Letter from the Director | Winter 2007-2008
Super Tuesday
Super Tuesday, 2008-Twenty-four states are holding caucuses and primary elections today. The early returns from Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and others have been in, and it is evident that there is still a lot of confusion and indecision about the crop of presidential candidates. This is understandable since only a few of us had the opportunity to attend the ISERP election forums that are scheduled to take place throughout the spring semester. The first forum, which took place on January 29, featured Robert Shapiro, Robert Erikson, and Andrew Gelman; subsequent events will focus on health, education, tax and economic policy, and so on. At the end of this process, we will likely know what we need to know-how critical social policy domains will be impacted by the choices of the electorate. I note in this context that at our last election forum, held just before the November 2006 elections, our own Bob Erikson made the (then) staggering prediction that the Democrats would take over Congress. Of course, he also made the prediction that this would lead to an observable change. If you would like to have the opportunity to hear other equally prescient predictions, we encourage you to attend the ISERP election events. If you have your own, let us know. We can either assign you to heckle from the rear, or stick you up front.
This issue of the newsletter focuses on the 2008 election with articles by Jason Bello and Bob Shapiro, Andrew Gelman, Sherry Glied, Fredrick Harris, and Saskia Sassen. We will continue this focus throughout the subsequent newsletters as well.
Throughout the fall semester, ISERP engaged in a process of self review (and then internal and external review) for the academic review process of the Academic Review Committee of the Arts and Sciences. We had hoped that by this newsletter we would be able to discuss the recommendations of the review committee, which provide the Vice President of Arts and Sciences with a potential template to follow for the next five or so years. I note in this context that ISERP arose from a similar process, and so we have lots of reasons to think that our growth over the past eight years will warrant significantly enhanced investment and support for interdisciplinary social science research and education. One of the key things that we need to do is continue to enhance our financial foundation. While we have been fortunate to be able to run ISERP on the strength of the large grants we have received, most comparable organizations have a substantially larger endowment from which to base core programmatic needs. We are in a puzzling position. On the one hand, we have achieved fiscal autonomy. ISERP contributes far more actual dollars to the University than it gets. At the same time, we are hamstrung in developing new exciting initiatives because we do not have the funds to take the massive chances needed to make real social scientific breakthroughs. Endowment support is critical for high risk social science. The difficulty of raising endowment support for basic interdisciplinary social science is that the work that we do is not about any specific social issue that may motivate those to support us. But while basic interdisciplinary social science may not be "sexy," it is fundamental to progress on all substantive problems that lie behind many philanthropic donations. Over the next few months, along with the election, it is to this problem that much of our thought is directed.
Peter Bearman, Director
Institute of Social and Economic
Research and Policy
