Americans have more of an impact than they realize when it comes to the economic situation of the United States, and financial experts are calling for individuals to be held more accountable.

The 22nd annual Abraham J. Briloff Lecture Series is set to be held on Wednesday, Nov. 12, in the Chamber Hall of the Binghamton University Anderson Center. The series, which is named for a presidential professor of accounting and ethics at Binghamton University, will focus on accountability and society.

“A major theme is ethics,” said Dean of the School of Management Upinder Dhillon. “Ethical issues we face, and part of what we’re seeing in the current market can be attributed to that.”

Judge Stanley Sporkin will speak about the current financial markets and discuss the causes, remedies and potential consequences of markets continuing at the current rate.

Over the course of his career, Sporkin, a retired judge, served 20 years with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which aims to preserve investors and markets, according to its Web site. He also worked five years as General Counsel to the Central Intelligence Agency, and was ultimately appointed by former President Ronald Reagan as a federal district court judge for the District of Columbia. Currently, Sporkin’s practice is the Gavin Consulting Group.

“All students are being trained to be leaders,” Dhillon said. “But being a leader means having obligations and understanding the consequences of one’s duties. If no one is accountable, we’ll face chaos.”

The Abraham J. Briloff Lecture Series began in 1985 at BU. Since then it has hosted a variety of speakers from academia, arts and politics, including Harry Belafonte, a musician and social activist, in 2004. Abraham Briloff himself spoke at the event in 2005.

According to Briloff, the current financial crisis is “extremely challenging.”

Briloff, an Emanuel Saxe Distinguished Professor of Accountancy Emeritus at Bernard Baruch College of the City University of New York, is now retired. According to Dhillon, Briloff is referred to by some as the “conscience of accounting” because of his level of expertise.

“It will require a great deal of heavy lifting to unravel and comprehend the current financial situation and then hope that we might clarify things for the future,” Briloff said.

In order to improve upon our current status, Briloff said that there must be a “greater degree of integrity on the part of all professions, whether they are accountants, peoples in the areas of finance, law, journalism, government, politics, in commitment to the Constitution of the United States.”

“The corporation is presumed to be the locomotive that carries the economy forward,” he said. “If the corporation is not understood in terms of its responsibility to society and those who are responsible for the management don’t understand their commitment to the totality of society, then the economic system breaks down.”

Briloff received an honorary Doctor of Human Letters from BU in 1984.

All BU students are welcome to attend the free event. For more information, call (607) 777-2314.