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Adam Smith Program Fellow Nicholas Wilson defended his GMU Econ dissertation 14 October 2025, "The Pursuit of Higher Things: Booker T. Washington constrasted with W.E.B. Du Bois." … Congratulations, Nick! … Someone higher is saying, "Attaboy!"
Adam Smith’s philosophy held that man is “naturally endowed with a desire of the welfare and preservation of society.” It spans the devout and the practical, the sublime and the mundane. It sees the individual as a soul nestled within society. Smith asked: What moral and governmental rules best advance the good of the whole? He taught readers to resist pursuing wealth and greatness to the detriment of wisdom and virtue.
The Adam Smith Program at GMU Economics explores the moral and economic philosophy of Smith and related thinkers, through professional scholarship, doctoral dissertations, graduate seminars, reading groups, and special projects. We study intellectual history to learn ethics, jurisprudence, politics, economics, and moral psychology. [Disambiguation: This program is not the Mercatus Center’s Adam Smith Fellowships Program.]