We are meeting several times over the academic year to discuss Ayn Rand’s first novel We The Living.” Then include the chapters to be discussed in each session. Those chapters are as follows: Meeting 1, 9/26: Part 1, Chapters 1–6 Meeting 2, 10/24: Part 1, Chapters 7–13 Meeting 3, 11/28: Part 1, Chapters 14–17
Revisiting Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead
This year marks the 80th Anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s breakout classic The Fountainhead. Join some of the leading experts on Rand’s ideas for an afternoon of discussion of the novel, its philosophy, and its enduring appeal.
Hope and Healing: Addressing Student Mental Health Challenges
Join us and the Austin Institute in RRH 4.314 or via Zoom to learn more about the causes of our society’s distress and about what we can and should do to help people regain their sanity and their joy. What is going on with mental health? Why are so many young people attending the best […]
Confidence Sets for Causal Orderings
Causal discovery procedures aim to deduce causal relationships among variables in a multivariate dataset. While various methods have been proposed for estimating a single causal model or a single equivalence class of models, less attention has been given to quantifying uncertainty in causal discovery in terms of confidence statements. The primary challenge in causal discovery […]
Bayesian Causal Synthesis for Meta-Inference on Heterogeneous Treatment Effects
Causal Inference Seminar with Ken McAlinn. We propose a new Bayesian methodology to mitigate misspecification in estimating treatment effects. A plethora of methods to estimate– particularly the heterogeneous– treatment effect have been proposed with varying success. It is recognized, however, that the underlying data generating mechanism can drastically affect the performance of each method, without […]
Is there a conflict between Free Speech and Social Justice? (And what do these phrases mean?)
Join us in person at RRH 5.402! In this dialogue, Gregory Salmieri and Devon Westhill have a conversation about the tensions between those who see themselves as advocates for free speech and those who see themselves as advocates of social justice. How are these ideals and the movements for them best understood? Why do they […]
Why There Is an Individual Right to Abortion
Much of today’s debate about abortion rights deals with questions about the point in pregnancy at which the fetus or embryo first acquires the right to live. But the real question we must answer to resolve the debate is a philosophical one about the nature of rights, not a specialized scientific one about the nature […]
Investing for Society? Why We Should Preserve Shareholder Capitalism and How to Do it
Over one-third of total managed financial assets in the US are in funds that seek so-called sustainable investments, mostly in pursuit of strategies that focus on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations. In this talk, I evaluate the models of shareholder versus stakeholder capitalism, and argue that shareholder capitalism should be preserved. I consider how […]
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass on Black Colonization
Join us in person at RRH 3.310 or via Zoom here for a talk with Chris Nadon! Abraham Lincoln was a life-long proponent of black colonization. Frederick Douglass was an almost life-long opponent of these schemes. This talk will examine Lincoln’s 1862 Address on Colonization in light of Frederick Douglass’ objections with particular attention paid […]
The Texas Empirical Policy Conference (TEPC)
The Texas Empirical Policy Conference (TEPC) is a forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on contemporary policy from the fields of heath economics, education reform, meta-analysis, law, etc. The prior conference (previously known as the ALI conference, which can be found here) explored the role of policies in education, finance, entrepreneurship, and energy. The 2023 conference will build […]