Interdisciplinary
Honors Program in Poverty and Inequality
The Center is developing an interdisciplinary honors program focused on poverty and inequality that will be built around three courses generously supported by The Elfenworks Foundation.
The first course, Controversies in Inequality, exposes students to some of the pressing questions that all students of poverty and inequality must take on:
- Do we have a moral obligation to reduce poverty? Is it wrong to spend lavishly on ourselves when others are in such dire straits?
- Why is income inequality increasing so spectacularly? Can we anticipate continuing dramatic increases in income inequality?
- Why is the gender gap in pay no longer decreasing? Why has the historic increase in female labor force participation come to such a sudden halt?
- Is meaningful democracy feasible in the context of extreme inequality? How might the role of money and influence on political outcomes be reduced?
- Why is health itself so unequally distributed? Are such inequalities in health especially extreme in the United States?
- Why is there so much residential segregation by race? Is employment discrimination still pervasive?
- Does poverty cause terrorism? Is equitable economic development the surest road to peace?
These types of questions are addressed through a series of debates that bring leading scholars of poverty and inequality to the Stanford University campus. Each year, four debate topics are chosen, and students prepare for them by completing relevant background readings several weeks in advance of the debate. The debate is open to the public, videotaped, and then becomes part of our archive of classic videos on the pressing questions of our time [sample syllabus].
The second course, Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy, explores bold and utopian as well as pragmatic proposals for reducing poverty and inequality. This course, conducted as a small seminar, challenges students to examine how poverty and inequality might be reduced both within the market and outside of it.
The third course, an Honors Seminar in Poverty and Inequality, provides an interdisciplinary setting in which students present and discuss their independent research projects on poverty and inequality.
This program is in development. For more information on the proposed Honors Program in Poverty and Inequality, please read our detailed description of the proposed program.
