Maxwell School News and Commentary

Mitchel Wallerstein ’72 M.P.A., dean of the Maxwell School from 2003 to 2010, has recently published “Public Higher Education That Works: One College’s Path to Academic Success and Financial Stability” (Teachers College Press, 2024).

Two of the fellows, Güler Ünlü of the Republic of Türkiye and Hyeonjee Lee of the Republic of Korea, represent that diversity. They, along with the other select Humphrey Fellows, are spending 10 months at the Maxwell School participating in graduate study, professional development and cultural exchange. 

He is a Harvard professor and co-author of the New York Times bestseller ‘Build the Life You Want’ with Oprah Winfrey.

Using a 40-year panel dataset from Texas, Yilin Hou and co-author identify leader municipalities in changing sales tax rates and examine how municipalities asymmetrically respond to multi-tiered rate changes. Published in Fiscal Studies: The Journal of Applied Public Economics.

Matthew Huber, professor of geography and the environment, says the VP debate was “evidence of the sad state of our climate discourse.“

The Maxwell professor spoke on the role of collaboration in public policy to researchers, policymakers and practitioners from around the world.

One element is “the return...of class politics, which takes the form of a series of important legislative measure that includes raising the minimum wage, facilitating the formation of unions, but also more specific things like, for example, recognizing the labor rights of domestic workers for the first time in the country,” says Edwin Ackerman, associate professor of sociology. 

A new collection of portraits from “Americans Who Tell the Truth” take their place in the Maxwell Foyer. 

“By growing the use of the RMB in cross-border trade settlement directly between China and Russia, U.S. financial sanctions cut targeted actors off from using the dollar system, which forces targets into alternative currencies that are exchanged outside of the U.S. financial system,” says Daniel McDowell, professor of political science.

So much of the response following disasters can feel piecemeal and reactive, says Sarah Pralle, associate professor of poltical science. “Every dollar we put into prevention is going to be a lot more efficiently spent,” she explains. In a world reshaped by climate change, “this idea that there’s safe places you can go hide is unrealistic.”