Daniel Weinstock, Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy, McGill University
Lotteries and educational equality

Drinks reception: 6-7pm
7-8:30pm

The Society is delighted to announce the PESGB 60th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture Series. To mark our 60th Birthday, we are hosting six public lectures over the course of 2025, in six cities across the UK: Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Swansea. Each lecture will be given by a distinguished philosopher whose work has significant implications for educational theory and practice.

Assignment to advantage-conferring educational institutions in countries like Canada and the UK still largely proceeds against the backdrop of a philosophically discredited view of merit. Demand for places in such institutions, moreover, largely exceeds supply. In this context, the role of lotteries in carrying out such assignment deserves serious attention. Where we can’t really determine who deserves what, and where too many people want the same thing (for their kids), weighted lotteries may end up being the fairest way of carrying out such assignments. In this paper I will make the case for lotteries, and discuss some of the practical and philosophical quandaries they would raise.

Daniel Weinstock holds the Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy at McGill University. He is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Law, the Department of Philosophy, the Max Bell School in Public Policy, and the School of Population and Global Health. His work has spanned widely across a wide range of topics at the intersection of philosophy and public policy.

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