Regular followers of this blog will have noticed a recurring theme of economics education within a broader historical/social scientific curriculum. This post looks at a long-time staple of Harvard’s undergraduate General Education course offerings, Social Sciences 2 “Western Thought and Institutions” that was conceived and taught by government professor Samuel H. Beer over three decades assisted by a changing stable of “section men”[sic! Theda Skocpol was a section leader in 1970-71].
I am a firm believer in the virtues of building a broad interdisciplinary foundation before allowing (compelling?) economics majors and graduate students to turn their attention to the technical methods of the discipline. The former promotes the capacity to pose interesting questions and the latter creates a capacity to seek solutions to those questions.
Following the two Harvard Crimson articles on Professor Beer and his course, Economics in the Rear-View Mirror is delighted to provide the course syllabus with its reading assignments from the academic year 1970-71. Students had to write three papers each term and according to the source for this syllabus (see below), he spend “as much work for SocSci 2 as [he] did for the other three courses combined”.
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Beer’s Soc Sci 2 Comes to A Close With Last Lecture
by Jaleh Poorooshasb
The Harvard Crimson, May 5, 1978
A chapter of Harvard history ended yesterday as Samuel H. Beer, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, delivered his last Harvard lecture before retiring.
Beer spoke before a packed hall of about 300 students, admirers and colleagues, some of whom had come as far as a thousand miles to hear the grand finale of Social Sciences 2, “Western Thought and Institutions.”
Although Beer will take advantage of retirement regulations that allow him to teach on a half-time basis, Soc Sci 2, which Beer has taught for 30 years, will be gone from Harvard forever.
“In this case, the man made the course and we would not presume to replace him,” John H. Harvey, assistant director of General Education, said yesterday.
In the lecture, which received thunderous applause and a standing ovation, Beer discussed Nazi Germany and ended with a quote from a prison camp survivor saying good and bad people exist everywhere.
Then, before the audience realized the lecture was over, and began clapping and cheering, Beer bounded out the door. He was halfway down Divinity Ave. before Michael Walzer, professor of Government and a former sectionman for Soc Sci 2, caught up with him and invited him to the Faculty Club, where more than 20 former sectionmen attended a luncheon in Beer’s honor.
The list of former sectionmen in Soc Sci 2 includes such notables as Henry A. Kissinger ’50 and James R. Schlesinger ’50.
Old Soldiers?
“Good courses never die,” Walzer said yesterday, adding that Beer’s influence will continue through his former students.
Beer, who is best known for his work in British politics and federalism in America, will continue to study and write books in both fields, Beer said yesterday.
He will teach two government courses at Harvard next fall and will repeat them during the winter quarter at Dartmouth, he added. One course is entitled “American Federalism” and the other “Modern British Politics and Policy.”
One of a Kind
Beer, former chairman of the Government Department at Harvard and author of several major works, “is a rich scholar of the type that is not created any more,” in a world geared toward specialization,” Sidney Verba ’53, chairman of the Government Department, said yesterday.
Beer said he is “quite content to terminate Soc. Sci. 2.”
“My father took it when he was here but I didn’t sign up because he told me it’s too hard,” one freshman, who wished to remain anonymous, said yesterday.
Beer made no personal observations during the lecture. He began by saying, “I really have changed my lectures over the years. I’ve even changed the jokes. But this lecture I haven’t changed. There’s such an air of finality about it.”
Beer has long been considered one of the foremost American experts on the theory of federalism. His writings include “The Modernization of American Federalism.”
Sam Beer, Legendary Gov Prof, Dies at 97
By Huma N. Shah
The Harvard Crimson, April 14, 2009
Last year, when the Harvard government department organized a meeting for alumni, current professors were asked to give a presentation on their projects and research. One participant was former professor and department chair Samuel H. Beer, who gave a short statement about the nuances of political science during his tenure at Harvard from 1946 to 1982.
“He completely stole the show,” said government professor Stanley Hoffmann, a former student of Beer’s. “[The current professors] were all preempted by the master, who spoke without notes, remembering everyone and everything. No one believed the man was 96 years old at the time.”
Beer, a noted scholar of British and American politics, passed away on April 7, at the age of 97.
“He was a spectacularly good teacher because his classes were all in the form of questions he addressed to himself and his students, for which he had all sorts of arguments before coming to his own conclusion,” said Hoffman. “It was very different from the typical top-down sort of lecturing. It was as if he was struggling with his own opinions.”
