Nobel Laureate in Economics, Amartya Sen, to be Saint Michael's College 2010 Commencement Speaker

Amartya Sen, sometimes known as the Mother Teresa of Economics, though he likely wouldn t approve of that name, will be the 2010 Saint Michael s College commencement speaker with ceremonies to be held on Thursday, May 13, 2010, in the Ross Sports Center. Professor Sen, gained the Mother Teresa reference for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, gender inequality, and political liberalism. His research has also ranged over economics philosophy and decision theory, social choice theory, development economics, public health, moral and political philosophy, and the economics of peace and war.
Winner of the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on welfare economics, Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until recently the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was the first Indian academic to head an Oxbridge college.
Born in Santiniketan, India, in 1933, Professor Sen is an Indian citizen. His family hails from East Bengal, present-day Bangladesh, but migrated to India following partition in 1947. Professor Sen studied in Kolkata before moving to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned his Ph.D.
Professor Sen s books (and countless articles) have been translated into more than 30 languages, and include Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970), On Economic Inequality (1973, 1997), Poverty and Famines (1981), Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982), On Ethics and Economics (1987), Development as Freedom (1999), Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2006), The Idea of Justice (2009), and more.
The expansiveness of Professor Sen s thinking and writing, and his ability to synthesize ideas, cannot be overemphasized. Moving beyond economics into philosophy, he said, . . . my main areas of interest in economics relate quite closely to philosophical disciplines for example, social choice theory makes intense use of mathematical logic and also draws on moral philosophy, and so does the study of inequality and deprivation . . .
Professor Sen s book Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981) demonstrates that famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food. Professor Sen s work in development economics has influenced UN development programs. His New York Review of Books essay entitled More than 100 million women are missing, analyzes the mortality impact of unequality rights between the genders in the developing world, particularly Asia.
Professor Sen s relentless work in welfare economics and study of the effects on the community has earned him the title of conscience of the profession. His work, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, inspired researchers to focus on basic welfare, and to use Sen s methods of measuring poverty. He argues that economic movement out of poverty first requires improvement in the social arena of education and public health.
Professor Sen quotes:
How can it be possible to arrive at cogent aggregative judgments about the society (for example, about social welfare, or the public interest, or aggregate poverty ), given the diversity of preferences, concerns, and predicaments of the different individuals within society?" Professor Sen said in his Nobel acceptance speech.
The motivating question in social choice theory, he wrote, is that, Responsible adults must be in charge of their own well-being; it is for them to decide how to use their capabilities. But the capabilities that a person does actually have (and not merely theoretically enjoys) depend on the nature of social arrangements, which can be crucial for individual freedoms. And there the state and the society cannot escape res­ponsibility.
In looking at the world economy in 2009, Professor Sen noted the wide misinterpretations of the economics of Adam Smith: Today, more than a trillion dollars worth of bad credit default swaps are terrorizing banks across the world. Smith would have seen that as hugely unfortunate, and as stemming from lack of regulation.
Amartya Sen has served as president of the Econometric Society, the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association, and the International Economic Association. He was formerly honorary president of OXFAM and is now its honorary adviser. He has received the highest awards given in a number of countries around the world, and honorary doctorates from major universities in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa; and he will receive one from Saint Michael s College of Vermont.
Learn What Matters at Saint Michael s College, The Edmundite Catholic liberal arts college, www.smcvt.edu. Saint Michael s provides education with a social conscience, producing graduates with the intellectual tools to lead successful, purposeful lives that will contribute to peace and justice in our world. Founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, Saint Michael s is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation s Best 371 Colleges. It is one of 270 colleges and universities nationwide, and one of only 20 Catholic colleges, with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Saint Michael s has 1,900 undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 100 international students. Saint Michael s students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Pickering, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other grants. The college is one of the nation s Best Liberal Arts Colleges as listed in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings. Saint Michael s is located just outside Burlington, Vermont, one of America s top college towns.