Special Report: Supplying Accountability and Demanding Change
an exclusive interview with Economist Claudia Sahm
Supplying Accountability and Demanding Change
by Advait Arun (SFS ‘22) and Claire Beezley (SFS ‘23)
Claudia Sahm learned the hard way this year that complaining about a lack of diversity in her line of work could get her in trouble.
Sahm’s July blog post, titled “Economics is a Disgrace,” went viral for exposing pervasive discrimination and gatekeeping across the economics profession. The post did not mention a word about her then-current employer, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth (WCEG), a progressive D.C. think tank ostensibly committed to diversity.
Yet, barely a few months later, Sahm was no longer the WCEG’s Director of Macroeconomic Policy. Sahm insists she left of her own accord and was not fired. But it would be accurate to say she was pushed out.
The President and CEO of the organization that pushed Sahm to leave, Heather Boushey, was recently appointed to Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Boushey was not mentioned in Sahm’s July blog post—but Sahm’s latest blog post, “Economics Truly is a Disgrace,” published just last week, details how she faced retaliation from Boushey and the WCEG leadership team for her July post. The new post also dug up a leaked memo from five years ago that alleges that Boushey was a toxic, sometimes vindictive manager.
Sahm wrote, “As a leader at Equitable Growth, I saw [Boushey] and her team actively suppress diverse voices and damage the careers of people who stand up to her.”
Boushey has remained silent; the WCEG tweeted that Sahm’s story was “not based in fact.” However, given the evidence provided, it does look like the WCEG, Sahm’s supposedly inclusive employer, indeed retaliated against Sahm for speaking out about a goal they both supposedly shared.
The Caravel interviewed Sahm and reached out to many others for comment.
At the end of the day, Sahm told the Caravel, all she wants is for leaders in the economics profession to be held accountable for their actions: “The goal of my two ‘disgrace’ blog posts is to bring attention to the systemic, cultural problems in the economics profession, not to call out specific individuals. The people are [named in the posts] to make it concrete that our problems start at the very top of the house and the hurt reaches all the way to our students” (emphasis Sahm’s).
For saying that, she, too, was excluded and hurt.
Deadweight Boss
Sahm says she is not out to attack anyone. But, considering that Boushey, the person whom she claims retaliated against her, will now sit on Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, it’s not clear that Boushey was held accountable at all.
Sahm allowed that Boushey would bring a new perspective to the Biden team—according to Sahm, she brings a “network of economists [who were not] there when [Sahm] was [on staff in] the Obama administration” in 2015 and 2016.
However, Sahm worried that Boushey’s management would be harmful toward those working alongside her, and especially under her: “A member of [CEA] has direct management responsibilities of both mid-career economists on staff and research assistants straight from undergraduate studies, as I know [from my time on staff] in the Obama Administration,” she explained in an email.
When Boushey’s appointment was announced, the economic policy world largely praised the choice. While Sahm’s allegations, released just the next day, drew considerable support and sympathy from some, they were also met with silence from others.
Marshall Steinbaum, an economics professor at the University of Utah, told the Caravel that the academic economics community has been “conspicuously silent” on the allegations, while those in the policy world have turned to positive personal experiences to “implicitly discredit” Sahm. He has been extremely vocal on Twitter in defense of Sahm.
Kathleen McNamara, a professor of government at Georgetown, praised Boushey’s leadership skills in a series of tweets, mentioning her own positive experience working with Boushey at a retreat. When the Caravel asked for her thoughts on Sahm’s blog post, McNamara declined to comment, citing her distance from pure economics.
McNamara praised Boushey for her leadership at a political economy retreat that Boushey organized and McNamara attended. (Twitter)
In McNamara’s defense, Sahm does not doubt that some people could have had positive experiences working with Boushey. ”I had a great experience [at WCEG] until July 30,” she told the Caravel, referring to the day she was told her post put the organization’s reputation at risk. The post was published on July 29.
But, she continued, “You don’t go to a judge and say, ‘well, I did kill that one person, but those 10 other ones? I did a great thing for their life.’ This is not how it works. There are a lot of ways for us to make excuses and not admit the obvious.”
