Reflections on a Pioneering Career in Economics and Public Policy Research

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Evidence-based can be the most valuable tool ever. But until we get integrity in place, it won't be.

[J.B. WOGAN]

I’m J.B. Wogan from Mathematica and welcome back to On the Evidence, a show that examines what we know about today’s most urgent challenges and how we can make progress in addressing them.

On this episode, my guest is Anita Summers, whose career in economics and public policy research spans more than seven decades, giving her a valuable perspective on the arc of evidence-based policy in the United States. Anita has a valuable perspective on Mathematica’s arc as well. She was a member of our Board of Directors from 1993 through 2019, and was a board chair for the majority of that time. I spoke with Anita in July, a couple months before her 96th birthday.

During the interview, we’ll discuss her biography at greater length, but I’ll just tease now to one part that felt very relevant to this current moment we are in, with the heightened awareness of the ways in which fields like economics could be more diverse or accessible to women or other minority groups. Anita pursued a career in economics when it was very rare for women to enter the profession. Even now, it’s relatively uncommon. According to a recent survey from the American Economic Association, women made up only about a third of students awarded a PhD in economics in the 2018-2019 school year.

Anita not only earned the degree, but she put her education to good use. Her career has included working as an economist for Standard Oil and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. She was also a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she started a first-in-the-nation public policy department in a business school.

As I listened to Anita’s stories, and relistened to them during the editing process, I was struck by the number of examples in her workplace experience that would be unacceptable today. Paying a woman less for doing the same work—and bragging about it, for instance. Or refusing to grant an audience to a researcher on the basis of her gender. Or making a working mother an hourly employee without benefits because she requests a non-traditional schedule.

During our conversation, Anita talks about what it was like to enter economics as a woman, the sexism she encountered, the way she navigated those challenges, and the role that her family played in her career choices. Anita also weighs in on how the field of evidence-based policy has changed and what lies ahead for the profession in the next few decades.

I hope you enjoy the conversation.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Right, so I think the first question I wanted to ask was about the underrepresentation of women in economics. I know women are still underrepresented in the field today, but it was even less common when you entered the field in the 1940s.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

To put it mildly.

[J.B. WOGAN]

To put it mildly, yeah. So, so what interested you about the profession?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

I think there are a few reasons; one, to go back to the depths, remembering my age, which is 95, my very early years were in the Depression years. My father was a vice president of a big bank of New York. We were very affluent. Lived in Great Neck when I was born and so on, and great affluence, and then the crash happened. And when the crash happened, one of the side effects, and it's in all the textbooks, is that all Jewish bank officers in New York City were fired, because they had to reduce the number of employees, and that was an easy way to do it. In case you're in doubt, it's in all the textbooks, what I just said.

So, I was a young, young, young child and I didn't know what happened. But suddenly, our entire life changed. We moved out from the great big house in Great Neck to a small apartment in New York City. And all of that, I lived through in the early years, and not understanding, of course, the depth of what was happening and all of that, but life changed. And my parents were wonderful parents. And, by, the way, by the end of the '30s, they were back in shape, in a totally different way. But there was a set of years, so I'm giving that; therefore, the economy, in some ways, you know, had such a profound effect on the life, that I think that that's one of the reasons. Obviously, one doesn't ever fully know why you chose it.

The second, entirely different origin, is that I went to Hunter College. At that time, my parents could have afforded to send me to an out-of-town college, but all my friends were going to Hunter, so, of course, that's where I wanted to go. At that time, they only took the top students across the five boroughs. You had to be top in your Regents exam. You had to be in the top ten percent of your class to get into that college, so it was a very, very excellent college. And the first two years of college, you took liberal arts education, that meant in the broadest sense of the word you took two years of arts, you took two years of science, two years of social science, two years of math, and so on. And you didn't choose your major until the end of your sophomore year.

