Brown University made big news this week that didn’t involve President Trump.

The university announced that John N. Friedman will be the inaugural dean of Watson School of International and Public Affairs, a new school that will bring several research centers and initiatives under the same umbrella.

Friedman is kind of a big deal. He’s been at Brown since 2015, and was a special assistant on economic policy for the National Economic Council under President Obama. I asked him to tell us more about his vision for the new school.

Q: It sounds like the Watson School is going to build on the success of the Watson Institute, including Brown’s well-regarded master of public affairs program. What are your goals for the new school over the next several years?

Friedman: The launch of the new school is an opportunity to broaden the great research and teaching already being done here at the Watson Institute. This includes engaging with more of today’s most important policy issues – like the challenges to the global trading system, the housing shortage crisis, or the implications of AI for society – and strengthening connections across Brown and the community here in Rhode Island. Additionally we’ll be working to elevate our Master of Public Affairs program, which is on its way to being one of the best such programs in the world, and to further expand on the fantastic work being done by our centers such as the Saxena Center on South Asia or the Taubman Center on American Politics.

Q: You mentioned the Taubman center, so I have to ask. Is there any chance Brown is going to revisit conducting public polling on Rhode Island politics with this new school?

Friedman: It's certainly something we'll take a look at. The challenge is that falling response rates make accurate polling really difficult these days, and especially so in a small state like Rhode Island. We need to think more creatively about how to measure public opinion in these changing times.  

Q: You’re the founding co-director of Opportunity Insights, an economics research lab that has led high-profile studies on social mobility and equality of opportunity. Tell us more about your research and how it will apply to your new role.

Friedman: My research at Opportunity Insights uses big data to understand how upward mobility rates for children can be shaped by the communities they grow up in, and how policies (like those that promote education, social capital, and healthy neighborhoods) can provide more pathways out of poverty. I’ll certainly bring this data-driven approach to my new role, but my research has also taught me that big data works best in combination with a broad range of other approaches. The school will be a place where all of these different methods, as well as varied policy perspectives, can engage to produce something that is more than the sum of its parts.

Q: You’re becoming the dean at a moment of deep uncertainty for higher education. What would you say to potential students (or their families) who are seconding guessing the need for college?

Friedman: Higher education is facing the greatest set of challenges in more than a generation, but it's exactly in such moments of uncertainty that students can benefit the most from college. At Brown, we're not just training students to get their first job out of college or graduate school, we're giving them the tools to thrive throughout their careers in a world that is more dynamic every year. More generally, we see in the data that the earnings advantage to graduating from college is larger than any time in recent memory. It's very important that each student choose the right college carefully, but going to college and graduating is the best investment you'll ever make.