Glenn-Hubbard

Costis Maglaras, professor in the Decision, Risk, and Operations division of the Business School, will succeed Glenn Hubbard as dean of Columbia Business School, University President Lee Bollinger announced in an email Thursday afternoon.

After 15 years as dean of Columbia Business School, Glenn Hubbard will be stepping down from his role at the end of the 2018-19 academic year, University President Lee Bollinger announced in an email this afternoon.

Ronald O. Perelman, chairman and chief executive officer of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., has donated $100 million to the Columbia Business School's planned building in Manhattanville, Columbia announced Thursday.

Ouch. Charles Ferguson, the guy responsible for Iraq war documentary "No End in Sight," has a new film out about the worldwide financial crisis. The film, called "Inside Job," takes aim at the usual host of greedy Wall St. types and inept government officials, but it also targets academics—including Glenn Hubbard, current dean of the Columbia Business School, and Frederic Mishkin, who teaches there.more

Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard announced his support for the return of ROTC in a press release today, arguing that veterans provide invaluable experience to the classroom. Hubbard also noted the benefits veterans have contributed to the business school's community. Hubbard joins Columbia Law School Dean David Schizer---who expressed his support for ROTC in an email sent to the Task Force on Military Engagement---as the two most prominent Columbia figures to have offered a public opinion on the ROTC debate. Full press releases after the jump.moreGlenn Hubbard:

With the 2012 presidential election a month away, senior economic advisers to President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney discussed the candidates' economic visions at Low Library on Monday. The event, which was billed as part of the University's World Leaders Forum, featured Columbia Business School Dean R. Glenn Hubbard, an adviser to Romney, and Harvard professor Jeffrey Liebman, an adviser to Obama, CC '83. Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large of Thomson Reuters, moderated the debate in a packed Low Rotunda. Hubbard focused on mistakes that he said Obama has made during his presidency, arguing that Romney will turn the economy around by improving consumer confidence, lowering marginal tax rates, and reducing government intervention. "We're going to rely more on market forces and less on government intervention," Hubbard said. "Romney's plan will deliver change." Liebman, though, said that Obama inherited a large deficit and structural economic problems from the Bush era, adding that he has made great strides to increase employment while cutting the deficit. "The president has plans to address three issues: bettering the current job situation, promoting lasting growth—in particular for the middle class—and reducing the deficit," Liebman said. Hubbard, on the other hand, argued that indicators like decreasing GDP growth rates, continually high unemployment, and a reduction in wages indicate that Obama's policies aren't working. He blamed Obama's tax policies, as well as a shortage of free trade, as underlying problems. "Every president who has confronted a recession has done better," Hubbard said. "This has by far been the weakest recovery for the past 10 recessions." Hubbard attributed the Obama administration's shortcomings to the president's belief that raising taxes on the rich would allow government spending to remain high, as well as what Hubbard called Obama's decision to regulate rather than reform. He said that high corporate tax rates make the United States "not competitive" in the world economy. "The bottom line is that economic recovery was not the focus of the first two years of Obama's presidency," Hubbard said. "There was no plan to reduce government spending. Instead, there was only massive regulation." Liebman countered that the Bush administration turned a large surplus into a deficit—a deficit that Obama is working to shrink, he said. "Throughout President Bush's two terms, he imposed two tax cuts. And he didn't pay for them. Then, the nation engaged in two wars. And he didn't pay for them," Liebman said. "Finally, he created a prescription drug program for the elderly. And he didn't pay for them." And the policies adopted by the Bush administration, Liebman said, are the same policies that Romney is now proposing. "Under Romney, we'd see two million jobs cut. Under Obama, we plan to increase the number of jobs by one million," he said. "That's three million jobs hinging on who wins this election." During a Q-and-A session with the audience, the two economic advisers also addressed climate change, China's currency, and corporate tax rates. They agreed that whoever wins the election should support scientific research, invest in new technology, and work to deal with climate change and harmful emissions. Audience members said they found the discussion engaging. Some attendees wished that it had lasted longer. "I thought the one-minute speeches were on the short side," Jun Jun Lau, CC '14, said. "Also, I wish they had talked more about recent issues, such as real estate and mortgages." Siran Jiang, CC '16, said she was glad that Hubbard and Liebman actually answered every question they were asked. "I think that's really rare to see in a debate of this sort," Jiang said. "There were, of course, some evasions—such as when Professor [Joseph] Stiglitz posed that question about median income—but for the most part, I was impressed with the candidness of their responses." news@columbiaspectator.com Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to Jeffrey Liebman as a former Harvard professor. He is in fact still a professor at Harvard. Spectator regrets the error.

