Global

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Abhijit Banerjee and Prof. Esther Duflo highlight the importance of foreign aid. “Reaffirming the most basic principle of aid would provide clarity,” they write. “The goal should be to invest in projects that will have the largest impact on the quality of life of poor people around the world. Saving lives during environmental catastrophes qualifies, as does financing global public goods such as vaccinations or epidemic control. Helping local actors to learn from each other and adopt the most effective ways to fight poverty can also have enormous benefits, even if this sounds a bit vague. That is because any aid money invested can then be spent in the best way possible.” 

Writing for The Boston Globe, President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif highlights the fundamental contributions made by universities across the United States in the advancement of scientific and technological innovations, and the role of government funding in these sectors. “Since World War II, the ideas born in university research laboratories have helped to make America great,” writes Reif. “Universities’ contributions should be recognized, and the systems that allow them to contribute should not be recklessly derailed.” 

Prof. Christopher Knittel speaks with GBH reporter Robert Goulston about the potential impact of tariffs on imported metals and lumber. “When you place a tariff on an imported good, it’s not just the price of the imports that increase, but it’s also the price of the domestically manufactured products that increase,” explains Knittel. “Obviously the cost of importing steel and aluminum will increase, but domestic manufacturers will also raise their price because they can.”

Prof. Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, speaks with Dezeen reporter Lizzie Crook about how this year’s event will be a “science-heavy edition of the festival examining the changing role of architecture at a time of environmental instability.” Says Ratti: "Architecture starts when the environment is against us and we adapt it to somewhere where we can live. We can look at this through science. There's going to be a lot of science in this year's biennale.”

Prof. David Autor speaks with NPR Planet Money host Greg Rosalsky about his working paper exploring “what happened to American communities after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001,” also known as the “China Shock." Autor and his colleagues found that while regions impacted by the China Shock did eventually recover, the people hurt by the China Shock did not. “The China Shock research suggests that classic, free market economic theory blinded many to the reality that free trade can destroy the livelihoods of many people and that they have a hard time adjusting," says Rosalsky.

In a discussion with Metropolis reporter Francisco Brown, Prof. Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, discusses his vision for this year’s festival. “I think the biggest challenge of architecture today, which we are trying to address both with our practice at CRA (Carlo Ratti Associati) and our research at MIT, is to create a better alliance between natural and artificial systems,” Ratti explains. 

A new tabletop exercise, developed by researchers at MIT and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has found that “a further buildup of U.S. nuclear capabilities would have limited effect on whether China might use its own nuclear weapons should a war over Taiwan erupt,” reports Brad Dress and Ellen Mitchell for The Hill. “The first large-scale war game of such an incident,” they write, “found that a U.S. buildup that goes past current modernization plans would not bolster nuclear deterrence in relation to Taiwan.” 

Prof. Abhijit Banerjee speaks with Financial Times reporter John Reed about global politics and the increased need for trust in economists. On his book, Poor Economics, Banerjee says, “I think we have always thought that economic ideas were too important to be left out of the public discourse. There is a sense in which we think economics does a disservice to ourselves and the world by wrapping ourselves in this omniscient jargon.” 

In a wide-ranging interview with NHK (broadcast in Japanese), President Sally Kornbluth discusses MIT’s innovation ecosystem, the MIT Climate Project and how MIT faculty work to help nurture their students’ creativity. "We give students the opportunity to research real-world projects and see their impact on society," says Kornbluth. “We should focus on bringing out the creativity of students, their individual creativity. Almost everyone you meet at a place like MIT wants to start a company. Nurturing this kind of talent is essential in the long run to the incredible success we see at American universities.” 

Researchers at MIT and the Center for Strategic and International Studies have used a tabletop exercise to determine whether a further build-up of US nuclear capabilities would impact China’s nuclear weapon use in Taiwan, reports Kathrin Hille for Financial Times. “The US has 600-plus tactical nuclear weapons, and it is modernizing their delivery means,” explains Principal Research Scientist Eric Heginbotham. “In the game, the one US team that employed tactical nuclear weapons used fewer than a dozen. In no cases did any of the participants ever say: ‘We need SLCM-N or some other system that is not in the inventory or being deployed under the current modernization plan.’”

Ben Armstrong, executive director of the Industrial Performance Center, speaks with Financial Times reporter Michael Acton about the future of foreign semiconductor company investments in the United States. Armstrong notes that it could take some time to see returns from the CHIPS and Science Act. “You could say the chip boom hasn’t even started yet,” says Armstrong. “The real benefits in growth that could come from it are not likely to pay off until a few years from now.”

Inspired by his daily walks, Prof. Elfatih Eltahir and his colleagues have developed a new way to measure how climate change is likely to impact the number of days when it is comfortable to be outdoors, reports Maddie Browning for WBUR. “I find people walking, jogging, cycling and enjoying the outdoors,” says Eltahir. “That's what motivated me to start looking at how climate change could really constrain some of those activities.”

Prof. Vipin Narang speaks with New York Times reporter David E. Sanger about the “use of nuclear weapons as the ultimate bargaining chip.” Narang explains: “A nuclear threshold is not determined by words, but by the deterrence balance and stakes, and changes to declaratory doctrine do not at all change the deterrence balance between the U.S., NATO and Russia.”

Forbes contributor Michael T. Nietzel spotlights the newest cohort of Rhodes Scholars, which includes Yiming Chen '24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo from MIT. Nietzel notes that Oluigbo has “published numerous peer-reviewed articles and conducts research on applying artificial intelligence to complex medical problems and systemic healthcare challenges.” 

Yiming Chen '24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo have been named 2025 Rhodes Scholars, report Brian P. D. Hannon and John Hanna for the Associated Press. Undergraduate student David Oluigbo, one of the four honorees, has “volunteered at a brain research institute and the National Institutes of Health, researching artificial intelligence in health care while also serving as an emergency medical technician,” write Hannon and Hanna.