Governing Diversity in Economic History | Buffett First Friday Lunch with Nancy Qian

The Roberta Buffett Institute hosts a faculty research lunchtime talk series on the first Friday of every month. Faculty members give a half-hour talk intended for a broad, multidisciplinary audience of Northwestern students, faculty and staff, followed by a conversational Q&A. 

October’s Buffett First Friday Lunch will feature Nancy Qian, James J. O'Connor Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences and Co-Director of the Global Poverty Research Lab at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. 

Why do some civilizations endure for centuries while so many others disappear? Professor Qian will offer a new history of human civilization told through the lens of economic history. From ancient China and Egypt to Rome, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and the United States, she will explore how large societies come into being, how rulers hold them together, and why so few survive the recurring shocks of conquest, collapse, and political change. 

The answer lies not simply in size, wealth, or military power but in the deepest challenge of political life: how to govern human diversity. Across millennia, rulers have used repression, political inclusion, and nation-building to transform divided populations into communities capable of imagining a common fate. 

Drawing on a wide array of evidence, from modern empirical analysis and historical records to insights from across the social sciences, this talk rethinks the rise and fall of civilizations as an enduring struggle to turn difference into shared identity and asks what that struggle reveals about the societies we are building now. 

Doors open at 12:00 p.m., and lunch begins at 12:15 p.m. 

Please note that 720 University Place is not an ADA-accessible space. Increasing physical access to buildings and facilities is a goal of the University, but not all buildings and venues have been updated.