Internationally renowned economist and Harvard University professor John Kenneth Galbraith will give the inaugural lecture for the Bernard D. Nossiter Prize in Journalism on April 24.
"I'm coming in honor of an old friend. I remember him as a very competent journalist and was very much influenced and guided by his work," Galbraith said in a telephone interview from Cambridge, Mass.
Galbraith is one of the most well known figures in modern economics, and his theories have sparked much debate between his admirers and staunch opponents.
"Galbraith is pretty controversial and is very much identified with the Kennedy administration and Keynesian economics," Economics Professor Meir Kohn said.
College spokesman Alex Huppe said Galbraith was a close friend of Bernard Nossiter '47 and agreed to give the lecture in response to a letter from Joshua Nossiter '79, Bernard's son.
Nossiter's family created an annual prize of $1,000 to recognize undergraduates for excellent pieces of journalism. Nossiter, who died in 1992, worked many years for The Washington Post.
This will not be Galbraith's first trip to the College. He has visited the campus many times while spending summers in Vermont.
"I know Dartmouth very well, and it is always a pleasure to go back," he said.
Galbraith has not yet written his speech, but said jokingly, "In these Republican days it will be something about what the good society should be like. "
"It will not be all-out support for Newt Gingrich," he added.
Many see Galbraith as one of the world's most influential economists, and in a forward to "Perspectives on Galbraith", Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., wrote, Galbraith "is secure as a giant in the contemporary intellectual and political history of America."
Galbraith was born in 1908 and attended the Ontario Agricultural College before earning a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California.
In the 1960 presidential election, he avidly campaigned for Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy. After Kennedy's victory he was appointed U.S. ambassador to India.
Galbraith's publications include "American Capitalism: The Concepts of Countervailing Power," "The Affluent Society," "The New Industrial State" -- which sold more than 1 million copies -- and "Economics and Public Purpose."
