Giving: Caring for the Needs of Strangers
28th Social Research Conference December 6-8, 2012
This conference is intended to be broadly inclusive, ranging from individual philanthropy, volunteering, and faith-based giving, to state social welfare programs designed to reduce the suffering of citizens, to international giving. Our speakers—scholars, professionals, and philanthropists—will deepen our understanding of why we do and should give to others, what the roots of altruism are, how we can instill generosity in our young people, what the religious and philosophical grounds for caring and giving to others are, and what the correct balance between private philanthropy and government welfare programs may be.
This conference is made possible by generous support from the John Templeton Foundation and the Rockefeller Archives Center.
To order the related issue of Social Research: An International Quarterly
PROGRAM
Thursday, December 6, 2012
I. Keynote: Caring for the Needs of Strangers
Deogratias Niyizonkiza, founder and director of Village Health Works in Burundi Moderator: Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine, Mountains Beyond Mountains, and Strength in What Remains (about Deogratias Niyizonkiza)
Friday, December 7, 2012
II. Religious and Philosophical Grounds for Giving
The Judeo-Christian Tradition J. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life, Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University Charity in Islamic Societies Amy Singer, Professor of Ottoman History, Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University; author of Charity in Islamic Societies (CUP, 2008) The Gift: Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Perspectives Diana L. Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies and Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and member of the Faculty of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School The Ethics of Giving to Strangers Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University; Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne Moderator: Richard Bernstein, Vera List Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research
III. The Development and Psychology of Altruism
The Evolution of Generosity Michael McCullough, Director, Evolution and Human Behavior Laboratory and professor of Psychology, University of Miami; author of Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct (Jossey-Bass, 2008) and coauthor of Research on Altruism and Love(Templeton Press, 2003) The Altruistic Brain James R. Doty, MD, Director and Founder, Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neuroscience; clinical professor of Neurosurgery, Stanford University School of Medicine Psychological Development of Altruism in Children Felix Warneken, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; co-author of "Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees," Science, (311, 2006) Moderator: Emanuele Castano, Associate Professor of Psychology, The New School for Social Research
IV. Solving Public Problems Through Private Means
Private Foundations Helmut Anheier, Dean, Berlin Professor of Sociology, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany Philanthrocapitalism Matthew Bishop, U.S. Business Editor and New York bureau chief, The Economist Individuals Helping Strangers Tina Rosenberg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, editorial writer, New York Times; author of Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World(W.W. Norton and Co, 2011) Moderator: Michele Kahane, professor of Professional Practice, Management Programs, Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy, The New School for Public Engagement
Saturday, December 8, 2012
V. Giving and the State: Legal, Political, and Economic Perspectives
Philanthropy and Democracy Rob Reich, Associate Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; author of Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in Education (UCP, 2002) Religion and the Welfare State: Rivals or Partners Lew Daly, Director and Senior Fellow, Demos; author of God's Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State (Chicago 2009),Unjust Deserts: How the Rich are Taking our Common Inheritance (New Press, 2008), and God and the Welfare State (MIT Press, 2006) Tax Laws and Philanthropy Jon Bakija, Professor of Economics, Williams College; co-author of "How Does Charitable Giving Respond to Incentives and Income? New Estimates from Panel Data," National Tax Journal, 2011, 64:2 Moderator: James Allen Smith, vice president and director of Research and Education, Rockefeller Archive Center; author of The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (Free Press, 1991)
VI. The Impact of Giving on the Recipient