And along the way, in the social science, I took an economics course, and at the same time in my mathematics requirements, that was one of the things you could choose, I took statistics. And somehow the two clicked for me, and somehow, I saw a connection that fascinated me, because I believed in evidence. It somehow made things clear. Somewhere along the line somebody said to me something, data is the plural of anecdotes. And that whole thing -- and I came from a family that was very realistic. I was the middle of three children. And, you know, our parents told us sort of what was happening. They didn't go into all the misery and all of that. But, you know, it was always a family that stressed -- well, two things. It stressed education. Nothing was more important, that we do our homework and study, study, study. And so I think the combination of an excellent set of courses and the timing had a lot to do with the choice.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Well, I have to assume that some of your peers were also interested in economics but did not go as far as you did in terms of earning a PhD and going on to have the success in the field that you've had. So, I was curious, what do you think has made the difference in your career?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

I go back to saying that at each step I was brought up to work hard. You know what I'm saying; that no matter what, going into depth was part of what -- I remember when we were sitting at the dinner table and something came up, I remember when I was about six years old, or something like that, I said, "Why is the sky blue? How come it's blue?" And my father immediately said, "Well, we'll look it up in the encyclopedia." I never got trivial answers, so to speak, if I asked a question of any kind. So I think the desire to go into depth was it.

But, remember, at that period of time, the motivation for me was entirely building my mind and learning more. I was not thinking of my resume. And, remember, I also knew that when I got married and had children, that was the end, so I never thought of it as a lifetime career. I thought it was something I'll do when I graduate and so on. I thought of it as a career for the interim period but not a lifetime career, because that's not what women did then.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Something I read was that you actually stepped back to raise your three boys before returning to work. Is that right?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

When I got married in 1953, and our first child was born in 1954, a year-and-a-half later, that was it, I wasn't having a career. And all my friends were like me. They were well educated people, but homemakers, and it didn't occur to me. Nor did I feel second rate. This is the point that's very different from today's world. For one thing, I always felt, and still feel, if I may say – though I'll be slaughtered for this -- that the greatest right I had was being a mother. I loved it. I enjoyed it. I loved the children and loved being home. And I had a husband who in no ways treated me as second rate in knowledge. You know what I'm saying? That's part of the story. And I did other interesting things. I became chair of the League of Women Voters and stuff like that. But I did not think of a career. And it was not a problem for me. That's my point.

[J.B. WOGAN]

I was watching -- well, there's a YouTube video online from an event in 2018, where your career is being celebrated at Hunter College, and the dean is making some remarks at the beginning, and one of the things she says, she tells the story about when you did come back to work, that you requested you only work four days a week, because you still had a son in high school. And I thought that was interesting.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

When I was working all the time in the league all the time and so on, one day I was taking a walk with my husband, and I said, "You know, I'm spending about 20 hours a week on the league and so on. I wonder if I ought to think about going back." And he immediately said that would be a good idea. But I didn't do anything, and then out of the blue, I got a call for Swarthmore College, and it was in the spring, and some young faculty member there had died, and they were looking for somebody to teach the microeconomics course in the fall, and somebody or other had given them my name, and so would I do it. And I said, well, yes, but I couldn't do it before 10:00 o'clock in the morning, because I had to see my children off to school and so on. And it started there, and then I had a second course, and then I was teaching there as an adjunct.

And then I started working on some research papers and so on. I got a call from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, saying they were looking for a person to be in their general Economics' Department to head the Urban Public Finance and Research thing. It was Public Finance and Economic Development. So I said, yes, but I can only work four days a week, and I had to be home at 4:00 o'clock or 3:30, whatever, because my children came home from school. They had never heard that request before.

See, one of the things I learned is, if you make it as a request rather than a demand, I don't believe in demanding. I don't believe in, because I'm a woman, you've got to do this for me. I was just stating the facts. So they ran into a huddle, and you'll love this, they came back and they said, okay, but we'll put you now on an hourly pay, and you will not have benefits. That wasn't a problem, because my husband was teaching as a professor at Penn in the Economics Department, and he had full benefits, so I said sure.

