Lant Pritchett talks to us about education, migration and development. Lant Pritchett is a Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Yes, where are the women? I was hoping to share these with my middle school daughter who is interested in a career in science. Female role models are needed.
Believe it or not, busy and accomplished academics are not very eager to donate their time to an online video series involving a show that does not exist, targeted to an audience that is not yet there. This was the scheduling challenge we faced on season 1.
The people that participated in this first season are all personal friends of mine that were willing to take the risk, and donate their time for this experiment. In fact, I had personal acquaintances that decided not to participate simply because, ex-ante, they could not see this as a useful use of their time.
So, the lineup of season 1 reflects the instantiation of a project performed in an uncertain environment, with important time constraints, and with basically zero budget.
I hope your comments do not imply a deliberate attempt from our end to portray a picture of science in which women are not active participants. Our attempt was simply to share a small sample of academic life that could help illustrate the potential of the format and provide a platform to build it further.
I apologize for not having female guests in Season 1. Our hope is to leverage the little attention that we have gotten so far to help a wider variety of guests. Hopefully, this will allow us to include a more diverse group of people, when it comes to gender, ethnicity and field of study.
So far, we have confirmed professors Marta Gonzalez and Rosalind Picard from MIT for season 2.
I hope you enjoy what we have been able to offer so far and that the messages of our guests help inspire thoughts and ideas.
Cesar, Thanks for the reply and the explanation of the context of the interviews. This is a terrific, invaluable project. I look forward to season 2 and beyond! Terry
While ensuring a gender-balanced representation for this project may not have been a priority (or a responsibility) in light of the many challenges you faced just getting it off the ground, it remains a curiosity to me that you have no female “personal friends” who were willing to participate. Intended or not, the wall of male images is indeed jarring, and has a distinctive “boys club” scent to it. That said, the project is laudable and interesting, and I look forward to a fuller participation of thoughtful and inspirational women.
The first thing that struck me was the lack of female scientists represented in this interview series. But then again, perhaps this is a representative sample of the scientists present at these major institutions, which highlights a deeper issue in the academic community.
I believe at least at M.I.T. the undergraduate student body is darn near 50-50 at this point. As to the faculty, I can’t say. However, the pipeline started to fill a fairly short time ago, since the percentage of female undergraduates has increased sharply in the last couple of decades.
I suspect we are seeing some combination of that and perhaps Cesar Hidalgo’s lack of ease around professional women, a not unusual situation at M.I.T.
Thank you for creating this immensely exciting project. It is interesting to hear about the subject matter of each expert, but in truth all of them are scholars who publish and we could glean much of this information through their publications. I would appreciate hearing more about their personal lives which is probably unavailable elsewhere – in particular, how their involvement in science informs their relationship to the world, and vice versa (including the minefield of spiritual and religious beliefs). You may be uniquely positioned to explore such a discussion.
It was astonishing to see this economist blithely proposing open borders and the free flow of “labor”, i.e. human population, as a rationale means to reduce poverty. The prospect of several billion poor emigrating to the U.S. – the number out there who would gladly entertain such a move – is the proposition of a madman.
We have had unprecedented immigration over the past four decades; what we got was growing income disparity and the extinction of the middle class. Pritchett ought spend ought to spend time with some of the millions of Americans who are unemployed and explain to them how mass immigration will improve their lives and that of their children. He might also spend some time with scientists who ponder questions of sustainability and energy use; or are his immigrants of the magical kind bringing with them the water, the energy and other resources necessary to live here?
Interesting discussions. Reactions in somewhat chronological order:
The schooling versus education framing of the discussion is useful. However, Pritchett does not give us concrete methods to increase education, which I understood him to define as preparation for adult functions including fulfilling productive roles in the economy. I think that from his later remarks we could suggest that educational reforms that lead to increased productivity as measured by wages earned by students are an ideal assessment. Still we don’t hear anything about quality of life or other less quantifiable measures. If I can demonstrate aptitude on a cognitive skills test that doesn’t translate into some measurable impact on wages or quality of life, then what is the purpose?
The idea that individual desires seldom manifest at the organizational level is a very honest and valuable insight indeed.
Pritchett argues simultaneously for and against labor migration but he does not seem to acknowledge that by observing the connection between productivity, migration, and wages, he is affirming that free labor migration will serve to send rich-country wages into free fall until the effects of mass migration balance out. I think that a strategy of letting the pressure out slowly using our immigration system is much better (for me at least), even despite the perpetuation of a wealth divide.
The notion of charter cities appears to rest on a similar fallacy as rebuilding Afghanistan in 15 months or any example of a failure for engineered norms to take hold. Starting fresh does not mean that the roots of normative traction will develop, so I don’t see how charter cities would cut down the development process from decades to years.
As at least one other comment mentions, all of this discussion does not touch upon what is feasible from an ecological sense in terms of supporting 7 billion richer lifestyles.
Of course the micro-credit calculations have far more overhead than travel. There is much to be said about acclimation to a new place and one’s ability to be maximally productive within an entirely new set of norms.
I think this series sounds exciting and I look forward to listening to some of the lectures after reading about it in the New York Times. But I too am appalled by seeing one long string of men – with no women! Aren’t there any women to interview? I looked around for a place to communicate this concern, coming here, and seeing a series of similar comments from people likewise dismayed by such a glaring lack of consciousness among so much consciousness … truly, I too am offended.
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I liked how he compared micro-loaning to emigration as economic solutions.
Are there no female scientists in Boston worth interviewing? It’s odd to me that every person interviewed here is male.
Where are the women scientists???
Yes, where are the women? I was hoping to share these with my middle school daughter who is interested in a career in science. Female role models are needed.
