Yale Dean Charts Path To Town-Gown Inclusive Growth”

Lisa Reisman photo

Yale SOM Dean Kerwin Charles at Wednesday's talk.

Improve information deficits,” build genuine partnerships,” and lead with respect. 

Kerwin Charles laid out those goals as he described his deliberate path towards forging a new Yale business school-developed center designed to foster economic growth outside of the walls of New Haven’s Ivory Tower.

Charles, who is the dean of the Yale School of Management, described those efforts Wednesday night during a lively talk on Economics and the Black Community” hosted at The Lab at ConnCORP at 496 Newhall St. just past the New Haven town line in Hamden. 

Roughly two dozen audience members turned out for a conversation that addressed topics ranging from Charles’ childhood in socialist Guyana to the racial earnings gap.

The event also shed light on the latest in a Yale-city initiative born out of last year’s new four-part town-gown deal that saw the university increase its voluntary payments to the city by $52 million over six years. 

The deal — first announced in November 2021 and approved by the Board of Alders in April 2022 — included the creation of a new Center for Inclusive Growth” to be housed at Yale’s business school and run by Charles, with Yale contributing an additional $5 million in the first six years towards that center’s development.

In a November 2021 letter to the alders describing this part of the town-gown agreement, Yale President Peter Salovey wrote that the new Center for Inclusive Growth will be established at Yale” and that its activities will include seeking to identify economic and social development initiatives aimed at bolstering growth throughout our community. The center will benefit from an advisory committee consisting of subject matter experts from both the city and the university. Kerwin Charles, the Indra K. Nooyi Dean of the Yale School of Management, will help launch this effort.” He also wrote then that the center’s structure and initial projects will be developed in the coming months.”

These many months later, what’s the latest?

We are making progress,” Charles, an internationally acclaimed economist, told attendees at Wednesday evening’s talk.

Charles said the aim for the new center is to avoid a top-down, uni-directional engagement” common to town-gown collaborations. 

One of the things I emphasized to Yale is that we’re not just going to do something tomorrow that the faculty wants,” he said. For too long, and in too many places, when universities interact with the community, they say, Here’s what we’re going to study’ and then they say, This is how we’re going to study it.’”

That, he said, leaves residents feeling like lab rats, experimented upon, probed and prodded. Nobody wants that.”

To that end, he and his team have held 31 meetings with local leaders, with citizens of the community, with alderpersons, and the mayor,” he said. They have identified space for the center. An announcement of its executive director is in the offing. 

There must be a genuine partnership,” he said. There must be respect.” 

The challenge, he said, is to identify ways in which we can be helpful. Are there problems identified by the community that our expertise and human capital can help solve.”

I can’t fix potholes,” he said. As far as help with a business plan, I’ve got a whole building of people who know about drawing up business plans.” 

The overall aim is to improve what he called information deficits.” 

Nobody is stopping that young Black girl from doing something, but she doesn’t know how one becomes a lawyer, how one starts a business,” said Charles, who has published widely on earnings and wealth inequality, labor market discrimination, and unemployment, among other topics. 

This is the result of the long reverberations of history,” he said. It’s not just that I don’t know how to start a business. My father didn’t know, and his father before him didn’t know.”

His concern: the focus is on the wrong income stratum. 

I have worked at among the world’s greatest universities, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Yale,” he said. In each of those places when issues arise about Black-white differences and outcomes, it is said, You know what we gotta do, we have to open up the corridors of this place to more Black people, make it more welcoming.’” 

Sandra Salmon at Wednesday's event.

Here’s the unfortunate truth about that,” he said. That ain’t where the problem is. If I’m concerned about the lack of Black wealth, I’m not worried about two more Black students coming to Yale. What about the hundreds of thousands of Black men and women who have no opportunity, who have no access to capital, who have no access to information? We have to think about where the problem is.”

Among his solutions is one that is decidedly inexact for someone who described the initial allure of economics as its internal consistency, its exactitude, its precision.”

Belief,” he said. Believing you can is no guarantee, but believing you can’t is a certainty. It is hard for me to understand how a Black child that has grown up in difficult circumstances anywhere in this country can have formed a belief about her potentiality that is comparable to her white, Asian, and Hispanic counterparts.”

Charles credited his mother with imbuing him with the sense that I could do anything. When I took the job at Yale, I said to my mom, Do I want to be a dean? Will I be good at it?’ And she said, Of course you can do it. You can crush it.’”

That’s a very big thing,” he said, smiling. You look a kid in the eye and you say you can do it.” 

Which is why, he said, the work of the sort being done by [ConnCORP] for young people, for fledgling entrepreneurs, for people starting a new business, or pivoting back to the work force, is so essential.” 

Your support imbues them with the sense of what is possible. You have a community with which to share ideas and frustrations.”

ConnCORP CEO Erik Clemons.

ConnCORP CEO Erik Clemons, who’s said he’s taken part in meetings for the Center for Inclusive Growth, expressed his gratitude for Charles’ efforts.

I so appreciate the way in which you have been intentional about being in community,” he said. It’s not just the meetings about inclusive growth. It’s really understanding the power of collaborative community, collaborative work across all races, genders, and classes.” 

Clemons said getting Charles to speak at the Lab was likewise intentional.

I wanted this community, especially the Black community, to know you existed, and you existed right on Whitney Avenue,” he said. So the question becomes how do I, how do we, entice other brothers and sisters who are at Yale, who are just as phenomenal as you are, to be more in a relationship with community?” 

That will take time, it seems. 

Charles highlighted a faculty member who was unsure of how she can engage with entrepreneurs, small businesspeople,” he said. She’s a professor, she writes papers, she doesn’t know how to do it. So I said, Come to the Center, we’re going to figure this out.’” 

We will not do this willy-nilly,” he said. This is about listening to people, inviting them in, and meeting them where they are.” 

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