PRINT INTERVIEWS AND MENTIONS (Selected)

The New York Times
November 29 , 2002

For an Economic Proselytizer, Another Highly Visible Pulpit; Attention, Good and Bad, Follows Jeffrey Sachs. (Excerpt)

DANIEL ALTMAN

"His [Jeffrey D. Sachs] attempts to fix crises abroad and influence policies for development have consistently directed the attention of experts and ordinary people to pressing economic problems. So by bringing Professor Sachs on board last summer, Columbia has guaranteed itself a bigger voice -- if a controversial one -- on the world stage.

"He appears to distance himself from things he's done that are not perceived as success stories and cozy up to those that were, after the fact, seen as successful," said Janine R. Wedel, associate professor of public policy at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. She studied Professor Sachs in action when he was advising governments in Eastern Europe.

Moreover, Professor Wedel said, it has not always been clear whom he was representing at a given time -- his own consulting firm, Harvard, international financial institutions, the United States or a local government. Nor has it been clear where all of his financing has come from or how he has spent it.

"Such ambiguity of roles, as Sachs and others like him have, doesn't serve well the people who are getting advice and don't know the motives and income sources of the consultants who are providing it," she said. "And the shifting mix of roles certainly doesn't serve well those donors or governments who are trying to provide impartial advice."

No one, including Professor Wedel, doubts Professor Sachs's brilliance and determination, and even his harshest critics say that he often gets results. As a prominent advocate for the problems of poor countries, he has been hailed as a visionary even while being criticized as a showboat."

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