by Pranab Bardhan, an Emeritus Professor at Berkeley, with main interest in Political Economy, Global Affairs with special focus on India, USA, Europe and China, and in literature and cinema
At MIT where Joe Stiglitz and I were hired as young economics assistant professors at the same time, our offices were close together, and both Joe and I used to work until quite late. Late evenings the janitors (mostly black) would come to sweep the floors and clean the bins and the toilets. Sometimes they’d sit down in our rooms and chat with us about the latest in sports, weather or politics. To Joe, this was routine; he did not realize how pleasantly out of the ordinary it was for me, coming from India. To this day in India, I have never seen a sweeper or a toilet cleaner daring to sit and chat with professors (or with students, for that matter). So that was a refreshing experience.
https://pranabbardhan.substack.com/p/when-i-first-came-to-the-us-two-political
Know Thyself 