Sandra J. Peart, University of Richmond
“Analytical Egalitarianism and Race: From Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill”
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
6:30 p.m.
Special Events Center, Boise State Student Union
The 6th Adam Smith Lecture will feature Sandra Peart, dean and E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor in leadership studies at the University of Richmond and past president of the International Adam Smith Society.
Join us to hear Peart discus the role that analytical egalitarianism — the view that in analyzing behavior all people are to be treated as equals — played in the theories of the classical economists, including its relationship to questions of race, ethnicity, slavery, equality and immigration.
Analytical egalitarianism contrasts with the analytical hierarchialism of contemporary British literary figures such as Carlyle, Ruskin and Dickens as well as later American institutional and neoclassical economists. In investigating this contrast, Peart and Levy correct the historical myth regarding the origin of the phrase “dismal science” that Carlyle accused economics of being.
Peart, with co-author David M. Levy, wrote of a series of papers and books concerning classical economists and analytical egalitarianism, including “The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism” (University of Michigan Press, 2008), “The ‘Vanity of the Philosopher’: From Equality to Hierarchy in Post-classical Economics” (University of Michigan Press, 2005), and “The Secret History of the Dismal Science. Part I. Economics, Religion and Race in the 19th Century” and related essays at Econlib.
Peart’s most recent books are “The Essential John Stuart Mill” (Frasier Institute: 2021) and two books she co-authored with David M. Levy: “Towards an Economics of Natural Equals: A Documentary History of the Early Virginia School” (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and “Escape from Democracy: The Role of Experts and the Public in Economic Policy” (Cambridge University Press, 2017). She is the author of more than 100 articles in the areas of constitutional political economy, leadership in experimental settings, ethics and economics, and the transition to modern economic thought.
Peart obtained her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Toronto in 1989. She began her career as an assistant professor of economics at the College of William and Mary and then joined the faculty at Baldwin-Wallace University. She was a visiting scholar at the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University in 2004–05, and the following year, she was a fellow of the American Council on Education.
Learn more about Sandra Peart.
Adam Smith Lectures are free and open to the public.
“The Purpose of Property: Experimental Evidence on Adam Smith’s Insights”
