Renowned regulatory expert Cass Sunstein visits Kenan as Practitioner-in-Residence

With seven engagements across two days at Duke, Kenan Institute for Ethics’ Practitioner-in-Residence Cass Sunstein presented to hundreds of students, faculty, staff and community members this week. He visited campus in collaboration with the Rethinking Regulation Program at Kenan and Duke Law School.

Sunstein, Harvard’s Robert Walmsley University Professor and founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, shared a breadth of his regulatory expertise on a range of topics, from moral commitments in cost-benefit analysis to political division, food labeling and the process of impeachment. In addition to his work at Harvard, Sunstein previously acted as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama Administration.

During talks at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Sunstein used topics of climate change and how people hold political beliefs to illustrate shifting ethical challenges in America. It can be hard to change minds, he said, because of how people can strongly hold to personal beliefs.

“Not liking something,” he noted, “pre-determines not believing.”