Ashley Nunes

What do you want students to gain by taking your class?

The goal of getting an education is to realize that everything you’ve been told in life isn’t necessarily true — and that nothing is what it seems. I think that’s really the hallmark, or the key theme, of this particular class: to challenge long-held beliefs about how innovation affects society, what the consequences of innovation are, and how we should think about the public policies that govern innovation in markets.

The onus is really on the students to: A) absorb as much information as they can, and B) realize that the information they’re getting is on par with what they’d receive as full-time students at Harvard College. The syllabus I use in summer courses is the same one I use when teaching students at the College.

What are the students at Harvard Summer School like?

Harvard Summer School does a great job of bringing together students with a wide range of experiences. For example, I’ve had many students from oil-producing countries. While burning oil is a major contributor to climate change, the drilling and export of oil is also vital to the economies of many of these students’ home countries.

That kind of perspective is important to acknowledge and understand. I’ve been teaching in the Summer School for about eight years now, and I’ve been fortunate to work with an incredibly diverse group of students.

Do you have a story of how you impacted a student?

One student I remember is now studying economics at Princeton. He was in my Summer School class, and after the program, he asked if he could be my research assistant. He ended up working with me for about a year and a half.

I wrote his recommendation letter for Princeton, and now he’s my co-author on a journal paper — which I think is remarkable for someone who’s just 18 years old.

More About Ashley

Dr. Ashley Nunes is a senior research associate at Harvard Law School and an associate of the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He studies regulatory policy with a focus on how innovation affects markets.

Nunes was previously a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and his work has been covered by The New York Times, The Economist, and The Financial Times. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where his research examined the scientific merit of raising retirement ages.