Saint Anselm College’s Center for Ethics in Society hosted its 8th Annual Ethics of Business, Trade, and Global Governance Conference at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, featuring prominent speakers who discussed the future of globalization, international trade, and emerging ethical issues in the global economy.
The conference took place on February 6-7, 2026 and opened with remarks from Dr. Dani Rodrik, the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Professor Marc Rugani, director of the Center for Ethics, introduced Dr. Rodrik and emphasized the importance of his research in today’s rapidly changing global economy.
“Dani Rodrik’s intellectual acumen and prudential incisiveness on the need for shared vision and compromise to serve the shrinking middle class in the United States, while paying attention to global inequality, is so needed in our community conversations which often devolve into partisan mudslinging or deafening echo chambers,” said Rugani.
In his speech, Dr. Rodrik highlighted three critical challenges facing the world economy drawing from his newly published book, “Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World.” These three challenges are climate change, an erosion of the middle class for social and political existence, and global poverty reduction.
“These are all significant challenges. What makes it worse is that many of our established ways of thinking about these challenges pose significant conflicts among these objectives,” Dr. Rodrik states.
Throughout Dr. Rodrik’s speech he used these three challenges and applied them to his discussions on international trade, emerging ethical issues, globalization, and foreign policy.
John Murphy ’27, a finance and economics major who attended the February 6th conference reflected on his experience hearing Dr. Rodrik discuss his approach on the issues of global economic policies.
“Dr. Rodrik’s speech is important for students to learn because it sheds light about how government incentives, subsidies, trade relations, etc. could be adopted domestically and beneficially influence GDP per capita,” Murphy states.
Murphy’s experience hearing Dr. Rodrik at the conference highlights how students should understand the direction of our global economy along with the threats and opportunities that stem from it.
On February 7th, the second night of the conference, a closed discussion was held for academics and conference attendees. Throughout the day many prominent guest speakers from other colleges discussed specific economic sectors including: globalization, trade, governance, ethical issues, and various case studies of Ghana, China, Ukraine, and Poland.
The Center for Ethics 8th Annual Ethics of Business, Trade, and Global Governance Conference was an important opportunity for students to learn more about societies rapidly changing growing economy. Hearing guest speakers like Dr. Rodrik can shed light on the driving forces that will affect the future of Saint Anselm students and the generation that will conquer the geopolitical and economic world.