Three UW-Madison faculty members presented ideas and potential solutions to counter material poverty Friday and Saturday during an annual conference on the subject held in Mazatlán, Mexico.
The third annual Mazatlán Forum: Platform for Cross-Border Collaboration invited scholars from across the United States and Mexico to present their ideas. The invitees’ studies and specializations vary from fields like sociology and philosophy to economics and business.
UW-Madison had the second most representatives at the forum, aside from Stanford University, which co-organized the event. UW-Madison sociology professor and Institute for Research on Poverty Director Lonnie Berger, public affairs and economics professor Timothy Smeeding and philosophy and educational policy professor Harry Brighouse said UW-Madison’s dominant presence at the conference is telling of the university’s reputation.
“UW-Madison is a public institution which has, over generations, made an unusual commitment to exploring and trying to help solve real, immediate social problems,” Brighouse said. “This is the university that produced social security after all.”
This commitment to conversation and discovery is crucial for Mazatlán Forum scholars to collaboratively develop challenges to poverty in the United States and Mexico, Berger said.
Berger’s presentation at the forum titled, “Supporting Young Men in their Family Roles,” illuminates his research on family complexity, child abuse and neglect and household debt. He focused on the direct relationship between poverty and social fathers, men who come to play a fatherly role either to their own siblings or to children not related biologically.
“[The forum] is a great chance to try out an idea you’re still working through that may be less than an academic paper or a policy,” Berger said. “Feedback from a range of different types of thinkers will get you revising and improvising until you have an idea that’s ready for primetime.”
All three UW-Madison representatives attended the Mazatlán Forum for the first time this year. Berger said UW-Madison’s passion for innovation makes the faculty excellent candidates for the conference.
“Our university really creates and pollinates creative thinking,” Berger said. “People want to come here. People want to visit, to train. It really speaks to the quality of the people here and their dedication to being here.”