Beer, the chair of the Harvard government department from 1954 to 1958, served as the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government for years before moving to Boston College in 1982 to be a professor of American politics.
Receiving his B.A. from the University of Michigan, Beer went to England on a Rhodes Scholarship before receiving his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1943. He was later granted an honorary doctorate from the University in 1997 in recognition of “his scholarship and [the] enormous impact his teaching had on undergraduates for over three decades,” said Peter A. Hall, Beer’s former student, who is currently a European studies professor at Harvard.
Beer was most famous for his self-designed course Social Studies 2: “Western Thought and Institutions,” which he taught for 30 years. Students studied six key moments in the development of Western Civilization, and “used theoretical lenses to understand the historical process,” said former teaching fellow Judith E. Vichniac, the current director of the fellowship program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
“Everywhere he went he was stopped on the streets by people who have taken that course,” Hall said. “It was one that inspired thousands of Harvard students.”
The teaching fellows who worked with Beer often went on to careers as academics or public service officials. Some of his famous students included Henry A. Kissinger ’50, Michael Walzer, and Charles H. Tilly ’50.
Before studying at Harvard, Beer was a staff member of the Democratic National Committee, and occasionally wrote speeches for former President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 and 1936.
Active in American politics, Beer was chairman of Americans for Democratic Action during his tenure at Harvard from 1959 to 1962. He also actively opposed student rebellions at Harvard during the late sixties.
Beer was elected president of the American Political Science Association in 1977, and was also appointed as a fellow of the British Academy in 2000.
After earning his Ph.D., Beer earned a Bronze Star fighting with the U.S. Army in Normandy. During his time at Oxford in the 1930s, he travelled to Germany, where he saw Hitlerism first hand, according to Government professor Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, another of Beer’s former students.
“He wanted to know how Germany could have fallen so far to embrace these vicious totalitarian ideas,” Mansfield said. “His courses were often directed to that subject.” Beer described the influence of these travels on his graduate work at Harvard in the Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions.
“By the time I came to Harvard in the fall of 1938, I was a fierce anti-communist, a fervent New Dealer, a devotee of Emerson, and ready to try to put it all together….[in] a defense of liberalism against the totalitarian threat,” Beer wrote. Many of his former students praised Beer’s engaging personality and dedication to teaching.
“He had a very good eye for the most important questions in politics and was intensely engaged with the thinkers over the ages who had worked with those questions,” Hall said. “When you talked to Sam Beer you were engaging in a dialogue with Marx, Weber, or Augustine. He had read an enormous amount, and he thought deeply about the big social and political questions throughout his life.”
“He would come to class wearing his military outfit and pump his fist, and tell us what to think about,” Mansfield said.
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SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
Fall Term 1970-71
The work of the Fall Term consists of three essays, one for each topic, and the mid-year examination. Section men will make specific assignments and suggest additional reading for these essays.
Books for Purchase
Students should own the following books, available at the Harvard Coop, or elsewhere as announced:
- Bunyan, John, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Paperback: New American Library: Signet Classics - DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE (Assize of Clarendon, Writs from the treatis called “Glanville” Magna Carta, and the Constitutions of Clarendon). Pamphlet: University Printing Office. On sale in General Education office, 1737 Cambridge St., Rm. 602.
- Hill, Christopher, THE CENTURY OF REVOLUTION 1603-1714
Paperback: W. W. Norton - Marx and Engels, BASIC WRITINGS ON POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY
Edited by Lewis S. Feuer. Paperback: Doubleday (Anchor) - Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
Edited by Samuel H. Beer. Paperback: Appleton-Century-Crofts (Crofts Classics) - SOCIAL CONTRACT: ESSAYS BY LOCKE, HUME, AND ROUSSEAU
Introduction by Ernest Barker. Paperback: Oxford (Galaxy Books) - Tierney, Brian, THE CRISIS OF CHURCH AND STATE 1050-1300
Paperback: Prentice-Hall (Spectrum) - Weber, Max, THEORY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION, translated by A. Herderson and T. Parsons.
Paperback: MacMillan Free Press. - Walzer, Michael, THE REVOLUTION OF THE SAINTS
Paperback: Atheneum
Attention of members of the course is directed to the new book written by former section men in Social Sciences too, Melvin Richter (Ed.), Essays in Theory and History: An Approach to Social Sciences (Harvard University Press 1970)
Assigned Reading
Everything on the following list is on “closed reserve” in Lamont and Hilles Libraries. The date suggested here will vary during the semester; lectures and section discussions should be your guides.