I never worried, by the way, about the compensation. By the way, we have to go back Standard Oil to talk about that. This is before I got married. I had worked for Standard Oil, and I had worked briefly for the National Bureau of Economic Research, and then somebody or other at -- I don't even remember who gave my name to the General Economics Department at Standard Oil, and I got a call about it and I sent my material and so on. And then when the head of the department called, and we're now talking 1947, he offered the job and described the salary, and described the job and salary. And he said, we decided we could get the same brains for less money. Nowadays, somebody would slam the receiver down if they got that. I thought, I don't care how much I earn, you know. I'll show them I can do the work. That was my point.

And then when I went there, by the way, within a year or so, they brought my salary up. And if I may put it this way, the work spoke for itself. I never requested an increase in salary, and they gave me more responsibility and so on. The best story there; however, is several years later, after I was working there, the CFO of the entire Standard Oil was a man named Emilio Collado, who subsequently became president of the World Bank.

One day, on Friday morning, I was told that Standard Oil was interested in building a refinery in South Africa, and they were making a bid on some land there, and this was a period of time when there was something call it had so-called dollar shortage, that is, American companies could invest in foreign countries, but they couldn't get their dollars out. They didn't allow them to get their dollars out. So, you could use it for expenditures in the country, but you couldn't get it out.

The question that I was asked to address was, in five years from now, will we be able to get our dollars out, and they had to decide by Wednesday. Well, I worked -- I had a research assistant and I worked for 15 hours a day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, wrote the paper Monday morning, gave it to my immediate boss, who edited it. And the meeting with Collado was to occur on Tuesday, and then it was given to Collado.

And Tuesday morning when I came in all ready for the event, my immediate boss, who is a very nice person, and helped me develop my career, et cetera, said, "Anita, I don't know how to tell you this, but Collado won't have a woman in his office except his secretary, so I'm the one going down, so sit next to your phone so I can call you." And all morning, every ten minutes or so, he called, I answered the questions. This is incredible. When lunchtime came, I said to him -- and the difference in today's world and that, what I was furious at is, I had done all the work, how stupid it is to ask somebody else. I did not say it was outrageous to treat a woman this way. I just want you to know, that's what I was angry at, was the idiocy of that.

So I said to him, you know, of course, I'm going to see this through appropriately, no matter what, so don't worry about that. I said, "But I want you to know that I will never, never do this again. I will never be part of an arrangement where I do the work." And I said, "Now, one possibility is you and the head of the department could take me down this afternoon, because it was continuing. Another is, just don't give me anymore assignment from him. There's plenty of other work to do, and the third possibility, if this annoys you, is I'll quit.

[J.B. WOGAN]

And how did they take that?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

So, they huddled, and then the head of the department and he took me down in the afternoon. And when we walked in the office, Collado looked at me and said, "What is she doing here?" And they said, "Well, she did the work." And he started by asking my boss, but then, immediately, I answered, you know, and for the next two hours, that took care of that. And from then on, it was never an issue. And I have always lived my life that way. I feel, you see, the work speaks for it. I don't want you to give me something because I am a woman. I want you to give me something, or whatever we're talking about because I can do it. And I never accepted anything which was because of a woman. I had a strong view on that.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Right. Well, I mean, it's sort of a funny backhanded compliment, because when they're saying they can get the same brains for less money on the one hand, that means they recognize the quality of your work, but then it's also indicating that they could get away with paying you less money. Did, did that motivate you? Did that fuel your desire to kind of show them up or show that they were wrong?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

No. That's the point. I never -- I can't fully, except telling you the background I had, where, no matter what you did, you were to do your best, period, period. And something in that -- also, I always felt that giving me something because I'm a woman was insulting. You were saying to me, you're doing it because I'm a woman, not because I could do it okay or well. I took it as a negative. And by the way, when I was at the Federal Reserve and a lot of this stuff, education got a lot of publicity in the newspapers, I was invited to speak everywhere in the world, everywhere around here in Philadelphia. It was all in Philadelphia, of course. There were a couple of instances where the CFO of Philadelphia and I were invited to talk about my assessment of their public finance situation, and I gave a talk, and then he commented negatively about a number of things I said, and then I was given a chance to reply.

