Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, Chapman University

The Smith Institute was established to challenge the perceived tension between economics and the humanities and to blur the lines between faculty research and undergraduate teaching. Its dual mission is to:

• reintegrate the study of the humanities and economics in the spirit of Adam Smith, the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, and

• recombine research and undergraduate education as a discovery process in the spirit of Vernon Smith, the progenitor of experimental economics.

The faculty of the Smith Institute are creating new connections between the Argyros School of Business and Economics, the Economic Science Institute, the Institute for the Study of Economics, Religion and Society, the Schmid College of Science and Technology, and the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

The Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University is an intellectual community rooted in freedom of expression as undergraduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty explore economics through the lens of the humanities and humanity through the lens of economics. The Smith Institute’s flagship program, humanomics, is dedicated to studying simultaneously the human condition and the causes and consequences of prosperity in the past 200 years.

The core courses are co-taught and cross-listed with professors from different disciplines and with texts from both disciplines read concurrently. Using Socratic dialogue, the professors’ job is to explore and learn alongside the students, rigorously teaching them how to ask good questions in an attempt to go beyond expected answers, modeling the importance of asking good questions in an academic pursuit.

The teaching in Humanomics is not personalized to the student, or for the student; rather, Humanomics is personalized by the student who explores his or her own questions about prosperity and the human condition. This sustained inquiry as part of a community of scholars is central to the learning environment. The goal of the program is not only to blur disciplinary lines but also the line between teaching and research, because teaching—like research—is about discovery.