Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

Why Obama Just Wrote Articles in 3 Academic Journals

Ideas pushed aside by politics can live on in scholarly debate.

January 22, 2017 at 3:00 PM UTC

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

Presidential scholar.
Photographer: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

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In his final two months as president, Barack Obama restricted Arctic drilling, sanctioned Russia, named new national monuments and made one last dad joke. He also moved to imprint his seal on history in a quieter way: through academic writing.

This month, Obama published a Harvard Law Review article that sums up his administration’s efforts to improve the effectiveness and fairness of the criminal justice system. In Science, Obama argued that market forces will help drive a transition to clean energy. These articles share the positive outlook and tone of Obama’s Journal of the American Medical Association article in August assessing the Affordable Care Act and suggesting future opportunities for health-care reform.