Comments on: The brown near misses of the John Clark Bates Medal

By: sriram

sriram — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:52:07 +0000

cool i did some work funded by PAL last summer around madras slums but didn’t know the sendhil link.

By: nnn

nnn — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:06:09 +0000

Boston,

You are tough! Sendhil might not have got his PhD if you had been on his advisor committee!

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:06:10 +0000

Great, isn’t it? Egalitarian merit wins out in the end, sorta.

By: Ponniyin Selvan

Ponniyin Selvan — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:22:29 +0000

Surprised to know about this village called "Kozhiyum" in Tamilnadu. I could not locate it. And kozhi is the tamil word for hen and has now become the favorite meat.

I don't think he would have personally experienced poverty / hard time (unlikely given his dad was doing his Ph.D in the US).

By: Reema

Reema — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:19:05 +0000

I guess this isn’t directly related but Avinash Dixit, though not young, is also a renowned Princeton economist who was considered to be a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize in Economics in 08. It went to Krugman in the end.

By: boston_mahesh

boston_mahesh — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:03:23 +0000

I commend Sendhil for his contribution in uncovering racism in the USA. However, this is far too easy of a task to do, pals. I was just thinking of a new form of “appearance”-ism. Although employers and renters will rent out to whites much more frequently than they do to people of color, there are institutions – such as very prominent and prestigious companies – who only hire good looking people with managerial presence. Another words, companies like Genzyme would rather hire a 6′ African-American rather than a 5’7″ white guy with pimples. Organizing a study on this would pose more challenges, I think.