Last week, some people wanted to meet up with me at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in New York. I was a little embarrassed to tell them I was not invited to CGI, and in fact have never been invited to CGI. Actually, there is a long list of distinguished groups wise enough to have never invited me to anything.
I think each of us who makes some kind of public comment on anything have some places where we are welcome (INs) and others where we are not (OUTs). I thought it might be entertaining if I told you mine.
Coincidentally, I’m also working on a paper with some co-authors about export specializations that occur by destination country market, where there does not seem to be much rhyme or reason to which country markets a given exporter penetrates compared to other similar countries they do not. Maybe the same is true with intellectual markets.
Indeed, with some exceptions, I can’t detect much pattern in my INs and OUTs. It does not break down neatly by ideology or political spectrum, for example. There are many possible explanations: (1) my work is stupid, and some people are clever enough to figure this out, (2) my work is brilliant, and some people are too dumb to figure this out, (3) I’ve offended important people at some places but not others, (4) I have messages that are welcome at some places but not others, (5) some of my OUTs may have stricter standards than my INs (although I would NOT say that about those INs so kind as to invite me).
Some interesting exceptions to my IN and OUT pattern are (1) aid agencies, and (2) universities. Invitations to (1) and (2) include a representative spectrum and I don’t detect any OUTs in either category (although feel free to nominate yourself as an OUT if you have disinvited me without my knowledge).
I hope my example will cause others to come out with lists of their own INs and OUTs.
Anyway, in some awkward mixture of self-promotion and self-abasement, here they are:
- The INs that have invited to belong or speak or write, sometimes on multiple occasions (although other times only once and they might have changed their minds since: I have low standards to count myself IN).
- The OUTs where the invitations to write or speak or belong somehow got lost in the mail.
| IN | OUT | |
|---|---|---|
| Think tank | Brookings | Council on Foreign Relations |
| International affairs magazine | Foreign Policy | Foreign Affairs |
| Ideas festival | Aspen Ideas Festival | TED conferences |
| Academic organization | National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) | Bureau of Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) |
| Book Reviews | Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, New York Review of Books | New York Times Book Review |
| Software philanthropy | Google.Org | Gates Foundation |
| Fashionable confab | Davos | Clinton Global Initiative |
15 Comments
That was a really interesting post- thanks. I can’t believe you were not (and have not in the past) been invited to the CGI. I was also really surprised about the NYT review diss.
It truly boggles the mind that you were not invited, but Jessica Alba and Brad Pitt (among others) were. I find this extremely disturbing given that your voice is an extremely important part of the aid debate (while you obviously are
voicing your own opinions on aid etc – you are also indirectly the voice for a lot of people worldwide who fully agree with you).
Out of interest (f you have the time to reply to this post) was Dambisa Moyo invited? Or George Ayittey – or, conversly Sachs? (if Sachs was then I guess only the supporters of the aid-model as it stands now are allowed to voice their opinion…)
It also seems to me there is quite the link between the three heavyweight orgs you were Not invited to (and therefore indirectly all those who agree with you!) – Council on Foreign Relations, Gates and CGI. I am a great
admirer of Clinton – but I am really surprised. He can invite Brad Pitt and other celebrities but not those actually
working with Real experience (hard earned) in the field of development? (re Brad Pitt, while his contribution is for
New Orleans, I still think in the case of ‘Make it Right’ the CGI should have recognised the people that Pitt depended on (the giants on whose shoulders he stood) to make such a thing possible (the architects, planners, structural engineers, landscape architects, specialists in solar energy, sewage etc).
Given the 6-degrees of separation in many of these orgs I supppose it’s not all that surprising… (CGI founded by Clinton who has done work with Gates, and was one of the people that supported the inclusion – incredibly – of Angelina Jolie [beggars belief] to the Council for Foreign Relations…which is fully endorsed by Gene Sperling, in I would say a blatant attempt by Sperling [not unlike Sachs and K Annan] to further his career through some well-places star association [in UK see current labour
minister David Milliband vying for Brown's job as an example of this currently in process..raw ambition at its most blatant].
I find it laughable (re CFR) that, say Jolie (!??) is up there dispensing advice/views on her one-day fly-in trip to said location rather than the many people (programme managers, health workers, conflict specialists, those working with refugee/repatriation, malnutrion nurses dealing with kwashiorkor, aids, problems with pregancies etc etc on a daily basis) that actually work with these issues/in the countries themselves. She dons a hat, a grave expression and a note pad and takes notes and THIS is deemed an important contribution to the world via CGI and CFR but your voice (and therefore all those who agree with you, and count on your voice being heard) is not??
An actress like Ms Jolie taking notes as her contribution to development (which she is so lauded for..the world has gone mad!) adds nothing and is utterly irrelevant, as the stories of these people will be well known to all those already working in the fields of dev/int relations/aid etc….it serves no purpose except to fuel this illusion that actors can make a valid contribution by wearing a T-shirt and getting lots of PR exposure in People – while lessening any dialogue for real change. I’ve been annoyed about this (as clearly many are given the backlash on ‘glamour aid’ as Moyo put it!) for years now, BUT (!) I was under the impression that at places like CGI and CFR voices that provided a semblance of common sense and were trying to find an alternative/new way to development were also being heard. I am really shocked, and I find this quite worrying for all of us who don’t agree with the party line…..
