This post is meant to be a general overview/partial book review on Bill Easterly’s The White Man’s Burden, as well as my own commentary on why Easterly’s message is important for the Western global health/development student today. I want to start by saying this is a very important book. Moreover, Bill Easterly, Professor of Economics at NYU, Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, and previously a World Bank research economist for 16 years, is among the most capable and relevantly experienced people to write a book like this. And for anyone interested in global health, human rights, and development, this book is a must read. It is not without flaws, but the points it raises touch on the largest issue in this field today: foreign aid is highly inefficient, and has no demand to change. As Easterly laments, $2.3 trillion later, much more money has gone into wasted attempts than into successful solutions for issues like starvation, infectious diseases, economic poverty, education, equitable governance, and the rest of the long list of problems disproportionately affecting certain places on our planet.

I will review some of Easterly’s main points (there have already been many reviews written, such as this great one by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and another by our very own Nicholas Kristof), but more importantly, I want to discuss the parallel I see between the aid agencies that Easterly criticizes and Western college students today who work on short international internships/fellowships to deal with some of the aforementioned issues in other countries. Continue reading →