Staff Profiles<\/a><\/p>\n[\/et_pb_accordion_item][\/et_pb_accordion][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″ _builder_version=”4.4.8″][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2020\/06\/Carl_Riskin_Profile_page.jpg” _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” alt=”Carl Riskin” title_text=”Carl Riskin” sticky_enabled=”0″ align=”center” border_width_all=”1px”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ text_font=”Open Sans||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
While Carl Riskin was an undergraduate student at Harvard in the late 1950s, momentous changes were taking place in China. Led by the country\u2019s Communist leader, Mao Zedong, China had embarked on the Great Leap Forward, an ambitious plan to turn the country into an industrial and agricultural powerhouse.<\/p>\n
The approach, including the ill-fated \u201cbackyard furnaces,\u201d brought economic disaster and famine. But Riskin was fascinated by it all, and went on to an academic career specializing in China\u2019s economic development. He has been teaching economics at QC since 1974. At the same time he has published widely on China\u2019s economy and is a senior research scholar at Columbia University\u2019s Weatherhead East Asian Institute.<\/p>\n
Riskin has traveled frequently to China, where he has close friends. He learned to speak fluent Mandarin and does research from original Chinese sources. It\u2019s not a particularly difficult language, he says. \u201cI\u2019m an avid pianist, so I don\u2019t have big problems with the tones.\u201d<\/p>\n
As China moved increasingly to engage with the world, Riskin was put in charge of writing the first two United Nations Human Development Reports<\/i> on China, starting in the late 1990s. (The Chinese authorities were most touchy about the section dealing with women\u2019s issues, he recalls.)<\/p>\n
In recent years the scholar has been studying income distribution in China. The big question now, he says, is whether the current worldwide economic crisis may undermine recent government policies aimed at \u201charmonious development\u201d: reducing regional disparities, environmental destruction, and an over-reliance on exports.<\/p>\n
QC President James Muyskens is focusing the college more on the borough\u2019s Asian communities as well as on the study of the region, says Riskin, who is developing a new course on the Chinese economy. Beyond that, the scholar likes the role QC plays in providing higher education to immigrants and other communities that often did not have it before. \u201cI\u2019m very happy to be a part of that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Favorite book:<\/strong><\/i> \u201cThis has changed many times.\u00a0Currently, it is probably the great sprawling novel by Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing<\/i>.\u00a0It\u2019s about race and music and the changing culture in the decades after World War Two.\u00a0It rings very true to one who grew up in that period.\u00a0The impact of racism on the lives of its main characters makes a devastating story.\u00a0And no other book I know captures what the passionate love of music feels like the way this one does.\u201d<\/p>\nFavorite music:<\/strong><\/i> Anything played by pianist Richard Goode. Riskin occasionally attends his master classes.<\/p>\nCourses taught:<\/strong><\/i> general economics, environmental economics, and developmental economics.<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Name: Carl RiskinTitle:Distinguished ProfessorDepartment: EconomicsDegree(s): B.A. Harvard College \u201960; Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley \u201969Contact Information: Phone: (718) 997-5454Office: Powdermaker 306IEmail: Carl.Riskin@qc.cuny.edu “Chinese culture is extremely hospitable. What I\u2019ve had problems with is the bureaucracy.”- Carl Riskin Student Profiles Alumni Profiles Faculty Profiles Staff ProfilesWhile Carl Riskin was an undergraduate student at Harvard in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"page_category":[],"wf_page_folders":[137],"class_list":["post-1172","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1853,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1172\/revisions\/1853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"page_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page_category?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}