Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Kaizen 11 — The Judy Estrin interview

The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship has published the eleventh issue of Kaizen [pdf], featuring my interview with Judith Estrin. The interview’s theme is Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Judy Estrin, CEO of JLabs, is the co-founder of seven technology companies. She was the Chief Technology Officer of Cisco Systems from 1998 to 2000 and has served on the boards of Rockwell and Sun Microsystems. Currently, she is on the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company and FedEx. Most recently, she is the author of Closing the Innovation Gap (McGraw-Hill, 2008). I met with Ms. Estrin in Menlo Park, California to explore her thoughts on educating and managing for entrepreneurship and innovation.

The issue also features two recent guest speakers to Rockford College — Joshua Hall and Jerry Kirkpatrick — and congratulates three student prize winners: Erin Filak, Kristy Luck, and Elliott Welsh.

More Kaizen interviews with leading entrepreneurs are at my site here or at CEE’s site here.

In Defense of Advertising by Jerry Kirkpatrick

In the following video interview, I speak with Professor Jerry Kirkpatrick, author of In Defense of Advertising, about the value of advertising, the common criticisms of it, and his responses to them. Dr. Kirkpatrick is Professor of International Business and Marketing at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Part I:

Part II:

This video interview is also available at the CEE site. More of my interviews with CEE’s guest speakers are available here.

Kirkpatrick on Montessori and Dewey

Professor Jerry Kirkpatrick gave a talk at Rockford College on October 28 on “Montessori and Dewey as Educational Philosophers.” Dr. Kirkpatrick is Professor of International Business at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

In the following eleven-minute interview after his talk, I speak with Dr. Kirkpatrick about the two great educational philosophers of the twentieth century, both of whom are exerting great influence in the twenty-first.

The talk was also based on Dr. Kirpatrick’s fine book Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism. His talk at Rockford College was sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and this video interview is also available here at the center’s site.

More of my interviews with CEE’s guest speakers are available here.

Jerry Kirkpatrick on philosophy’s importance to business

Professor Jerry Kirkpatrick gave a talk at Rockford College on October 27 on “The Importance of Philosophy to Business.” Dr. Kirkpatrick is Professor of International Business at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. His talk was sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship.

In the following two-part interview after his talk, I speak with Dr. Kirkpatrick about his education in philosophy and business and the relevance of moral philosophy and epistemology to practicing business professionals.

Part I:

Part II:

This interview is also available at the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship’s site. More of my interviews with CEE’s guest speakers are available here.

Fall 2009 guest speakers

The Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship and the Department of Philosophy have an intellectually-stimulating line-up of guest speakers [pdf] this fall semester:

On September 16, Timothy Sandefur will be speaking on “Market Entrepreneurs and Political Entrepreneurs: Some Legal and Constitutional Issues.” Sandefur is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm based in Sacramento, California.

Jerry Kirkpatrick will be giving two talks: “The Importance of Philosophy to a Successful Business Career” on October 27 and “Montessori and Dewey as Educational Philosophers” on October 28. Kirkpatrick is Professor of International Business & Marketing at California State Polytechnic University

Joshua Hall will also be giving two talks on the theme of “The Dilemma of School Finance Reform,” one on October 13 and one on November 11. Hall is Assistant Professor of Economics at Beloit College and on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research.

For more details, please see the flyer [pdf]. Admission is free and open to the public.

My Philosophical Foundations of Education course

I’m teaching a graduate-level course on the Philosophical Foundations of Education (EDUC 605) this semester.

We cover several key philosophical issues that bear directly upon education, read the works of several philosophers — Plato, Locke, Kant, Dewey, and others — who have influenced education greatly, and we look at several systems of educational philosophy.

I’ve also invited three guest speakers this semester: Jerry Kirkpatrick, a philosopher of education and professor of business at Cal State Pomona, and Joshua Hall, an economist at Beloit College with expertise in the political economy of education, and Roberto Salinas León, a philosophy Ph.D. and President and CEO of the Mexico Business Forum, Mexico City. Professor Kirkpatrick will be at Rockford College on October 28 and Professor Hall’s and Dr. León’s dates are TBA.

Here are PDF file of the syllabus and schedule for the course and the supplemental 59-page booklet of readings:

Syllabus and Schedule [pdf]
Supplemental readings booklet: Philosophical Foundations of Education [pdf]
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Worth Reading for April 2007

4/28 John Stossel proposes: How About Economic Progress Day? (Thanks to Eric for the link.) John Tamny wonders why, despite the clear data, some academics consistently undersell capitalism. And marketing professor Jerry Kirkpatrick, author of In Defense of Advertising, nicely debunks subliminal advertising.

