Our featured presenter for the month of January is Jim Mittelman, a Boulder resident, an author, educator, and Daily Camera columnist. A Distinguished Research Professor at American University, he has written several books, including The Globalization Syndrome: Transformation and Resistance and Implausible Dream: The World-Class University and Repurposing Higher Education. His newest book is titled Runaway Capitalism. Previously, he worked at the United Nations and with civil society organizations. He has had teaching and research appointments in Finland, Japan, Mozambique, Singapore, South Africa, and Uganda. In addition, he held the Pok Rafeah Chair in International Studies at the National University of Malaysia, served as Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies (today, the Korbel School) at the University of Denver, and was named a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Jim has summarized his presentation and discussion topic here. We live in the age of Runaway Capitalism. Engulfing the peoples of the world, this evolving complex has reached a perilous moment. It has encountered a “polycrisis”: a confluence of crises in the environment, public health, democracy, the economy, racial (in)justice, and higher education.
Runaway capitalism is ricocheting from one locale to another without a helmsman to steer the ship. After World War II, liberal multilateralism evolved as a state-led, collective effort to provide stability and predictability, which enabled the engines of capital accumulation but with light regulation. The demise of neoliberal order effectively sidelined this form of multilateralism.