Giving to Developing States Michael Cohen, Professor and Director of the Julian J. Studley Graduate Program in International Affairs Program, Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy The New School for Public Engagement; former director of World Bank's urban policy program The Impact of Aid on its Recipients in Times of Disasters: Some Reflections from an "Aid Provider" Nicolas de Torrente, program manager of the Deepening Democracy Program in Uganda; former U.S. executive director of Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) The Impact of Private Giving on Public Institutions: Public Schools as an Example Joanne Barkan, contributor, editorial board member, Dissent; author of "Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools," Dissent(Winter, 2011) Moderator: Lopamudra Banerjee, assistant professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Metropolitan Museum of Art This private, custom tour of the permanent collection will explore images of generosity in art and examine how art has been influenced by patronage from politicians, wealthy families, and religious figures. (Additional $24 for tour ticket and museum admission. Register at the door of the conference, now that online registration has closed. Seats remain available as of Thursday, December 6)
BIOGRAPHIES
Speakers, Panelists, and Moderators
Helmut K. Anheier is Professor of Sociology and Dean at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He also holds a Chair of Sociology at Heidelberg University and serves as Academic Director of the Center for Social Investment. From 2001 to 2009, he was Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare at UCLA's School of Public Affairs and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. Professor Anheier founded and directed the Centre for Civil Society at the London School of Economics and the Center for Civil Society at UCLA. Before embarking on an academic career, he served as social affairs officer to the United Nations. He is currently researching the role of foundations in civil society and focuses on concepts and methods in civil society and globalization studies. Professor Anheier is the editor of the annual Global Civil Society Yearbook (with Mary Kaldor and Marlies Glasius) and the Cultures and Globalization Series (with Raj Isar). His recent publications include Foundations and American Society (with David Hammack, Brookings Institution Pres, 2009) and Nonprofit Organizations: Theory, Management, Policy(Routledge, 2005).
Jon Bakija is Professor of Economics at Williams College. He is author of “How Does Charitable Giving Respond to Incentives and Income? New Estimates from Panel Data” (with Bradley Heim), National Tax Journal, 2011, 64:2), Taxing Ourselves: A Citizen’s Guide to the Debate Over Taxes (with Joel Slemrod, Cambridge MIT Press, 1996), and Retooling Social Security for the 21st Century (with Eugene Steuerle, Urban Institute Press, 1994). Professor Bakija was Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Cornell Law School from 2007 to 2008, an economist on the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in 2005, Visiting Associate Analyst of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2004, and Model-Okun Visiting Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution from 2002 to 2003.
Lopamudra Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts. She was Chair of the Undergraduate Program in Economics from 2007- 2010 and Fellow of the Indian China Institute at the New School from 2008–10. Her work broadly encompasses two fields of study—distributional aspects of development and disaster studies. Her earlier research has explored the interconnections between poverty and disaster vulnerability, particularly in the case of Bangladesh. She has also worked on issues of economic distributions in China and India. Her co-edited volume Development, Equity and Poverty: Essays in Honor of Azizur Rahman Khan (with A. Dasgupta and R. Islam) was published in 2010 jointly by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, New York), and Macmillan Publishers India Limited (New Delhi). Currently, she is working on economic analyses of catastrophic risk and uncertainty and on economic theories of power as part of a research program that examines disasters and discontinuities in the natural physical system, and disorders and disequilibria in the social system.
Joanne Barkan is a writer based in New York City and Truro, Massachussetts and a member of the editorial board of Dissentmagazine. Her most recent work is a series of articles on private foundations and the effort to remake public education in the United States (“Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools,” “Firing Line: The Grand Coalition Against Teachers,” and “Hired Guns on Astroturf: How to Buy and Sell School Reform,” all in Dissent). Ms. Barkan is the author of Visions of Emancipation: The Italian Workers Movement Since 1945. She has also written many books of fiction, nonfiction, and verse for young readers. She holds an MA degree in French Literature from the University of Wisconsin and studied at the Institut d’etudes politiques in Paris. She attended public elementary and high schools on the South Side of Chicago.
Richard Bernstein is Vera List Professor of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research. He is author of several books, including Radical Evil: A Philosophic Interrogation (2002), Freud and the Legacy of Moses (1998), Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (1996), The New Constellation: The Ethical/Political Horizons of Modernity/ Postmodernity (1991), and Philosophical Profiles (1986).
