Professor Deepak Lal of UCLA was elected president of the Mont Pelerin Society on September 12, 2008 during the Mont Pelerin Society’s 60^th Anniversary general meeting in Tokyo, Japan.  Dr. Lal has been a friend of Atlas for quite some time, having spoken at several Atlas evens in the past including an Atlas meeting in Mont Pelerin, Switzerland.

Here, Leonard Liggio offers some background on this great freedom champion:

Deepak Lal was born January 3, 1940 in Lahore (India, now Pakistan). He graduated from St. Stephens College, Delhi, with a BA with Honors in history. He received a MA with Honors in Philosophy and Politics, and a D Phil in economics from Jesus College, Oxford. He taught at Jesus College and Christ Church College, Oxford.

He was a lecturer and a reader in political economy at University College, London, 1970-84; and professor at University College, London, 1984-93. In 1991 Deepak Lal was appointed to the James S. Coleman Professorship in International Development Studies, at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has served on the editorial boards of the Cato Journal and the Journal des Economistes et de Etudes Humaines. He reviewed David Landes’ Wealth and Poverty of Nations (Cato Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1998).

Deepak Lal presented the Julian Simon Lecture in New Delhi in 2000; the Shenoy Memorial Lecture in Ahmedabad in 1996; and the Ohlin Memorial Lecture in Stockholm in 1995 which became the book: Unintended Consequences (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998). Unintended Consequences includes explanations for the growth of capitalism in the West based on the differences between encouragement of marriages and wealth concentration among close relatives and Western prohibitions on marriages to close relatives and thus dispersing of wealth. In the book, Deepak Lal draws on the magisterial contribution of the late Harold Berman, Law and Revolution (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1983) regarding the Western Legal Tradition.

Also it includes analysis of the differences between individual guilt in Western societies and family shame in Eastern societies. Deepak Lal is working on a study on “Globalization and Order.”