With America’s president-elect vowing to wage war on wealthy universities, normally outspoken US scholars have been unusually quiet over the past few weeks. Yet the Nobel prizewinning economist Daron Acemoglu isn’t one of those holding back: “Donald Trump is a real threat to democracy,” he told?Times Higher Education?bluntly.
“There is a danger that he will do permanent or very enduring damage to America’s institutions. He tried to do that in his first term and is in a better position to do so today,” continued the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economics professor.
The Turkish-American economist’s views on Trump will certainly not surprise those who have followed Professor Acemoglu’s work over the past three decades: his best-known 2012 book,?Why Nations Fail, explains why democracies founded on robust institutions such as unbiased legal systems or non-partisan regulation are also the world’s most successful economies.
But the Istanbul-born economist, who received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2024 in Stockholm this month, felt it was important that?scholars continue to speak out?on these matters, even if it makes it easier for a political establishment to go on the offensive over alleged leftist indoctrination on campus.
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“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,” explained Professor Acemoglu. “There are special times when academics should speak out.”
Public engagement is not an area that Professor Acemoglu has shirked in recent years either, even if it meant inviting criticism from both sides of the political divide. To some critics – like??– his feelgood theories about the economic power of democracies fail to explain why China and other Asian countries with less participatory societal systems have flourished in recent years. But his calls for hefty taxes on social media and for stricter regulation of artificial intelligence, which he said will not just “wreak havoc in many industries…[but] also lead to pervasive manipulation of consumers and citizens”, have also put him out of step with right-leaning US economists still broadly supportive of the creative destruction caused by the free market.
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“There is a very vocal group within economics that sees any call for regulation as a cardinal sin,” reflected Professor Acemoglu, joking that “if economists were a group that had to be card-carrying members, some economists would probably try to tear up my card”.
“That is also because economics is a very techno-optimistic discipline as a whole, and with good reason because, in our history, science has brought many good things, though the perspective of our book?Power and Progress?[written with?fellow MIT Nobelist Simon Johnson]?is that it depends on how you use it,” he said.
“There is not a positive causation of technology – just think of chemical or nuclear weapons, or even lately fossil fuels. Some technologies might be bad for society – and for shared prosperity too.”
Already a prolific commentator on US affairs, Professor Acemoglu’s Nobel status will surely solidify his reputation as one of the most distinctive voices on technology and industry stateside. But he points out that he is very much a “product of the British higher education system”, having taken his undergraduate degree at the University of York in the late 1980s.
“I was the only international student at undergraduate level,” he recalled of his time at York. “It didn’t have the academic pretences of Oxford or the London School of Economics, but it had small classes, so I had access to one-on-one discussions with tutors, where I learned all my economics.”
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Those intrigued by Professor Acemoglu’s prolific output – “he writes papers faster than I can read them”,?on Professor Acemoglu’s ability to write??plus others” – may be interested that he wrote his first paper at York.
“I had signed up to a course, but it wasn’t going to run because I was the only student on it. I convinced my tutor Peter Lambert – who later became a dear friend – to teach it and we ended up writing a paper together,” he explained.
“I had a good time at the LSE where I did my PhD, but if I’d have gone there for my first degree, I wouldn’t have had the same level of interaction with tutors, even if they might have been more celebrated professors down in London.”
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While he “misses London and aspects of British society”, staying in the UK was never likely once MIT came calling, he reflected. “It wasn’t easy to leave the LSE but I thought MIT would offer me the best platform to get my work noticed,” he said of his current employer, which clearly values him given his??(?665,000).
That calculation has certainly paid off, with Professor Acemoglu now seen as US academia’s most celebrated economist – he is the third most-cited living economist – having published hundreds of papers, half a dozen popular books and with his research influencing industrial policy globally (his and Professor Johnson’s work was cited in the, passed in 2022).
However, even someone described as a “monster of productivity” – he has? – admitted that the writing process is not always easy. “I don’t think I’m particularly fast or slow – the op-eds are easier to write but writing books is very tiring,” he said.
“I love finishing books but the practice of writing them is very painful.”
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