School of management

School Notes: School of Management
September/October 2020

Kerwin Charles | http://som.yale.edu

Dean discusses inequality and racism

On June 16, Dean Kerwin K. Charles appeared in a live online conversation with John A. Byrne, founder and editor in chief of the MBA-focused website Poets & Quants. Charles and Byrne discussed Charles’s journey from Guyana to a life in academia, his research on the economic aspects of inequality and racism, his own experiences as a person of color, and his thoughts on the role of higher education in promoting racial justice.  

In a June 25 New York Times column, the Times’s David Leonhardt ’94 cites research by Charles and coauthor Patrick Bayer that finds the Black-White wage gap is as large today as it was in 1950. Charles and Bayer used census data to look at the relative earnings of all Black and White men between 1940 and 2014. Their finding is that the gap narrowed between 1950 and 1980 but ballooned again in recent decades, as trends that worked against low-wage earners disproportionately affected Black men.

Mayors College and CEO Summit pivot to address racial unrest

The Chief Executive Leadership Institute’s Mayors College and CEO Summit went on as planned June 3, but in a new format—an online discussion, open to the public—and with a new theme: racism and the civil unrest sweeping the United States after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.

The summit’s original theme was “Economic Rejuvenation: Safely Bringing Corporations and Communities out of COVID Caves.” Organizers had prepared an agenda of discussion revolving around economic recovery, community rebuilding, biotech developments, and US/China trade issues related to the COVID-19 crisis and breakdowns in diplomacy.

Several times a year, the CEO Summit brings together corporate and government leaders and leading academics to discuss the role of business in the day’s most pressing issues. The annual Mayors College convenes mayors of middle-sized and large cities.

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