TOPIC 1: TRADITIONALISM AND THE MEDIEVAL POLITY
- Week of September 28: THE SOCIOLOGY OF AUTHORITY
Weber, Max, THE THEORY OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION, pp. 324-392. - Weeks of October 5, 12, and 19: FEUDAL MONARCHY IN ENGLAND
Bloch, Marc, FEUDAL SOCIETY, pp. 59-92, 103-120, 270-274.
Poole, Austin Lane, FROM DOMESDAY BOOK TO MAGNA CARTA 1087-1216, chaps, I, II, V, X-XIV.
Jolliffe, J.E.A., THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND, pp. 139-263.
John of Salisbury, THE STATEMAN’ S BOOK (from the POLICRATICUS), translated by John Dickinson, Introduction, Text: IV:1, 2, 3, (pp. 9-10), 4, 11; V:1, 2, 5; VI:18, 20, 21, 24; VII:17-19; VIII:17 (pp. 335-9), 18, 20, 23, (pp. 398-9; 405-10)
DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE: Assize of Clarendon, Writs from the Treatis called “Glanvill,” Magna Carta.
Optional: ENGLISH HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS 1042-1189 (Vol. II of series) edited by David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway. Nos. 1 (years 1135-154), 10, 12, (pp. 322-4, 331-3, 335-8), 16, 19, 58-9, 268.
TOPIC II: DYNAMICS OF MEDIEVAL DEVELOPMENT
- Week of October 26: THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Weber, Max, FROM MAX WEBER: ESSAYS IN SOCIOLOGY, edited by H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, “THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS,” pp. 267-301.
Weber, Max, THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION, edited by Talcott Parsons, chaps. VIII, XI, XIII. - Weeks of November 2: THEORIES OF SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL POWER.
Lovejoy, Arthur O., THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING, A STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA, pp. 24-77.
Tierney, Brian, THE CRISIS OF CHURCH AND STATE 1050-1300, pp. 1-95, 127-138.
Brooke, Z. N., LAY INVESTITURE AND ITS RELATION TO THE CONFLICT OF EMPIRE AND PAPACY (article listed separately in the libraries)
Tellenbach, Gerd, CHURCH, STATE, AND CHRISTIAN SOCIETY IN THE TIME OF THE INVESTITURE CONTEST, Introduction, chap. 1 (sections 1 and 3), chap. 2, chap. 5 (section 3) and Epilogue. - Week of November 9: THE GREGORIAN REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND
Duggan, Charles, “From the Conquest to the Death of John,” THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE PAPACY IN THE MIDDLE AGEs, edited by C. H. Lawrence, pp. 65-115.
Poole, A. L., FROM DOMESDAY BOOK TO MAGNA CARTA, chaps. VI, VII.
DOCUMENTS FOR CLASS USE: Assize of Clarendon.
Knowles, David, THE EPISCOPAL COLLEAGUES OF ARCHBISHOP THOMAS BECKET, chap. V.
TOPIC III: RELIGIOUS REVOLT AND POLITICAL MODERNIZATION
- Weeks of November 16 and 23: Analytical Perspectives
Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, edited by Louis S. Feuer, pp. 1-67, 82-111.
Marx, Karl, CAPITAL, Modern Library edition, pp. 784-837 (chaps. 26-32). In some editions this is chap. 24, entitled, “Primary Accumulation.”
Beer, Samuel H., Introduction to Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, pp. VII-XXIX,.
Weber, Max, THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM, translated by Talcott Parsons, pp. 35-c. 62, 79-128, 144-183. - Weeks of November 30, and December 7, 14: THE PURITAN REVOLUTION
Hill, Christopher, THE CENTURY OF REVOLUTION 1603-1714, chaps. 1-11.
Bunyan, John, THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS, portions of the First Part: in Signet edition, pp. 17-30, 66-110, 131-148.
Hexter, J.H., “Storm Over the Gentry,” in Hexter’s REAPPRAISALS IN HISTORY.
Walzer, Michael, THE REVOLUTION OF THE SAINTS, chaps. I, II, IV, V (pp. 148-171), and IX.
Walzer, Michael, “The revolutionary uses of repression,” in Richter (Ed.), ESSAYS IN THEORY AND HISTORY.
