Highlights of 2011 - Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern ...

HIGHLIGHTS OF 2011
discussed her research behind cost-effective policy solutions
for mitigating the harmful effects of mothers’ prenatal smoking
on their children. IPR economist Jonathan Guryan traced the
narrowing of the black-white achievement gap in the 1980s
to an unexpected source—integration of Southern hospitals in
1965. MIT economist Michael Greenstone spoke about how
rising daily average temperatures will lead to 10 times more
deaths in India than in the United States and underlined the
difficulty of getting developing countries to engage in long-term
solutions for climate change over growth strategies (see p. 22).
Hub for Methodological Workshops
Political Identity and Ideology
More than 80 social scientists and graduate students gathered
to discuss the formation of political identity and ideology at the
fifth Chicago Area Political and Social Behavior Workshop at
Northwestern on May 6. Presenters were Indiana University’s
Edward Carmines, the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s
Katherine Cramer Walsh, Cara Wong of the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and MIT’s Adam Berinsky. IPR
political scientist James Druckman organized it, and the Institute
was a co-sponsor (see p. 39).
Each summer since 2006, IPR has hosted faculty-led
methodological workshops, training participants from across
the nation in how to conduct better experiments in education
and use biomarkers in field research. In summer 2011, three
were on experiments in education, sponsored by the Institute of
Education Sciences, the research wing of the U.S. Department of
Education—one co-organized by IPR statistician and education
researcher Larry Hedges on cluster-randomized trials and
two by IPR social psychologist Thomas D. Cook on quasiexperimentation
(see p. 49). Biomarker experts Emma Adam,
Thomas McDade, and Christopher Kuzawa ran the sixth IPR/
Cells to Society Summer Biomarker Institute, supported by the
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development (see p. 20).
Transnational Workshop on Inequality
Focusing on inequalities found in neighborhoods and institutions
between France and the United States, 25 researchers came
together for a two-day workshop
at Northwestern University to
discuss transnational issues related
to education, health, housing,
and employment. The second
joint workshop, held June 23–24,
was organized by IPR sociologist
Lincoln Quillian and IPR education
economist David Figlio with
sociologist Marco Oberti of Science
Po’s Observatoire Sociologique du
Changement, a research institute
at one of France’s most influential
social science universities.
“We hope that by taking a
comparative look at common
social issues, we can work together
to find common solutions,” Quillian
said. The workshop was supported
by The Partner University Fund of
the FACE Foundation, NYC (see
pp. 55–56).
Interdisciplinary Colloquia
IPR continues to strengthen its research community by building
interdisciplinarity through its colloquia and seminars, holding or
co-sponsoring nearly 50 events over the year. Twenty-one were
held in its signature Monday series, and 25 in its four subseries
on quantitative methods, performance measurement and
rewards, education and labor policy (joint with the economics
department), and social disparities and health (see pp. 71–73).
Speakers included IPR faculty and others, such as MIT professor
Abhijit Banerjee, director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty
Action Lab, on microfinance diffusion; Andrew Gelman of
Columbia University on the challenges of estimating small
effects; Sheldon Danziger of the University of Michigan on
anti-poverty policy; and Ohio State University’s Richard Steckel,
who used anthropometric measures to assess health and
nutrition in African Americans following emancipation, tracing
the implications for the rise of Jim Crow laws and lynching.
Robert Groves, U.S. Census Bureau director from 2009–12, meets with IPR graduate
research assistants before his Distinguished Public Policy Lecture.
5