Matthew Bishop is the U.S. Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief for The Economist. He was previously the magazine’s London-based Business Editor and is the author of several books, including In Gold We Trust? The Future of Money in an Age of Uncertainty (with Michael Green, 2012), The Road from Ruin (also with Green, 2010), about how to improve capitalism following the crash of 2008 and subsequent economic downturn, and Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World (also with Green, 2009), on the new movement that brings together the business and social sectors to solve some of the world's most pressing problems. Mr. Bishop is the author of several of The Economist’s special report supplements, including most recently A Bigger World, which examines the opportunities and challenges of the rise of emerging economies and firms; The Business of Giving, which looks at the industrial revolution taking place in philanthropy; Kings of Capitalism, which anticipated and analyzed the recent boom in private equity; and Capitalism and its Troubles, an examination of the impact of problems such as the collapse of Enron. In 1994, he wrote an acclaimed special report on corporate governance, Watching the Boss. He has also co-authored three books for the Oxford University Press on subjects ranging from privatization and regulation to corporate mergers.
Emanuele Castano is Chair of the Department of Psychology and Associate Professor of Psychology at The New School for Social Research. His recent publications include “The Perception of The Other in International Relations: Evidence for the Polarizing Effect of Entitativity,” in Political Psychology (with collaborators, 2003) and “I Belong, Therefore, I Exist: Ingroup Identification, Ingroup Entitativity, and Ingroup Bias,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (with collaborators, 2002).
Michael Cohen is Director of the International Affairs Program at the New School for Public Engagement. Before coming to the New School in 2001, he was a Visiting Fellow of the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University. From 1972 to 1999, he had a distinguished career at the World Bank. He was responsible for much of the urban policy development of the Bank over that period and, from 1994-1998, he served as the Senior Advisor to the Bank's Vice-President for Environmentally Sustainable Development. He has worked in over fifty countries and was heavily involved in the Bank's work on infrastructure, environment, and sustainable development. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Panel on Urban Dynamics. He is the author or editor of several books, including most recently Preparing the Urban Future: Global Pressures and Local Forces (ed. with A. Garland, B. Ruble, and J. Tulchin), The Human Face of the Urban Environment (ed. with I. Serageldin), and Urban Policy and Economic Development: An Agenda for the 1990s. Other recent publications include articles in 25 Years of Urban Development (Amersfoort, The Netherlands, 1998), Cities Fit for People (Kirdar, ed., 1996), The Brookings Review, Journal of the Society for the Study of Traditional Environments, International Social Science Review, Habitat International, and Finance and Development. He is currently completing a book on Argentina's recovery from the economic crisis of 2001 which will be published in 2011-2012. He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, The Johns Hopkins University, and the School of Architecture, Design, and Urban Planning of the University of Buenos Aires.
Lew Daly is Director of the Sustainable Progress Initiative and Senior Fellow at Demos. He is the author of God’s Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State (University of Chicago Press, 2009), Unjust Deserts: How the Rich are Taking our Common Inheritance (The New Press, 2008), and God and the Welfare State (MIT, 2006). He is leading a multi-year project on implementation of “Beyond GDP” metrics in federal and state-level governance in the United States and also manages a research program on economic alternatives to mass consumerism. Previously, Mr. Daly was a fellow of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy, where he worked closely with then-president Bill Moyers on special projects. He formerly worked as a research consultant with the Democracy Collaborative of the University of Maryland, and as a researcher and strategist on religious advocacy. He has published articles, reviews, and commentary in many publications, including Newsweek, Democracy, Policy Review, Commonweal, Boston Review, Dissent, Tikkun, and many other publications. His work has been covered in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Weekly Standard, The Christian Century, Commonweal, and The Nation, among others.
James R. Doty, MD is Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), a part of the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neuroscience (SINTN). The Center is a multi-disciplinary effort focused on understanding the neural, moral, and social bases of compassion and altruism. (The program has been supported by His Holiness the Dalai Lama who personally donated the largest single gift he has given to scientific research.) Previously his professional interest was focused on neuro-oncology (brain tumors) and utilizing both surgery and stereotactically focused radiation to treat solid tumors of the nervous system primarily utilizing the CyberKnife.
