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This lecture is named for the late Lester Kissel, a graduate of Harvard Law School and longtime benefactor of Harvard University's ethics programs and activities.
Title: Why Surfers Should be Fed - After Three Decennia
Abstract: In April 1990, Philippe Van Parijs gave a lecture at Harvard’s Ethics Center subsequently published under the title “Why Surfers Should Be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income”. Nearly 30 years later, the idea he was then pleading for is being discussed, proposed and tested throughout the world. This lecture will look back at the initial ethical justification of basic income and update it in the light of what has been happening since then.
Philippe Van Parijs is a guest professor at the Universities of Louvain and Leuven, Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence) and associate member of Nuffield College (Oxford). He was the founding director of Louvain’s Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics from 1991 to 2016, and a regular visiting professor at Harvard University from 2004 to 2008. He is one of the founders of the Basic Income Earth Network and chairs its International Board. His books include Real Freedom for All (Oxford U.P. 1995), What’s Wrong with a Free Lunch? (Beacon Press, 2001), Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World (Oxford U.P. 2011) and Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (Harvard U.P. 2017, with Y. Vanderborght).
