Johns Hopkins University has received $10 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to create a new center to explore the relationships between markets, governments, and citizens.
The Center for Economy and Society will examine the challenges our society and democracy face, such as economic inequality, pessimism about the economy, and declining trust in politics.
The Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network are funding a number of initiatives to address the topic.
A total of $40 million in grants will fund similar centers at Harvard University, MIT, the Santa Fe Institute, and Howard University.
“There are few places where serious economic thinkers on the left and right can talk and argue in serious and productive ways,” Steven Teles, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins who will be the center’s inaugural director, said in a statement.
“The center will provide a pluralistic space in which scholars and practitioners with different approaches to the open society can thrash out their disagreements, discover common ground, and build new frameworks for governing,” he said.
In the coming years, the center will build a new facility where both undergraduate and graduate students can learn.
Hopkins and the Hewlett Foundation will also fund two new endowed positions for scholars who will help build the center.
