Arthur C. Brooks Wiki, professor at Syracuse and auther of “Who Really Cares”
. . . After a stint at Georgia State University, Brooks landed at Syracuse University in 2001. In 2005, he became a full professor, and he has held the Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business and Government Policy since 2007. At Syracuse, Brooks has held joint appointments in the public affairs and management schools.
[edit] Rise to prominence
In the early 2000s, Brooks began to look deeper into behavioral economics, often using the General Social Survey. It is this work that launched him into the spotlight. During his time at Syracuse, Brooks has continued his academic work on philanthropy and nonprofits, authoring several articles and textbooks.
[edit] Who Really Cares
Brooks’s first foray into the limelight was in 2006 with Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism.[4] Originating in his research on philanthropy and drawing on survey data, he articulates a charity gap between the 75 percent of Americans who donate to charitable causes and the rest who do not. Brooks argues that there are three cultural values that best predict charitable giving: religious participation, political views, and family structure. Ninety-one percent of people who identify themselves as religious are likely to give to charity, writes Brooks, as opposed to 66 percent of people who do not. The religious giving sector is just as likely to give to secular programs as it is to religious causes. Those who think government should do more to redistribute income are less likely to give to charitable causes, and those who believe the government has less of a role to play in income redistribution tend to give more. Finally, people who couple and raise children are more likely to give philanthropically than those who do not. The more children there are in a family, the more likely that a family will donate to charity. One of Brooks’s most controversial findings was that political conservatives give more, despite having incomes that are on average 6 percent lower than liberals.
Brooks adopts what he calls a “polemic”[1] tone when offering recommendations, urging that philanthropic giving not be crowded out by government programs and that giving must be taught cultivated in families and communities. He admits being surprised by his conclusion: “These are not the sort of conclusions I ever thought I would reach when I started looking at charitable giving in graduate school, 10 years ago. I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book.”[4]
Who Really Cares was widely reviewed and critiqued. Many commentators thought that Brooks played up the role of religion too much, arguing that a charity gap is largely erased when religious giving is not considered. Eugene Volokh writes, “Although the liberal v. conservative split is the hook for the book, the data are not nearly as stark as the hype surrounding the book might indicate.”[5] Others have commented that Brooks goes beyond his data.[6] According to Beliefnet, “Brooks says he started the book as an academic treatise, then tightened the documentation and punched up the prose when his colleagues and editor convinced him it would sell better and generate more discussion if he did. To make his point forcefully, Brooks admits he cut out a lot of qualifying information.”[2]
In February 2007, after the release of Who Really Cares, Brooks briefed President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush on his findings.[7] Later that year, Brooks joined the American Enterprise Institute as a visiting scholar.
