Maxwell School News and Commentary

"A lot of communities now are very committed to dealing with issues of racism, but the fact is their own history is problematic," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science. "They’re beginning to confront their own racism, and their own complicity in the racism of the past."

"My mom told the seven of us to go outside and play," University Professor Madonna Harrington Meyer recalled. "Today’s mom says, ‘Get in the van and I’ll drive you from Spanish camp to violin lessons.’ The idea is to cultivate your child, give them every possible advantage, and it clearly spills over to the intensification of grandparenting." Harrington Meyer was interviewed for the New York Times article "When Grandparents Help Hold It All Together." 

"This is really going to hurt American businesses who use Mexico to reduce their costs and stay competitive," Mary Lovely, professor of economics, told Bloomberg after President Trump announced that all products from Mexico will be hit with 25 percent tariffs.

The "Modi government should get a lot of credit for its Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code as well as the cleansing of the banking system, an important component being getting rid of non-performing assets," says Devashish Mitra, professor of economics and Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs.

"It looks like there was a level of specificity that China wasn’t willing to accept and a level of ambiguity that the Trump administration wasn’t willing to accept," Mary Lovely, professor emerita of economics, told the New York Times.

Stuart Rosenthal, professor and chair of economics, argues that it’s often possible to predict a neighborhood’s income level 20 years into the future by the age of its housing stock today. 

Len Burman, Paul Volcker Chair in Behavioral Economics, suggests eliminating a provision of current law in which assets that increase in value can go essentially untaxed across generations as a way to reduce inequality.

"This is a real institutional threat to the separation of powers to use emergency powers to enable the president to bypass Congress to build a wall on his own initiative that our elected representatives have chosen not to fund," says William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs.