Sandra J. Peart
Dean Sandra J. Peart became the fourth dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies in 2007. A national leader in her field, she is a director of the annual Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economic Thought at George Mason University. She was the 2007-08 president of the History of Economics Society. Previously, she taught at the College of William and Mary. In the News
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A distinguished scholar with special expertise in the history of economic thought and political economy, especially in the context of ethical leadership, Peart has focused her research in this area on two broad questions: how do individuals, who are motivated by private interests, come together to make decisions about the group, and how well do people make such decisions and are we all equally able to decide? For the purposes of economic analysis, Adam Smith argued that we are equally capable, with observed differences attributed to education and the division of labor. The "vanity of the philosopher" presupposes otherwise and such presuppositions lead to analytical failures. More
Peart has applied this insight to leadership, where she argues that one means by which to prevent ethical failures of leadership is to suppose that we are all equally capable of leading (or learning to lead). She then asks what this would mean institutionally and has argued in favor of trials of randomized leadership as an institutional framework that might yield “good” – ethical and effective – leadership. In collaboration with experimental economists at George Mason University, she has begun to investigate this question experimentally using a public goods game.
Dr. Peart is a regular presenter at the annual conference of the International Leadership Association and several years ago led the development of a leadership studies program at Baldwin-Wallace. In 2004-05, she was a visiting scholar at the Center for Public Choice at George Mason University.
Peart has received numerous awards and research grants. In 2005-06, she was a fellow of the American Council on Education. Peart has authored or edited five books and numerous publications. She co-authored or co-edited many with David M. Levy, a professor of economics at George Mason University. The collaborators just published a new book, The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Essays on Egalitarian Economics. Currently she is working on John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: Their (Friendship) Correspondence and Subsequent Marriage, and other papers by Hayek on Mill, a volume of the Collected Works of F. A Hayek from the University of Chicago press.
Before coming to the Jepson School, Peart was a professor of economics at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, where she also served as chair of the faculty.
Education:
Ph.D., economics, University of Toronto, 1989
M.A., economics, University of Toronto, 1983
B.A., history and economics, University of Toronto, 1982