KNOXVILLE — James K. Galbraith, an economist and frequent contributor to a number of national publications, will give the inaugural Anne Mayhew Distinguished Honors Lecture on Oct. 5 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
The event, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7 p.m. in the Toyota Auditorium in the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, 1640 Cumberland Ave.
Galbraith is the Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair of Government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
He is also a senior scholar of the Levy Economics Institute and chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security, a global professional network. He writes a column called “Econoclast” for Mother Jones and occasional commentary in many other publications, including The Texas Observer, The American Prospect and The Nation. He is also an occasional commentator for Public Radio International’s Marketplace.
Galbraith’s books are “Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future” (Basic, 1989), “Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay” (Free Press, 1998) and “Inequality and Industrial Change: A Global View” (Cambridge, 2001), co-edited with Maureen Berner. His latest book is “The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too.”
Galbraith is the son of renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith and the brother of former diplomat and commentator Peter W. Galbraith.
He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale, and studied economics as a Marshall Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge.
He served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including executive director of the Joint Economic Committee. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1985. He directed the LBJ School’s doctoral program in public policy from 1995 to 1997. He held a Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Lectureship in China in the summer of 2001 and was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2003.
Galbraith’s recent research has focused on the measurement and understanding of inequality in the world economy, and he leads a research group called the University of Texas Inequality Project.
Sponsored by the Chancellor’s Honors Program, this lecture series is named after Mayhew, professor emerita who retired as vice chancellor for academic affairs in July 2006 and returned a couple of years later to serve as the director of the Office of External Scholarships. She retired from that position in June.
Mayhew will introduce Galbraith.
C O N T A C T :
Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)