Ditto on the female scientists.
Dear James, Sarah, Terry and Linda,
Thanks for your comments.
Believe it or not, busy and accomplished academics are not very eager to donate their time to an online video series involving a show that does not exist, targeted to an audience that is not yet there. This was the scheduling challenge we faced on season 1.
The people that participated in this first season are all personal friends of mine that were willing to take the risk, and donate their time for this experiment. In fact, I had personal acquaintances that decided not to participate simply because, ex-ante, they could not see this as a useful use of their time.
So, the lineup of season 1 reflects the instantiation of a project performed in an uncertain environment, with important time constraints, and with basically zero budget.
I hope your comments do not imply a deliberate attempt from our end to portray a picture of science in which women are not active participants. Our attempt was simply to share a small sample of academic life that could help illustrate the potential of the format and provide a platform to build it further.
I apologize for not having female guests in Season 1. Our hope is to leverage the little attention that we have gotten so far to help a wider variety of guests. Hopefully, this will allow us to include a more diverse group of people, when it comes to gender, ethnicity and field of study.
So far, we have confirmed professors Marta Gonzalez and Rosalind Picard from MIT for season 2.
I hope you enjoy what we have been able to offer so far and that the messages of our guests help inspire thoughts and ideas.
All the best
C
Cesar, Thanks for the reply and the explanation of the context of the interviews. This is a terrific, invaluable project. I look forward to season 2 and beyond! Terry
While ensuring a gender-balanced representation for this project may not have been a priority (or a responsibility) in light of the many challenges you faced just getting it off the ground, it remains a curiosity to me that you have no female “personal friends” who were willing to participate. Intended or not, the wall of male images is indeed jarring, and has a distinctive “boys club” scent to it. That said, the project is laudable and interesting, and I look forward to a fuller participation of thoughtful and inspirational women.
The first thing that struck me was the lack of female scientists represented in this interview series. But then again, perhaps this is a representative sample of the scientists present at these major institutions, which highlights a deeper issue in the academic community.
I believe at least at M.I.T. the undergraduate student body is darn near 50-50 at this point. As to the faculty, I can’t say. However, the pipeline started to fill a fairly short time ago, since the percentage of female undergraduates has increased sharply in the last couple of decades.
I suspect we are seeing some combination of that and perhaps Cesar Hidalgo’s lack of ease around professional women, a not unusual situation at M.I.T.
Thank you for creating this immensely exciting project. It is interesting to hear about the subject matter of each expert, but in truth all of them are scholars who publish and we could glean much of this information through their publications. I would appreciate hearing more about their personal lives which is probably unavailable elsewhere – in particular, how their involvement in science informs their relationship to the world, and vice versa (including the minefield of spiritual and religious beliefs). You may be uniquely positioned to explore such a discussion.
It was astonishing to see this economist blithely proposing open borders and the free flow of “labor”, i.e. human population, as a rationale means to reduce poverty. The prospect of several billion poor emigrating to the U.S. – the number out there who would gladly entertain such a move – is the proposition of a madman.
We have had unprecedented immigration over the past four decades; what we got was growing income disparity and the extinction of the middle class. Pritchett ought spend ought to spend time with some of the millions of Americans who are unemployed and explain to them how mass immigration will improve their lives and that of their children. He might also spend some time with scientists who ponder questions of sustainability and energy use; or are his immigrants of the magical kind bringing with them the water, the energy and other resources necessary to live here?
Excelente interviews Cesar!
I have enjoyed all the first season. I will be waiting for the season 2.
Greetings from Venezuela.
Glad that you mentioned Nepal at 19:15.
Greetings from Nepal.
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you guys need to clam down. none of it was intentional. it is a fact that more men dominate the sciences and he had a small pool to begin with.
Interesting discussions. Reactions in somewhat chronological order:
The schooling versus education framing of the discussion is useful. However, Pritchett does not give us concrete methods to increase education, which I understood him to define as preparation for adult functions including fulfilling productive roles in the economy. I think that from his later remarks we could suggest that educational reforms that lead to increased productivity as measured by wages earned by students are an ideal assessment. Still we don’t hear anything about quality of life or other less quantifiable measures. If I can demonstrate aptitude on a cognitive skills test that doesn’t translate into some measurable impact on wages or quality of life, then what is the purpose?
The idea that individual desires seldom manifest at the organizational level is a very honest and valuable insight indeed.
Pritchett argues simultaneously for and against labor migration but he does not seem to acknowledge that by observing the connection between productivity, migration, and wages, he is affirming that free labor migration will serve to send rich-country wages into free fall until the effects of mass migration balance out. I think that a strategy of letting the pressure out slowly using our immigration system is much better (for me at least), even despite the perpetuation of a wealth divide.
The notion of charter cities appears to rest on a similar fallacy as rebuilding Afghanistan in 15 months or any example of a failure for engineered norms to take hold. Starting fresh does not mean that the roots of normative traction will develop, so I don’t see how charter cities would cut down the development process from decades to years.
As at least one other comment mentions, all of this discussion does not touch upon what is feasible from an ecological sense in terms of supporting 7 billion richer lifestyles.
Of course the micro-credit calculations have far more overhead than travel. There is much to be said about acclimation to a new place and one’s ability to be maximally productive within an entirely new set of norms.
I think this series sounds exciting and I look forward to listening to some of the lectures after reading about it in the New York Times. But I too am appalled by seeing one long string of men – with no women! Aren’t there any women to interview? I looked around for a place to communicate this concern, coming here, and seeing a series of similar comments from people likewise dismayed by such a glaring lack of consciousness among so much consciousness … truly, I too am offended.