Published on 03-17-2025
Purdue University’s business school brings to West Lafayette this spring leading voices from the National Constitution Center, the National Review Institute, the Mercatus Center, the Liberty Fund and more to have a deep discussion about free markets and morality.
Aimed at business thought leaders, the Daniels School’s April 30 Cornerstone for Business Conference is an on-campus gathering that features an opening keynote from President Emeritus of Purdue University Mitch Daniels and informed discussions of the connections between business and AI; democracy and business; markets and human progress; shareholders and stakeholders and more.
“We’re trying to get to those historical, philosophical foundations of why business is valuable,” conference organizer says. The Associate Dean of Student Experience and Undergraduate Programs at the Daniels School is also a clinical associate professor of economics whose areas of expertise include labor, experiential learning and the ethical integration of AI in the classroom.
Businesses can’t survive without profits, Blanchard notes.
“When you are the business leader, what do you want to do with that profit?” she asks. “What are the responsibilities of principled business leadership?”
Purdue’s Germaine Seelye Oesterle Professor of History and Director of Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Melinda Zook will speak as part of a panel discussion on democracy and business. “By bringing together scholars, journalists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, humanists and economists, this conference will highlight important intersections,” she says. “It will ask attendees to consider the questions of our day, including how can we build a better, more adaptive business culture?
“In addition to many other salient points, I think attendees will see how the humanities and business education need to work together to educate our young people,” Zook says. “I also think they will see how capitalism and democratic citizenship go hand in hand. Good business leaders and entrepreneurs need to understand the history and culture of our democracy.”
Most conferences are packed with presenters who give you answers, says Rich Ryffel, the Daniels School’s executive director of business leadership. “This conference will give you a lot of questions,” he says. “What is the role of business in society? What obligation does business have to society beyond earning profits? What is the future of business in America? How can we preserve and pass on the American entrepreneurial spirit?”
Among the esteemed guests tackling these large questions are Andreas Widmer, director of the Arthur & Carlyse Cicocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship; Jeff Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center; Dominic Pino, a journalism fellow at the National Review Institute; and the Mercatus Center’s Veronique de Rugy and Juliette Sellgren, creator and host of “The Great Antidote” podcast.
Ryffel is excited about the lineup and “the conversations that I know the presenters will inspire among the attendees. I’m looking forward to hearing the diverse perspectives from the other attendees, which will challenge my thinking.”
Attendees will hear from Widmer, author of The Art of Principled Entrepreneurship: Creating Enduring Value, about business and AI, business and democracy, business and value generation, and the importance of investing in your employees.
The dinner’s keynote address will be jointly delivered by de Rugy and Sellgren, a dynamic mother-daughter team, Blanchard says. A contributing editor at Reason magazine and a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, de Rugy is a prolific writer and commentator on topics including government spending, cronyism, and the effects of fiscal stimulus, debt and deficits, and regulation on the economy.
Sellgren’s podcast takes its name from an Adam Smith quote: “Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” She has hosted today’s experts on universal basic income, the fiscal theory of the price level, trade and commerce and much more.
“My hope is that everyone in attendance will leave the conference with a better understanding of the uniqueness of the American capitalistic system and a renewed commitment to ensuring that the American ideals of freedom and capitalism are inherited by the next generation,” Ryffel says.
Conference registration is open and the cost is $18.69 in honor of Purdue’s founding year.
