Part 1 of a conversation with distinguished professor Barry Bluestone, founder of policy schools in Boston: UMB and Northeastern.

McCormack Speaks

Barry Bluestone is the Russell B. and Andrée B. Stearns Trustee Professor Emeritus of Political Economy in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

He served as the founding director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy from 1999 to 2015, and the founding dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs from 2006 to 2012.

Before assuming these posts, Bluestone spent twelve years at the University of Massachusetts at Boston as the Frank L. Boyden Professor of Political Economy and as a senior fellow at the university’s John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs. He was the founding director of UMass Boston’s Ph.D. program in public policy.

Before coming to UMass in the fall of 1986, he taught economics at Boston College for fifteen years and was director of the college’s Social Welfare Research Institute. As part of his work, Bluestone spends a considerable amount of time consulting with trade unions, industry groups, and various federal and state government agencies. He was Executive Adviser to the Governor’s Commission on the Future of Mature Industries in Massachusetts and has worked with the economic development departments of various states.

Bluestone is also a founding member of the Economic Policy Institute, along with Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, Robert Kuttner, Ray Marshall, and Jeff Faux. In 2006, he served on the transition team for Governor Deval Patrick.

He has served as a member of many boards and public councils, including the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development as well as the Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance, the Governor’s Economic Development Strategy Council and continues as a board member of the Governor’s Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative, the Community Affairs Research Advisory Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and many more.

Professor Bluestone was raised in Detroit, Michigan and attended the University of Michigan, where he received his B.A., M.A. and finally his Ph.D. in economics in 1974.

In his spare time, when he was younger, he competed in team triathlons as a bicycle racer — fortunately with a team otherwise comprised of orthopedic surgeons and an internist. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was married to Mary Ellen Colten for nearly thirty years until her passing in 2017. Their son Joshua works in Chicago and
| after teaching English and Spanish in the Chicago Public School system now works in public housing projects on the city’s North Side.
Topics include housing and local economic development, local public finance, The Dukakis Center, the future of Boston housing and beyond, the paradox of urban life, and more.