Today, The Graduate Center announced a $9.5 million gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation. The multi-year gift will support the Stone Center’s work, with a significant portion designated for the center’s GC Wealth Project, aimed at expanding access to research and data on the increasing wealth accumulation that is of growing concern in the United States and in other countries. The gift will also allow the Stone Center to expand its postdoctoral scholars program by recruiting two new postdocs each year during the next five years, for a total of 10 additional postdoctoral scholars.
Professor Janet Gornick, director of the Stone Center, discussed why this new gift is particularly meaningful for the center, its postdoctoral scholars and graduate students, and its research:
How will this gift help to further the center’s goals in the coming years?
At the end of this calendar year, the Stone Center will celebrate its fifth birthday. We’re old enough to have built a strong and healthy foundation, and at the perfect age to look forward to the next stages of our development.
This extraordinarily generous gift from Jim and Cathy Stone will allow our center to solidify and grow. Since we opened our doors in 2017, we’ve built a strong, interdisciplinary research community at The Graduate Center, now including six Senior Scholars, four postdoctoral scholars, and about 20 Ph.D. students. Our GC team is complemented by an active group of 28 Affiliated Scholars, a remarkable set of researchers based in institutions throughout the United States and abroad.
We’re extremely grateful to know that, as result of this new gift, we’ll be able to not only sustain but also expand the Stone Center community. As a first step, we’ll increase our small professional staff — the team responsible for the largely unsung work of administration, financial management, and communications. I’m especially excited that we’ll be able to strengthen this invaluable behind-the-scenes team.
In the last decade or so, socio-economic inequality has become a major topic of public conversation. What do you think are currently the most pressing areas within the broader subject of inequality?
At the Stone Center, we’ve sought to locate our work in what I think of as a sweet spot in the world of inequality research. On the one hand, we’re committed to addressing fundamental questions about high and rising income and wealth inequality — that is, about the driving factors, economic and political consequences, and promising institutional remedies. On the other hand, we address these longstanding questions using constantly improving data and increasingly sophisticated methods and, as much as possible, we approach our work through interdisciplinary and intersectional lenses.
As we grow and add scholars, especially postdoctoral scholars, the Stone Center will continually incorporate new research agendas. We’re beginning to tackle, to name a few, the health consequences of economic inequalities; the pathways through which race, ethnicity, migration, and demographic changes shape inequality; the interplay between economic disparities and climate change; and the effects of extreme economic shocks on inequality. As we move ahead, we’ll continue to take on the “classic” questions, especially where more complex answers are needed, while simultaneously turning our attention to novel questions that reflect the complex trends unfolding around us.
A large portion of this gift will support the Stone Center’s study of the causes, nature, and consequences of the growing concentration of wealth among the ultra-rich. How is the Stone Center addressing the issue of wealth concentration, and how will this gift advance the center’s work in this area?
In recent years, attention to high and rising inequality has been mainly focused on income. Now, increasingly, scholars are turning their attention to wealth. Income and wealth are correlated across households, of course, but income and wealth inequality are distinct — with different determinants, consequences, and policy solutions. A growing research literature finds that the harmful effects of wealth disparities exceed those that result from income inequality.
Many scholars are analyzing wealth deficits among the least advantaged. Recent work has uncovered alarming wealth disparities across racial groups, insufficient savings among middle-aged households, and asset poverty among the elderly. At the same time, especially in the United States, the ultra-rich are commanding increasingly disproportionate shares of national wealth. At the Stone Center, we’re intensively analyzing this rising concentration of wealth among the rich.
One core component of the Stone Center is the GC Wealth Project, which we began in late 2017. The GC Wealth Project team has already produced a collection of papers, both substantive and methodological, and they have an ambitious research agenda for the coming five years. I’m excited to note that, in mid-2021, the GC Wealth Project will launch a publicly-accessible dashboard: an interactive web-based resource focused on high-end wealth inequality. It will include curated information, data, and visualizations characterizing wealth portfolios and wealth inequality across countries and over time. It will also include sections on wealth data sources and measurement approaches, as well as detailed information on the taxation of wealth transfers (e.g., inheritances and gifts) imposed by a selection of countries and by the 50 U.S. states. We hope that the GC Wealth Project’s dashboard will become an indispensable resource for wealth scholars and policy analysts around the world.
Of the many accomplishments and contributions of the Stone Center and its scholars, which means the most to you?
I’m proud of much of what we’ve accomplished at the Stone Center. But perhaps most of all, I’m proud of the support — intellectual, collegial, financial — that we’ve been able to provide to young inequality scholars. The Stone Center is now home to four two-year postdocs and we’ll welcome two more in September 2021. This tremendous new gift from Jim and Cathy will allow us to select and hire 10 more postdocs between 2022 and 2026. That is almost too good to be true!
We’re also gratified that we’re able to provide financial support, advising, and mentoring to students enrolled in several of The Graduate Center’s academic programs. At any given time, the Stone Center employs about 10 to 15 student research assistants. We’re also able to offer a smaller number of students travel funding and modest stipends, awarded through annual open competitions. There is little that we do that means more to me than the role we play in developing future generations of inequality scholars.
How does the research carried out by the Stone Center resonate with the aims of The Graduate Center, whose stated goal is to advance knowledge for the public good?
At the Stone Center, we’ve always loved the motto displayed on the outside of The Graduate Center’s building: “The life of the mind in the heart of the city.” As with The Graduate Center more generally, providing accessible knowledge to public audiences is central to the mission of the Stone Center. We’ve worked closely with GC Public Programs to produce dozens of events for large and diverse audiences, with Stone Center scholars frequently appearing as featured speakers, moderators, and panelists.
In the last two years, the Stone Center has also dived into the world of social media, and we’ve launched three new series on our website — Research Spotlights, Scholars’ Blog Posts, and Scholar Interviews — with each exploring various facets of income and wealth inequality. Thanks to this marvelous new gift from Jim and Cathy, we’ll be able to create and disseminate even more public-facing scholarship. We look forward to playing an ever-growing role in the national and international conversation about inequality that will surely continue in the coming years.
Read More:
The Graduate Center: $9.5 Million Gift to The Graduate Center, CUNY Significantly Advances Research on Income and Wealth Inequality
Jim Stone: How Academic Research Can Address Wealth Concentration and Inequality
Video: A Gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation