New Perspectives in Social Policy Seminar Series

2009–2010 Seminar*

Caught in the Middle
Richard C. Longworth
Senior Fellow, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar, DePaul University

Respondent: Donald Nichols, Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and Economics, University of Wisconsin–Madison (see profile below)

Tuesday, May 4, 2010
4:00–5:30 p.m.
The Pyle Center, Alumni Lounge
702 Langdon Street

Scholar and veteran journalist Richard C. Longworth describes the impact of globalization on the Midwest in his book Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism. Arguing that the Midwest is the bellwether of the United States, Longworth analyzes the region’s crisis and provides a plan for survival and recovery.

IRP is hosting this New Perspectives lecture on the Midwest being “caught in the middle” because rising skill-biased technical change, increased labor productivity, and globalization of production are evident according to emerging trends in labor demand in Midwest labor markets. Even as we emerge from the recession, these changes are liable to have adverse effects on the employment prospects of less-skilled, low-income, and poor people, whose jobs and economic futures are at risk.

Longworth is the author of many books, and a MacArthur Foundation report, “Global Chicago.” He has been an adjunct professor in international relations at Northwestern University and a regular lecturer at Columbia University and is a mentor at the Harris School at the University of Chicago. An Iowa native, Longworth graduated from Northwestern and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. He has won the Overseas Press Club award twice (work on globalization and on the UN) and was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has won every major national award for economic reporting. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, has been a speaker at the Davos conferences, and for 5 years was a mentor to StreetWise, Chicago's newspaper for the homeless.

Donald Nichols, Longworth’s respondent, is Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and Economics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and longtime modeler of the Wisconsin economy. His research is in the areas of macroeconomic theory and policy and regional economic policy. His work has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Review of Economics and Statistics. His most recent contribution is a new definition of an export base for a regional economy, which appeared in International Regional Science Review.

Professor Nichols is an award-winning teacher and has played a prominent role in public affairs, both nationally and in Wisconsin state. He served on the staffs of the Council of Economic Advisers to the U.S. president in 1963, and the U.S. Senate Budget Committee in 1975 and 1976. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor from 1977 to 1979, and Economic Advisor to the Governor of Wisconsin from 1983 to 1986.

* Please note that the New Perspectives in Social Policy lecture by Roland Fryer that was previously announced on this page has been cancelled and a new date is under discussion.

Past New Perspectives in Social Policy Seminars

Charles Karelis, Research Professor of Philosophy, The George Washington University, and author of the book The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can't Help the Poor (Yale University Press, 2007), delivered the 2007–2008 lecture "The Persistence of Poverty," April 3, 2008. Daniel M. Hausman, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Philosophy, UW–Madison, served as the respondent.

Martha Albertson Fineman, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, Emory Law School, and Director of the Feminism and Legal Theory Project, delivered the second lecture, "The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency," October 19, 2006. Joe Soss, now Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service at the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and IRP Affiliate, responded to Fineman’s talk.

Charles Murray, W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, delivered the first New Perspectives in Social Policy lecture, "A Plan to Replace the Welfare State," May 5, 2006. Robert Haveman, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus, and IRP Affiliate, responded to Murray’s talk.