Summers Debates Nobel Laureate

Lawrence H. Summers juggled the roles of public intellectual and University president Saturday afternoon as he debated economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya K. Sen in the closing event of a star-studded Harvard convention on globalization.

The former Treasury Secretary Summers and Sen, an economics professor at Cambridge University, discussed the challenges of economic development, world poverty, free market economies and human rights before an overflow crowd at the Law School’s Ames Courtroom.

But Summers also represented the University—which he said must do more to help tackle issues outside its walls.

In responding to an audience member’s question, Summers explained that Harvard must address these issues of global importance as part of its core academic mission.

“If you look at example after example, it is knowledge and people who have been taught who represent the biggest opportunity for change in the developing world,” Summers said. “We need to think about the subjects we study and those that we teach so that those with the biggest potential impact...get the attention they deserve.”

But, Summers said it would be neither fiscally responsible nor effective for Harvard to use its endowment to directly relieve poverty.

The need for Harvard to focus on projects that will have ramifications beyond academia has been a recurrent theme since Summers took office last summer.

Summers has said that the opportunities to improve humanity provided by the sequencing of the genome and other developments in the life sciences requires Harvard’s increased focus on the field.

The new dean of the school of education said last week that Summers told her the school should “focus its mission more sharply and support rigorous research directed at solving the most pressing problems in education.”

And Summers said Saturday that through research and the training of world leaders, Harvard could make its impact felt on issues such as poverty and global development.

Summers has painted such efforts as institutional in nature, composed of new centers, conferences or programs. But with his participation Saturday, there was the hint of the personal role Summers could play as well.

The Summers-Sen debate came as the final panel of the two day long Colloquium on International Affairs, entitled “Globalization after September 11: Has Anything Changed?”

Earlier panels and speeches included top scholars, government and business leaders, including former Treasury Secretary and newly appointed member of the Harvard Corporation Robert E. Rubin ’60 (see related story, page A-X).

In Saturday’s debate, Summers advocated open markets, education and social changes as the solution to the developing world’s problems.

Summers and Sen’s debate was a cordial one, peppered with assurances from both sides that they were largely in agreement.

Summers opened by pointing out the benefits provided by economic development and questioned the notion that globalization is to blame for world poverty.

“More people in the world are poor because of the lack of globalization than because of it,” Summers said. “A more open, market-centered economy in terms of the distribution of goods and services is important.”

He and Sen, who was Harvard’s Lamont University professor before leaving for England, agreed that open markets were not the entire solution. Improved literacy and health are central to providing the poor with opportunities to participate in these markets, both said.

Summers however stressed that anti-entrepenurial and protectionist policies were also barriers to relieving world poverty.

Summers took the opportunity to criticize the Bush administration’s trade policy, calling increased tariffs on steel and textiles harmful to both America and the developing world’s interests.

Summers and Sen also weighed in on the question of debt relief.

Summers questioned the wisdom of wiping out the foreign debt of developing nations—an approach advocated earlier in the day by Stone Professor of International Trade Jeffrey D. Sachs ’76—saying that it offers the greatest reward to countries that have been most irresponsible.

He also joked that he held his opinion despite the fact that he had met U2 lead singer and debt relief advocate Bono before Sachs did.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.