Cass Sunstein

The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC), in partnership with Qatar Foundation (QF), has launched an initiative to promote and share knowledge about behavioural economics in Qatar. Devised by the SC’s Qatar Behavioural Insights Unit (QBIU) and QF, the ‘Community of Practice for Behavioural Economics in Qatar’ hosted a discussion with Professor Cass Sunstein, the founder and director of the Programme on Behavioural Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, at the SC’s Legacy Pavilion in Al Bidda Tower...Sunstein said he is impressed with Qatar’s commitment to behavioural economics and praised the work of the QBIU. “What I’ve noticed is that the World Cup is being seen by many as an opportunity to do something great in connection with football, and also things in relation to the type of challenges faced by many of the world’s nations, such as health issues and the promotion of entrepreneurship,” said Sunstein.

A new interdisciplinary project at Harvard will explore how behavioral science and behavioral economics can help improve health outcomes for patients and decisions made by doctors. It also has the potential to increase cost-effectiveness. The project, Behavioral Insights Health Project at Harvard, is a University-wide partnership between faculty members at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School and other Harvard schools...The Project’s board of advisers, which is expected to grow, includes a wide range of faculty from the Harvard community, including Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School. [Cass] Sunstein said he expects the project to attract students and faculty from schools across the University, and, in particular, to draw on the research and expertise of the Behavioral Insights Group based at the Harvard Kennedy School.  “We intend to share best practices, explore which interventions work and which do not, and find ways to reduce illness, suffering and premature mortality,” said Sunstein.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. There is talk these days about a complex and somewhat arcane legal concept: obstruction of justice. The term refers, broadly speaking, to willful efforts to interfere with the operations of the legal process, including criminal investigations. Let’s bracket the hardest definitional puzzles for now, and ask a question that could become pressing before long: What happens if special counsel Robert Mueller concludes that President Donald Trump has, in fact, obstructed justice? In answering, we should take a vow of neutrality. We should not allow our views about any particular president — negative or positive — to color our understanding of the meaning of the Constitution.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. People do not, of course, have to pay to use Facebook. It’s free. The company’s revenues come mostly from advertising. But in light of recent controversies, there have been discussions, at least outside of Facebook, about changing the business model. What if people had to pay to use it? How much would they be willing to spend? Any answers would tell us something important about the value of social media in general. I recently conducted a pilot experiment to obtain some preliminary answers. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, I tried to find out, from 400 Facebook users, exactly how much the platform is worth.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. President Donald Trump’s “Executive Order on Reducing Poverty in America” has produced the expected political reactions. Because it focuses on saving taxpayer money and strengthening work requirements for federal programs, many conservatives are celebrating it, while many progressives have attacked it as punitive and dehumanizing. As it turns out, it’s a lot more interesting and subtle than either side has seen – and potentially more constructive.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Americans think of July Fourth as Independence Day – the anniversary of their nation’s birth, signaled by the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But if you really want to celebrate the country’s birthday, you might do that today. It’s Patriots’ Day. In a time of national tumult and division, let’s all raise a toast, and shed some tears. Recognized in just four states, Patriots’ Day commemorates the Battles of Lexington and Concord, where the American Revolution began on April 19, 1775. Every American should know the tale.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. According to numerous reports, President Donald Trump is giving serious thought to firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, special counsel Robert Mueller or both. His lawyers should be telling him something pointed and specific: If the dismissal is aimed at shutting down Mueller’s investigation, it would probably be an impeachable offense. In any administration, the president’s lawyers quickly learn that one of their most important jobs is to say “no” to their boss – and to tell him things he does not want to hear.

As Americans increasingly turn to social media as their primary source for news and information, the dangers posed by the phenomenon of “fake news” are growing...In a recent study described in the journal Science, lead authors Matthew Baum, the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications, David Lazer, a professor at Northeastern University and an associate of the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and more than a dozen co-authors argue that a multidisciplinary effort is needed to understand better how the internet spreads content and how readers process the news and information they consume. Such broad-based efforts are necessary, the authors said, “to reduce the spread of fake news and to address the underlying pathologies it has revealed.”...In addition to Baum and Lazer, the paper was co-authored by Yochai Benkler, Adam J. Berinsky, Kelly M. Greenhill, Filippo Menczer, Miriam J. Metzger, Brendan Nyhan, Gordon Pennycook, David Rothschild, Michael Schudson, Steven A. Sloman, Cass R. Sunstein, Emily A. Thorson, Duncan J. Watts, and Jonathan L. Zittrain.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Should coffee come with a cancer warning? As a matter of policy, the answer seems obvious: Of course not. As a matter of law, it’s much more complicated, at least in California. A tentative judicial ruling in Los Angeles County last week suggests that when people go to the local coffee place, their morning ritual is going to be accompanied by a jolt of fear. It could potentially turn into a fiasco, I think, and it tells us something important about how well-intentioned laws can go badly wrong.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. For the first time since the 1940s, Americans have been asking: Can it happen here? The question, which has been debated in the U.S. for months, is meant to draw attention to the potential fragility of democratic self-government -- and to emphasize that in some periods, democracies are especially likely to turn in authoritarian directions. It would be fair to pose that question in any case in light of China’s continued rise, Russia’s resurgent aggression, and the disturbing developments in Turkey, Poland, Hungary and the Philippines. To his most severe critics, some of the words and deeds of President Donald Trump make it seem as if democratic principles might not be entirely secure in the U.S. itself.

