The Citizen Conversation with…Cass Sunstein
by Forrest Dunbar on November 19, 2008 in Citizen Conversation with...
Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan describes Prof. Cass Sunstein as “the preeminent legal scholar of our time – the most wide-ranging, the most prolific, the most cited, and the most influential.” Professor Sunstein has had a very busy year: in addition to changing law schools (Chicago to HLS), he helped establish the Program on Risk Regulation, offered informal advice to the Obama campaign, and even found the time to get married to HKS’s own Samantha Power. Professor Sunstein was kind enough share a moment of his time with the Citizen.
Q: How are you enjoying your first year at Harvard? You described your academic schedule as “grueling.” Are they hazing you because you’re the new guy?
A: Loving it here! I wouldn’t say my academic schedule is at all grueling – more like a lot of fun. I have a few book deadlines, though, and they do keep me at the keyboard.
Q: Do you think you’ll have any time this year to make it over to the Kennedy School, seeing as your wife works here?
A: Sure. I am teaching a freshman seminar with Prof. Power, so I am there every week. Also I have a lot of friends there aside from Prof. Power, so I expect to be there a fair bit.
Q: Speaking of which, what do you think the chances are you both re-locate to DC next year?
A: No comment!
Q: Briefly, for those who may not have heard the term, could you describe Libertarian Paternalism?
A: The idea is that we should try to maintain freedom of choice while also nudging people in directions that will make their lives go better. This approach can help with environmental protection, energy conservation, investments, education policy, marriage, health care, and much more. Recent work in behavioral economics provides much of our motivation here.
Q: If you had to recommend some concrete policy applications of these ideas to Kennedy School students – both domestic and international students – what would they be?
A: 1. Make energy use salient, so that people have a sense of the economic and environmental costs of their activities. Our book, Nudge, offers a set of examples.
2. For credit markets, promote simplified transparency, so that people know what they’re getting into.
3. For savings and charity: try Save More Tomorrow and Give More Tomorrow programs. (Nudge offers the details.)
Q: Do you think the Obama administration will incorporate some of these ideas in the coming four years?
A: I wouldn’t be amazed if it did.
Q: Not too long ago you wrote an article called “The Obama I Know” in which you described a detailed legal conversation you had with the senator on warrantless wiretapping. Do you think his position on issues like this, where he has taken a strong constitutional stand against the Administration, will change when he becomes the head of the executive branch?
A: No. He’s a very steady guy.
Q: You’ve written quite a few books. Care to give us a preview of the next one? Or are you just too busy these days?
A: The newest one is called Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide. It should be out in the spring. It has material on political debates, terrorism, ethnic divisions, even the sub-prime crisis.
Q: Could you describe what led you to that particular topic? And how will the book be different from previous books on groupthink or political extremism?
A: I have long worked on extremism, growing out of some studies in the 1990s on juries and more recently on group dynamics among judges and citizens. Especially because extremism is so salient nowadays, I thought it might be worthwhile to connect some of the experimental literature with some real world phenomena.
On the second question: The book uses social psychology and behavioral economics to
cast new light on extremism in many domains; it goes well beyond the groupthink model (I hope).
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[…] You can read the Citizen’s recent interview with Professor Sunstein, in which he elides a question regarding political appointment, here. […]