Newsweek columnist to give BB&T Distinguished Lecture
Syndicated columnist Robert J. Samuelson, of Newsweek and the Washington Post Writers Group, will give a talk on Monday, Sept. 27, 4-5 p.m., as the featured speaker in the BB&T Distinguished Lecture, hosted by the Pamplin College of Business.
The talk, “The Myth and Reality of the Economic and Financial Crisis,” will be held at the Inn at Virginia Tech’s Latham Ballroom. It is free and open to the public, no tickets required. Free parking is available at the Inn at Virginia Tech and Skelton Conference Center. Find more parking information online or call (540) 231-3200.
Samelson, whose weekly column explores political, economic, and social issues, has been a member of the Writers Group since 1996. Beginning his journalism career as a reporter on The Washington Post’s business desk in 1969, Samuelson has since worked as a freelance writer, an economics correspondent at The National Journal, and a columnist at Newsweek.
He has written three books, The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement, 1945-1995 (published in 1995); Untruth: Why the Conventional Wisdom is (Almost Always) Wrong, a collection of columns (2001); and The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: the Past and Future of American Affluence (2008), on which the lecture will partly be based.
Samuelson, who has won many awards for his work, received a bachelor's degree in government in 1967 from Harvard University.
Featuring two speakers each year, the BB&T Distinguished Lecture Series on Capitalism discusses current issues in business management and government policy, in addition to topics related to capitalism. The series is part of a Pamplin College teaching program to explore the foundations of capitalism and freedom. The program’s courses, undergraduate and graduate, examine alternative economic systems, including socialism and communism, and compare them with the economic solutions offered by free markets. For more information, please contact finance professor and program director Douglas Patterson.
Previous BB&T speakers include Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan, former Virginia governor James Gilmore, and Pamplin alumnus and Forbes newsletter editor Vahan Janjigian. The program was established in 2007 in the college’s finance department with a $1 million gift from BB&T Charitable Foundation.
