William McGreevey

Associate Professor, Department of International Health, NHS
Age: 76
Education: B.A. Ohio State University, Economics; Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Economics
Area of research: I’m trained as an economist and I’ve been working on issues of economic development for a long time. The first teaching job I had was teaching economic history, years ago and then I sort of stayed in that area and then came to Washington, D.C., many years ago and worked in development here, particularly at the World Bank for almost 20 years and then I’ve been teaching here at Georgetown for seven years.
Courses Taught: “Political Economy of Health and Development,” “AIDS: Who will live who will pay and what is to be done?,” “Population Demography and Development”

What Drew you to Georgetown? 
Well one thing is, I live in Georgetown, I live over on P Street so that was attractive. The Chair of our department, Dr. Bernard Lisa, and I were colleagues at the World Bank, and when he wanted to expand his group in the economics of the health sector he invited me to join.

What is the greatest challenge in your field today?
This is specified very well by writings about the fact that there is a risk that we will not grow as rapidly in our economy in the next couple decades as we have in the past and that one percent is getting all the main benefits of rising incomes and we have to figure out how to address that and to promote greater equality. So for us, just imagining how the future’s going to be is something of a challenge. I’ll add one quick note to that, which is that, for those working in the health sector, that is predicted to be the fastest growing opportunity area so working in health is a good thing to do.

What would your ideal course be?
Probably the issue that I’m most interested in is how we got from a condition where it was all nasty brutish and short – that was the famous phrase from Thomas Hobbes – in the period before the Enlightenment and then we went through the 19th century and a period where we became much better off and learned what was the cause of many kinds of illness and what will the future bring. That would be my top pick.

What would you be doing if you weren’t in academia? 
Hmm… Well I’m old now, let me tell you. My 76th birthday is coming up next Monday. If I weren’t working, if I had no other obligations, I would have fun travelling.

Interview by Katy Berk