Please register to join us on April 30, 2024 at 12:00pm for an online lecture by Saule Omarova, Beth and Marc Goldberg Professor of Law, Cornell University.
If you’re on campus, please join in-person for lunch at Social Science Matrix.
Register for Zoom
Register for In-Person with Lunch
(Please note the speaker will be presenting remotely.)
Abstract. Omarova will lay out an institutional design scheme for the proposed National Investment Authority (NIA), a federal entity to be charged with the financing and implementation of a long-term public investment strategy for the United States. And she will explain how this NIA, and other institutional proposals that she has developed, could transform industrial policy in general, and climate policy in particular, in the United States.
This event is sponsored by the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI), the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2, and the Climate and Community Project.
About the Speaker
Saule Omarova specializes in regulation of financial institutions, banking law, international finance, and corporate finance. Before joining Cornell Law School in 2014, she was the George R. Ward Associate Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Prior to joining academia, Professor Omarova practiced law in the Financial Institutions Group of Davis, Polk, & Wardwell, a premier New York law firm, where she specialized in a wide variety of corporate transactions and advisory work in the area of financial regulation. In 2006-2007, she served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a Special Advisor for Regulatory Policy to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance.
Location: The speaker will be presenting remotely via Zoom. This event will be presented online via Zoom, with an in-person audience at Social Science Matrix, 820 Social Sciences Building, UC Berkeley. If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Chuck Kapelke at ckapelke@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.
About The BESI Climate Seminar
The Climate Seminar at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) brings leading scholars of the political economy of climate change to UC Berkeley for hybrid talks and conversations. The Seminar is co-sponsored by the Socio-Spatial Climate Collaborative, or (SC)2, and organized by Daniel Aldana Cohen. In Spring 2024, we will have three events, all from 12:00-1:30pm PT. Each event will be moderated by Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology and the Director of (SC)2, UC Berkeley.
Core text: Saule Omarova. 2022. “The National Investment Authority: An Institutional Blueprint.” Berggruen Institute. Pp 112.
Recommended reading: Saule Omarova. 2024. “Finance as a Tool of Industrial Policy: A Taxonomy of Institutional Options.” In Industrial Policy 2025: Bringing the State Back In (Again). Roosevelt Institute. Pp. 98. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/4013_RI_IndustrialPolicyReport_2025.pdf
Learn more about the Seminar Series.