GSB Professors Share Their Expertise in Washington DC
Keith Negley
The school’s history of engagement with the government stretches back to its earliest days.
In 2023, California Congressman Ro Khanna proposed that he and Jonathan Levin organize a meeting in Washington, DC, between leading business schools and elected officials. Levin, then Dean of Stanford GSB, was enthusiastic. But he had one condition: Khanna, a Silicon Valley Democrat, had to find a Republican co-sponsor. “I wanted to be sure we were talking to people from both sides of the aisle,” Levin says.
At a time when partisanship colors virtually every conversation inside the Beltway, Levin wanted this gathering to cultivate, if not common ground, then at least mutual understanding.
Khanna recruited Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana to cohost a daylong series of meetings in July 2023. The impetus, Levin says, was a recognition that the velocity of change has put new demands on business leaders and created a new imperative for the people who train them. “The issues we’re talking about — how government engages or intervenes in the economy, and how the government is going to work with the private sector to stop climate change or manage the future of new technologies — every business school is thinking about those questions.”
Deans from 10 business schools joined dozens of members of Congress to talk about manufacturing, immigration, the labor market, AI, climate change, and their impact on the future of the U.S. economy and business education. To Levin’s delight, the meetings were interesting, as expected, but also remarkably collegial. “The entire discussion was exceptionally thoughtful and serious — and really nonpolitical,” he says.
The day in DC exemplified the GSB faculty’s engagement with U.S. and international policymakers in a range of roles, including advising, official appointments, and strategic outreach — continuing a history of involvement that stretches back to the earliest days of the school.
A Legacy of Engagement
On December 29, 1968, future Stanford GSB Dean Arjay Miller spoke to a meeting of the American Finance Association and the American Economic Association in Chicago. At the time, Miller was vice chairman of the board of Ford. Among the words he shared….
“The dispossessed in our society have no problem in recognizing — and demanding — such basic quantitative objectives as more income, more jobs, more health care, to name just a few. These goals are important in themselves, and they are a foundation for the achievement of such broader goals as dignity and self-respect, social harmony, and cultural advancement.…
[L]et me urge that academic people, whatever their field of learning, assume a larger role in helping to resolve the critical social problems our nation faces…”
Over the past several decades, the speech has been referenced as a source of inspiration at the GSB, and its call for academics to become more involved in the public sphere continues to resonate. Many GSB faculty have answered that call.
After the 2008 financial crisis rocked the global economy, Anat Admati vowed she would do whatever she could to improve the system. Admati, the George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics, intensified her efforts to share her expertise with the people who control borrowing, lending, and investing. Then, in 2016, she had a long conversation with [then] former GSB Dean Arjay Miller. “He wanted to ensure people in government are as equipped to deal with challenges as those in the private sector,” she says.
Shortly after Miller’s death a year later, Admati found new inspiration in his 1968 speech, which was referenced in his obituary. “It blew me away,” Admati says. “He said academics have expertise and are less conflicted than people in government or industry. They are the ones to solve our problems.”
On the Policy Front Lines
Stanford GSB faculty have been involved in government policy circles for decades, a service that sometimes requires multi-year commitments. In July 2022, Susan Athey, PhD ’95, the Economics of Technology Professor, took a partial leave to work as chief economist in the antitrust division at the Department of Justice. In addition to reviewing proposed mergers, she helped lead an effort to write new merger guidelines, a working version of which was released in summer 2023.
Elsewhere on the Hill, Levin and Darrell Duffie, the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management and Professor of Finance, collaborated on a report for President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
And there are many more examples of GSB faculty engaging with policymakers. Their commitment to bring their business acumen, insights, and perspectives to those in government continues today.
“Part of what the business school can do, along with alumni and graduate students, is help business be a contributor to solving big problems of the world,” Levin says.
Read the full, original story for more on GSB’s legacy of outreach to educate policymakers and others, within and outside of government.