Columbia University should push for members of faculty to fully disclose all outside activities, remunerated and non-remunerated, that may reasonably be thought to influence research and teachings. These guidelines that currently exist, but seem to go ignored. Better-enforced conflict of interest disclosure policies would boost the institution's transparency and therefore its reputation. It would also be a first step in addressing the role faculty members' outside activities in elite educational institutions, such as this one, may have played in the global economic meltdown, which cost millions their livelihoods and homes. For Columbia, the issue of conflict of interest was substantively raised in the 2010 Oscar-winning documentary "Inside Job." The film features Columbia Business School professor Frederic Mishkin. He is asked about a paper he published, which describes the stability of Iceland's economy shortly before the global financial collapse proved the clear opposite of stability. The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Iceland Chamber of Commerce paid $135,000 for Mishkin's paper. Columbia Business School dean Glenn Hubbard is also featured in "Inside Job." In interviews in the film, Dean Hubbard is asked about his extensive ties to the financial service industry, including a 2004 paper written with the then-Goldman Sachs chief economist, William C. Dudley (now president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York), in which Hubbard praised credit derivatives as enhancing economic stability, reducing volatility, and making recessions less frequent and severe. According to the New York Times, Warren Buffett has called these same practices "financial weapons of mass destruction" that are widely acknowledged by many economists as having helped trigger the crisis. Following the film's release, along with other single-school initiatives, Columbia Business School nominally addressed critics by establishing a committee headed by Hubbard's vice dean, Christopher Mayer. The result was a pledge by the committee to go beyond University transparency requirements. The pledge asked Business School faculty to declare all outside activities on an online CV, linked to each faculty member's individual website. But Hubbard's position as economic advisor to the former presidential hopeful Mitt Romney still remains absent from his online Columbia profile. His ties to the Analysis Group, a consultancy firm which has placed him as an expert defending financial industry players, also remains absent. In 2009, Hubbard testified in defense of Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, who were subsequently laid off, despite evidence to the contrary from the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The testimony cost $100,000, according to the Analysis Group. A member of the jury later told the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, "Dr. Hubbard's research allowed us to see what the managers were seeing." Irrespective of whether being paid for an expert opinion is ethical, the act of ignoring your school's own recommendations signals a disdain for and disregard of the importance of conflicts of interest. From a pedagogical point of view, it is worrying that there is a possibility that the knowledge students are absorbing in good faith might have been bought by private corporations and private interests. The questions raised here are part of a broader discourse on faculty's external financial interests and how they may have a distorting effect on university-based research and teaching. What appears to be a laissez-faire culture on campus is further representative of an attitude that is held by people beyond University walls—from Washington to Wall Street—who have avoided addressing core causes to the financial crisis, and they have let most, if not all, off the hook. As it stands, conflict of interest policies at Columbia appear to have done little to tackle an ongoing problem of "knowledge for hire." Instead, they have reinforced a turn-a-blind-eye mentality. Full transparency has been nominally required on campus since 2009, but, according to a November 2011 report, which was presented to the University Senate on the subject, only 3 percent of 38,825 conflict of interest disclosure forms declared possible conflicts of interest in 2010—a laughably low, suspect number, considering how many University professional schools explicitly pride themselves in the employment of current or former field practitioners. Conflict of interest declaration does not need to be a bad thing, especially if it is combined with transparency and the possibility of accountability. Generally speaking, full online transparency and disclosure in the classroom of first-hand experience would increase teachers' reputations and integrity not the opposite. Solutions for a better system could include full transparency through an open, searchable, online database with compilation of all faculty members' CVs in one location, caps on remunerations for outside activities, randomized audits, and simply leading by example. Many of these solutions are already being pushed through a campus petition on the subject. With greater understanding and debate surrounding the issue of conflict of interest, University-wide support would encourage resolution of this matter. Let us no longer look the other way when it comes to the uncomfortable issue of conflicts of interest at Columbia University. The author is a human rights studies M.A. candidate and a member of Transparent Columbia. To respond to this op-ed, or to submit an op-ed, contact opinion@columbiaspectator.com.

Former Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger reflected on his long career in building the U.S. relationship with China and discussed China's future on Monday. Widely credited with opening the country's relations with the People's Republic of China, Kissinger said that he made "over 50 trips over four decades and had personal and intimate interactions with leaders on each side" giving him a unique perspective on the country. The goal of establishing diplomatic ties proved difficult to achieve, as China was in the middle of the Cultural Revolution under the dictator Mao Zedong. Kissinger recalled early efforts to contact Chinese officials under the Nixon and Ford administrations. "We instructed our ambassador in Poland to walk up to any Chinese diplomat he saw in any social context and tell him he wanted to talk," he said. "He didn't think it was a good idea, so we had to bring him back to Washington and walk him into the Oval Office and the president told him to do it ... and he did it." There were continued communication problems with Chinese leaders, he said. "Chinese leaders wrote messages out in pencil, then a messenger brought them to Pakistan and then Pakistan brought it to Washington and then we typed our answers and sent them back so it took about two weeks for a message to get through," he said. Kissinger joined Business School Dean R. Glenn Hubbard for the discussion in Miller Theatre. He also received the George S. Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing for his book "On China." The prize is awarded annually to the author whose book on economics best bridges theory and practice. Troy Chen, Business '12 and president of the Greater China Society, said in an email, "I was impressed by his political insight and foresight derived from a profound understanding of China on many dimensions: from ancient Chinese history to its contemporary economy and politics." "As a business school student, I was also inspired by his argument that business leaders from both countries would play a more important role in the next decade, in fostering common understanding and mutual prosperity between the two nations," he said. Speaking about the direction of foreign-policy relations with China, Kissinger said, "Whenever a new administration comes in they start the process of discovery all over again. There have been eight administrations but policy has had great continuity on the American and Chinese side." Kissinger noted that China's integration with an increasingly globalized economy could lead to political freedom. "As China becomes integrated into the global economy, it is probable there will be a gradual transition of the Chinese political system, though it is probable that it will develop special Chinese characteristics." He stressed the need for cooperation in the next 10 years to prevent possible conflict, though he said that a Chinese domestic crisis is more likely than an international conflict. "I think progress is being made in understanding the concept of leadership in China," he said. "The Chinese have a hell of a time trying to understand the concept of leadership in the U.S." yasmin.gagne@columbiaspectator.com