Valerie Jarrett: Greater inclusion in education drives innovation, prosperity
Senior White House Advisor Valerie Jarrett made an emphatic call for greater inclusiveness in education, casting the issue as a key to future prosperity, in MIT’s Compton Lecture on Thursday.“When we’re working to ensure that all Americans have full access to education, resources, role models, encouragement, and opportunities that they need to reach their full potential, we’re unleashing the full force of our economic capacity,” Jarrett said in her lecture, “Built to Last: Opportunity, and the Economics of Empowerment,” given in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium. In the speech, Jarrett outlined a series of policies that President Barack Obama’s administration has undertaken to encourage participation in the so-called STEM fields – science, technology, engineering, and math — by the nation’s entire population. And, observing that millions of Americans, throughout history, have been denied social rights and educational opportunities due to their ethnicity or gender, Jarrett suggested that such inequities bear both moral...