For Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), advancing the public good means protecting against all forms of tyranny, both political and economic.
“Just as the Constitution creates checks and balances in our government, safeguarding against concentrated political control, anti-monopoly laws create checks against concentrations of economic power.”
Khan, now an Associate Professor at Columbia Law School, delivered her remarks at the 2025 James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Lecture in Economic Inequality at the Harvard Kennedy School. The Stone Lecture, which is designed to bring greater awareness to wealth concentration and the broader problems of inequality, was previously delivered by economists Thomas Piketty (2018), Emmanuel Saez (2019), Joseph Stiglitz (2022), and Daron Acemoglu (2024).
The Stone Lecture is hosted by the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy’s Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality, and Social Policy and the Institute of Politics at HKS. It was held in the John F. Kennedy, Jr. Forum, which was filled to its capacity with students and faculty eager to hear Khan’s speech.
“...it was clear my mandate was to invigorate antitrust and consumer protection, and ensure that it was tackling the problems of the modern economy.”
Khan used key examples from her leadership of the FTC from 2021 to 2025 to provide a framework for how federal agencies can better defend the public good.
In recent decades before Khan’s appointment, the FTC moved slowly, and according to Khan, this was largely by design. Amidst ideological and political changes in the 1980s, the agency became tied to self-imposed bureaucratic processes, and the anti-monopoly thrust that characterized the agency’s early decades was diminished. But Khan’s appointment to FTC chair in 2021 signaled a mandate for major reforms.
“My selection as chair of the FTC was unusual,” Khan said, “but the desire for reform had real bipartisan support, with over 20 Republicans joining the Democratic caucus and voting for my confirmation. Taking the helm at this time, it was clear my mandate was to invigorate antitrust and consumer protection, and ensure that it was tackling the problems of the modern economy.”
Khan used the FTC’s statutory authorities in a broader capacity for antitrust cases to a degree unseen since before the Reagan administration. “We ended up reorienting the FTC’s approach to prioritize tackling misconduct that was resulting in the greatest harm for the greatest number of people,” she said.
Under Khan’s leadership, the FTC reinvigorated consumer protection enforcement, tackled abuse of noncompete clauses, and enacted protections of sensitive data from unchecked surveillance. The FTC also introduced regular open meetings, where Americans across the country could speak with Senate-confirmed appointees about problems they thought the FTC should tackle.
How did Khan’s FTC move so quickly to reorient itself in this way? In her Stone Lecture, Khan laid out the specific reforms she enacted while leading the agency.
“First, we canvassed and identified the full set of legal tools and authorities that Congress had given the agency. Strikingly, dozens of legal provisions had sat unused in plain sight, from authorities that strengthened the agency's hand in stopping breaches of people’s sensitive health data to authorities on tackling unfair methods of competition, the central mandate that had animated the agency’s creation.”
Second, this canvassing allowed the FTC to map out an agenda that prioritized tackling the biggest pain points for Americans.
“Practically, this meant taking on law breaking by some of the largest corporate players in the most significant sectors of our economy, including dominant providers in agriculture, healthcare, and technology.”
Third, by removing the red tape which served as an obstacle to agency staff, the FTC could pursue cases against big industry players more efficiently.
Fourth and finally, in each case, Khan also pushed to avoid half measures and instead sought more substantive changes to protect consumers.
“For example, we moved away from requiring privacy disclosures and instead banned data brokers from furtively selling people’s sensitive health data in the first place.”
These reforms to the FTC allowed for Khan’s FTC to provide clear, transparent rules to businesses regardless of size. No longer could mega-corporations hide behind loopholes and massive legal teams, which small businesses couldn’t afford. The framework also allowed the FTC to pursue antitrust litigation more efficiently and protect consumers.
Khan also reflected on the future role of the government in combatting economic inequality at a time when the functions of government itself are rapidly changing.
“Rebuilding our government institutions, including to take on the crisis of inequality, will require a clear-eyed assessment of why the American public had overwhelmingly lost faith that government was working for them.”
For Khan, this means producing “on-the-ground results” for the American People. She provided an example from one of the biggest ways economic inequality affects Americans today: access to health care.
“I think when people are kind of thinking about their day-to-day lives, oftentimes it really is things like health care markets that are kind of most acutely not delivering for them… when we're talking about how this is affecting mortality rates, I think we’re just opening a whole other frontier of why taking on this market power is really incredibly important.”
According to Khan, taking on issues of inequality like health care access may require a new approach to agency governance that goes beyond just the FTC.
“As we look beyond the DOGE wreckage, we should figure out what a reformed approach to governing should look like, rather than assume we should go back to the way things have been.”
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Watch the full 2025 Stone Lecture.