(nb – my focus on the inclusion of celebrities at CGI/CFR is down to the fact that one hears..all the time!.. about their inclusion in said orgs – while it is hard to know who else is allowed in).
Hm, I think that there is a problem with your modeling. There is a difference between not being proactively invited, and not being welcome (out).
For example, just because the NYT Book Review hasn’t asked you to review anything doesn’t mean that they don’t respect your voice and opinion. Or are you referring to whether they reviewed your book? In which case, perhaps that is an issue with your publicist.
Likewise, what was your “In” with Google.org? Did they give you a grant? The Gates Foundation gives grants, so by “out” do you mean that they rejected a grant application?
Granted, I have no idea how invitations to these organizations, publications, and events are all determined, or if there is room to request an invitation (have you ever tried that?). But it seems like you need a better definition of what the two poles mean.
Lee,
You are right that it’s hard to interpret something that DIDN’T happen, and I am probably exaggerating a little the meaning of non-invitations.
To answer your question on Google and Gates, I am NOT talking about funding anywhere in this post. I am talking about issuing invitations to speak — Google did (once) and Gates did not.
I’m a Midwesterner where it is very bad form to try to invite yourself to anything, so I am talking only in this post about unsolicited invitations.
thanks for your comments. Bill
Outside of celebrity tip sheet Us Magazine, I haven’t seen many lists like this recently. I think that’s because social network analysis has come along so much recently — the perceived Easterly love is a tiny slice of the interactions among these players. There are questions of centrality, overlap, access that may have much more to do with the social graph of these institutions than any real judgment on your work.
For instance, my organization could also be described as “in” with Google.org and “out” with Gates Foundation, but that may have to do more with the information-hungry habits of Googlers and the younger Google.org’s less focused mission than any attributes of you or me.
If for some reason you wanted to attend either CGI or TED, I can put you in touch with the right people. In both cases I think they’re clubbish kinds of organizations and I’ve been invited to both because I know someone, not because of the quality of my ideas. Honestly, it makes me kind of sad.
Off-topic but have you seen “Improving Accountability at the World Bank” September 28, 2009 by Alnoor Ebrahim at HBS?
Link to pdf article:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pdf/item/6233.pdf
Link to his testimony:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pdf/Ebrahim-WorldBank-Testimony2009.pdf
General link:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6233.html
Jonathan Eyler-Werve:
I am a big fan of network analysis. I think it would be fascinating to do a more systematic analysis as you suggest. At the very least, it would be fascinating to get the speaker lists for a bunch of development-related conferences, see who is invited where, and see if there are identifiable clusters of conferences that tend to invite an identifiable cluster of speakers. Also as you say, some conferences would have more universal lists than others, and it would be interesting to identify the more central ones in this sense.
all the best, Bill
Bill,
You are presuming that conference organizers would divulge their invitation list to someone who is not on it. You would probably influence outcomes just by requesting the data, if they would even provide it.
Yours,
Diane
I think there is an idealogical division in the list. To explain it I’d turn to Thomas Sowell and his views on the conflict between the “constrained vision” (Easterly) vs. the “unconstrained vision” (TED, Clinton Global Initiative).
As flawed as the methodology might be, I think we are missing a larger point here. Easterly is “out” with certain players/voices (choose appropriate noun here) in the development field for reasons that are easily understood. After your exchange with Gates at Davos, I don’t think it is any surprise that you are not invited to speak to his foundation. Re NY Times, one has only to read some of the development puff pieces they have published to realize why they would not reach out to an aid skeptic. Not everyone in this business is as open to debate as Aid Watch. For some, questioning the assumptions that are articles of faith for others is reason enough not to be invited.
I don’t think BREAD really does invitations, although if you submitted a paper or asked to attend a meeting, I’m sure they’d be receptive. The bigger surprise is that NBER has invited you to one of their conferences – since that’s an organization that hasn’t given many development economists the time of day.
The World Youth Alliance [www.wya.net]would ordinarily be in your “in list”. We have so many points of agreement, its almost surreal. However, impoverished and youthful as we are, I doubt you will find the time for us. I guess that means we are perpetually on everyone’s “out” list. Sucks!
Any chance you could simply be being fooled by the inherent randomness of it all?
Bill,
What’s your own in/out list – i.e. conditional on getting an invitation, where do you go, and where not?
And are you on the out list of the IGC (not CGI), or are they on yours?
http://www.internationalgrowthcentre.org/index.php?q=node/108
Sometime it is better to be out than in, especially if people know you are out. The absence of participation could be a form of negative-participation in something you disagree with
P= F[IN]- F/out[IN]+ F/in[OUT]- F/out[OUT]
F[IN] function of times one is invited and heard
F/out[IN] is function of times one is invited but not heard, not seen for any reason
F/in[OUT] function of “silence stronger than words”- one is not invited but everybody knows he/she is not invited because he/she is disturbing of a pre-established consensus.
F/out[OUT] one is completely out – not invited not heard and nobody cares….
P= Popularity