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Obama, Vartan and Brest

Barack Obama once ran the Chicago arm of the Annenberg Challenge, a $500m effort to improve schools in America funded by media tycoon Walter Annenberg. It was there that he came into contact with Bill Ayers, the Weatherman terrorist, a relationship that caused controversy during the recent election campaign. Less controversially, coming into contact with […]

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Quis Custodiet Gates?

The need for philanthropy to be accountable to society, as part of a new social contract between the wealthy and the rest of society, is one of the main themes of our book. As we observe in the introduction, “if philanthrocapitalists are to be a legitimate part of the solution to the world’s problems, a […]

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What is the business of business?

On Sunday, The Economist hosted a debate in New York on the motion, “The business of business is business.” For the motion, Clive Crook, of the Financial Times and the Atlantic, and Will Wilkinson, of the Cato Institute, argued that this simple rule is a necessary “constitution” for business, to ensure that its managers can […]