A recent adviser to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, and University Professor at Columbia University, Jagdish Bhagwati will give a lecture titled, Globalization: Why It Has a Human Face, at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 31, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave., Bates College.

Sponsored by the Bates College Lecture Committee, and co-sponsored by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, the Bates College economics department and the Bates Economics Society, the talk is open to the public free of charge.

A senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and recognized by his peers in economics as a leading trade expert, Bhagwati is the author of the recent book In Defense of Globalization (Oxford University Press, 2004). The volume addresses many of the criticisms often directed at economic globalization. The process, he argues, “has a human face, but we need to make that face more agreeable.” The author’s “charming cosmopolitanism will allay fears of critics convinced that economists are incapable of appreciating non-economic values,” wrote New York Times Book Review critic Daniel W. Drezner.

In the book, Bhagwati defines the oft-contested meaning of globalization: “Economic globalization constitutes integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, direct foreign investment (by corporations and multinationals), short-term capital flows, international flows of workers and humanity generally, and flows of technology.”

One of three in a series of Bates College-sponsored speakers who deal in matters that are both provocative and serious, Bhagwati’s presentation raises numerous questions for thoughtful observers, says lecture committee member Michael Sargent, assistant professor of psychology.

Is globalization inevitable? Is it desirable? What should governments do, if anything, about it? As an adviser to the UN, the WTO and Human Rights Watch Asia, Bhagwati has come to conclusions that many will find surprising, says Sargent. For example, he argues that global outsourcing of jobs is not a major cause of job loss in the United States, an argument he presents in a piece provocatively titled, “Why Your Job Isn’t Moving to Bangalore.” He has also proposed – contrary to critics’ claims – that globalization may benefit women in developing countries.

“The lecture committee thought that having him to Bates to discuss ideas such as these would make for a healthy debate, and on a topic of broad interest and timeliness,” Sargent says. “What better diversion from the rigors of our own ‘March Madness’ could there be?”

The author of more than 50 volumes and 300 articles, Bhagwati is a native of India. He attended Cambridge University where he graduated in 1956. He continued his studies at MIT and Oxford, returning to India in 1961 as professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, and then as professor of international trade at the Delhi School of Economics. He returned to MIT in 1968, leaving it 12 years later as the Ford Professor of Economics to join Columbia.

An outspoken literary theorist and controversial critic of university politics, Stanley Fish will challenge the value of a liberal arts education in a talk titled Why Liberal Arts Education Cannot Be Justified at 4:15 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave., Bates College. Sponsored by the Bates College Lecture Committee, the talk is open to the public free of charge.“We are always looking for speakers whose written work suggests that they are both provocative and serious,” says lecture committee member Michael Sargent, assistant professor of psychology. Fish’s writing indicates that he easily meets those two criteria. Following his talk, the committee hopes that a lively conversation will ensue.

For example, says Sargent, in a New York Times op-ed piece, “Why We Built The Ivory Tower,” Fish “contends that college and university faculty have no business attempting to mold student character nor to cultivate citizenship; instead, we should stick to what we as academics are trained to do: teaching and research.” Fish presents this position as a critique of the stance taken by many high-profile college administrators (such as former Harvard President Derek Bok), and then proceeds to make a case for it that is, in Sargent’s judgment, “clear and thoughtful.”

A widely recognized analyst of contemporary literature, Fish is considered a leading scholar of Milton. He has also written about legal theory, interdisciplinarity and issues pertaining to free speech and hate speech. Fish writes a monthly column on campus politics and academic careers for The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Careers” section.

Fish’s work includes Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing, Too and The Trouble With Principle.

Fish earned his Ph.D. from Yale University, taught English at the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University, and served as Arts and Science Professor of English and professor of law at Duke University from 1986 to 1998. He recently stepped down from his position as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The Fish lecture is the first event in a three-part series co-sponsored by the lecture committee. Next up is a talk called Globalization: Why It Has a Human Face, by Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March, 2, to be followed by a lecture titled Abrupt Climate Change, The Greenhouse Effect, and How We Can Make Money Cleaning Up After Ourselves by Penn State geoscientist Richard Alley at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 10. These lectures will be held in Chase Hall Lounge.

Chris Hables Gray, a noted cyberculture expert and activist, will discuss the social implications of altering the human body through technology in a lecture at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 3, in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall. Gray will also participate in a panel discussion with Bates professors about scientific responsibility and ethics at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, in Room G21, Pettengill. The public is invited to attend both events free of charge. For more information, call 207-786-8293.

Editor of The Cyborg Handbook (Routledge, 1995) and author of the book Postmodern War (Guilford, 1997), Gray is associate professor of computer science and of the cultural studies of science and technology at the University of Great Falls, Montana, and is core faculty for the Union Institute and University. The recipient of fellowships at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, he chairs a weapons and peace group of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. His work crosses the boundaries of science, technology, politics and philosophy.

Gray’s Feb. 3 talk is titled Cyborgs, Posthumans, and Other Waking Dreams. Short for cybernetic organism, the term “cyborg” refers to an entity with both mechanical and organic qualities.

Titled Terror and Peace in the 21st Century, the Feb. 4 panel considers “how war has become terror and how the international system is being tremendously shaped by new technologies, especially information technologies with profound implications for globalization and our prospects for peace,” Gray says.

Moderated by Bates Professor of Psychology Richard Wagner, the panel includes Gray, professor of physics John Smedley, assistant professor of philosophy Frank Chessa, and associate professor of mathematics Bonnie Shulman. Gray’s visit to Bates is sponsored by the Bates College lecture committee.