Sahm underscored how divisive admitting the obvious actually was: “I have friends in D.C. who may never speak to me again. I publicly criticized Heather’s management skills after her appointment was announced. And it was after my friends had praised Heather’s policy skills, skills I agree she has.”
The Biden Administration is still hiring, including at the CEA. It makes sense that people seeking employment ought not to criticize the people who would hire them.
After all, said Sahm in an email, “insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders. [That] was advice Elizabeth Warren says Larry Summers, then a top adviser in the Obama Administration, gave her.” Rather than follow that rule, Sahm explained, “I chose to be an outsider over staying quiet.”
Sahm is not the only one with complaints. A 2015 memo leaked from the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank which the WCEG was part of at the time, points to a longstanding pattern of toxic management.
The memo details comments from five different employees who left the WCEG with complaints about Boushey’s management style. One called her “phenomenally incompetent” and the ““worst manager ever,” while another mentioned Boushey yelling and swearing. Sahm exclaimed, “You had one person leave with severance and four others that sound really disturbed by what happened!”
But, in what may come as no surprise, the consequences to Boushey herself were minimal. The memo mentions that she was undergoing “training and professional development” with a management coach, and that she was directed to “work more closely with HR.”
In fact, the memo was originally sent to Neera Tanden, who is currently making headlines as another controversial Biden appointee due to her inflammatory Twitter presence, dismissive comments toward progressive writers, and CAP’s ties to foreign investors, among other things (Tanden allegedly once punched Bernie Sanders’ former campaign manager in the chest for questioning Hillary Clinton’s support of the Iraq War).
Sahm expressed disappointment to the Caravel regarding Tanden’s handling of the situation: “It really bothers me that several years ago people like Neera Tanden or John Podesta, who Heather [Boushey] reported to and knew about her management issues, just brushed it off. If you’re not held accountable, then why would you get better?”
Once upon a time, Steinbaum, too, worked at WCEG. According to his recent Twitter statements, “It was the most toxic working environment I have ever been subjected to, very much including the University of Chicago Economics Department. I was screamed at in the office, berated in front of coworkers, prevented from publishing my research, punished for having my work appear in public & be well received. And, of course, ultimately fired.”
Steinbaum had nothing nice to say about his time at WCEG. His stated experiences there line up with descriptions of Boushey in the leaked CAP memo. (Twitter)
Steinbaum specifically mentioned his work with Boushey, tweeting, “Being victimized by Heather, both while I worked for her and long after she fired me [sic] had a profound effect on me personally and professionally. That's what bullies are and how they wield their power.”
Steinbaum and Sahm are certainly not excited about Boushey’s new gig in the White House. Sahm offered Boushey her own story as a warning: “If you have a demoralized staff at CEA and high turnover, it will be disruptive and bad for their economic policy advice.”
Career Gouging
Despite his tweets, Steinbaum told the Caravel via email that people following Sahm’s story are missing what he thinks is the most important part.
“I do think the coverage of this story has drifted too far toward Heather's workplace toxicity, which is very real (and which is attested to by the CAP memo), and away from why she fired Claudia [Sahm], which is a far more serious offense—retaliation for blowing the whistle on gender-based discrimination in economics. That fact totally puts the lie to everything Heather has supposedly spent her entire career working for, and no one (that I'm aware of) who's defended her has honestly confronted that fact in their defense of her.”
(As was previously mentioned, Sahm denies that she was fired, preferring to use the words “forced out.”)
The other publications that have covered this story—Fox News, Politico, Bloomberg, and the Daily Mail—have all focused primarily on Sahm’s allegations about Boushey’s management, to the Caravel’s knowledge. So, Steinbaum would be right to say that people are giving Boushey’s retaliation against Sahm less attention.
The existing evidence surrounding that retaliation, though, does not paint a pretty picture for Boushey.
Sahm’s July blog post mentioned not a word about Heather Boushey or WCEG. She didn’t know about the leaked CAP memo then, either. Not only was her blog post a personal one, with most names redacted, but Sahm says she received confirmation from her attorney that, because the post dealt with issues of race and gender, it was “so protected speech” (emphasis Sahm’s).
