The New Philanthropy: Effective Altruism and Beyond

The New Philanthropy: Effective Altruism and Beyond 

A conference at Yale University    

Details: 9:30-6pm on Friday May 6 & Saturday May 7

Faculty Room, Second Floor, Connecticut Hall (Door “C”)

The conference is free and open to the public. Please circulate this announcement! 

Topic: Over the past several years there has been a groundswell of support for the philanthropic movement known as “effective altruism,” originally inspired by the work of philosopher Peter Singer. Organizations grounded in this approach to alleviating poverty have proliferated – among them GiveWell, Giving What We Can, 80,000 Hours and the Center for Effective Altruism.  Broadly speaking, effective altruism is “a philosophy and social movement which applies evidence and reason to working out the most effective ways to improve the world.”  The effective altruism movement is an exceptional example of how social change can be motivated by work in applied philosophy. The robust public and nonprofit support for this approach is surely positive in the sense that many individuals are now convinced not only that they should give to those less well-off than themselves, but also that they should be concerned about how efficiently their money is being used to achieve this goal. Nevertheless, many elements of the movement have yet to be subjected to proper critical scrutiny. To that end, the conference will bring together academics and NGO practitioners to examine the strengths and weaknesses of effective altruism as it is now practiced and understood. The conference will provide a forum for interdisciplinary assessment of the contributions of effective altruism to philanthropic endeavors aimed at improving the lives of the global poor.  

Speakers: The keynote speaker will be Professor Angus Deaton, Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University. His research focuses on the determinants of health in rich and poor countries, as well as on the measurement of poverty in India and around the world. He was awarded the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare. In addition, Professor Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne, will join us from Australia via Skype.  

Many other distinguished speakers will also present their work on topics including: measurement and measurement bias in effective altruism, the relationship between corporations and altruism, and whether effective altruism is unjustifiably paternalistic.   

For more information, please contact: newphilanthropyatyale@gmail, or visit http://globaljustice.macmillan.yale.edu/news/new-philanthropy-effective-altruism-and-beyond-conference-yale-may-6-7  

The conference is sponsored by: the Society for Applied Philosophy, the American Philosophical Association’s Berry Fund for Public Philosophy, the Yale Global Justice Program, Academics Stand Against Poverty, the Yale Effective Altruists, the Department of Philosophy, Department of Political Science, Department of Economics, and the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.