4/27 Beautiful photographs of bridges around the world.

4/26 Cultural and religious control-freaks and more cultural and religious control-freaks. Closer to home: controlling yet more “inappropriate” sexual expression. And of course this is just plain control-freaky.

4/25 The entrepreneurial transformation of American business. Key quotation: “since 1980, more than 5 million jobs have disappeared from Fortune 500 companies, while 34 million new jobs were created at small businesses.” In Slate, new data on men’s and women’s work loads. And Warren Farrell has good advice to women on how to increase your income.

4/24 Cultural trends: What do people actually use the Internet for? And the always-worth-reading Grant McCracken on the decline of accidental social networks.

4/23 Fascinated by China: In Far Eastern Economic Review, Carlson Holz worries about the pressures on Western intellectuals’ integrity. Depressingly, R. J. Rummel has revised his Chinese democide numbers upwards: 73,000,000 deaths. Rich Karlgaard wonders whether Shanghai or Beijing is the future of China. And Mark Vallen comments on an exhibition of American art in China and quotes this amusing line from Colin Powell: “If you give 1.3 billion Chinamen access to home shopping on television, (communism) is over, because there is no way communism can compete with a salad shooter for $9.95.”

4/18 Philosopher Tibor Machan challenges a false alternative: Are humans by nature good or evil? Ph.D. candidate Joe Duarte reflects on life choices that make a profound difference. And here is an interesting development in artificial brain repair.

4/17 Law professor Larry Ribstein wonders if Hollywood is warming up to business. Key quotation: “rich capitalists have funded films like ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ Why not pro-capitalist films?” (Thanks to Roger for the link.) And over at Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner, discussion of philosophical themes in two films The Devil Wears Prada and The Pursuit of Happyness.

4/16 Excellent data, dynamic graphics, and passionate presentation: a talk by Hans Rosling on world development. (Thanks to Anja for the link.) Here is Rosling’s web log.
And Don Boudreaux has anecdotes and data pointing to the conclusion that cancer is not the killer it once was.

4/15 Business Week’s most livable cities in the world.

4/13 Today is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. Historian David Mayer remembers Thomas Jefferson. Here are the official White House biography, the website for Jefferson’s home at Monticello, and Genevieve LaGreca’s toast to Jefferson’s achievements.

4/12 An interesting technical and business challenge: the $100 laptop and the rural poor. As my friend Eric Adkins puts it, “Some kid with a $100 laptop and loads of free time is going to invent something brilliant.”

4/11 Is Europe’s economy suffering from Eurosclerosis? Also check out Olaf Gersemann’s Cowboy Capitalism. (Thanks to Anja for the links.) And: socialism or individualism? Craig Depken quotes wise words spoken in 1907 by Nicholas Murray Butler, then president of Columbia University.

4/10 Gramscian warfare: Lazarus Long explains what Americans need to learn about ideological warfare. And Sascha Volokh has some charming word play while exploring postmodernism’s unintended consequences.

4/9 In Topoi, philosophers Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith ask: What’s Wrong With Contemporary Philosophy. Answer: Lots.

4/7 The creation of Zarathustra—the powerful and passionate sculpture by Peter Schipperheyn. (Thanks to Michael for the tip.)

4/6 An embarrassment to higher education: Florida Gulf Coast University’s speech code. And advice for graduating students: Avoid the seven deadly sins of resumé design.

4/4 Like Che and Mao: another murderous thug not to idealize: Leon Trotsky. (Thanks again to Bob H. for the link.)

4/4 He probably won’t get tenure: teaching evaluations for Professor Socrates. (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.)

4/3 Good news from the historian’s across-centuries perspective: Steven Pinker on declining rates of violence. (Thanks to Anja for the link.) And uncertain news from Caitlin Flanagan on college women’s sexual judgment and practice across the decades.

4/2 Australia round-up: A review of Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country by Keith Windschuttle. A key quotation: “second-rate has always been the wrong adjective for Australia. It tells more about the insecurities of those who use the label than anything else. It is especially untrue today when to be an Australian is to be a citizen of the world, and yet still live in the best country on Earth.” In Spiked, Guy Roth has some choice words for fashionably snobbish pooh-poohing of Australian culture. And that’s not even to mention that one of my son’s favorite television shows, The Upside Down Show, originates in Australia.