On July 30, not a day after the blog post was published, Sahm’s supervisor, Amanda Fischer, reprimanded Sahm for putting “Heather in a difficult position and put the reputation of Equitable Growth at risk.” Sahm offered to look for a new job after that conversation; the next day, Fischer asked her for a formal resignation.
Between July and October, WCEG put Sahm on a “Performance Improvement Plan” to improve her allegedly faltering performance at work. A mid-year evaluation, given at the same time, was much more negative than Sahm’s February evaluation, which had praised her work in no uncertain terms.
Sahm tweeted that her “very good labor law attorney (who selectively takes on cases) said [the Performance Improvement Plan] violated the National Labor Relations Act. Title VII of Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
The given evidence and statements indicate that Sahm was, in fact, retaliated against for protected speech.
Sahm did not ultimately press charges for retaliation, tweeting that she dropped the case “because [I] had already spent $10k of my own money.” She was not convinced that the National Labor Relations Board would side with her against the leader of a well-known Democratic think tank.
Meanwhile, WCEG tweeted out its own statement in response to Sahm’s story: “As a mission-driven organization, Equitable Growth believes in collaboration and respect as part of our core values. Claudia Sahm’s version of what transpired in her time at Equitable Growth is not based in fact.”
Unsatisfied netizens replying to and quoting the tweet repeatedly pointed out one salient hypocrisy: an organization that believes in respect should not be publicly tweeting about former employees.
WCEG did not respond to the Caravel’s request for comment.
The Washington Center for Equitable Growth (WCEG) called Sahm’s story false on Twitter, but none of their justifications explicitly contradict Sahm’s story. (Twitter)
Sahm saw that coming. Because there would be consequences to admitting guilt, Sahm told us via email, “I do not expect an apology. They cannot admit wrongdoing now or in the past… I do not want Heather [Boushey] to lose her post. What I want [is] for all of Biden’s leadership team to treat their staff with respect” (emphasis Sahm’s).
But it’s not clear that letting WCEG off the hook for retaliation furthers Sahm’s, or anyone else’s, desire for accountability.
Why would WCEG, an organization that “believes in collaboration and respect,” retaliate against protected speech made freely, in a post that didn’t say anything about them? Why would Fischer tell Sahm that the blog post “put Heather in a difficult position?”
Steinbaum has a theory. It has to do with who Boushey is connected to; it also doesn’t make Boushey look very good. In her July blog post, Sahm redacted most names. One prominent name she didn’t redact was that of Larry Summers.
Summers, President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and President Obama’s National Economic Council Director, has a history of making sexist remarks and racist judgments, and he’s been in the public eye for quite some time. This year, he was an economic adviser to then-candidate Biden.
It’s no surprise that he is one of the leading economists Sahm wants to call out. Her July post mentions that she “had an early career woman come to [her] recently with an inexcusable interaction with him.”
A glance at Larry Summers’ Wikipedia page summary tells you what you need to know about his track record as a leading economist. (Wikipedia)
After Sahm left WCEG, she wrote in her December post that “Heather chose Larry over me.” On the surface, Sahm’s meaning seems entirely symbolic: by dismissing Sahm’s criticisms of economics, Boushey is therefore siding with elites like Summers, the very people whose behavior Sahm is trying to change.
But Steinbaum suggested on Twitter that there may be a real “sick symbiotic professional relationship” between Boushey and Summers. Because Boushey came from a heterodox economics (read: not free-market capitalist) Ph.D. program, Steinbaum alleges that Boushey and others in her position would rely on the validation of “real economists” like Summers.
Indeed, WCEG, which Boushey runs, had Summers keynote at one event where Boushey and Sahm also spoke, and Boushey interviewed Summers for WCEG once, too; the two know each other and have interacted. John Podesta’s leaked emails have lots of mentions of both Summers and Boushey; the two were often mentioned together in emails relating to then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s economic policy proposals; the two inhabit the same world of thinkers and policymakers.
In his email to the Caravel, Steinbaum pulled no punches against this “D.C. think tank world.”
