MIIS gets a new president: Sunder Ramaswamy to oversee merger with Middlebury | Monterey Herald

MONTEREY, California — These are interesting times for an economist, said Sunder Ramaswamy, president of Monterey Institute of International Studies.

“I regret not being in the classroom,” he said.

Ramaswamy took over management of MIIS this week from retiring president Clara Yu at a time when his academic specialty — international economics and development — is at the forefront of the public’s consciousness.

He’d like to be talking to students, he said, about “how this mess happened and how we can get out of it.”

The international financial collapse is like nothing seen in 80 years, Ramaswamy said. There have been localized financial crises, but nothing of the current situation’s global scope since the stock market crash of 1929 that set off the Great Depression of the 1930s.

“It’s the age-old mix of greed and lack of confidence,” he said. Recovery will require re-establishing confidence in the economy — “a very ethereal concept” — and the recent bailouts of banks and businesses, as well as investment in public infrastructure, could be the mechanisms that will turn it around.

Ramaswamy, 44, comes to Monterey after serving as dean for faculty development and research, and professor of international economics, at Middlebury College in Vermont. He helped oversee part of the integration of Middlebury and MIIS after the two schools announced a partnership in 2005.

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