[Atlasphere] UPDATES - Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship

[O-Land News Junkie]

I’ve been working for several months now with Stephen Hicks of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship to create their new web site, which we just launched recently.

They’re doing some terrific work to promote an Objectivist-inspired vision of entrepreneurship, and I highly recommend signing up for their beautiful Kaizen newsletter (instructions below).

Below is an announcement Dr. Hicks recently sent out to members of his mailing list. We’ll also be publishing some of their interviews soon at the Atlasphere, so stay tuned for those as well.

My new Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship at Rockford College is now one year old, and I am writing to let you know of our accomplishments to date, highlighting especially the Objectivist connections.

This month we launched our website:

www.EthicsAndEntrepreneurship.org

. The website was designed by Joshua Zader, whom you may know as the founder of the Atlasphere. The CEE website has information about our programs and publications — and a web log that will track developments in business ethics and entrepreneurship. I invite you to check it out and to subscribe to its RSS feed to follow our activities over the coming years.

The second issue of

Kaizen

, our glossy newsletter, was also published this past week. In our first issue we featured an interview with architect John Gillis. In our second we interview painter Michael Newberry. The interviews focus on the excitement and challenges of entrepreneurship in the worlds of architecture and painting and include full-color images of Gillis’s and Newberry’s major works.

I invite you to

check them out

on our website. Each future issue of

Kaizen

will feature an interview with a successful, entrepreneurial achiever, along with news of CEE’s activities.

I am happy also to announce that CEE has hired four talented people with Objectivist connections.

Shawn Klein

as full-time instructor in Philosophy.

Shawn is a Ph.D. candidate and has been a frequent and popular lecturer at TAS conferences. He is teaching courses for us in Business Ethics, Ethical Theory, and is developing a new course in Sports Ethics.

John Reis is adjunct professor of Philosophy.

John is a long-time Objectivist with twenty-five years of business experience in Chicago, and he has been an adjunct professor at Elmhurst College for many years. John is putting that experience to good use for us at Rockford College by teaching our course on Business and Economic Ethics.

Anja Hartleb-Parson

, our research and publications manager

, is a Ph.D. student in political philosophy who has participated in both TAS- and ARI-sponsored conferences. We are pleased that while she is pursuing her doctorate Anja has been helping us with our publications projects and has lectured for us on Objectivism and issues in political philosophy, including the Kelo case, free speech, and Ayn Rand’s

We the Living

.

We also hired he very talented Christopher Vaughan

, who directed and edited my video documentary on

Nietzsche and the Nazis

. Chris also directed and edited the twelve-minute promotional video about the Center which appears on our website, and he developed the design for our Kaizen newsletter. Chris is working with me on a number of new, creative projects, which you will hear more about over the coming year.

In its first year CEE has reprinted and made available at Amazon.com four important essays by Objectivist scholars. The essays are on topics directly relevant to CEE’s mission in business ethics and entrepreneurship. The essays’ primary audience is students in the various courses CEE sponsors at Rockford College. But we are also making them available through other outlets, as we would like them to have as wide a reading audience as possible.

Tara Smith’s “

Money Can Buy Happiness

” is republished from the journal

Reason Papers

.

David Kelley’s

“The Entrepreneurial Life” and “Is It Nobler to Give than to Create?”

are re-published together from

Navigator

magazine.

David Mayer’s “

Thomas Jefferson: Man versus Myth

” is republished from MayerBlog.

And my own “

Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics

” is republished from the

Journal of Accounting, Ethics, and Public Policy

.

These four essays are the beginning of what CEE plans will be a continuing series of essays by professionals on key issues in business ethics, entrepreneurship and related fields. I hope you find the series to be of interest.

We have had a busy and productive first year and are working hard on our next projects.

Let me close inviting you to receive a complimentary print copy of our newsletter, Kaizen. If you are interested, please send your postal address to us at CEE [at] Rockford.edu. And please spread the word. Your support is appreciated.

Sincerely,

Stephen

Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Professor of Philosophy

Executive Director, The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship

http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/718.php