Diana L. Eck is Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society, and Member of the Faculty of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. Professor Eck's academic work has a dual focus—India and America. Her work on India focuses on popular religion, especially temples and places of pilgrimage, called tirthas, and her work on the U.S. focuses especially on the challenges of religious pluralism in a multireligious society. Her books include her most recent work, India: A Sacred Geography, (Harmony, 2012), Banaras: City of Light and Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India (CUP, 1998) and A New Religious America: How a "Christian Country” Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation (Harper, 2002). Professor Eck received the National Humanities Award from President Clinton and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1998, the Montana Governor's Humanities Award in 2003, and the Melcher Lifetime Achievement Award from the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2003. In 2005-06, she served as president of the American Academy of Religion. In 2009, Eck delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, a series of six lectures titled "The Age of Pluralism."
J. Bryan Hehir is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life. He is also the Secretary for Health Care and Social Services in the Archdiocese of Boston. His research and writing focus on ethics and foreign policy and the role of religion in world politics and in American society. He was a faculty member at Georgetown University (1984 to 1992) and the Harvard Divinity School (1993 to 2001). His writings include chapters on "The Moral Measurement of War: A Tradition of Continuity and Change; Military Intervention and National Sovereignty; Catholicism and Democracy" and "Social Values and Public Policy: A Contribution from a Religious Tradition," as well as Catholic Charities USA: 100 Years at the Intersection of Charity and Justice(Liturgical Press, 2010).
Michele Kahane has over 20 years of experience in the global business, nonprofit, and philanthropy sectors. In July 2009, Michele joined the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy as a professor of professional practice with a focus on social entrepreneurship and social finance. She leads the Social Innovation Initiative at The New School, is co-chair of the Committee on Civic Engagement and Social Innovation at The New School for Public Engagement and is a member of the Provost Office’s Civic Engagement Committee. Prior to her faculty appointment at The New School, she held executive level positions at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) and at the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College. Michele spent a decade at the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the economic development unit managing the Corporate Involvement Initiative, which supported the efforts of companies, social entrepreneurs and the public sector to forge innovative partnerships to address social and environmental challenges. Before working in philanthropy, Michele served as a vice president in Emerging Markets Corporate Finance at Chemical Bank (now JP Morgan Chase). She holds an MBA and Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University, and a BA from Princeton. She is the co-author of the award-winning book, Untapped: Creating Value in Underserved Markets, which provides advice to managers on how companies can implement new business strategies that make a difference in poor communities globally. She serves on diverse advisory committees and boards including the Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future, Criterion Institute, Social Impact Exchange, and Fast Forward Fund.
Tracy Kidder has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. His books include Strength in What Remains (a book about Deo Niyizonkiza), Mountains Beyond Mountains: the Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, My Detachment, Home Town, and The Soul of a New Machine.
Michael McCullough is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami, where he directs the Evolution and Human Behavior Laboratory and coordinates the Evolution and Behavior emphasis within the Psychology Department’s PhD Program. He holds a secondary appointment in UM’s Department of Religious Studies. Professor McCullough’s research—all of which is heavily influenced by evolutionary approaches to understanding human cognition and behavior—focuses on (a) psychological mechanisms related to social exchanges of costs and benefits (for example, forgiveness, revenge, and gratitude); (b) religion; (c) self-control; and (d) adolescent risk behavior. McCullough received the Margaret Gorman Early Career Award and the Virginia Sexton Mentoring Award from Division 36 (Psychology of Religion) of the American Psychological Association. He has written more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. In addition, Professor McCullough has authored or edited six books, the most recent of which is Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct. Professor McCullough’s research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Fetzer Institute.
