Q: What are the primary strengths of the Watson School, and what sets it apart from other policy schools?

What’s unique about the school flows from the interdisciplinary, cross-cutting environment here at Brown. We have tenure-track faculty jointly appointed with other departments and schools across campus, so we’re really bringing together the best scholars, whether in political science or public health or economics or computer science or history. And we plan to increase the number of jointly appointed faculty members in the future. We also have many centers that are helping to create those types of environments and practitioners who provide real-world insights into the most pressing issues the world is facing today.

I think back to when I worked at the White House. We didn’t have economics meetings or political science meetings. We simply looked at a problem that we were trying to solve and drew on whatever we needed to solve it. Ultimately, what we are trying to do with our education is give students that window into the special environment where you can take all these different perspectives, disciplines and approaches and integrate it together to understand what is going on in the world.

Q: How do you expect your background as an economics researcher and educator to influence your vision, decision-making and leadership?

I’m informed by my experiences in and outside of the classroom and am inspired to use them to help advance the work of our faculty and students. I’m an economist who is using big data to understand upward mobility and equality of opportunity, and my scholarship embodies a lot of what we’re trying to do with the school as a whole. 

For example, in research with Opportunity Insights, we’re trying to move the ball forward around specific policy issues and pull in perspectives from many different disciplines and methods to inform our work. I personally have benefited tremendously from engaging with academics from a broad range of disciplines. I’ve also benefited tremendously from my experience in the White House and from my continued conversations with people I met through that work to really understand how research translates into impact and what factors you need to take into account. I’m well aware of not only having a research perspective that translates into impact but also understanding all of the other things that go into developing policy that go beyond one’s own research — that come from other people’s research, as well as practical implementation issues.

Q: How will the school advance a diversity of ideas, perspectives and experiences, and why is this important?

This is critical for all parts of the University, and it’s especially important for a policy school. Engaging in open exchange with those you don’t agree with and trying to make progress goes beyond something that is intellectually nice and helpful. It’s almost a professional necessity for our master’s students — and for undergraduates, it’s essential for understanding problems. 

I don’t want to diminish the fact that this is something that’s especially difficult in these polarized times, but we have to make it such that students are eager to engage with people they disagree with and are OK probing different sides of questions so that they really understand what’s going on. We do this at school-wide events, but we can’t just hold a couple of events during the year and think that’s going to be enough. We have to reinforce it at all different levels. If you look at the national data, the most concerning thing is that students in general will say they self-censor because they’re afraid of what other students might think about them and do, and so this is a broader cultural issue. We need to make sure that at the Watson School, students know that it’s OK to disagree and it’s OK to probe things — because that’s really the way you move the ball forward.

Q: How will the school collaborate with external partners?

Since starting as dean in July, I’ve been spending a lot of time talking to people to signal the openness of the Watson School to explore new partnerships and to broaden out in new ways. I’ve spent time not just talking with people in the University about ways to collaborate, but also talking to people out in the community. I’d like to have Watson be more broadly engaged in Providence and in Rhode Island in a way that contributes to the community. Rhode Island is a small state, and everything is right here in a way that can be a great way for students to contribute to the public good and learn how things work.

Q: What are some of the qualities that distinguish Watson School students?

Brown students are phenomenal in many, many ways. They’re obviously super smart and engaged and hardworking, and I would say that the extent to which they are intellectually curious stands out even across our peer institutions. Especially here at Watson, we have students who are not “intellectual tourists” but rather driven by a desire and a passion to make the world better in some way. Students are often motivated not just by a desire to get a good grade or get a job after graduation, but by their deep passion for specific issues, and I think that’s special. 

Q: What’s your best advice for students studying public affairs?

Making progress on big issues is really hard. And it’s complicated, both from a policy design and implementation perspective and from a political perspective. So you can’t be daunted by the scale of the challenge. You have to find ways to move forward in smaller steps, just like how you can’t eat a whole pizza in one bite. Particularly in polarized environments, focusing on more bite-sized issues is a way to make progress that can more easily overcome partisan divides. There’s a lot of great work at the state and local levels, which tend to be less partisan and more pragmatic. Most people care a lot more about things like whether the streets are plowed and the trash is collected than about theorizing about big things. Even if it’s not going to show up on the front page of a national newspaper, you can still find many ways to make a difference in thousands, if not millions, of lives.