Tanner Lectures
Photo by Christine Baker
The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society collaborates with the Office of the President to host the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford.
The Tanner Lectures were established by the late American scholar, industrialist and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner. In creating the lectureships, Tanner said, "I hope these lectures will contribute to the intellectual and moral life of mankind. I see them simply as a search for a better understanding of human behavior and human values. This understanding may be pursued for its own intrinsic worth, but it may also eventually have practical consequences for the quality of personal and social life."
Stanford is proud to be one of the nine distinguished universities to host the Tanner Lectures. The Tanner lectureships, which are comprised of annual lectures and seminars, are held at Cambridge, Harvard, Michigan, Oxford, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, the University of California and the University of Utah.
The purpose of the Tanner Lectures is to advance and reflect upon scholarly and scientific learning relating to human values. This intention embraces the entire range of values pertinent to the human condition, interest, behavior and aspiration. The lectures are published in an annual volume.
Appointment as a Tanner lecturer is in recognition for uncommon achievement and outstanding abilities in the field of human values. The lecturers themselves come from the fields of philosophy, religion, the humanities, sciences, creative arts and learned professions — or from leadership in public or private affairs. The lectureships are international and intercultural and transcend ethnic, national, religious and ideological distinctions. Past Tanner lecturers at Stanford include: Tommie Shelby, Seth Lazar, Andrew Bacevich, Danielle Allen, Jared Diamond, Dorothy Allison, Paul Krugman, Mary Robinson, Harry Frankfurt, Avishai Margalit, David Brion Davis and Glenn Loury.
2025-26 Tanner Lecture: Economics and Ethics for Sustainable Development in a Changing World
The 2025-26 Tanner Lecture features economist Nicholas Stern discussing the economics of an ethically sound world.
The twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss require a rapid restructuring of how we produce, consume, and care for the environment. This lecture will explore how a new economics can guide these changes to our systems, structures, and technologies that are necessary to lead us toward a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future. We need an ethically sound public economics where structures are dynamic, where market failures are taken seriously, where change is driven by private-sector investment, and where time matters.
2-day Event Schedule
Lecture by Nicholas Stern with Heather Boushey
- Thursday, March 12, 5–7p | Denning House, Rm 210
Discussion Seminar with Nicholas Stern, Simon Caney, and Gretchen Daily
- Friday, March 13, 10a–12p | Denning House, Rm 201
This event is hosted by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and the Office of the President.
Please note that this event is in-person only, and RSVPs are requested to attend. Walk-ins are welcome.
Speaker:
Nicholas Stern is IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Chair of the Global School of Sustainability at the London School of Economics. He has held posts at other UK and overseas universities, and as Chief Economist at both the EBRD and the World Bank. He was Head, UK Government Economic Service 2003-2007, and produced the Stern Review on the economics of climate change. He was President of the Royal Economic Society (2018-2019). He was President of the British Academy (July 2013-2017) and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (June 2014). He was knighted for services to economics (2004), made a life peer (2007), and appointed Companion of Honour for services to economics, international relations and tackling climate change in 2017. He has published more than 15 books and 100 articles.
Discussants:
Heather Boushey is one of the nation’s most influential voices on economic policy and focuses on the intersection between economic inequality, growth, and public policy. She served in the Biden administration as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist to the President’s Invest in Cabinet. She is a Professor of Practice at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design and a nonresident fellow at the Reimagining the Economy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. Boushey co-founded and served as the President & CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Her book, Unbound: How Economic Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It, which was called “outstanding” and “piercing” by reviewers, was on the Financial Times list of best economics books of 2019.
Simon Caney is Professor in Political Theory at the University of Warwick. He works on issues in contemporary political philosophy, and has published widely on climate justice, global justice, and responsibilities to future generations. He is the author of Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2005), and he is also the co-editor (with Stephen Gardiner, Dale Jamieson and Henry Shue) of Climate Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2010). He was a member of UK’s Nuffield Council of Bioethics (2014-2020), and a coauthor of the Nuffield Council of Bioethics reports on Biofuels: Ethical Issues (2011) and Research in Global Health Emergencies (2020). He is completing two books - On Cosmopolitanism: Equality, Ecology, and Emancipation (Oxford University Press) and Democracy, Justice, and the Future: An Essay in Applied Political Philosophy (Oxford University Press). He is also currently completing a series of papers on climate justice.
Gretchen Daily is Bing Professor of Environmental Science and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She is co-founder and Faculty Director of the Stanford Natural Capital Alliance, a 20-year-old global partnership whose mission is to help secure the well-being of people and nature. They do this by co-developing with decision-makers a systematic approach to valuing nature in sustaining and fulfilling human life. The approach is now being integrated into policy, finance, and practice in over 75 countries around the world.
Together with many colleagues, Daily has published several hundred scientific and popular articles, and a dozen books, including Nature’s Services (1997), The New Economy of Nature (2002), The Power of Trees (2012), and Green Growth that Works (2019). Daily is a fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She has received numerous international honors including the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2020), Blue Planet Prize (2017), Volvo Environment Prize (2012), and the International Cosmos Prize (2009).
