Should all failing social programs be cut? Or does reassessing and improving them make more sense? Delivering the 2017 Sheffrin Lecture in Public Policy, Ron Haskins offered a definitive answer. 

 

Doug Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, delivered the 2012 Sheffrin Lecture, "The Paradoxical Origins of America's War on Immigrants."

 

For the 2015 Sheffrin Lecture, Princeton University economist Atif Mian addressed the question, "What Happened to Global Growth?"

 

Jonathan Gruber, Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered the inaugural Sheffrin Lecture, “Health Reform in the U.S.: How We Got Here and Where We Are Going.”

Gruber was a key architect of Massachusetts’ health reform. During 2009–10 he served as a technical consultant to the Obama Administration and worked to help craft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In 2011 he was named “One of the Top 25 Most Innovative and Practical Thinkers of Our Time” by Slate Magazine.

Peter Galison, the Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University, delivered the 2011 Sheffrin Lecture, "Secrecy: Espionage Act to Wikileaks."

 

Gary C. Jacobson, a distinguished professor of political science at UC San Diego, delivered the 2013 Sheffrin Lecture "Partisan Polarization in American Politics."

In his presentation, Jacobson described how ideological differences between the American national parties have been widening for several decades, and that partisan divisions are now greater than at any time since the Civil War.

Sendhil Mullainathan, an economist at Harvard University, delivered the 2014 Sheffrin Lecture "Scarcity: A Talk for People Too Busy to Attend Talks.”

 

Mullainathan's recent book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, draws on cutting-edge research from behavioral science and economics to show that scarcity creates a similar psychology for everyone struggling to manage with less than they need.