Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s executive director, talks with guest speaker Douglas Den Uyl about the essence of capitalism.

Rockford College students can see the new Atlas Shrugged movie on Saturday, May 7 at 7:15 PM for free, courtesy of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. We are only covering the tickets, not concessions or transportation. 

The film is playing at Wildwood Theaters in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Please arrive by 7:00. Look for Professor Stephen Hicks or Professor Shawn Klein.

Click here to see the theater’s location and to get directions.

Eduardo Marty is the Founder of Junior Achievement Argentina, an educational outreach program. Students in JA are taught how to prepare a business plan and raise funds. Approximately 50,000 students per year across Argentina participate. Marty has also held academic posts as professor at the University Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala, and the University of Buenos Aires. He was the host of Buenos Aires’s major television talk show Boom—Politics and Economics. We met with Mr. Marty in Buenos Aires to talk about his business education programs for young people and the state of entrepreneurship in South America.

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Kaizen: Where did you grow up in Argentina?

Marty: In Buenos Aires. I went to elementary and high school here and the University too.

Kaizen: Before university, what was your education like?

Marty: Well, I went to school called National Buenos Aires. That’s the oldest high school in Buenos Aires, created in 1770. It’s a public school, but it’s a very prestigious one. It was the first school in Buenos Aires. To enter, you need to pass a very tough test once you finish elementary school. From five students submitting and applying—they accept just one. Our education is divided into elementary school and then secondary school. When I was in sixth grade I tried to pass the exam and I did it, so I was one year younger than the rest.

The Jewish community attends that school a lot. It is a very intellectual community here in Buenos Aires. By the way, you know that after New York Buenos Aires has the second largest Jewish community in the hemisphere.

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Robert Bradley worked at Enron for 16 years. As director of public policy analysis for his last seven years there, he wrote speeches for the late Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO, who was convicted in 2005 of fraud and conspiracy. Dr. Bradley is also founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research of Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C. He frequently writes and lectures on energy, political economy, and corporate governance. He is currently completing his seventh book, Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, the second volume of a trilogy on political capitalism inspired by the rise and fall of Enron. We met with Dr. Bradley in Houston to explore his thoughts on Enron, political capitalism, and the future of energy.

Kaizen: Why does the Enron case matter?

Bradley: Enron’s fall was front-page news in the United States and around the world. It was such a surprise that the company everyone thought was the best—the most innovative, most socially progressive, and so on—was revealed to be the very worst. Virtually everyone got fooled by the reversal, so it had tremendous mystery and appeal.

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Philosophy professor Stephen Hicks gave two invited talks this month. On November 13th, he spoke at the University of Texas, Austin, on the impact of Galileo Galilei and John Locke; the title of his talk was “Philosophy and the Early Modern Revolution in Religion.” On November 15th, he spoke at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia on the topic of the fiftieth anniversary of Ayn Rand’s philosophical novel, Atlas Shrugged; the theme of the conference was “The Continuing Relevance of Atlas Shrugged.”