By Sandra J. Peart, Dean and E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor in Leadership Studies and President of the Jepson Scholars Foundation
Alex Rodriguez, Lance Armstrong, and Bernie Madoff. What do they have in common? Trying to obtain high returns without regard for the rules—cheating. Pressures to bend the rules at colleges and elsewhere are enormous. We would all like to find a risk-free
Read moreSince the early days of universities, faculties have been criticized as inward-looking, cloistered — literally and figuratively — from the world around them. More recently, such criticisms have become sharper as the “value” and rising cost of a liberal arts
Read moreOn the heels of a most successful year at the helm of the Toronto Football Club, University of Richmond alumnus Tim Bezbatchenko, ’04, recently returned to campus for a dialogue about leadership. Tim, who — it’s no coincidence — minored
Read moreFor many years, leadership scholars have attempted to pull the conversation away from the person in the position to a discussion about context, situation, or how the person or people in charge were affected by time and place. Think of
Read moreI recently attended a talk Crystal Hoyt gave to University of Richmond Law faculty about people’s perceptions of women leaders. The research uses something referred to by many as “implicit bias”: the idea that people may unwittingly (though there’s some
Read moreWhile I was in Chile for the 2018 International Adam Smith Society conference, I went on two runs. I started both times from my hotel in Vina del Mar, but on the first, I went south, toward Valparaiso, and then
Read moreThere are few academics of greater stature than Robert Putnam. On Monday evening, the crowd that filled Cannon Memorial Chapel learned precisely why. Dr. Putnam inspired us with a talk about what he calls the growing opportunity gap. The idea
Read moreSurveying the economic landscape in 1930, John Maynard Keynes opined that “the permanent problem of the human race” would be resolved in two generations. “The struggle for subsistence,” then our “most pressing problem,” would fade, replaced by affluence unimagined before
Read moreIn a wonderfully articulated opinion piece, Stefanie Haeffele-Balch and Virgil Henry Storr expounded on how Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments described a system of ethics in which discourse leads to moderation. Smith’s idea is that discussion facilitates the imagination:
Read moreAdam Smith defies simple-minded characterizations. And there are still plenty of open problems that stem from his work. These are my two takeaways from a terrific set of papers and plenary talks at the International Adam Smith Society Chile conference
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