The Belmont Center for Business Ethics announces that Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago will speak at Belmont on March 22. Fogel, the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions and Director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, won the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His most recent book, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, argues that every movement for progressive economic, social and political change in U.S. history has had Christians in the vanguard.
Fogel’s lecture at Belmont, titled “The Contribution of Enthusiast Religion to the Shaping of American Civilization,” is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. in the Maddox Grand Atrium at the Curb Event Center, following a 3 p.m. reception. Thanks to the generosity of the James M. Medlin Speakers Series in Business Ethics, there is no fee – but registration is required. To register, contact Harry Hollis at 615.460.6834 or by email at hollish@mail.belmont.edu.
Dr. Fogel teaches is the author of more than 20 books, including Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, and The Fourth Great Awakening , which presents “a bold and intriguing view of America’s past and future – one in which the periodic Great Awakenings of religion bring about waves of social reform, steadily improving the material lives of even the poorest Americans and now positioning the nation for a renewed burst of egalitarian progress.”
In the books’ “Afterword,” Fogel wrote this:
“Although the world that our grandchildren will inherit will be materially richer and contain fewer environmental risks, its spiritual struggles will be more complex and more intense than those of my generation. Ethical issues will be at the center of intellectual life, and engagement with those issues will form a larger part of the fabric of daily life than is the case today.”
There is no admission charge for his Belmont appearance thanks to funding by the James M. Medlin Speaker Series in Business Ethics. James Medlin was a highly successful real estate developer who served on Belmont’s Board of Trustees for twelve years. In the business world, he was recognized as a man who believed and practices high moral and ethics standards of conduct in all business relationships.
Fogel received his B.A. from Cornell University, his M.A. from Columbia University and his Ph.D., in economics, from Johns Hopkins University. In addition to his current position at the University of Chicago, he has held faculty positions at the University of Rochester, Cambridge University, and Harvard University.
Professor Fogel is the author of more than 20 books, and has received numerous awards and prizes, including the Arthur C. Cole Prize (1968), the Schumpeter Prize (1971), the Bancroft Prize (1975), the Gustavus Myers Prize (1990), and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1993). He is a former president of the American Economic Association, and is a member of many academic societies and academies.
Belmont Center for Business Ethics
The Belmont Center for Business Ethics aims to create ethical business leaders for a better society by providing a forum in which leaders of organizations can interact with one another to discuss key issues in the area of organizational integrity, resources to resources to facilitate the development of ethical standards of conduct, and a practical educational orientation about concepts of organizational ethics and compliance processes. The Center was founded in 1994 by Dr. Clifford L. Eubanks, then Dean of Belmont’s College of Business Administration, and Dr. Harry N. Hollis, current director of the Center, supported by the James Medlin family, which made possible the establishment of the Center with generous gifts to Belmont to be used to support the teaching of ethics to students at the university. Dr. Patrick Raines, the current Dean of the College of Business Administration, has made a strong commitment to enabling the Center to grow and become an effective resource for promoting responsible ethics in businesses and in the professions. The work of the Center has been greatly strengthened by gifts from The First Tennessee Foundation and by The Dorothy Cate and Thomas F. Frist Foundation. These gifts have been used to help put on conferences on such issues as health care business ethics, sports ethics, and ethics in music business. These gifts have also funded scholarships for students to attend conferences sponsored by the Center.
