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Jonathan LevyThe Real Economy: Veblen’s University Politics
Tuesday, February 25, 2025, 5:00–6:30pm
Drawing on his new book, The Real Economy: History and Theory (Princeton University Press, 2025), Levy will discuss Thorstein Veblen’s attempts while a professor of economics at the University of Chicago to decide to what degree the university was inside or outside the economy.
Levy focuses on Veblen’s account of the economy from a particular vantage point, his experience at the turn of the twentieth century of being a working economist at the newly founded University of Chicago, which was among the first self-styled US research universities, funded by new forms of philanthropic wealth. If we take seriously Veblen’s mantra that “habits of thought are the outcome of habits of life,” then the modern and still today contemporary research university environment must have something do with how the economy is lived and thought. Levy uses Veblen’s account of the modern research university in its early years to articulate his conception of “the economic life process,” the relationship between capitalism and higher education, and the possibility of socialism.
Jonathan Levy is professor of history at Sciences Po, Paris. He is the author of Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Harvard University Press, 2014) and Ages of American Capitalism: A History of the United States (Random House, 2022). He was previously Professor in the Department of History and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where he was also a fellow of 3CT.
This event is free and open to the public, and registration is recommended. Please email us at ccct@uchicago.edu if you require any accommodations to enable your full participation.
