"Myron Weiner was a brilliant scholar, and an inspiring teacher and colleague, who had a large impact on the world, in particular on the lives of children," said Professor Joshua Cohen, then-head of the MIT Department of Political Science.
[2] Professor Weiner served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Agency for International Development, the US State Department, and the U.S. National Security Council.
Using impassive data and scholarly language, Weiner's work reversed the causal direction, showing that historically (e.g. in Scotland) and cross-nationally (e.g. in even-poorer Africa and China), the reforms which expanded education preceded higher incomes.
"[4] His contrarian views sometimes caused controversy, e.g., showing that democratization can exacerbate ethnic conflict, or the perverse effects of well-intentioned affirmative-action or child labor policies.
[1] With Samuel P. Huntington and Lucian Pye, he was a co-founder and co-director for many years of the Harvard-MIT Joint Seminar on Political Development (JOSPOD) research project.
Other books include Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India (Princeton Univ Pr 1978 ISBN 978-0-691-09379-6; reprinted 1988 by Oxford University Press