“What's a huge problem [in think tanks] is [the] total lack of commitment to any principle higher than careerism. As I wrote on twitter, my interpretation of what Heather did was that she's motivated by protecting Larry Summers and put her capital as a prominent voice on gender inequality to work for him. It's retaliation for calling out gender discrimination, but not motivated by gender discrimination, but rather careerism, in other words, if that makes sense.” (See what tweets Steinbaum mentioned here.)
By retaliating against Sahm, Boushey is proving her loyalty to Summers.
To Sahm, that makes complete sense: “I find it disturbing when people take on the mantle and say I care about this and they use it to advance their careers… and yet… it’s not the real deal.” Later, in an email, she underscored that advancing careers is “not what we [as a field] need to do better.”
Sahm wants to see the real deal. “I don’t see how accountability happens if we don’t say” the names of people who have done bad things, names of people like Summers. Or else retaliation against people like Sahm, who are trying to make positive change, will continue.
Though Sahm emphasized that the individuals involved in her specific case should only serve as examples demonstrating a systemic problem—and insisted that she did not want to see Boushey lose her appointment—Steinbaum doesn’t think change will come unless Boushey faces consequences.
“As for what needs to be done to change [the culture within economics],” Steinbaum wrote, “in this case it's very simple: Heather has to suffer career consequences for her retaliation, including losing the appointment to CEA, getting thrown out of the American Economic Association for violating its Policy on Discrimination and Harassment, and being removed as Executive Director of the Center for Equitable Growth.”
Steinbaum, like Sahm, wants elite economists to hold each other accountable to the standards of diversity and inclusion they claim to support. But he is not yet so optimistic, warning that, “If Boushey gets away with this, which I think is overwhelmingly likely, you can kiss any ‘gender reckoning’ in econ goodbye.”
Economics at the Firm Level
Any such “gender reckoning” is long overdue. To Sahm, that—and not the retaliation—is the most important part of this story.
The economics field is conspicuously dominated by white men—a 2019 study by the Brookings Institution found that only 23 percent of academic economics faculty were women, as were only 30 percent of Ph.D. economists working in the entire federal government. The numbers were even bleaker for racial minorities, who only made up 21 percent of the country’s economics faculty and 24 percent of federal government economists.
But representation, or lack thereof, doesn’t tell the whole story. The first ever professional climate survey by the American Economic Association (AEA), conducted from 2018 to 2019, demonstrates that the women and people of color who do pursue careers in economics deal with widespread discrimination from their instructors and colleagues.
Nearly half of women respondents reported experiencing sex-based discrimination, while more than a quarter of non-white respondents reported discrimination based on race. Women and non-white respondents disproportionately experienced discrimination or unfair treatment while seeking out advisors, research assistantships, and jobs. Black and Latina women reported the highest rates of discrimination based on either race, sex, or both.
A Black woman respondent to the 2019 AEA professional climate survey bluntly judged, “I would not recommend my own (Black) child to go into this field. It was a mistake for me to choose this field. Had I known that it would be so toxic, I would not have.”
The results of the AEA’s first professional climate survey indicate that women and people of color in academia face widespread discrimination compared to their white male counterparts (AEA).
In “Economics is a Disgrace,” Sahm recounts numerous stories, both her own and shared with her by students and colleagues, of academic faculty and economic policymakers making racist and sexist comments. Often, their targets did not report the incidents—Sahm herself recalls not even learning of an employee relations office at the Federal Reserve until she had worked there for more than ten years.
But power dynamics, too, make it risky for young economists to speak out against discrimination and poor treatment. And even when they do report, consequences don’t always follow—the weak response by Tanden and CAP to complaints about Boushey makes that clear enough.
In addition to racism and sexism, economists must contend with an exclusionary culture of gatekeeping and elitism, according to Sahm. She writes that a “handful of departments” wield disproportionate influence, providing insiders with prestigious opportunities like spots on the National Bureau of Economic Research, while economists with less reputed institutions are largely left out.
The outpouring of responses to Sahm’s original post further demonstrated the pervasiveness of that toxic environment. “I had so many people contact me. Many shared, ‘ I felt so alone. I felt like it was my fault. I'm not alone,’” Sahm remembered. “And some told me: ‘this happened and I left economics.’”