But when he stood up to talk, I can't quite give you the tone to the lectern, and I was seated next the lectern. After I sat down, he turned to me and nodded and bowed his head down, and he said, “Now, little lady.” And I froze and then decided I was not going to say a word about it. I'll just speak about the public finance. But, believe me, I was angry. I didn't say I didn't respond, but I felt the best answer was to answer factually, and I took notes and then I got up and said point number one, point number two, et cetera.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Well, you've anticipated what I was going to ask next, which was, if you encountered sexism, how did you manage it and do you have any coping strategies that you can share? I think you've already mentioned a few.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

The main thing was keeping the model that it's the work which I should be judged on, not my gender. That, I felt, was the best statement about gender equality. That's the sum of all of this. And how I came exactly to that, I can't answer, except what I said originally, that there was so much emphasis on learning and doing the work that somehow that dominated everything, you know? I can't answer all the motivation on that. You know what I'm saying? Also, I was married to someone who had no such thoughts on women, because that's very relevant.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Yeah, it sounds a little bit like what I've heard about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her husband and how supportive he was of her career.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Yes. By the way, for example, immediately when I started teaching, that first teaching at Swarthmore, my husband immediately said, as I was debating whether I could do it, he said, "I'll arrange for my courses to be on the days yours are not, so, in case any of the kids get sick, one of us can be home."

[J.B. WOGAN]

Yeah, so he was, he was very supportive of you.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Totally. But it was a deeper thing that than, you know.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Right.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

In the same way that he respected any steps I was making in the career, he was a father all the time also. He did not feel the only care from the children came from the mother. So, there was equality.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Right. So, I wanted to shift now to talk a little bit more about your career and less about your distinction as a woman in economics. So, let's talk a little bit more about what you did as an economist. I saw that two of your areas of focus were on urban public financing and the economics of education. What drew you to those topics?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Well, that, I was drawn to at the Federal Reserve, because I was working on the public finance problems of large cities of America, you see. And one of the things I discovered in my analysis of the public -- obviously, I concentrated most on Philadelphia. But one of the things I concentrated on is comparing Philadelphia's budget with other major cities. And what I learned, to my amazement, that the biggest contribution to the deficit was from education. So, then, that's how I came to that field.

And then I thought, why education? There have been a number of assessments of efficiency on libraries and police force and so on, and then I looked up how you judge efficiency. I started to search on how you judge the efficiency on education. Well, it would take a very long time to go into all of it. But it turns out there was one professor at the University of Chicago, William Coleman, who had done the only study that had ever been done on which teachers are best, only he did it with what schools are best, so he used school average data and so on. And this is regression analysis, you know, and so on.

So, I thought, I'm going to do it with the City of Philadelphia, and get data on individual students in each school, and the teachers and so on. And the president of the Federal Reserve back then, David Eastburn, called me in when they heard I was interested in this topic to say, "Now, what are we doing in education?" So I talked to him about it. And he thought it was a great idea, and he went with me to see the superintendent of schools of Philadelphia to get consent to use all the data. And I assured them right away that we would discard all the names and only assign numbers to the students so there would be no identification. And then, for a four-month period, I had two research assistants, and we conducted a random sample from all the schools. I won't take you into the whole thing, a couple thousand students.

We had data on their parents' education, their parents' race, the gender of the kids, the gender of the teacher, the background of the teacher, the score on the National Teacher's Exam, years of experience, the evaluation of the college, the rank of the college they went to, the experience. You see what I'm saying. And conducted all of this, and got all of this data over a many months' time and assembled it, and put out the first study that had been done at that level of detail for the certain teachers, and I did it for three different years so that you weren't picking up something by accident. And there were certain teachers who were consistently given controlling for the students in the class.

