WHEELING, W.Va. - C. Bradley Thompson, BB&T Research Professor in the Department of Political Science at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study Capitalism, will present a talk titled, “Self-Interest Rightly Understood” on Thursday, March 21, 2013.

His 7 p.m. program is part of the Distinguished Speaker Series presented annually by Wheeling Jesuit's Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality (ISCM) and takes place in the National Technology Transfer Center auditorium.

According to Ed Younkins, Executive Director of WJU’s Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality (ISCM), “Professor Thompson will address the question, ‘Is capitalism moral?’ The answer to this question depends on whether self-interest can be defended as moral or not. In this lecture, C. Bradley Thompson examines how American culture understands the idea and practice of self-interest, and, in the tradition of Alexis de Tocqueville, he calls for a new understanding and defense of ‘self-interest rightly understood.'”

C. Bradley Thompson is the BB&T Research Professor in the Department of Political Science at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study Capitalism.

He received his Ph.D. at Brown University, and he has also been a visiting scholar at Princeton and Harvard universities and at the University of London.

Professor Thompson has published five books, including the award-winning John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty;Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea; The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams; Antislavery Political Writings, 1833-1860; and Freedom and School Choice in American Education.

In recent years, Dr. Thompson has also published essays on a range of topics such as children’s rights, natural law theory, Marxism, Progressive education, and free-market education.

He is currently completing two books: one on “The Ideological Origins of American Constitutionalism” and another to be titled Our Killing Schools: How America’s Government Schools are Destroying the Minds and Souls of Our Children.

Dr. Thompson is also an occasional writer for The Times Literary Supplement of London and The Objective Standard. He has lectured around the country on education reform and his op-ed essays have appeared in scores of newspapers in the U.S. and abroad. His lectures on the political thought of John Adams have twice appeared on C-SPAN, and he has been a guest on the John Stossell Show.

Founded in the spring of 2006 as a result of a generous gift from the BB&T Charitable Foundation, the ISCM is dedicated to an examination of capitalism and a free society. It supports the growth and development of teaching and research while establishing a forum for differing opinions to promote an appreciation of the concept, operation and effects of a Capitalistic system by engaging students and the community in activities designed to stimulate discussion of these important topics. For more information, please visit, www.wju.edu/academics/bus/iscm/ or call 304-243-2087.