What Inspires Your Professors? Part II

In Spring 2020, we posted Faculty Reading Recommendations. The post proved so popular that we decided to revisit and expand the topic. This time we asked Harris professors what inspires them—books, blogs, podcasts, you name it!  This is the second blog in a two-part series. Read the first round of recommendations here.

Luis Martinez, Assistant Professor

• As tenure-track faculty, most of my reading has been devoted to work related material. However, I read a wonderful book called The Man Who Loved Dogs by Cuban writer Leonardo Padura. It tells the story of the last days of Leon Trotsky and of the assassin sent by Josef Stalin to kill him. Come to think about it, I guess this is somewhat work-related for someone like me that studies non-democracies. Anyways, highly recommended.
• My all-time favorite book is probably The Feast of the Goat by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa” , which is centered around the figure of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. (You can see a theme in my tastes developing here, I know.) I am a big fan of Vargas Llosa (though I don’t agree with his views on many issues) and also recommend The War of the End of the World or Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. One of the highlights of my first year at the University of Chicago was attending a series of lectures given by Vargas Llosa at the College and getting a signed copy of one of his books.
• With most in-person events currently cancelled, academics have resorted to virtual seminars to present their work and get feedback. Two that I regularly watch are on “Political Economy and Economic History in Latin America” and on “Advances in Field Experiments.” The latter, run by the Economics department at the College, has the nice feature that most talks are later uploaded to Youtube and can be watched when convenient (or listened to while doing chores at home…)

Rebecca Wolfe, Lecturer  

Non-fiction

Humanitarian interventions are fraught with numerous trade-offs and moral quandaries. David Rieff's A Bed for a Night delineates them with journalistic storytelling to capture the reader. 

I brought both Why Nations Fail by James Robinson and Daron Acemoglu and Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo home from my office to help prepare for fall term. I also strongly recommend Severine Autesserre's Peaceland. Between COVID-19 and questions of identity and who decides it, the localization debate will need to be taken more seriously. How do we balance technical and local expertise? And how do we think about generalizability of evidence and locally led interventions? Figuring out how to manage these tensions will be critical for international development professionals moving forward. Autesserre outlines a number of key critiques of how international development professionals undervalue local knowledge. 

Podcasts

I used “Global Dispatches” and “Displaced” in my course on Humanitarian Interventions regularly. “Global Dispatches” is broadly about foreign policy and development; “Displaced” focuses on refugee issues. I highly recommend these specific episodes: 

• Ezra Klein's interview with Jenn Richenson. While it's US-focused, I think the question of changing demographics explains tensions and violence in many countries. 
• This American Life's episodes about the US border refugee crisis (which won the Pulitzer), as well as episodes about development in Haiti.

Social Media

• I highly recommend Jeremy Konyndyk's twitter feed: he is the former head of USAID's Office of Disaster Assistance (and was my former colleague at Mercy Corps). He taught me to use Twitter as a curation tool to see what others in the field are talking about. Right now, he's focused on COVID-19, using his experience leading the US international response to Ebola to critique the US response to COVID. He also has smart ideas on INGO management.
• Others at the Center for Global Development have good feeds: David Evans for amazing summaries on the latest development economics research; Michael Clemens and Helen Dempster on displacement issues). 
• I also recommend this webinar organized by Hakeem Jefferies, a political scientist at Stanford. This webinar helped me think about the parallels between state-sponsored violence abroad and here in the US. He will be organizing more soon. 

Fiction

As development professionals, we are often creating policies or programs to influence people's behavior. To best do that, we need to understand the people we are creating programs for. I find novels, art, poetry, etc. helpful for getting me see the world through a new lens.  Exit, West by Moshin Hamid is about two refugees fleeing an unknown country (though many assume Syria). Many outsiders think it's easy to leave; it's not. And Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie introduced me to the Biafra War, and helped me understand some of the long standing tensions in Nigeria in a new way (I have been largely working in the North). 

Paula Worthington, Senior Lecturer  

• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Why go to public policy school when you can watch John Oliver? He covers all kinds of relevant topics and is way funnier than university professors. A few favorites include: “Vaccines!”, “Police Accountability!”, and “Lotteries!”
• McSweeney's Internet Tendency, which regularly posts things funny articles related to higher education.