Former Brazilian Senator and long-time campaigner for basic income, Eduardo Suplicy received an honorary degrees from the Catholic University of Louvain earlier this year. The degree came for work as an “utopiste pour le temps présent” (utopian for the present). Also receiving degrees were Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and architect Paola Vigano.
Suplicy’s acceptance speech is on line, including his famous rendition of “Blowin’ in the wind” by Bob Dylan. According to Philippe Van Parijs, who attended the event, “The rector’s speech made it sound as it the whole university was endorsing basic income, and basic income was the first item in the evening news, with Yannick Vanderborght and Suplicy briefly speaking in favour, and the bosses of the trade unions and the employers against.”
Karl Widerquist is a Professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar. He specializes in distributive justice—the ethics of who has what. Much of his work involves Universal Basic Income (UBI). He is a co-founder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (USBIG). He served as co-chair of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) for 7 years, and a member of the BIEN EC for 14 years. He was the Editor of the USBIG NewsFlash for 15 years and of the BIEN NewsFlash for 4 years. He is a cofounder of BIEN’s news website, Basic Income News. He is a cofounder of the journal "Basic Income Studies."
Widerquist has published several books and many articles on UBI both in academic journals and in the popular media. He has appeared on or been quoted by many major media outlets, such as NPR’s On Point, NPR’s Marketplace, PRI’s the World, CNBC, Al-Jazeera, 538, Vice, Dissent, the New York Times, Forbes, the Financial Times, and the Atlantic Monthly, which called him “a leader of the worldwide basic income movement.” Most of Karl Widerquist's academic writing is available at his research website (Widerquist.com). For more information about him, see his BIEN profile (https://basicincome.org/news/2016/12/bien-profiles-karl-widerquist-co-chair/).
BIEN’s 2022 Congress will be held in Brisbane, Australia, from Monday 26th to Wednesday 28th September 2022. Registration now open. This will be a hybrid face to face and online event. The main face-to-face event will take place in Brisbane.
Call for papers closed: Abstracts (250—300 words) please click here for more information.
Basic Income
A Basic Income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement. Read more
