Join us for our final PPE Speaker Series of the academic year on Thursday, April 10 in Murphey 116 from 6:30-7:45pm! This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited, so please arrive early to claim your seat. Stick around after the talk for Q&A and pizza!

Abstract: Profit-maximizing business models might seem to be exemplars of the Protestant work ethic in their relentless focus on maximizing profits and productive efficiency. However, the 17th-century Puritan inventors of the work ethic stressed the importance of avoiding business models that depend on relating to others in unjust ways such as taking advantage of the vulnerable, tyrannizing workers, breaching trust with the community and making money in ways that do little good for others. I draw lessons from Puritan business ethicists for problematic business models today, such as private equity. I also consider how the work of professional and social services can be improved in ways that enhance the lives of workers and service recipients alike, realizing an ideal of fulfilling work that can be traced to the Puritans.

Professor Elizabeth Anderson specializes in moral, social and political philosophy, feminist theory, social epistemology and the philosophy of economics and the social sciences. She is particularly interested in exploring the interactions of social science with moral and political theory, how we learn to improve our value judgments, the epistemic functions of emotions and democratic deliberation, and issues of race, gender and equality. She is the author of Value in Ethics and Economics, The Imperative of Integration, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don't Talk About It), and, most recently, Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back.  She has written numerous articles on value theory, the ethical limitations of markets, facts and values in social scientific research, feminist and social epistemology, racial integration and affirmative action, rational choice and social norms, democratic theory, egalitarianism and the history of ethics. Professor Anderson is currently working on the history of egalitarianism.

Professor Anderson is a MacArthur Fellow, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the British Academy.  She designed and was the first Director of the Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Michigan.