Chapman University President Daniele Struppa has taken the fundraising torch from Jim Doti, securing a recent $15 million gift that will allow Chapman University to establish the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy.
The institute pays homage to two notable Smiths: Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith, best known for writing “The Wealth of Nations,” which is considered the first modern work of economics; and Vernon Smith, a Chapman professor of economics and law who was one of two winners of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economic science. (The other was an Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman).
The new institute was funded by $15 million in gifts from the Arlington, Va.-based Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and two anonymous donors, and by gifts from two Orange County donors—$100,000 from Gavin Herbert, the founder of what is now Allergan PLC, and $80,000 from Rick Muth, chief executive of Stanton-based ORCO Block Co. Â
Charles Koch is chairman of the board and chief executive of Koch Industries Inc., a conglomerate that’s one of the largest privately held companies in the country. He and his brother, David, are known as major financial backers of conservative political causes.
It’s the first sizable gift received by Chapman since Struppa took over as president in September, succeeding Doti, who was renowned for fundraising over a 25-year tenure during which the school grew exponentially. It’s not, however, the first donation by the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, which previously has made gifts to the Argyros School of Business and Economics and to the Economic Science Institute, a unit of the business school that Vernon Smith co-founded in 2008.
“We are extremely grateful to so many donors for their generosity,” Struppa said, adding that the funding “will help promote an intellectual community at the university, wherein ideas can be exchanged freely and useful knowledge will benefit society.”
“The Smith Institute’s broad mission is to reintegrate the study of the humanities and economics in the spirit of Adam Smith, and to recombine research and undergraduate education as a discovery process in the spirit of Vernon Smith,” according to a statement by Chapman Professor Bart Wilson, who was appointed director of the Smith Institute and holds the Donald P. Kennedy Chair in Economics and Law at the university. “We will expand our innovative undergraduate program into a minor called Humanomics, which challenges the perceived tensions between economics and humanities.”Â
2010
Chapman already had an interdisciplinary humanomics program, which started in 2010 and teaches and researches economics through the lens of “humanistic science.” Humanomics grew out of the university’s desire to explore economics through the lens of the humanities and study humanity through the lens of economics.
The first phase of the humanomics program was a freshman seminar course designed to explore three questions: What makes a rich nation rich? What makes a good person good? And what do those questions have to do with one another? The course combines interpretations of the human condition in literature with an inquiry into the causes and consequences of the prosperity of the past 200 years. Humanomics has been expanded beyond a freshman course at the request of students, according to the university.
“The growing interest among Chapman students to challenge themselves with these big questions is the reason why we proposed the institute to the donors,” Wilson said. “It is exciting to significantly extend our capabilities to co-teach interdisciplinary courses with scholars from both economics and the humanities.”Â
Chapman will add 11 faculty members to form a group of researchers “interested in blurring the line between teaching and research, as Vernon Smith is known for,” Wilson said. The institute faculty will “envision new frontiers of interdisciplinary research, developing them in conjunction with colleagues and students in their courses.”
The Smith Institute also will mentor up to five post-doctoral fellows, who will spend two years in residence working on research and teaching under the guidance of the institute’s faculty. The university already has chosen four faculty members to take part in the institute, for a total of 15: Wilson; Vernon Smith, who teaches in the business and law schools; Jan Osborn, assistant professor of English; and Keith Hankins, assistant professor of philosophy.
Annual Effort
The institute will offer an annual conference or workshop that will bring to campus faculty from other universities to engage in the exchange of ideas in economics and humanities.
Vernon Smith is also founder and president of the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics; a member of the board of advisors at The Independent Institute, a conservative, libertarian think tank in Oakland; and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
Smith and Struppa have ties to Fairfax, Va.-based George Mason University. Smith and a team of economists first joined the faculty of George Mason in 2001 from the University of Arizona, courtesy of a $3 million grant from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Vernon Smith created the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, a research center and laboratory specializing in experimental economics, at the school. He also was a professor of economics and law and a fellow at the university’s Mercatus Center, a nonprofit, free-market-oriented research, education, and outreach think tank, of which Charles Koch is a board member.
Struppa joined George Mason in 1987. He served as director of the university’s Center for the Applications of Mathematics, as chairperson of the department of mathematical sciences, and as associate dean for graduate studies. He was selected dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1997, serving in the position until 2006, when he moved to Chapman as provost. As dean, Struppa hired Vernon Smith and his team to join the George Mason faculty and then did the same in 2007 at Chapman.