Locke, John, AN ESSAY CONCERNING…… CIVIL GOVERNMENT, chaps. 1-9, 19. Available in SOCIAL CONTRACT: ESSAYS BY LOCKE, HUME AND ROUSSEAU.
SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
READING LIST
SPRING TERM 1971
Students are asked to buy the following books, which are available at the Harvard Coop, or, in the one case, at the General Education Office.
- BRIGGS, Asa, The Making of Modern England
Paperback: Harper Torch books. Hardcover title: The Age of Improvement. - BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France
Paperback: Bobbs-Merrill: The Library of Liberal Arts - HOBBES, Thomas, Leviathan
Paperback: Penguin - MILL, John Stuart, On Liberty
Paperback: Appleton-Century-Crofts: Crofts Classic - NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Genealogy of Morals
Paperback: Vintage - RUDÉ, George, Revolutionary Europe, 1783-1815
Paperback: Harper Torchbook - de TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution
Paperback: Anchor Books
Everything on the following list is on “closed reserve” in Lamont and Hilles Libraries. The date suggested here will vary during the semester; lectures and sections should be your guides.
TOPIC IV: IDEOLOGY AND REVOLUTION
Weeks of February 8 & 15
HOBBES, Thomas, Leviathan, esp. Intro., Chaps. 11, 13-15, 17-21, 26, 29-30, and Review and Conclusion.
ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract, especially Book I; Book II; Book III, chaps. 1-4, 12-18; and Book IV, chaps. 1-2, 7-8 (in the Galaxy paperback edition used for Locke’s SECOND TREATISE in the Fall Term).
BEER, Samuel, “The Development of the Modern Polity,” chap. 3 (Typescript on reserve).
Weeks of February 22 & March 1
RUDÉ, George, Revolutionary Europe, pp. 65-241
de TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Forward, pp. 1-211.
RICHTER, Melvin, “The uses of theory: Tocqueville’s adaptation of Montesquieu” in Richter, Essays in Theory and History, pp. 94-102.
TILLY, Charles, The Vendee, chaps. 1, 2, 4, 9, 13.
TOPIC V: MODERNIZATION WITHOUT REVOLUTION
Week of March 8:
BURKE, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, especially 3-4, 18-129, 138-144, 169-200, 233-266, and 286-291 (Page citations to the Library of Liberal Arts paperback edition).
Weeks of March 15, 22, & 29:
BRIGGS, Asa, The Making of Modern England (Hardcover title, The Age of Improvement), chaps. I, II (sections, 2-3), III (section 5), IV-VI, VIII (sections 1-3, through p. 416), and IX (section 3).
DICEY, A. The Lectures on the Relations Between Law and Opinion in England During the 19th century, Lectures 4, 6, 9, 12 (pt. 1).
BEER, Samuel H., British Politics in the Collectivist Age, Introduction, Chaps. I-II, Epilogue (391-409).
MILL, John Stuart, On Liberty, chaps. 1-2, 4
TOPIC VI: THE CRISIS OF MODERNITY
Week of April 12:
NIETZSCHE, Friedrich, The Genealogy of Morals (trans. W. Kaufmann; Vintage paperback).
Weeks of April 19, 26, & May 3:
PINSON, Koppel S., Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization, chaps. 15-21 (First or Second Edition).
EPSTEIN, Klaus, “Three Types of Conservatism” in Richter, Essays in Theory and History, pp. 103-121.
BULLOCK, Alan, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, chaps. 1-4, 7.
REICHSTAG, Election Statistics, 1919-1933, Mimeographed. To be distributed.
PARSONS, Talcott, “Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World”, Mimeographed. (This essay also appears in Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory).
VIERECK, Peter, Metapolitics: From the Romantics to Hitler (Capricorn paperback subtitle: The Roots of the Nazi Mind), Prefatory Note (or, in paperback, “New Survey,” sections 3-4, & chaps. 1-2, 5-7, 11-13).
ERIKSON, Erik H., “The Legend of Hitler’s Childhood” in Childhood and Society, chap. 9.
ECKSTEIN, Harry, A Theory of Stable Democracy.
Reading Period Extra: Nazi Films
Wednesday, May 12, at 7 p.m., Lowell Lecture Hall
FINAL EXAMINATION June 4
Source: Personal copy of course syllabus shared for transcription at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror by one my longest, dearest economics and personal chums, Robert Dohner (Harvard, 1974; M.I.T., 1980).
Image Source: Samuel H. Beer, 1953 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.