http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/education/04YALE.html
New York Times April 4, 2002 Mexico Ex-President to Lead Yale Globalization Center By YILU ZHAO
Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico, will become the next director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, an institute that focuses on what Yale defines as the increasing economic, cultural and political interdependence between nations.
"Alleviating poverty in third world countries is an issue very dear to Ernesto's heart," said Richard C. Levin, Yale's president, in announcing the appointment yesterday. "He wants to make sure that the globalization process improves the welfare of the poor as well as the rich."
The center invites public leaders and potential leaders from around the world to the university's New Haven campus to give lectures, hold seminars and offer semester-long courses. It also sponsors research projects and conferences, such as the conference scheduled for next fall on the relations among Central Asian countries and how those relations affect the stability of the region.
Mr. Zedillo, 50, received his Ph.D. in economics from Yale in 1981. His own interest in the job seems to focus on how to bring the benefits of a more global outlook to third world countries, which have often been portrayed as being exploited by richer ones.
"Globalization is not the problem itself," Mr. Zedillo said in a telephone interview yesterday. "The problem is that we are lacking effective public policies regarding globalization. We want to make globalization inclusive and its economic consequences — the good ones — sustainable."
Mr. Zedillo has been credited with promoting the development of democratic institutions, to the extent that he presided over the defeat of his own party in Mexico's first fully democratic presidential elections, in 2000. The party had been in power for 71 years; his tenure began in 1994. He also carried out economic reforms that brought new stability to Mexico's financial situation.
Mr. Zedillo has had a long-standing relationship with Mr. Levin, also an economist teaching at Yale. The two met when Mr. Zedillo took Mr. Levin's class on industrial organization as a graduate student. The university approached Mr. Zedillo after Strobe Talbott, a deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration and the current director of the center, announced in January his resignation to become the president of the Brookings Institution.
"I have the highest regard for my own university," said Mr. Zedillo, whose appointment is effective in September.
The center, begun last year, is part of the university's effort to become more international. It decided last year to admit international students without regard for their ability to pay. It also started the World Fellows Program, which will sponsor potential leaders from around the world to study for a semester at Yale.
The university has long been an incubator of political leaders in this country. Four of the past six presidents — Gerald R. Ford, George Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — went to college or law school at Yale.
Now the school is not at all shy about its ambition to cultivate leaders for other countries.
"That's exactly what we want to do," Mr. Levin said. [end]