A new lecture series hosted by Yale President Maurie McInnis will commence on Wednesday, Feb. 19 with a talk by Raj Chetty, a renowned Harvard economist who uses “big data” to study the science of economic opportunity.
Chetty’s talk, titled “Creating Equality of Opportunity: New Insights from Big Data,” will take place from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Zhang Auditorium in Evans Hall, 165 Whitney Ave. The lecture is free and open to the public but registration is required.
Each semester, the presidential lecture series will bring a leading expert to campus to share ideas and inspire critical thought on some of today’s most complex topics, particularly as they relate to higher education. McInnis has identified declining trust in higher education and the need to better communicate its positive impact on the nation and the world to the public as common themes that emerged in the 100-plus listening sessions she conducted with faculty, students and staff during her first semester as Yale’s president.
“I’ve designed the Presidential Lecture Series to spark intellectual exchange on issues of importance to the nation and higher education,” McInnis said. “The series is an extension of Yale’s commitment to sharing knowledge that improves the world and will feature scholarly insight from a wide range of disciplines. I am excited to invite members of the Yale community to engage deeply in these issues and honored to welcome Professor Chetty as the inaugural speaker.”
Chetty is the William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics at Harvard, and a founding director of Opportunity Insights, a non-partisan research team that conducts deep analyses of data to determine how to improve social mobility and works with local stakeholders to drive informed policy change.
During a commencement speech at Wesleyan University last year, Chetty identified access to a quality education as a critical factor in closing economic disparities. When a child moves to a neighborhood with better schools or gets a chance to attend a high-quality college,” he noted, “we see their lives transformed relative to other comparable kids who didn’t get the same chances.”
Chetty received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2003. Among the many awards he has received are a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, the John Bates Clark Medal, presented to an economist under 40 whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field, and Harvard’s George Ledlie Prize, for research that makes a valuable contribution to science or otherwise benefits humanity.
He is also director of the Public Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that facilitates cutting-edge research on and analysis of major economic issues.
McInnis welcomes suggestions from the Yale community on future speakers in the series. Recommendations may be submitted through the email portal on the Office of the president’s web page.