An interview with Cass Sunstein. Home is a place where you can be entirely yourself — unshaven, feet up, unworried, slow heartbeat. I live in Concord, Massachusetts, where the American Revolution started. My house, which was built in 1763, played a role — munitions were held here on that fateful day, April 19, 1775, when a British Army force marched on the town to capture the hidden cache of arms. The house feels as if it has a bright, free, determined, revolutionary spirit.

An interview with Cass Sunstein. On The Gist, before Donald Trump’s headline-hogging presidency, things like bridge collapses made news for more than a few days. In the interview, Cass Sunstein’s new book asks if the U.S. is fundamentally immune to authoritarianism, or whether president Trump has proved the opposite. His new book—Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America—puts the question to more than a dozen leading writers.

When Law School Professor Cass R. Sunstein found out on March 14 that he was this year’s recipient of the Holberg Prize, he said he was both surprised and gratified. “It felt like squash had been made an Olympic sport, and I had been informed that I made the team,” Sunstein said. “Meaning, very surprising and slightly surreal—and a great honor.” The Holberg Prize is a Norwegian award given annually to a researcher who has made great contributions to the arts and humanities, the social sciences, law, or theology. Sunstein is a researcher in behavioral science and political theory, and his work explores the intersection of the two fields...Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe, who taught Sunstein, wrote in an email that Sunstein “is a national treasure.” “His breadth and depth of insight across disciplines is unparalleled, as is his productivity. That he credits me as his mentor is humbling but enormously gratifying,” he wrote.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The horrendous actions by Cambridge Analytica, a voter profiling company, and Aleksander Kogan, a Russian-American researcher, raise serious questions about privacy, social media, democracy and fraud. Amidst the justified furor, one temptation should be firmly resisted: for public and private institutions to lock their data down, blocking researchers and developers from providing the many benefits that it promises – for health, safety, and democracy itself.

In The New York Times Book Review, Andrew Sullivan reviews “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide,” by Cass R. Sunstein, and “Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America,” edited by Sunstein. Sullivan writes: It’s really hard to impeach a president. The founders included the provision, from the very start, as the weakest, “break the glass in case of emergency” mechanism for reining in an out-of-control executive. He was already subject to a four-year term, so he would remain answerable to the people, and to two other branches of government, which could box him in constitutionally.

Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein has been named this year’s winner of the Holberg Prize, one of the largest international awards given to an outstanding researcher in the arts and humanities, the social sciences, law, or theology. Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, is being given the prize for his wide-ranging, original, prolific, and influential research...“The main goal has been to deepen the foundations of democratic theory for the modern era, and to understand in practical terms how democracies might succeed in helping to make people’s lives better — and longer.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Did you hear? Taylor Swift is doing a new album, consisting of her favorite Katy Perry songs — and despite their lengthy feud, Perry herself will be performing on the album! OK, that’s not true. But a new study finds that by every measure, false rumors are more likely to spread than true ones. For those who believe in the marketplace of ideas and democratic self-government, that’s a big problem, raising an obvious question: What, if anything, are we going to do about it?

Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor known for bringing behavioral science to bear on public policy (not to mention for writing a best-seller about “Star Wars”), has won Norway’s Holberg Prize, which is awarded annually to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in the arts, humanities, the social sciences, law or theology...In a statement, Mr. Sunstein summed up his work as addressing “how to promote enduring constitutional ideals — freedom, dignity, equality, self-government, the rule of law — under contemporary circumstances, which include large bureaucracies that sometimes promote, and sometimes threaten, those ideals.”

An article by David M. J. Lazer, Matthew A. Baum, Yochai Benkler, Adam J. Berinsky, Kelly M. Greenhill, Filippo Menczer, Miriam J. Metzger, Brendan Nyhan, Gordon Pennycook, David Rothschild, Michael Schudson, Steven A. Sloman, Cass R. Sunstein, Emily A. Thorson, Duncan J. Watts, and Jonathan L. Zittrain. The rise of fake news highlights the erosion of long-standing institutional bulwarks against misinformation in the internet age. Concern over the problem is global. However, much remains unknown regarding the vulnerabilities of individuals, institutions, and society to manipulations by malicious actors. A new system of safeguards is needed.