies, Executive Director of the Samuel Zell and Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, and Professor of Marketing at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Formerly Senior Associate Dean of the Business School and Vice-President for Development and Executive Officer for the University, he headed the $1.4 billion Campaign for Michigan in the 1990s. Recipient of awards for teaching excellence and service to the University, he holds an undergraduate degree and LLD (honoris causa) from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, an MBA from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Kinnear has previously held a faculty appointment at the University of Western Ontario Ivey School, and visiting appointments at Harvard University, Stanford University, and the European Management Institute (INSEAD) at Fontainebleau, France. His teaching and research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurial studies, strategic marketing planning, marketing and public policy, and market-based management. His Ph.D. dissertation examined the economic concept of "market failure" as it relates to ecological issues, especially pollution externalities. His research activity has resulted in publications in numerous scholarly journals including: the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, and the Journal of Business Research. He is former editor of the Journal of Marketing and former founding editor of the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing. This latter journal publishes scholarly articles related to public policy and the marketplace, including issues of FTC and FDA regulations, and environmental dynamics of consumption.

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Friday, July 19

Chris Hedges

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and writer Chris Hedges - a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans - writes and speaks extensively on war, religion, American culture, empire, and the conflict in the Middle East.

His bestseller War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning draws on the many conflicts he covered to explore what war does to societies and individuals. He examines faith and belief in American society in his books Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America; his New York Times bestseller American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America; and I Don't Believe in Atheists - his critique of New Atheists such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens - which was praised by The Times Literary Supplement as the most astute dismantling to date of the New Atheist argument. In the bestseller Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, he examines the illusions that beset American culture as it retreats into fantasy and severs itself from reality. In Death of the Liberal Class, he argues that the pillars of the liberal establishment - the press, liberal religious institutions, labor, public education, culture, and the Democratic Party - have surrendered to corporate interests or been so decimated as to become ineffectual, shutting down the possibility of incremental and piecemeal reform that is vital to the maintenance of a democratic state. His latest book is The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.

Chris Hedges has written for Foreign Affairs, Granta, The New Statesman, Harper's, Mother Jones, The Nation, Adbusters, and The New York Review of Books. He writes a weekly column for Robert Scheer's web magazine Truthdig.com and is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute.

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