Addressing a full audience of students, faculty and community members, Brown questioned why, four years after the 2008 financial crash, Europe is suffering a second recession and why the problems that led to the first recession have not been solved. He also cited high levels of global unemployment as a significant problem, noting that people continue to worry about their future job prospects.
"First we must recognize that we are all part of an interdependent economy," Brown said. "What happens to us in one country affects all of us right across the world. We can't deal with the world's problems if we fail to realize this."
Brown, currently a member of Parliament from the Labour Party, served as prime minister from 2007 to 2010. He also served as chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 until 2007, the longest term of any modern chancellor.
Brown said that although people tend to blame politicians for world problems, there are "fundamental and bigger" forces at play around the globe that lead to these issues.
"We have moved from a Western-centric economy to an economy where all the different forces of production in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere are now rising," Brown said, stressing that this shift is not necessarily negative because it offers new opportunities and new markets.
He encouraged the audience to think about how "the forces of change" currently affecting the global economy will work for people in the future.
Brown said that the rise of a new global middle class which places a strain on energy sources, food, and water also creates new opportunities for an alternative energy market.
Brown offered three solutions to this problem, stating that economies around the world, like China and the United States, must agree to work together for global growth to occur. He also extolled the necessity of a global climate change agreement to address issues of climate change and global financial standards to ensure fair practices and prevent another financial meltdown.
Brown also mentioned the "golden rule" that is present in nearly all cultures and religions that people should act responsibly toward others and emphasized that this same rule must underlie all economic thinking.
Brown stressed the global importance of education, saying that it is the key to lifting nations out of poverty and allowing their citizens to develop talents.
"The only way forward for most countries is through education," he said.
He described a visit to Nigeria during which he found that the local public school was losing students to a nearby fundamentalist Islamic school that was better able to provide students with adequate supplies and textbooks. Brown said that in addition to its economic importance, education must be a priority for international development in order to prevent the "indoctrination" of students desperate for an education.
"We can take millions of people out of poverty, we can get every child into school for the first time in our history so that, instead of developing some of the talents of some of the people, we are in a position to develop all of the talents of all of the people," Brown said.
Economics professor David Blanchflower, whom Brown appointed to the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee in 2006, and students from his two current economics courses, "Topics in Labor Economics" and "The Financial Crisis of the Noughties," met with Brown prior to the lecture. His students were excited to meet Brown, according to Blanchflower, who said he thought the students heard "an impressive lecture," which Brown presented without using notes.
"[Students] listened to a statesman with an extremely articulate and important speech about growth, cooperation and having values," Blanchflower said.
Blanchflower also mentioned the rarity of hearing a "true statesman," a term he used to describe Brown.
Alex Hanson '14 said he agreed with the arguments that Brown made in his lecture.
"I think he hits the nail on the head when he says that there are fundamental things at work that you can't just expect politicians to fix and that there are forces at work that are far larger than governments, and those have to be understood and tapped into if we are going to have any solutions," Hanson said.
College President Jim Yong Kim invited Brown to visit campus, according to lecture organizer Nariah Broadus. The talk was organized in the preceding two weeks, Broadus said.
The lecture was sponsored by the President's Office.
