Economics Professor Shares ‘Shrewd Samaritan’
Bruce Wydick, the new director of Westmont in San Francisco, reads from his latest book, “Shrewd Samaritan: Faith, Economics, and the Long Road to Loving our Global Neighbors,” on Wednesday, Sept. 18, at 7 p.m. in Westmont’s Global Leadership Center. The free, public event is sponsored by Westmont in San Francisco and the Westmont Department of Economics and Business.
“This book is about learning to live the message of the Good Samaritan in the context of the globalized world of the 21st century,” Wydick says. “This means learning to love our global neighbor wisely by harnessing the resources at our disposal—our time, talents, opportunities, and money—on behalf of those who are victims of injustice, disease, violence and poverty.”
Wydick, a highly esteemed writer and scholar, has taught economics for 23 years at the University of San Francisco and is a distinguished research affiliate at the University of Notre Dame and the Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley.
“‘Shrewd Samaritan’ will help develop a framework to better love and care for our neighbors in an age of globalization, when the number of people in our neighborhoods, or at least those in our potential sphere of influence, has expanded dramatically,” he says.
Wydick brings a wealth of global and local expertise as he seeks to transform the 47-year-old Westmont in San Francisco, an internship-based, semester-long program in which students hone professional skills transferable to every career and vocation. He earned a doctorate at UC Berkeley after completing undergraduate and master’s degrees at UC Davis.
He has published academic articles in leading economic journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Development Economics and was the lead investigator of the worldwide impact study of Compassion International’s child sponsorship program. His book “Games in Economic Development” was published by Cambridge University Press. He has also written for USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News, as well as Christianity Today.