Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Times Higher Ed’s Jack Grove about the importance of maintaining economic and political discussions in higher ed. “It is fine for academics to speak on such issues as long as you can keep that separate from your classrooms and for what constitutes high-quality research,” says Acemoglu. “There are special times when academics should speak out.”
Prof. Abhijit Banerjee speaks with Financial Times reporter John Reed about global politics and the increased need for trust in economists. On his book, Poor Economics, Banerjee says, “I think we have always thought that economic ideas were too important to be left out of the public discourse. There is a sense in which we think economics does a disservice to ourselves and the world by wrapping ourselves in this omniscient jargon.”
Gloria L. Fox, the longest-serving Black woman representative in the Massachusetts Legislature who completed the MIT Community Fellows program, has died at the age of 82, reports Tiana Woodard for The Boston Globe. Fox is remembered as a “superwoman, a legend, and a lifelong advocate of Boston’s black communities,” writes Woodard. “Fox held the seat, representing parts of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mission Hill, and the Fenway for more than 30 years… she championed legislation that addressed health disparities, foster care, criminal justice, and disinvestment, no matter what opposition she faced.”
Ben Armstrong, executive director of the Industrial Performance Center, speaks with Financial Times reporter Michael Acton about the future of foreign semiconductor company investments in the United States. Armstrong notes that it could take some time to see returns from the CHIPS and Science Act. “You could say the chip boom hasn’t even started yet,” says Armstrong. “The real benefits in growth that could come from it are not likely to pay off until a few years from now.”
In an interview with Boston Public Radio, Prof. Jon Gruber explains the expected impact of incoming tariff proposals, reports Hannah Loss for GBH. “There is a growing consensus that economic nationalism is something worth taking seriously, in particular for sectors where we are very vulnerable to supply chains and where we have concerns that other countries might not trade fairly,” says Gruber.
Prof. Charles Stewart III speaks with USA Today reporter Chris Brennan about misinformation surrounding the integrity of the election process in the U.S. "What we're seeing now are groups that are arising specifically to keep the controversy going and to make money on it and to try to expand the view," says Stewart.
Prof. Ariel White speaks with NPR reporter Elena Moore about how voting laws for formerly incarcerated individuals vary from state to state. “The right to vote is going to vary quite a bit across different states in the U.S.,” says White. “It can be really challenging for people to get accurate information about what the law is and how it might be applied to them.”
Graduate student Aruna Sankaranarayanan speaks with Mashable reporter Cecily Mauran the impact of political deepfakes and the importance of AI literacy, noting that the fabrication of important figures who aren’t as well known is one of her biggest concerns. “Fabrication coming from them, distorting certain facts, when you don’t know what they look like or sound like most of the time, that’s really hard to disprove,” says Sankaranarayanan.
A new commentary by Prof. Jonathan Gruber and his colleagues outlines a proposal for a new long-term care at home plan, aimed at enabling seniors to stay in their homes, reports Jonathan Cohn for HuffPost. “Relative to other countries, we’re very nursing home focused, and we’re not really doing enough to keep people at home,” says Gruber. “I also just think it’s a valuable benefit to people that makes their lives better.”
Researchers from MIT and Oxford University has found “social media platforms’ suspensions of accounts may not be rooted in political biases, but rather certain political groups’ tendency to share misinformation,” reports Miranda Nazzaro for The Hill. “Thus, even under politically neutral anti-misinformation polices, political asymmetries in enforcement should be expected,” researchers wrote. “Political imbalance in enforcement need not imply bias on the part of social media companies implementing anti-misinformation polices.”
Writing for Scientific American, MIT Prof. David Rand and University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral fellow Jennifer Allen highlight new challenges in the fight against misinformation. “Combating misbelief is much more complicated—and politically and ethically fraught—than reducing the spread of explicitly false content,” they write. “But this challenge must be bested if we want to solve the ‘misinformation’ problem.”
Writing for The New York Times, Prof. Daron Acemoglu and University of Chicago Prof. James A. Robinson propose solutions to address growing distrust in democracy. “We need a new democratic social contract that people can believe in,” they write. “Democracy does not need to follow a majoritarian opinion on every topic, but it cannot sideline the views of the majority of the population, even on divisive subjects such as immigration.”
Writing for The Financial Times, Prof. Esther Duflo makes the case that the following the legislative elections in France, politicians must come up with a new vision for the country that “combines production, redistribution and protection of the environment; that promotes respect and dignity of all people; that has the courage to lead the way on the big projects that France, Europe and the world need. Chief among them: fiscal reform, a just green transition, and a way to distribute the gains of growth in a more equitable way to all.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with New York Times reporter Jim Tankersley about the economic implications of President Biden’s decision to codify and escalate tariffs on Chinese goods. Autor’s “latest research warns of the economic perils of poorly designed trade policy, but it also explains why presidents might keep pursuing it,” explains Tankersley.
Prof. Adam Berinsky speaks with Boston Globe reporter Aidan Ryan about misinformation in the age of generative AI. “I don’t think that AI is necessarily going to make misinformation better, in the sense of making it more persuasive,” says Berinsky.“But it’s easier to create misinformation.”