Conversations On Philanthropy
Emerging Questions on Liberality and Social Thought

Contributors


JACK BIRNER is a research professor for University College Maastricht and professor of economics and the philosophy of social science, department of sociology, University of Trento, Italy. He has an international business administration degree from Nijenrode, The Netherlands, a BA in economics and philosophy from Michigan State University, doctorates from Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. His current research interests include cultural evolution, the functioning of markets, the creation and destruction of value and complementarity in economic and social capital. An important source of inspiration: the history of economic thought. Also in preparation is a book on Hayek’s evolutionary research program.  He is also a part-time wine maker.

LAURENT DOBUZINSKIS is Associate Professor of political science at Simon Fraser University (Canada). His current research is focused on the history of economic and political thought, with special emphasis on French political economy, and he is writing a book on the moral discourse of economists. He is the author or editor or several books and articles on topics ranging from public policy to political philosophy.

DAVID ELLERMAN works in the fields of economics and political economy, social theory and philosophy, and in mathematics. His undergraduate degree was in philosophy at M.I.T. ('65) and he has Masters degrees in Philosophy of Science ('67) and in Economics ('68), and a doctorate in Mathematics ('71) all from Boston University. He has been in and out of teaching in economics, mathematics, accounting, computer science, and operations research departments in various universities (1970-90), founded and managed a consulting firm in East Europe (1990-2), and worked in the World Bank from 1992-2003 where he was an economic advisor to the Chief Economist (Joseph Stiglitz and Nicholas Stern). Now he is a visiting scholar at the University of California in Riverside. He has published numerous articles in various fields (see Curriculum Vitae) and five books.

JACQUES T. GODBOUT is professor emeritus at the National Institute for Scientific Research (Université du Québec, Canada). During many years he has studied and published books and articles on participation and democracy, from the perspective of the relations between public and non-profit organizations and their clientele. These research projects have led him to be more and more interested in the gift relationship. He has published many books on that subject, including Ce qui circule entre nous (Paris, Seuil 2007) and, in collaboration with Alain Caillé, L’Esprit du don, translated in many languages (In English: The World of the Gift, McGill-Queens’s University Press, 1998, 2000 paperback). He is currently studying various aspects of the gift in modern societies, such as: gift exchange in the family, blood and organ donations, volunteers, philanthropy, gift and market, gift and the state.

STEVEN GROSBY is professor of religion at Clemson University. His recent books includeNationalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005) and, as editor, Edward Shils, A Fragment of a Sociological Autobiography (Transaction, 2006).

SHAUN HARGREAVES HEAP is a graduate of Oxford and UC Berkeley. He is Professor of Economics at the University of East Anglia and has held positions at Concordia University and the University of Sydney. His current research concerns the social influences on decision making and in particular involves an experimental investigation of how group membership affects people's willingness to trust each other. He has published research in this area recently in the Economic Journal and in the American Economic Review. His other area of current research is on the influence and measurement of diversity in the media.

CHRISTINE DUNN HENDERSON is a Senior Fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc., a private educational foundation located in Indianapolis. She completed her undergraduate work at Smith College (A.B. in government and French studies) and received a Ph.D. in political science from Boston College. Prior to joining Liberty Fund, she taught political science at Marshall University. She is the contributing editor of Seers and Judges: American Literature as Political Philosophy, and co-editor of Joseph Addison's "Cato" and Selected Essays. Her primary areas of research and publication include nineteenth-century liberalism, as well as politics and literature.

JONATHAN B. IMBER is Jean Glasscock Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College where he has taught the past thirty years and where he is presently Director of American Studies.  He is author of Abortion and the Private Practice of Medicine (Yale University Press, 1986), and most recently of Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine (Princeton University Press, 2008).  He has edited or co-edited seven books, including The Feeling IntellectSelected Writings of Philip Rieff (University of Chicago Press, 1990) and most recently,Markets, Morals and Religion (Transaction Publishers, 2008). He is Editor-in-Chief of Society.

PAUL LEWIS was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford. He was a Newton Trust Lecturer in the Faculty of Economics and Politics, and the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Emmanuel and Selwyn Colleges, before becoming a Senior Lecturer in Economics at King’s College, University of London. His research interests include: the Austrian school of economics; applied microeconomics; and the history and methodology of economics. He is a Visiting Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, USA, a retained supervisor in economics at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and a member of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group.

GORDON LLOYD earned his bachelor’s degree in economics and political science at McGill University. He completed all coursework toward a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago before receiving his master’s and PhD degrees in government at Claremont Graduate School. The co-author of three books on the American founding and author of two forthcoming publications on political economy, he also has numerous articles and book reviews to his credit. His areas of research span the California constitution, common law, the New Deal, slavery and the Supreme Court, and the relationship between politics and economics.

ROGER A. LOHMANN is Professor of Social Work and Benedum Distinguished Scholar at West Virginia University. He was editor of Nonprofit Management and Leadership from 2000-2008. He is the author of numerous journal articles and author of three books: Breaking Even: Financial Management in Human Services and The Commons: New Perspectives on Nonprofit Organization, Voluntary Action and Philanthropy and Social Administration (co-authored with Nancy Lohmann). He is also co-editor (with Nancy Lohmann) of Rural Social Work Practice and a forthcoming volume on public deliberation and sustained dialogue (co-edited with Jon Van Til). He was a pioneer of online intellectual discussion lists, founding ARNOVA-L (in 1990) and more than 30 other lists. He is the founder and chair of the board of the Nova Institute at West Virginia University and is currently engaged in developing an online graduate certificate program in nonprofit management and third sector studies and an update on his previous theoretical work on the commons theory of associations.

JAMES R. OTTESON received his BA from the University of Notre Dame and his PhD from the University of Chicago. His books include Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life (Cambridge, 2002) and Actual Ethics (Cambridge, 2006), the latter of which won the 2007 Templeton Enterprise Award. He has taught formerly at Georgetown University and at the University of Alabama, and is currently professor of philosophy and economics at Yeshiva University and Charles G. Koch Senior Fellow at the Fund for American Studies in Washington, DC.

DAVID L. PRYCHITKO is a professor of economics at Northern Michigan University.  He has published widely in economics, and is the co-author (with Paul Heyne and Peter Boettke) of The Economic Way of Thinking, an introductory textbook published by Prentice Hall.

KEVIN QUINN is Associate Professor of Economics at Bowling Green State University.  His research interests are in economic philosophy, especially the nature of rationality, and in the history of economic thought.

PAUL G. SCHERVISH is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy (CWP) at Boston College, and National Research Fellow at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, and to the John Templeton Foundation.  He was appointed a Fulbright Scholar for the 2000-2001 academic year at University College Cork in the area of research on philanthropy.  For the 1999-2000 academic year he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy.  He has been selected five times to the NonProfit Times annual “Power and Influence Top 50,” a list which acknowledges the most effective leaders in the non-profit world.  He received a bachelor's degree in classical and comparative literature from the University of Detroit, a Masters in sociology from Northwestern University, a Masters of Divinity Degree from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. With Keith Whitaker he is the author of Wealth and the Will of God: Discerning the Use of Riches in the Service of Ultimate Purpose (Indiana University Press, January 2010).   

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