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Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen to speak on The Idea of Identity

By Brian Fitzgerald

	Amartya Sen. Photo by Kris Snibbe, courtesy of Harvard University News Office

How much are we influenced by the company we keep? On Wednesday, September 19, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled The Idea of Identity at 3 p.m. in the SMG Auditorium. The talk is the first in The Future of Identity Distinguished Lecture Series at BU, which will explore the many questions arising from the ways people define themselves as members of groups.

Sen, who won the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics, is the first scholar to hold the visiting professorship in the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.

Sen is widely known for his key contributions to the questions of social choice, welfare distributions, and poverty. However, his writings are wide-ranging and diffuse. The master of Trinity College of Cambridge University and a professor emeritus at Harvard, Sen spoke on the idea of identity last November in London at the British Academy, a fellowship of scholars.

"The importance of the idea of identity can scarcely be doubted," said Sen. "Our relation with other people is greatly influenced by the way we identify with some, and not with others." He argued that our knowledge of ourselves must include how our concerns and priorities are influenced by our attachment to one group of people -- which can spell out brutal disaster to another group. "The subject is, I would submit, not only of some analytical interest," he continued, "it is also of central relevance in understanding a diverse basket of practical problems, as varied as violence in the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda, the growing appeal of fundamentalism in Asia and Africa, racial discrimination in America, or anti-immigrant violence in West Europe, and even the current controversies surrounding the idea of being British in a multiethnic Britain."

Sen was originally scheduled to speak on September 14, but restrictions on flights coming into Boston following the September 11 terrorist attacks led to the rescheduling of the first lecture. At press time, his second lecture had not been rescheduled.

Born in Santiniketan, India, in 1933, Sen received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. An Indian citizen, Sen has been a professor in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States He has served as president of the Econometric Society, the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association, and the International Economic Association. He is also honorary president of Oxfam.

His most influential work is 1981's Poverty and Famine, in which he argues that mass starvation is not just a consequence of nature, but also an avoidable economic and political failure. Partly because of the book, nations threatened by famine now commonly use public works and other state-funded initiatives to help their poor citizens survive. Sen's concern for the poor began early in life. During the Bengal famine of 1943, the 10-year-old handed out cigarette tins of rice to starving refugees as they passed his grandfather's house.

"Dr. Sen's incredible research and policy-oriented career directed toward alleviating poverty, and his pioneering work in creating the [United Nations] Human Development Index, make him eminently qualified to serve as the center's first visiting professor," says real estate entrepreneur Frederick S. Pardee (SMG'54, GSM'54), who funded the center with a $5 million gift that includes an endowed professorship, held by noted historian David Fromkin, a professor of international relations, history, and law at BU. Fromkin, who directs the center, says that Sen "is a broad-based thinker with an enormous wealth of information to share. He will address the very large topics that the center was formed to explore."

For the annual Distinguished Lecture Series, Fromkin says, the center seeks individuals of world stature who have the abililty to transcend narrow academic boundaries. "Dr. Sen is a person with many interests and numerous areas of expertise, which is why the Pardee Center wanted him to be its visiting professor this year," says Fromkin. "We're looking for speakers with genuine vision who use a multidisciplinary, big-picture approach to the future."

By combining tools from economics and philosophy, Sen "restored an ethical dimension to the discussion of vital economics problems," according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in awarding him a Nobel Prize. He is "one of the world's most articulate spokespersons for the ways to use economics and economic theory to better people's lives," says Cutler Cleveland, a CAS associate professor, director of the CAS Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, and a member of the Pardee Center's advisory council.

Admission to Sen's lectures is free, but registration is required. For more information, call 358-4000.

14 September 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations