Category: Events

Please join us for a special round table event with Mary Kowalski, owner of Kowalski’s Markets, and Kris Kowalski Christiansen, CEO of Kowalski’s Markets, at 9:30 am on Tuesday, April 26, at their headquarters in Woodbury.

Mary and Kris will discuss with us the concept of a civic business – what it is, how it works and how their employees contribute – and how other businesses can adopt this model.

Here’s a short video of Mary and Kris discussing a civic business.

Coincidentally, we will be including an article by Mary on this very issue in this month’s edition of Pegasus.

The event is free and refreshments will be served.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Kowalski’s is located at 8505 Valley Creek Road in Woodbury.

The event will conclude at 11:00 am.

Please join us for an in-person round table on the Russian invasion of Ukraine at 9:00 am on Wednesday, April 6 at Landmark Center in St. Paul.

T.S. Eliot said that April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.  And here we are, in April.

But we are not in Ukraine, where the spring thaw has bogged down Russian tanks.

Have we entered a new age?  A darker one, with more intolerance and less freedom?  An age of elites imposing their ways on the “deplorables”?

In our aspirations, have we overlooked the insight of Thomas Hobbes and Herbert Spencer that power, not love, is the foundation of life?

Registration and a light breakfast will begin at 8:30 am.

The cost to attend is $10.00 per person.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

On a related note, you may find it of interest to read Vladimir Putin’s article on the Rus of July 2021, where he makes his case for the invasion.  You can read it here.

Please join us for a special round table event with Mary Kowalski, owner of Kowalski’s Markets, and Kris Kowalski Christiansen, CEO of Kowalski’s Markets, at 9:30 am on Tuesday, April 26, at their headquarters in Woodbury.

Mary and Kris will discuss with us the concept of a civic business – what it is, how it works and how their employees contribute – and how other businesses can adopt this model.

Here’s a short video of Mary and Kris discussing a civic business.

Coincidentally, we will be including an article by Mary on this very issue in this month’s edition of Pegasus.

The event is free and refreshments will be served.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Kowalski’s is located at 8505 Valley Creek Road in Woodbury.

The event will conclude at 11:00 am.

The Caux Round Table has recently published Klaus Leisinger‘s new book, Integrity in Business and Society, because it is an excellent, one-stop shop for learning about the praxis of ethics.

Norms – good and bad – can be found, created and debated, to be sure, but can they be lived just as easily?

Klaus, an experienced business executive and wise counselor, will join us again by Zoom to discuss these and other practical questions at 9:00 am (CST) on Thursday, January 20 and you are invited to join us.

To register, please click here.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

In addition to being able to access the event through Eventbrite, we will also email you the Zoom link directly the day before the event.

he Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism, with support from the Citizens League, Growth & Justice, Center of the American Experiment and Humphrey School of Public Affairs, invites you to a special Zoom round table on John Brandl’s “uncommon quest for common ground” at 9:00 am on Tuesday, December 28.

Mitch Pearlstein, whose initiative launched the Brandl program in 2008, will join us to recall his personal experience with John.

Our combined efforts reflect the leadership of John Brandl, former state legislator and Dean of the Humphrey Institute (now School).  John, a life-long Democrat, took, as his True North, the “uncommon quest for common ground.”  John was loath to “dis-include” anyone or their personal truths and narratives.  But he quietly and engagingly sought to find the harmonies and goodness which can affirm our common humanity.

This past July, the Pew Research Center surveyed 10,221 American adults.  Recently, it released a report categorizing all Americans as belonging to one or another of nine “tribes” in our politics.  These rivalrous tribes are: 1) faith and flag conservatives; 2) committed conservatives; 3) populist right; 4) ambivalent right; 5) stressed sideliners; 6) outsider left; 7) Democrat mainstays; 8) establishment liberals; 9) and progressive left.

For two decades, other commentators and analysts of our culture and politics have proposed that we Americans, in our culture and politics, have taken on a bimodal distribution of dispositions as follows:

In contrast to the bimodal distribution of political beliefs and agendas, past understandings of the American democracy (such as Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America) were more in line with a normal gaussian distribution of individual orientations as follows:

The urgent question is whether the American experiment in ordered liberty is collapsing, whether there is any common good left, but only various factional interests and ideologies, just as Madison feared might happen.

Knowing that most great nations and powers lasted about 250 years before disintegrating or collapsing, what kind of program might be most effective at this point in our nation’s history to improve our prospects?

To register, please click here.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

The Zoom link will be emailed to registrants the day before the event.

Please join us for a special Zoom round table at 9:00 am (CST) on Thursday, December 9, with our colleague, Klaus Leisinger, on the release of his new book, Integrity in Business and Society.

Today, every self-respecting company has a mission statement assuring that the integrity of its actions is one of its highest values. Nevertheless, the limits of legality are often tested in everyday life, “service by the book” is merely provided in the environmental area, although proactive action would be necessary and inhumane working conditions are made possible, again and again, with legal tricks.

How can this be? Are these one-off lapses on the part of individual managers and thus, the exception to an otherwise upright rule? In this book, Klaus Leisinger shows that integrity is, above all, a personal responsibility: Integre leaders look closely, act to the best of their knowledge and conscience and lead by example. When they make promises, they keep them. When they make mistakes, they stand up for them and correct them. They motivate the people working in the company through fairness and recognition and convey to them that they are part of something they can stand up for with pride. With a minimum of academic theory, the author presents practical insights and tools that help deal with moral dilemmas in everyday business life and develop solutions based on universally valid values.

To register, please click here.

This is the second in a series of Zoom round table events with authors, business leaders and think tank leaders.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

With sustainability, climate change and asking that companies have a “purpose,” which is not simply the making of profits, the narratives of ethics and morality predominate in many discussions of capitalism.

Yet, is it not true that systems are complex and multiple action domains each contribute separately to the outcomes, whatever they may be?

It would be salutary, therefore, to bring into our considerations of capitalist enterprise economics. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) concentrates on economic realities and thinking. They see themselves in the intellectual tradition of Frederic Bastiat, who noticed the power of “opportunity cost” in our thinking about prices and spending.

At 9:00 am (CST) on Thursday, December 2, we invite you to join us in a webinar over Zoom to learn more about AIER from Brad DeVos, its interim President.

Brad DeVos joined AIER in 2017. He earned a B.S. in economics and a B.A. in urban studies from the College of Charleston, as well as an associates degree in computer aided design and drafting. Brad is a member of the historic Mont Pelerin Society, a L.E.E.D. Accredited Professional, a graduate of the Atlas Think Tank Leadership Academy and a member of the Foundation for Economic Education’s Faculty Network.
Through the Bastiat Society program, AIER makes the ideas that enable peaceful trade and human flourishing available to the everyday business person. They are the only international network of business people committed to advancing peaceful trade and human flourishing.

AIER’s Bastiat Society is geared for the business community—a highly leveraged, influential, and engaged audience. Apart from being active in the society, their members and attendees are also involved in various local issues, civic groups, trade associations and fraternal organizations.

The problem is—of all potential audiences for academic ideas—the business community is among the hardest to reach. They have companies to run, employees to take care of and families who deserve their attention.

The typical business person has limited spare time and is reluctant to take on additional commitments. Yet, these people also have the most to lose if capitalism is undermined and economic freedom is replaced by central planning and more government intervention.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

Please register here.

The Zoom link will be emailed to registrants the day before the event.

Steve Young, Global Executive Director of the Caux Round Table, will moderate.

To learn more about AIER, please visit their website at: www.aier.org

Inflation worries are in the news.  The rise in financial asset prices continues willy-nilly.  Bernie Sanders wants more taxes on the rich and transfer of money to the poor and nearly poor.  The gap between those with access to money and the middle class grows wider and wider.  Middle incomes, in real terms, have stagnated since 1973.

The interconnections between finance and capitalism – the money economy and the real economy – are complex and legendary.  Marx, Keynes and Milton Friedman all had strong opinions about how finance does or does not contribute to a good and a responsible capitalism.

The topic is so important that we should not turn aside from seeking to learn more about what finance is doing to our economies in our time.

Please join us for an in-person round table on the financialization of everything at 9:00 am on Tuesday, October 26, at Landmark Center in St. Paul.

We are very pleased to provide a meeting space at Landmark Center to continue its tradition of public service and to share with the community its spacious rooms and architecture of distinction.  In Landmark, one can experience the contributions of design to our self-regard and our feelings of citizenship, as being part of something larger and worthy of note.

Registration and a light breakfast will begin at 8:30 am.

The cost to attend is $10.00 per person.

Space is limited.

For more information or to register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last about 2 hours.

As we Americans recover from the “withdrawal” from Afghanistan and the 2022 election campaign for control of the House and Senate begins a bit earlier than usual, we seem as divided into different subjective epistemological and emotional living spaces as ever.  Each of us has seemingly been anointed as a truth bearer.

Whoever is not for us is against us.  The enemy of my enemy may be my friend.  What does not fit is misinformation or disinformation.  No one can be trusted, except fellow true believers.

So, who needs journalism anyway?  Or rather, what does journalism have to do with our truth?

There are media companies, private businesses selling information and entertainment to paying customers.  But are they in the business of journalism?

As private companies, they presumably come within the compass of business ethics pointing to their true north.  Under the principles of moral capitalism, they have stakeholders to consider.  But in what order of priority?  Owners first or the common good first?  Where does hucksterism end and citizenship begin?

The Caux Round Table has proposed a code of ethical conduct for persons working in journalism, which you can read here.

Please join us for an in-person round table on the ethics of journalism at 9:00 am on Tuesday, September 28, at Landmark Center.

We are very pleased to provide a meeting space at Landmark Center to continue its tradition of public service and to share with the community its spacious rooms and architecture of distinction.  In Landmark, one can experience the contributions of design to our self-regard and our feelings of citizenship, as being part of something larger and worthy of note.

Registration and a light breakfast will begin at 8:30 am.

The cost to attend is $10.00 per person.

Space is limited to 24 attendees.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Due to the Delta variant, the building is requiring face coverings for all who enter.

The event will last about 2 hours.

There is a new book out on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. From a review, it seems the book takes a dystopian view of what Zuckerberg created with his social media platform.

The first reaction to social media was, as I recall, enthusiastic – taking participatory culture and politics to the masses for a flowering of human creativity and fulfillment at personal and community levels.

Then, second thoughts came upon us.

Now, we wallow in anxiety over misinformation, disinformation, wasted hours, personality distortions, cancel culture, ad hominem attacks in place of reasoned arguments, emotions crowding out goodwill, the rise of Trump, the evaporation of the habit of reading and learning how to think well, etc.

The Caux Round Table has proposed a code of ethics for users of social media, which you can view here.

Please join us to discuss this code and social media in general at 9:00 am on Tuesday, August 31, at Landmark Center.

Registration and a light breakfast will begin at 8:30 am.

The cost to attend is $10.00 per person.

Space is limited to 25 attendees.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

As of now, due to the Delta variant, the building is requiring face coverings for all who enter.

The event will last about 2 hours.