Speech and Opening Remarks NYU-Poly CAPCO Conference

Welcome Speech and Opening Remarks
NYU-Poly CAPCO Conference (June 14, 2011)
President Jerry MacArthur Hultin
Thank you, Charles.
Welcome to Polytechnic. For 150 years we have served as an independent school of
engineering and technology, indeed the nation's second oldest private school of
engineering. In 2008, we affiliated with NYU to take on the role of serving as the
engineering and technology school of NYU, and to assist NYU in bringing its science to
the world and its education around the world in a global networked university.
As a school of engineering and technology, we are committed to transforming 21 st -
Century technical education–taking the traditional Humboldt model to a new level where
our scientific and engineering research is connected more closely to the market place.
Not just our faculty, but also our students invent, get patents, form companies, and
create jobs—one young man from Polytechnic won the Stern's school's business
competition this year, including its $75 thousand prize.
We have business research centers, incubators, and angel funds—all designed to
encourage faculty and students to create new products, services, jobs, and companies.
We have the department of FRE, which has organized this conference to bring the best
analytics and theory into direct contact with policy, regulation, investment, and economic
growth. Charles Tapiero has been a leader—and partner with me—in pushing the
boundaries of engineering schools into the 21st century. You'll see firsthand his
intellectual prowess today displayed not only in his words, but also in the breadth of the
colleagues he has assembled here.
As a school of NYU, we have a special assignment from John Sexton—to bring
engineering and technology to all of NYU, not just at Washington Square, but also at the
First Avenue medical alley in Manhattan, and in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai where new
portal campuses are being built to NYU's 14 other global locations.
From our position, this is a reverse acquisition: Poly has acquired a business school,
mathematics center, medical, law, policy, science school, and global network to take the
science and liberal arts into greater contact with society and the economy here in the
United States, in the Middle East, and in China, where I spent last week in Shanghai,
Nanjing, and Beijing developing Polytechnic's role in global technology, innovation, and
economic growth.

In just one example, we are bringing engineering to the medical school in this way: a
professor with knowledge of epilepsy is partnering with one of our leaders in ECE, and
together they are developing a chip that detects and counter-attacks incipient epileptic
seizures.
As a second example, Polytechnic is at the heart of NYU's proposal to Mayor
Bloomberg to create a new campus of applied science and technology. We have offered
to the Mayor to create a multi-university campus that focuses on the future of cities,
forming a Center for Urban Sustainability and Progress.
I could give many more examples, but time is short, so look at our web site for more on
how Polytechnic and NYU are merging into a singular science and engineering
powerhouse.
Third, I want to complement you on taking on the issues, problems, and opportunities
represented by today's agenda. I cut my teeth on financial collapse in the savings and
loan crisis of 1985, not the one you are thinking of that drew the United States economy
to its nose, but the one in Ohio that was a preview of the national collapse that followed.
I led the state-chartered corporation that provided working capital to rescue that small
set of Ohio S&Ls too strong to be shut-down and too weak to survive on their own. With
me was this afternoon's panel chair, Rogdin Cohen, brought from NYC to help us
structure our solutions.
For Rogdin, Ohio was "summer camp" for the big S&L crisis that appeared on the
national scene about three years later. And for me, it was the basis of getting President
Clinton to appointment me to Freddie Mac's Board.
Of course, Ohio's crisis was a case of, not too large to fail, but too small to care. We
learned in the late 80s and again in 2008, what too big to fail really means. I suspect
you will have an exciting team debating issues and designing solutions that provide us
with a post-2008, global financial model for managing risk and financial activity.
Finally, let me challenge you in the months ahead to help me deal with the "Faustian
bargain" that the world has made with technology. Simply put, here's my concern: in the
coming years, we will see technology capable of producing food, products, education,
and services using about 1 billion people, and leaving about 8 billion people without the
two things they need: jobs and income.
Assuming 1 billion find work doing those things the rest of us don't want to do—what do
the 7 billion others do. Technology and the global economy have already hollowed out
the American economy; my concern is that in the next years, technology will hollow out
the global economy and leave us with 7 billion people who are idled by technology and
lack the incomes that stoke the financial engines that you so dearly care about.

This, of course, is a bigger assignment than today's agenda, but it is one that I am more
and more convinced we must deal with.
With that, I'd like to join you all day to discuss and debate the issues on this fabulous
agenda with the brilliant speakers and panelists that Charles Tapiero and the FRE
faculty have assembled, but as the CEO of Polytechnic, I have do what CEOs do as
infrequently as possible, humbly report to the Board of Trustees. Enjoy the day.