Scott Goldsmith.

• Author: Anjum, Shehla
• Position: ICONIC ALASKANS - Interview

How many economists can talk about working with former headhunters in the hot, steamy jungles of Borneo, even learning a few lessons from them? One can--Scott Goldsmith.

"After I got my BA in 1967,1 wasn't sure about what 1 wanted to do. I planned to go to graduate school, but not immediately. I was left with two choices: go to Vietnam or join the Peace Corps."

His choice got him a two-year assignment as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sarawak, Malaysia, in northwest Borneo. Goldsmith's job was to persuade people in rural areas to adopt modern public health practices--vaccinations, toilets, and water systems.

The work also took him upriver into areas where tribes of former headhunters lived, and sometimes he met with them "in traditional longhouses where old, dust-covered heads hung from the rafters."

The two years in Borneo were not a big success. Peace Corps volunteers received little local support and, Goldsmith says, he probably got more out of the experience than the locals.

It was difficult to persuade people to accept changes such as bathing in fixed places rather than rivers and using latrines rather than the jungle, Goldsmith says. But he learned from that experience.

"Sometimes it is best to let people do what they have been doing even if it may seem primitive to us. But they are not dumb. They taught me to look at both sides of an issue and to not entirely dismiss an opposing point of view," he says.

After two years in Borneo, Goldsmith spent another travelling the "hippie trail" across southern Asia. After returning to the United States he started studies for a PhD in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, not far from Chicago, his hometown.

40 Years in Alaska

Goldsmith, sixty-nine, has lived in Alaska for much of his life--forty years--but grew up in Chicago in a family that valued education. Both parents were graduates of Northwestern University. His older brother attended Princeton, and Goldsmith followed him. His brother chose religious studies, but Goldsmith picked economics. His reason: "It offered a logical way to think about how the world worked. I wanted to understand that and then help others understand it too," he says.

Making people understand Alaska's important fiscal issues has been Goldsmith's goal since he arrived in 1975, the year he finished his PhD. When he began his job search one possibility was at the University of Alaska Anchorage's Institute of Economic and Social Research (ISER), he says. An offer came from George Rogers of ISER who met Goldsmith at an economics conference in San Francisco.

Goldsmith was married by then and the idea of moving to Alaska intrigued him. But it was his wife Yvonne who really wanted to come. "Her mother worked for Pan Am, which entitled the family to discounted travel. When Yvonne was in her teens she went on a round-the-world trip with her family. They got bumped for twenty-four hours in Fairbanks, but that stay left an impression on Yvonne. She thought it was better than New York City, where she lived, and was excited about moving to Anchorage."

He accepted the job and they moved to Anchorage...