The 2015 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences will kick off a Washington State University Foley Institute lecture series next week that will explore the issue of inequality in the United States.
Sir Angus Deaton, Nobel laureate and Princeton University professor, will discuss the value of meritocracy and other related issues in his talk entitled "American inequality: The deaths of despair." The talk will be streamed live on the Foley Institute's YouTube channel at 12 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 7.
"Our hope is this series will help people rethink what they think about inequality," said Cornell Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service.
Deaton is one of the many world-renowned scholars who will present for the Foley Institute Lecture series throughout the fall semester on a wide variety of topics ranging from inequality and immigration to populism and the gentrification of Washington state. Pertinent topics raised during the lecture series will also be used as discussion points in Political Science 400, a Global Campus course taking place this fall.
"One of the things that we've been trying to do at the Foley Institute at least one semester of the year is run a series on a particular topic then teach a course that coincides with that lecture series," Clayton said. "We decided the politics of inequality was a particularly good topic, given how important it is right now in terms of driving the national dialogue. The series also aligns with this year's Common Reading Book, Tales of Two Americas."
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