Deogratias (Deo) Niyizonkiza is founder and director of Village Health Works and a leading advocate for the most impoverished people in the world. An American citizen, Deo was born in rural Burundi where he attended grade school and part of medical school. Arriving alone in the US, his incredible courage, determination and ingenuity led him to Columbia University for his undergraduate education. He went on to study at Harvard's School of Public Health and Dartmouth Medical School. Deo returned to Burundi to establish Village Health Works in 2006. His passion rallied the southern Burundi community of Kigutu into action and, with community-donated land and an army of committed volunteers, the clinic opened in December 2007. Deo's success in building an entirely community-driven health and development organization is unprecedented, and makes Village Health Works unique among NGOs. Deo’s extraordinary story is told in Tracy Kidder’s book, Strength in What Remains (Random House, 2009), a New York Times best seller also named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. A frequent lecturer on global health, Deo is the recipients of multiple awards including the 2011 International Medal Award of St. John’s University and the 2010 Women Refugee Commission’s Voices of Courage Award.
Rob Reich is Associate Professor of Political Science, Faculty Director of the Program on Ethics in Society, and Faculty Co-Director of the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) at Stanford University. Professor Reich is author of Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in Education (UCP, 2002), co-editor of Toward a Humanist Justice: The Political Philosophy of Susan Moller Okin(with Debra Satz, OUP, 2009), and co-author of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation(Brookings Institution Press, 2005). He is the recipient of several teaching awards, including the Phi Beta Kappa Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Walter J. Gores Award, Stanford University.
Tina Rosenberg is a writer for the Opinionator, New York Times and the author of Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World (W.W.Norton & Co, 2011), The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism (Vintage, 1996) for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Rosenberg's work has appeared in The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post. She is a fellow at the World Policy Institute and frequently writes for The New York Times Magazine.
Amy Singer is Professor of Ottoman History in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, Israel. She is the author of Charity in Islamic Societies (CUP, 2008), Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (SUNY, 2002), Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (SUNY, 2003), Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials (CUP, 1994), and Feeding People, Feeding Power: Imarets in the Ottoman Empire.
Peter Singer is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, a position he has held since 1999. Professor Singer is also Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. Singer was the founding President of the International Association of Bioethics and, with Helga Kuhse, founding co-editor of the journal Bioethics. He teaches “practical ethics”, which he defines as the application of a morality to practical problems based on philosophical thinking rather than on religious beliefs. In 2009 Singer was named by Time magazine as one of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World”. Professor Singer first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975, for giving the impetus to the animal rights movement. He has authored many books, including The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter (with Jim Mason, Rodale Books, 2006), The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty (Random House, 2010), and The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress (Princeton University Press, 2011).
James Allen Smith is Vice President and Director of Research and Education at the Rockefeller Archive Center. He was Senior Adviser to the President of the J. Paul Getty Trust from 2000 to 2005 and Executive Director of The Howard Gilman Foundation from 1991 to 1999. Smith is the author of three books, including The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite(Free Press, 1991), which won awards from the American Historical Association and the National Academy of Public Administration and has been widely translated. His most recent articles, essays, and book chapters have focused on American and European philanthropy and on cultural policy and the financial support for cultural organizations.
Nicolas de Torrente is Program Manager of the Deepening Democracy Program, Ugandais former Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the United States. Before joining the US office in early 2001, he worked extensively for the organization, first as an administrator and head of mission in Tanzania and Rwanda, and later as an emergency coordinator in Somalia, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Macedonia, and Afghanistan. He has also served as advisor on the agency's work in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. A Swiss national, Mr. de Torrente holds a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics, as well as degrees from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Switzerland and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston. He has published numerous articles on humanitarian and development issues, particularly on the relation between humanitarian action and political and military strategies.
Felix Warneken is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 2007-2009. He is the author of dozens of articles and book chapters, including “Human Altruistic Behaviors from a Developmental and Comparative Perspective” (to appear in Signaling, Commitment, and Emotion, MIT Press, eds. B. Calcott, R. Joyce, & K. Sterelny), “Social-Cognitive Contributors to Young Children’s Empathic and Prosocial Behavior” (with Vaish, in Empathy: From Bench to Bedside, edited by J. Decety, MIT Press, 2011), and “Altruistic Helping in Human Infants and Young Chimpanzees,” (with Tomasello, Science, Vol. 311 no. 5765, 2006).
