A section of Said and Done
Full Summer 2016 edition
 

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HISTORY
Making amends, Georgetown president meets with descendants of slaves | Craig Wilder
In an article on the way universities have begun to respond to their historical ties to slavery, The New York Times quotes MIT historian Craig Wilder, who remarks, “Georgetown has made a decision to recognize the humanity of the problem they’re dealing with, to treat it as more than a public relations problem.”
Story


CENTER FOR CIVIC MEDIA | CMS + MEDIA LAB
The Perils of Using Tech to Solve Other People's Problems | Ethan Zuckerman
"It’s rare that technology provides a robust solution to a social problem by itself. Successful technological approaches to solving social problems usually require changes in laws and norms, as well as market incentives to make change at scale." 
Commentary at The Atlantic
 

ECONOMICS AND TECHNOLOGY
Dear Silicon Valley, Forget flying cars, Give us economic growth
MIT economist David Author is quoted in this article: "'The reality is that new digital technologies, even such impressive ones as artificial intelligence, won’t by themselves soon revive the economy, never mind solve problems like climate change'...We need to solve key 'bottlenecks' in such sectors as energy, education, and health care to radically improve productivity, says Autor.”
Article at Technology Review
 

ECONOMICS
Taxing wealth leads declared wealth to disappear | Jonathan Gruber
A new study co-authored by Jonathan Gruber, Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, finds evidence from Switzerland that raising taxes on wealth leads to significant reductions in the declared wealth of effected taxpayers.
Story at Wall Street Journal
 

COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES + MEDIA LAB
Public Citizen Monitoring | Ethan Zuckerman
Ethan Zuckerman, the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, discusses the importance of public monitoring to hold institutions — such as the police — accountable for wrongdoing, a practice that benefits enormously from new technologies.
Story at The Atlantic

SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND INEQUALITY INITIATIVE
Obama's next project should be fatherhood | David Autor
USA Today highlights research by David Autor that reveals a growing education gap for boys without fathers in the home: “growing gender educational inequality in lower-income communities appears to be tied to the rise of fatherlessness.”
Story
 

ECONOMICS
Billions wasted on a war on cocaine that didn’t work | Pascual Restrepo
A new study co-authored by MIT PhD candidate in economics Pascual Restrepo indicates that “Plan Colombia, a decade-long U.S.-backed initiative to fight the drug trade and organized crime in Colombia” resulted in high costs for taxpayers but little net reduction in the trade.
Story
 

ECONOMICS AND U.S. JOB LOSSES
The truth about trade and American jobs
The U.S began sending manufacturing jobs to China before it joined the World Trade Organization in late 2001. MIT economist David Autor estimates that the U.S. has lost around 1 million manufacturing positions and 2 million jobs total to China between 1999 and 2011. This is about one-fifth of the manufacturing jobs lost during that time.
Story at CNN
 

ECONOMICS AND MANUFACTURING
What the 2016 U.S. Election Is Really About
Is globalization the underlying issue being debated through the U.S. Presidential election? NYU’s Edward Golberg cites research by MIT economist David Autor indicating that "'the growth in imports from China [contributed] to as much as one-quarter of the employment drop-off from 1991 to 2007.' But the U.S. job slide began well before China's rise as a manufacturing power. And manufacturing employment is falling almost everywhere, including in China. The phenomenon is driven by technology.”
Story at the Huffington Post
 

ECONOMICS AND PROTECTIONISM
Why is the U.S. turning to protectionism? | David Autor
“Unlike medical services or retail, manufacturing is very geographically concentrated," MIT economist David Autor tells the BBC, "so that kind of magnifies the pain. It's something that people experience directly if they are… working in those industries, but also indirectly if they live in those communities.”
Story
 

ECONOMICS
Trade with China is tearing our politics apart | David Autor
How has trade contributed to the divisive atmosphere of U.S. politics? To understand the relationship, The Washington Post looks at recent research on international trade co-authored by by MIT economist David Autor.
Story at The Washington Post

 

ECONOMICS AND VOTER ANGER
In wake of Brexit, addressing voter anger with more than lip service
“It's worth listening to MIT economist David Autor, who has documented the concentration of economic harm done to communities in the U.S. most vulnerable to competition from China and the political consequences of that: 'trade boosterism has actually in some ways been the enemy of trade policy and a mature conversation that recognizes that these costs are real, that we should recognize the benefits of trade and recognize that certain individuals are going to be worst off, and then develop policy that helps mitigate those adverse impacts. That's much more effective, more palatable in the long run than simply saying, It's good for you, everyone benefits. That's not true.’”
Article at the Wall Street Journal

 

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY
Dartmouth contest shows computers aren’t such good poets | Sherry Turkle
Sherry Turkle, Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, offers her view on the failure of advance computing to produce adequate poetry: “Poetry needs to come from the experience of human meaning. That is what gives it life.”
Story at The Washington Post

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY
Tech expert says we settle for connection but crave conversation | Sherry Turkle
CBC News explores MIT anthropologist Sherry Turkle’s analysis that constant engagment with digital communication tools is making people less attuned to the thoughts and emotions of others.
Story
 

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIETY
Talking To Our Computers Is Changing Who We Are | Sherry Turkle
“[Technology] makes us forget what we know about life. When it comes to certain things, we really need people. What has been most striking is how difficult it is for us to give each other full attention when we have our devices and how much we’re losing out.”
Story at The Huffington Post
 

CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Obama’s Visit To Hiroshima Was about Memory | Richard Samuels
President Obama recently became the first seated President to visit the Japanese city of Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped the world’s first atomic bomb. Richard Samuels, Director of the MIT-SHASS Center for International Studies, was interviewed by NPR’s “Here & Now” about the significance of the visit for the U.S. and Japan.
Story at WBUR
 

POLITICAL SCIENCE
Does Democratic Weakness Create Republican Opportunity? | Charles Stewart
Does the extended Democratic Presidential Primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders strengthen GOP prospects? The New York Times talks to MIT political scientist Charles Stewart about demographic and partisan shifts among the electorate.
Story at The New York Times

 

ECONOMICS
Brazil taps MIT graduate to head central bank | Ilan Goldfajn
The government of Brazil’s acting president has nominated Ilan Goldfajn, who earned his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1995, to head the nation’s central bank. Goldfajn has drawn praise from Wall Street investors and acted as Deputy Governor for Economic Policy at the Central Bank of Brazil from 2000 to 2003.
Story at Reuters
 

ECONOMICS
How the expert class got Trumped and Berned | David Autor
In this CNBC article, MIT economist David Autor reflects on the difficulty of effectively communicating complex economic analyses to the general public: "We feel we can train our students, but our students aren't the public and we don't know how to school the public.”
Story at CNBS
 

COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES
Are we ready for a gay Disney princess? | Edward Schiappa
“There is no doubt that kids seeing positively portrayed gay characters could have a significant effect that would contribute to such children’s learning about the world and who is in it,” says MIT-SHASS faculty Edward Schiappa.
Story at The Washington Post
 

CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Obama’s Visit Raises Ghosts of Hiroshima | Richard Samuels
The dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima is an event understood differently in Japan than it is the United States, David Sanger writes in the New York Times. Today, MIT political scientist Richard Samuels remarks, many Japanese people "deny Japan’s destructive war in Asia” that led to the bombing.
Story

 

A section of Said and Done
Full Summer 2016 edition