The Seminar on Ethics, Economics, and International Relations provides a forum for scholars, practitioners, and researchers to explore a broad range of ethical and social issues relevant to international politics. In the past, speakers have approached a variety of issues including humanitarian intervention, human rights, the role of the state, global justice, economic inequality, public policy, and international development and conflict in the 21st century. While participants bring a variety of backgrounds and methodological approaches to the seminar, they are united by an interest in the area where the normative and empirical dimensions of international politics meet. Many of them bring a cross- or inter-disciplinary approach to their specific topic of interest, and all seek to address their topic to a wider academic audience. Participants are typically drawn from the Weatherhead Center, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Divinity School, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ departments of Government, Economics, Philosophy, and History, as well as from several other universities and institutions, and from the public sphere.

Niall Ferguson, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History and the William Ziegler Professor at the Harvard Business School, chairs the seminar.

Current Academic Year

• 2011–2012 Seminar Schedule