Dr. Susan Dynarski, an economist at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, will present the 2023 Clemens Lecture titled “Inequality in Education” at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 25, in the Stephen B. Humphrey Theater at Saint John’s University.

The event is free and open to the public. The lecture will also be live streamed on the CSB and SJU website.

Dynarski earned her bachelor’s degree in social studies and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Clemens Lecture Series was founded in 1985 to further conversation on the ways that economics can speak to the larger problems of society and culture. It brings to Saint John's outstanding economists noted for their abilities to address the economic dimensions of social issues and to sustain dialogue with the other fields of the liberal arts. It also provides a valuable opportunity for students to meet both informally and in classes with the visiting lecturer. 

Dynarski’s research focuses on understanding and reducing inequality in education. She uses large-scale datasets and quantitative methods of casual inference to understand the effects of charter schools, financial aid, postsecondary schooling, class size and high school reforms on academic achievement and educational attainment. 

She is a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and was selected as a Carnegie Fellow in 2020. The Chronicle of Higher Education named her a “Top Ten Influencer” in 2015. She has been a visiting fellow at Princeton University and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. She also writes frequently for The New York Times. 

The Clemens Lecture Series is designed to be useful in understanding daily life and is intended for a wide audience, including students, faculty, the business and professional community and members of the general public interested in the impact of economic issues in their lives.