In such a hierarchical, elitist field, it’s no surprise that leaders aren’t held accountable.
We asked one recent Georgetown Ph.D. graduate about her experiences. She allowed us to quote her denial to comment: “It is often difficult for recent grads to discuss these things, so I also recommend reaching out to more senior folks, who have the ability to speak more freely on the subject.”
For what it’s worth, Sahm saw that denial coming from a mile away. “Early career individuals can be hurt really badly by sticking their neck out and making noise,” she told us. In such an inhospitable environment, it would be hard for anyone, not just early-career economists, to speak their minds.
So Sahm did it for them. In a September interview with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Sahm admitted she wanted to start this conversation:
“I’ll take this one for the team because I can. I don’t mind rocking the boat—I’m not trying to destroy economics. I love it. I’m not trying to destroy Larry Summers or any of these men. I just want them to stop and think: ‘Could I be more supportive?’”
Often, they could be more supportive.
Sahm spent much of our interview praising Janet Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chair, for being a high-profile advocate of increasing diversity and improving inclusivity within economics. Yellen, says Sahm, forced her staff to think about these issues.
Sahm admits that “the people who are bad-behaving, most of them just aren’t thinking about what they’re doing.” When leaders like Yellen model good behavior at the top, that can change. However, “Bad behavior is often learned,” too, said Sahm.
“So it's not just about individual behavior. It's about changing the institutions, changing the culture.” Sahm had mentioned earlier that economists, ironically, don’t like discussing questions of power and institutions.
“Until things have changed” and “the bad behavior stops” in the majority of professional economic organizations, Sahm goes on, “knowledge”—“and allies,” she later added— “[are] the most protection that young people can have from getting hurt.” Sahm isn’t out to get Boushey or Summers; she just wants to tell others the truth about the world she’s in.
“We have Nobel Laureates, past presidents of the AEA, and top advisers of presidents doing things that are not inclusive,” said Sahm in an email. She had earlier said, “We can’t do our best economic policy if this is what we have come to accept as the way economics is.”
Modeling Change
We asked Sahm what advice she has for students who want to enter the economics world, especially now that she’s revealing the field’s dark underbelly. Why would students want in, if this was “the way economics is”?
She praised the advisors who have supported her over the years, and generalized that it would be “really helpful for [young adults] to have… people cheering them on.” She maintained that “The last thing I want to do is scare people away or make them not feel welcome.” Later, in an email, she added, “I love economics and want others to love it, too.”
Still, she was unclear about what students could actually do that didn’t involve finding good mentors within potentially toxic leadership structures. Perhaps that obfuscation was intentional; maybe it would be better for students to stay out until leaders clean up their act—referring to economics students, and “to people who have been hurt or who feel excluded,” Sahm exhorted, “economics needs you. But we don’t deserve you.”
But for those already within the profession, says Sahm, change “only happens when people demand it." Right now, Sahm is demanding it. Change—in this case, having leaders who model more inclusive behavior—does not begin without supplying accountability.
Sahm’s post has actually achieved some success. She mentioned, “One man in the post contacted me and apologized for what he’d done.” An apology isn’t accountability, but it’s better than nothing.
At worst, she’s getting people “to recognize that we have a systemic problem” in economics. At best, she’s getting economists to think about and reevaluate their own past actions in light of these systemic problems. Slowly but surely, Sahm hopes to continue to align the world of professional economics with the goals of diversity and inclusion that, as a workplace, it sets out for itself.
Economists like Sahm make models of policies and preferences for a living. These models are supposed to fit the real world. If they don’t, economists need to change the models, adjusting their equations and reevaluating their assumptions.
Working with people and not graphs, however, demands the opposite approach. Sahm sees a world of discrimination and gatekeeping, nothing like the model community that she was promised.
But that model is a good one; its assumptions and its goals are valid. It’s the world around her that Sahm is trying to change.
Claire Beezley is the Compass Gender editor and the Caravel’s Director of Digital Operations. Read her work here.
Advait Arun is a former Compass Money editor and the Caravel’s former Director of Digital Operations. Read his work here.