Meir Kohn, What Is Capitalism? What is Communism? And What is the Important Difference?

Jan. 23 at 6 pm in Carpenter 13. Lecture 3 in our year-long, 6-part series.

In this talk, Professor Kohn explains why terms like “capitalism” and “communism” do more to obscure than to illuminate any real understanding of the economic world around us. Understanding the economy involves thinking clearly about the words we use to describe it.

Jake Monaghan, Crime and Punishment: Thoughts on the American Policing System

Jan. 24 at 4:30 pm in Kemeny 008.

Managing disorder in American cities is philosophically and politically fraught. In this talk, we’ll see why, and consider some possible responses. Jake Monaghan is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California and earned his PhD at the University at Buffalo. He is the author of Just Policing and several articles on the philosophy of policing. 

Joshua Rubenstein, "The Last Days of Stalin"

January 29 at 4:30 pm in Haldeman 041. Joshua Rubenstein is an award-winning independent scholar of literature and history, an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, and a life-long activist (Amnesty International) with a specialty in Russian and Soviet dissidents and prisoners of conscience. He is the author or editor of a number of path-breaking books on Soviet and Soviet-Jewish history. In this talk, he discusses his 2016 book The Last Days of Stalin, when the Soviet Union was inundated with a “tsunami of anti-Semitism.” Co-sponsored by the Eurasian, East European, and Russian Studies Department.

Zongyuan Zoe Liu, China's Real Economic Crisis

Jan. 30  at 5:00 pm in Kemeny 008.

Is China still a rising power, or has it embraced a “failing model”? Zongyuan Zoe Liu has staked out one of the most forceful and articulate approaches to this major question of our time. Liu is the Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions as well as Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System?

Meir Kohn, There is No Such Thing As Market Failure

Feb. 13 at 6 pm in Moore B03

“Market failure” is often cited as a rationale for proposing government solutions to economic problems. In #4 of his year-long “Understanding the Economy” lecture series, Meir Kohn subjects the reasoning behind the theory of “market failure” to critical scrutiny.