Oh, I had the initial IQ of the child. You see what I'm saying? But full controls, with the background of the child and the past thing, and certain teachers who were consistently at the bottom, and then a lot in the middle. And I put all this together and said efficiency calls for excellence, and the only reward for teachers, by the way is, still true, is that every year you get an increase in salary whether you're the greatest teacher in the city or the worst teacher in the city, every teacher gets the same increase. And I took a stand against that. Well, you can imagine what the union had to say on the subject.

So, that's where I came into urban public policy and all of that, and then one thing led to another. And there were a number of different things. And then, by the way, subsequently, six other Federal Reserve Banks over the next several years did comparable studies in their area, all of whom found out the same thing. So, that's how I got into education. That's the whole point. And then that got a lot of publicity. The union invited me to give a talk. My husband wanted a policeman to go with me. They were furious. But, again, I didn't get angry. I just answered the questions. That's what I believe in. I believe in evidence-based work from the beginning of time.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay. And then how did you end up at the Wharton School of Business?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

So, I came to Wharton by this remarkable dean, Dean Carroll, who called me one day at the Federal Reserve and said, "I'm thinking of forming a Public Policy Department in the Wharton School and wondered if you'd consider coming to head it." At the time, I would be coming as an adjunct, because if the department didn't succeed, they weren't giving me a professorship. And I said, "A Public Policy Department in a business school?” He said, "Yes." He said, "Everybody going into the public sector should understand the private sector." He said, this is the unique thing, "Everybody going in the private sector should understand the public sector." I said, "Is there another business school in the country that has one?" "No. We'll be the first." And I was taken aback by the whole idea, you know.

My husband and I talked about it and so on, and I decided, what the heck, it sounds like a great idea. I worked that summer, because I had nobody -- I had no place to go to for developing the curriculum. The curriculum of a public policy school is one thing, but when you're located in the business school, you have to -- so I worked very, very, very hard to develop the basic course. After about three years, we had three different sessions of it, you know, three class fulls of 65 to 70 students. Now they weren't public policy majors, most of them, but they came from all over to take them. And I was thrilled with the whole thing. I worked incredibly hard on that.

By the way, all the courses taught evidence-based stuff. Underlying every course was based stuff. You know, in the basic course, we started with the basic principles of microeconomics that have bearing on public policy, the basic principles of political science that has it, and then I would take five different areas, education, medical things, and talk about the roles. For example, to give a simple example, in medicine, you have one kidney and three people who need it, how do you decide? Well, in a market economy, just whoever pays the most. Is that what you want? You see what I'm talking about. Yeah, then it becomes a role for government or its equivalent. I'm just giving a simple example. But in all of those, and then I would take them through the studies, the studies that show this and how it's done. I didn't go into every last statistical detail but the general thing about it. And then in subsequent courses, they had to do one themselves, you know, on this. Anyway, and that worked, and it's a functioning department now.

[J.B. WOGAN]

And what do you think the legacy of that innovation is on the field of public policy?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Well, I think the general underlying concept that – remember, that private economy, capitalist economy does not mean every single thing is private. After all, you allow a police force to begin with that.

The fact is, most of the students were majored, but we had a lot of students who were not majors who would take a couple of the courses. But most of the students who were majors went off into private consulting firms, but worked in the -- gradually, consulting firms had a section where the employee worked on government issues. So, they were working for a private firm, but they tended to work on government issues. That's where most of them worked.

 

[J.B. WOGAN]

So, these alumni are the legacy to some degree.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Exactly. So, the answer is, it's had some influence, and, I think that a lot of it comes from the basic course, where they get some exposure, at least to recognizing two things, remember, I did evidence-based stuff right from day one and for a lot of people. Nowadays, it's a part of everybody's curriculum anyway, but in those days, it was not. So, I think the design of that program and what the dean did was remarkable.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Well, as someone who has been conducting research to inform public policy, who's been interested in the role that evidence plays in policy-making, I was curious what you think is different today compared to when you first started working in this field?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

I think the good part is that, you know, even people who don't really know exactly what it's about, you know, kind of know you've got to see evidence. I mean, you can't pick up any newspaper without seeing 15 graphs, tables all of kinds, you know, every newspaper filled with this kind of stuff. So, I think that's a plus, and so the use of that as the basis for decision-making is a plus, and it's also associated, obviously, with the increase in IT, you know, all of that has greatly, greatly expanded that.

