Jason Furman, the Aetna professor of the practice of public policy, has been named Weil director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein announced the appointment, effective immediately, on May 1.
Furman, who co-teaches the perennially popular Economics 10, the largest course in the College, will serve alongside John Haigh, an HKS lecturer in public policy who has co-led the center since 2011. Furman replaces Eliot University Professor Lawrence H. Summers, who resigned from the position on February 25 amidst furor over his connections to financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
During the eight-year Obama administration, Furman was among the U.S. president’s top economic advisors. From August 2013 to January 2017, he served as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and in that role as a member of the cabinet.
In the opinion pages of the New York Times, where he is a regular contributor, Furman is known for his data-driven explanations of ongoing economic trends and his contributions to debates over economic policy. A defender of Federal Reserve independence—Jerome Powell was a recent guest in his Economics 10 class—he frequently emphasizes the limits of central bank policy, arguing that it cannot solve supply-side or policy-driven inflationary forces such as tariffs.
He is also a frequent commentator on economic data on the social media platform X, where he posts short takes on the latest releases of data concerning inflation, jobs, and gross domestic product.
As a professor of the practice, “my career has been animated by trying to close the gap between economic research and real-world policy,” said Furman in the HKS announcement of his appointment. The Mossavar-Rahmani Center “has been doing this for decades,” he noted, “and I look forward to working with John to bring together faculty across Harvard, government, business, and other experts—with a diversity of perspectives and approaches—to better understand and address issues from the governance of artificial intelligence to industrial policy to macroeconomic management.”
Across its various programs, the Mossavar-Rahmani Center produces key research and insights on healthcare, technology and innovation, labor, climate, macroeconomic policy, global trade, and other topics. The center is home to a repository of Harvard papers on these and other topics, and hosts fellows, as well as practitioners from business, government, and finance, who conduct research and engage with students.
In the announcement, Weinstein, the HKS dean, described the Mossavar-Rahmani Center as “one of Harvard Kennedy School’s most critical intellectual homes—a place where the world’s best researchers and practitioners come together to explore how private and public institutions can work together to build a better world.”
