Jagdish Bhagwati is IIT Chicago-Kent's 2010 Centennial Visitor
Noted economist to speak at Chicago-Kent on March 3
Columbia University professor Jagdish Bhagwati has been named Chicago-Kent College of Law's Centennial Visitor for 2010. Professor Bhagwati will deliver the 2010 Centennial Lecture, "U.S. Trade Policy: Why the Drift Is Dangerous," at 3 p.m. on March 3 in the Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Courtroom at Chicago-Kent College of Law, 565 West Adams Street (between Clinton and Jefferson streets) in Chicago. The lecture is free and open to the public, but reservations are requested. A reception will follow the lecture.
Jagdish Bhagwati is University Professor at Columbia University and a senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Widely regarded as the preeminent international trade economist today, Professor Bhagwati has also made contributions to public finance, immigration, and the new theory of political economy.
Between 1991 and 1993, Professor Bhagwati served as economic policy adviser to the late Arthur Dunkel, director general of GATT. He was a special adviser to the United Nations on Globalization, and external adviser to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Professor Bhagwati was appointed by the WTO director general to the Expert Group on the Future of the WTO, and served on the advisory committee to former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Under the chairmanship of former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, he also served as a member of the Eminent Persons Group on the future of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
A native of India, Professor Bhagwati graduated from Cambridge University. He studied at MIT and Oxford before returning to India as a professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute. Professor Bhagwati was a professor of international trade at the Delhi School of Economics. He returned to the United States to join the MIT faculty, where he taught for twelve years before leaving as the Ford International Professor of Economics.
Professor Bhagwati joined the Columbia faculty in 1980. He uniquely combines major scholarly contributions to the postwar theory of commercial policy with a substantial presence in the media, where he has frequently written in leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New Republic, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist and Foreign Affairs.
His works include In Defense of Globalization (Oxford University Press 2004), Free Trade Today (Princeton University Press 2002), Protectionism (MIT Press 1988) and A Stream of Windows: Unsettling Reflections on Trade, Immigration and Democracy (MIT Press 1998). Professor Bhagwati's book India: Planning for Industrialization (Oxford University Press 1970), co-authored with his wife and Columbia University economics professor Padma Desai, provided the intellectual case for the economic reforms now underway in India.
Professor Bhagwati is the recipient of six festschrifts in his honor, the latest three on his 70th birthday. He has also received numerous prizes and honorary degrees, the latest from the London School of Economics, including awards from the governments of India (Padma Vibhushan) and Japan (Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star).
Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. The Centennial Visitor lecture series was inaugurated in fall 1987 as part of a year-long celebration to mark the founding of Chicago College of Law, forerunner of Chicago-Kent, in 1888. Previous lectures have included Hon. Harry T. Edwards, U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit; Hon. Stephen M. Schwebel of the International Court of Justice in the Hague; and Princeton University Professor Hendrik Hartog.