But I think that the world has -- what shall I say -- in some ways, it drives decisions. But polarization is making the choices of the topics, and the lack of integrity is a dominating force in this country now. I am appalled. You know, the evidence -- no more civics is taught. I gather it's beginning to go back. But there is a lack of integrity and that affects -- when I read first, a couple years, about misinformation, I felt I had to give up. If I can't watch something on television and believe the picture I'm seeing is correct, how can I believe anything? And, obviously, the most basic way we all get our sense of integrity is in your home, upbringing, and now, with the IT stuff, the ability to deceive is simply overwhelming, overwhelming, and I feel we have never appropriately -- one of my findings, by the way -- you'll see why I'm saying this -- is in class size for middle and high-achieving students, large classes make no difference than small classes. For low-achieving students, it makes all the difference in the world. And the way education resources should be allocated should reflect that. Not spend more money on everybody, but you see what I'm saying.

So, all of the sources for giving integrity have become more and more, and the techniques for using all this is everywhere, so it's hard to trust anything I see or hear. So, I think the point is that evidence-based policies should have an adjective before it to expect it to be good in, what did you say, 2050; that, without the development of integrity, evidence-based, in many ways, will fall apart. If I can't believe the numbers you give me and that you're giving me all the qualifications for the numbers, how can I believe it?

And I was an expert witness on a number of cases, education issues, and I would never accept it if I couldn't do the evidence-based study. I was not ready to use anybody's else's evidence-based study. And just to prove the merits of that, one of the first cases I was in Baltimore, the state hired me, and it was a case of the expenditures were much less on pre-K than on other places across the state, and Baltimore was suing the state for inadequate thing, and the question is, does it make any difference whether the expenditure is more or less? You see what I'm saying?

[J.B. WOGAN]

Uh-huh.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

And they had a study which showed that it made all the difference in the world, done by a professor at the University of Maryland, and I said, "Well, I'll only take it if I can do my own study," which I did, which showed, in fact, it made all the difference in the world whether you had pre-K or not, but did not make a difference on the difference in cost. When it came to the trial, and he used a control group, and the state asked me to look at his whole deposition to see if I had any suggestions, and I said, "There's something very strange in that his control group, the characteristics of the people in the control group were almost identical to the group in the experimental group. I've never had such luck. You might just ask him about it.” Bottom line -- I won't take -- on trial they asked, and it turns out he had made up those numbers entirely. This is a professor at the university.

[J.B. WOGAN]

You mentioned 2050 there. Just for listeners' sake, they should know that I had sent you some questions advance, and I had asked you if you were to bet where the field is going, what do you think evidence-based policy will look like in the year 2050, so that's where 2050 comes from. Since you've already started to answer that question, let's stick with it. Is there more you wanted to say about the future of evidence-based policy?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

I think that our ability to gather knowledge -- this is a plus of evidence, and Mathematica has been outstanding in this -- at gathering knowledge on evidence-based things, the ability to get good answers and help on every single thing we're doing is staggering. But gathering knowledge, what shall I say, is not the same as having the wisdom and using it. And that without the integrity, the assurance of integrity, we will not be getting the benefits. Now, certain places in general, in hospitals, for example, the research and so on in hospitals has been very, very meticulous, and has been extraordinary when things have been able to be found out for that. But the world is filled with money being the determinant of the answer, and so my answer to you is, evidence-based could be the most invaluable tool ever, ever, but until we get integrity in place, it won't be.

