Climate change is real and its impacts are mostly negative, but Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center says that common portrayals of devastation are unfounded. In this lecture, Professor Lomborg outlines how to establish a rational climate policy in the context of many other, competing global issues. The Copenhagen Consensus Center is a think-tank that researches the smartest ways to do good. For this work, Lomborg was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. His numerous books include False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, The Skeptical Environmentalist, and Prioritizing Development: A Cost Benefit Analysis of the UN's SDGs. The Hayek Lecture series is funded by a grant from the Thomas W. Smith Foundation and is sponsored by the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University and the Duke University program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.

On February 17, 2020, Charles Whitaker delivered, "Conflict and Crisis: How the Digital Revolution Upended Journalism and Democracy," as part of the Hayek Lecture Series. The digital revolution upended the media paradigm in ways that have both advanced and harmed society as we knew it. On the one hand, it democratized the production and dissemination of content, nullifying the influence of gatekeepers who once controlled the flow of information in print and across airwaves. But it also enflamed our tribal passions, allowing us to burrow into echo chambers that confirm our biases and stoke our grievances. And it hastened the dismantling of local and regional news outlets that served a vital function in the promotion of community and maintenance of our democracy. In this discussion, Whitaker traces the arc of the digital maelstrom and its socio-political consequences and tries to suggest a way forward. Charles Whitaker is dean and professor at Northwestern Medill School. To learn how you can support the Center and the Hayek Lecture Series, please contact the director, Bruce Caldwell, at 919-660-6896 or bruce.caldwell@duke.edu

In this lecture, Professor Bueno de Mesquita will question the impact of the Protestant Reformation, arguing that it was not a major driver either of northern Europe's economic success or of the decline of Roman Catholicism's sway in Europe. Rather, both, along with Europe's secularization and creation of sovereign states, were predictable products of the Concordat of Worms. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Silver Professor of Politics at New York University. He is an expert on international conflict, foreign policy formation, and nation building. His current research focuses on the links between political institutions, economic growth, and political change. He is also investigating the causes and consequences of international conflict as well as national security policy forecasting and analysis. To learn how you can support the Center and the Hayek Lecture Series, please contact our director, Bruce Caldwell, at 919-660-6896 or bruce.caldwell@duke.edu. Produced by Shaun King, Duke University Department of Political Science.

On Februrary 4th, 2019, Robert Lawson visited Duke University to present his talk, "Economic Freedom & the Wealth and Health of Nations." Robert Lawson is professor of practice and Jerome M. Fullinwider Centennial Chair in Economic Freedom and is director of the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Cox School of Business. He previously taught at Auburn University, Capital University, and Shawnee State University. Dr. Lawson is a co-author of the widely-cited Economic Freedom of the World annual reports, which present an economic freedom index for over 150 countries.

Deirdre McCloskey from the University of Illinois at Chicago talks "Free Market Liberalism is Humane"