Stockholm send-off honors Nobel Prize winner

In 24 hours, Elinor “Lin” Ostrom has gone from shaking the hands of President Barack Obama to those of IU President Michael McRobbie.

Sitting on the stage at the IU Auditorium on Wednesday, Ostrom held hands with her husband, Vincent, as she listened to fellow faculty and colleagues celebrate her achievements.

Ostrom, Nobel Prize Laureate and IU Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, is IU’s eighth Nobel Prize winner and the world’s first woman to win it in economics.

Friends and colleagues gathered in the auditorium Wednesday for a brief reception followed by remarks from Mayor Mark Kruzan, Provost Karen Hanson, and
co-directors of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis Michael McGinnis and James Walker, among others.

After meeting fellow 2009 Nobel Laureates on Tuesday in Washington and attending the reception at IU on Wednesday, Ostrom will leave for Stockholm on Friday to accept the Nobel Prize in Economics, formally titled the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

“This is Lin’s day, Tuesday was Lin’s day, next week is Lin’s week, too, in Stockholm,” said McRobbie during his speech Wednesday at the reception.

McRobbie highlighted the many contributions Ostrom has made both to economic scholarship and to the University.

The Nobel Committee, in their announcement of her award on Oct. 12, cited Ostrom’s large body of research on the economic governance of common resources, like fish in the ocean and trees in the forest, where no one entity has authoritative control.

“Her book ‘Governing the Commons’ dispelled the conventional wisdom that the best arrangement for managing common property was either privatization or government control,” Hanson said in the ceremony’s opening remarks.

Beyond her contributions to analysis of the commons, Ostrom and husband Vincent have contributed fiscally to the institution where they have both worked for more than four and half decades.

“Lin and Vincent have given personally to the Foundation – to an endowment to support the Workshop – over $2 million over their careers at IU,” McRobbie said.
“They’ve made a further estate gift of $1.5 million, and Lin has said her half of the Nobel Prize, $700,000, will also be a part of that endowment.”

Furthermore, Ostrom and husband Vincent founded the Workshop in 1973 to foster an interdisciplinary approach to political-economic scholarship.

“Vincent and Lin together have been the driving force, jointly, behind the Workshop ... which I think has been one of the most vigorous, most dynamic, most highly regarded academic centers in the University,” McRobbie said.

Even with all of Ostrom’s travel obligations, the Workshop still remains one of her top priorities.

“I’m at the Workshop all the time ... we had a colloquium today,” Ostrom said. “The Workshop doesn’t change.”

Following her lecture Dec. 8 at Stockholm University and award ceremony Dec. 10 at Stockholm Concert Hall, Ostrom will attend the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Dec. 13.

She plans to help with international negotiations on climate change by representing the Workshop and its hundreds of contributing scholars.

“Lin is nothing if not gracious to her colleagues,” McRobbie said. “She has said over and over again that her achievement reflects all the wonderful students the Workshop has had, the wonderful faculty who have been part of the Workshop and the extraordinary staff. ... The glory that is now Lin’s also reflects on all of them.”