[J.B. WOGAN]

So, going back to one of the questions I was asking about earlier, in terms of how the field of evidence-based policy has changed, one of the reasons I asked about that is, there does seem to be a lot happening right now, a lot of activity at the federal level around trying to embed data and evidence in federal policy, and I didn't know if, from your standpoint, if you think -- I mean, is that very heartening to you? Does that strike you as real progress or --

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Well, no. I am not overly optimistic on the solution, because the distribution of income that we have is a statement, and in some sense, it's a summary of what we're talking about. It's a summary of what the consequence of this, money essentially buys. As long as we allow huge donations to political parties from private things and all of that kind of thing, it's not going to change, and that's one end of the spectrum.

The other end is starting in schools to do civics in a way that teaches pride in your country and building into the coursework from kindergarten on, civilized debates and discussions. There was an article once the Harvard Education Review that, for example, that said children in kindergarten, for example, to teach how to have civilized debates, the teacher should say, we're going out on the playground now and we can go on the slides or the swings -- I may not have that exact -- which would you like to do? And then the little kids say, this one wants this, this one wants this, and they discuss back and forth. And then the teacher concludes by saying one day we'll do this and one day we'll do that.

The point is to teach that you can disagree and be congenial and respectful, and then in the first grade you can do different things. Obviously, as you go up the grade, constantly having them in this kind of discussion, where that debate -- I'm using debate, whatever you want to call it, where different views are discussed, but you are respectful of the different views, and then you figure out a way we're going to compromise on this. Because, obviously, the ideal place to get that is in your home. But there are large numbers of students, particularly in the big cities, who do not come from homes like that. And then in the most affluent areas, you get people who are brought up to know that money buys everything. I can get anything because I'm rich.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Right.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

That philosophy. And it's just a matter of handing out some more bills or whatever. Until that's changed, I am not optimistic.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Okay.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

And you are beginning to see some aspects of cooperation. My son, Larry, you know, is now out in Venice attending the G20 thing, and he's one of the co-directors on financing things, and they're discussing global cooperation on financing assistance to different countries. It's an ideal kind of discussion. And so I don't know what the whole aftermath will be, but they are working out, and there was considerable agreement, for example, on expenditures on, very big, on climate control. And without worldwide cooperation, you can't have solutions. I'm just saying, so I'm seeing that. Now that G20 hasn't had anything like that for years. So, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about, except we have to get back to the individual families, and that's in the schools. If it's not in the home, it has to be in the school.

[J.B. WOGAN]

In my intro, I mentioned your longstanding relationship with Mathematica, the fact that you were a board member for 26 years, a chair for 17 of those years, and most of this interview is not about your role in the organization. But I was curious, looking back, what are you most proud of in terms of your association with Mathematica and what it has achieved during your time as a board member?

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Well, first of all, I always had profound respect for Mathematica. You know, it's the integrity of the place, and they have don't a superb job of not being able to be identified with any party. Very few think tanks. See, that's the other thing, they are called "think tanks." They are thinking republican or they're thinking democrat, and that's not a think tank in my book.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Right.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Mathematica is one of the few that have retained that integrity, and that is number one. You see, that's part of this integrity discussion.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Yeah.

[ANITA SUMMERS]

Whatever conclusion they come to has nothing to do with parties. I used to take great pleasure several times over the years, at the end of the semester a student would come up to me and say, "You know, Professor Summers, we were trying to think about whether you were a democrat or a republican, and we haven't been able to decide." And I thought, "Good. That's just what I want." But that's very important. I wasn't on the subject of party, I was on the subject of evidence-based thinking and why government has a role and how to think about it, and, you know, I started at the beginning of the course by saying, "In the end, there can be value judgments." That's not what this course is about.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Well, I think that's a great place to end this conversation. Anita, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you sharing your stories and insights.

[J.B. WOGAN]

Thanks again to my guest, Anita Summers. In the show notes, I will link to a few examples of Anita’s scholarship that are available for free online. As always, thank you for listening to On the Evidence, the Mathematica podcast. You can keep up with the latest episodes of On the Evidence by subscribing wherever you get podcasts. Another way to stay up-to-date with the show is by following us on Twitter. I’m at JBWogan. Mathematica is at MathematicaNow.