Alfred P. Stiernotte Lecture Series in Philosophy

40th Annual Alfred P. Stiernotte Lecture

“There But For the Grace of Wall Street Go I”

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Corey Robin, distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center

At the 40th annual Alfred P. Stiernotte Lecture, we will examine the tension between the claim that political institutions and movements are powerless to counter authoritarianism, and the belief that financial markets will ultimately safeguard democracy. We will explore how this long-standing idea in political thought has been challenged by economic thinkers from Adam Smith to Max Weber to Michal Kałecki. We will conclude by considering how the current moment provides a new opportunity to revisit this tradition through Robin’s critical questions and insights.

Location & Directions

Mount Carmel Auditorium (CCE-101)

275 Mount Carmel Avenue, Hamden, CT 06518

Maps and directions to our Mount Carmel Campus

About the speaker

Corey Robin, distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center

Corey Robin, distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center

Corey Robin is a political theorist who has written three prize-winning books: Fear, The Reactionary Mind, and The Enigma of Clarence Thomas. In addition to his academic work, he is a prolific essayist, with pieces appearing in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The London Review of Books, and many other outlets. His writing explores the conundrums and challenges of the real world, bringing urgent political and social questions into sharp focus.

Who was Alfred P. Stiernotte?

Alfred P. Stiernotte, associate professor of philosophy

Alfred P. Stiernotte, born in Belgium in 1908, emigrated to Canada with his parents in 1922 and earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alberta in 1935. Five years later, he returned to school to pursue a Bachelor of Divinity at Meadville Theological School, where he won the Billings Prize for top scholastic performance. He became a Unitarian minister, serving in Vancouver and Salt Lake City, before earning a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Religion from Harvard. Stiernotte held a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale, was a visiting scholar in philosophy and fine arts at Columbia, and later became the Dockstader Professor of Theology at St. Lawrence University in the 1960s. He then returned to New Haven to join the faculty at Quinnipiac College, where he taught science and philosophy.

Stiernotte published four books, authoring Modern Theological Thinkers and God and Space-Time, and editing Mysticism and the Modern Mind and Frederick May Eliot: an Anthology. He also published articles in various journals, such as The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society and The Review of Metaphysics, and served on the editorial boards of The Humanist and Journal of Liberal Religion.