Category: Harvard

In this post we have a nice pair of bookends for the career of Columbia economics Ph.D. (1940) and later Columbia professor, C. Lowell Harriss:  a letter from 1946 recommending his appointment to an assistant professorship and a memorial webpage from the Columbia economics department.

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Columbia University
in the City of New York

Faculty of Political Science

November 26, 1946

Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President,
213 Low Memorial Library

Dear Mr. President:

On recommendation of the College Committee appointed in accordance with your letter of October 3d and with the approval of the Committee on Instruction of Columbia College, the Department of Economics requests the promotion of C. Lowell Harriss from instructor to assistant professor, effective January 1, 1947.

The Department considers that this promotion would be a well earned recognition of ability and service. The reasons set forth in the enclosed letter from Professor Horace Taylor, chairman of the College Committee, in our judgment amply justify our request that this action be taken at an exceptional time.

Dr. Harriss’ salary as instructor is $3,300 for the year. We recommend that his salary as assistant professor should be at the rate of $3,600. Funds for the additional $2150 required on the 1946-47 budget are available in the unexpended salary of Carl T. Schmidt.

Respectfully yours,
[signed]
Carter Goodrich
Executive officer, Department of Economics

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________________

Columbia University
in the City of New York

Faculty of Political Science

November 26, 1946

Professor Carter Goodrich
Fayerweather Hall
Columbia University

Dear Professor Goodrich:

The newly constituted Committee on Economics Instruction in Columbia College held its first meeting on October 28. I have reported separately the formal action taken at this meeting with regard to the nomination of a Departmental Representative.

Its most urgent matter of regular business in the view of the Committee is its unanimous recommendation that Dr. C. Lowell Harriss, instructor in Economics, be promoted to Assistant Professor of Economics. It is the opinion of the Committee that Dr. Harriss has reached a maturity and a competency in this field that cause him to be considerably underranked in his present position. The Committee not only recommends promotion for Dr. Harriss, but strongly urges that the promotion be made immediately and to take effect January 1, 1947. This recommendation is made both because it would provide immediate recognition to a man who, in the Committee’s judgment, thoroughly deserves it, and also because we believe that action of this kind would have distinct morale value, both for Dr. Harriss, and for other members of the College staff who feel as we do about Dr. Harriss as a teacher, a scholar, and a person.

Dr. Harriss is thirty-four years old. He joined this Department as an instructor in economics in 1938. He is a man of such broad intellectual background and training that he has been extraordinarily well qualified for work in the course in Contemporary Civilization, and has made substantial contributions to the planning and teaching of this difficult course. He also has contributed materially to the Departmental work in the College, and one of our plans for the next academic year is that Dr. Harriss will offer an undergraduate course in his speciality [sic], which is Public Finance. During the current year, he is giving a course in this field designed for University Undergraduates. If Dr. Harriss receives the promotion that is recommended, it is planned that he will be a member of the Faculty of Columbia College and also of the Faculty of the new School for General Studies. One of the reasons that we strongly believe that we should, in the interests of the University, increase the number of young men of professorial rank is that the College Faculty will be expected to provide members to the Faculty of the School for General Studies.

Dr. Harriss’s intellectual attainments are extraordinarily high. He received the B.S. degree at Harvard Summa Cum Laudein 1934, having majored in history. My impression is that the degree with highest distinction is awarded to a major student in a particular department only once in several years at Harvard or, at least, it averages out about this way. On graduating from Harvard, Dr. Harriss was awarded the highest scholarship (one for travel in Europe) that is given to a graduate of Harvard College. He then became a Council for Research in the Social Sciences Fellow in economics and pursued graduate studies at both Chicago and Columbia. He was awarded our Ph.D. in 1940. As a graduate student, he won the high opinion of his professors. His dissertation on “Gift Taxation in the United States” was written under the direction of Dr. Haig. This dissertation was of such excellence that it immediately established Dr. Harriss as an authority on this subject. This was pointedly demonstrated when he was made head of the Gift Tax Section in the Division of Research of the United States Treasury Department. He held this post from November 1941, until April, 1943. He then entered the Army and rather rapidly rose to the rank of Captain. His distinction as a student was continued in the fact that he was the first ranking man in his class in Officers Candidate School. During his service in the Army, he was in charge of important work connected with procurement for the Army Air Forces, and was stationed at Air Force Headquarters, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio. For his work there, he received the Army Commendation Award. He returned to his work with us at the beginning of the Spring Term.

Last summer Dr. Harriss received a firm offer of an Associate Professorship at Syracuse University at a salary of $4,000. He also received inquiries which appear to anticipate firm offers from both Rice Institute and the University of Indiana. Both of these institutions talked with him in terms of an Associate Professorship at a salary of about $4,000. Dr. Harriss declined to consider the inquiries and turned down the offer made by Syracuse. I believe that I am not exaggerating when I say that there is not a young man in this country of greater competence or promise in the field of public finance than Dr. Harriss, and I believe that Professors Haig and Shoup rate him at about the same level.

During his time with us and the period that he was in the Army, Dr. Harriss has outgrown his academic rank. Our Committee believes that his appointment in the fashion we have recommended will be in the long-run interest of education and scholarship in Columbia College and in the University at large.

Sincerely yours,

[signed]
Horace Taylor

HT:mdl

Source:Columbia University Archives. Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Central Files 1890-, Box 406, Folder “Goodrich, Carter 1/4”.

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C. Lowell Harriss (1912-2009)
In Memoriam

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATOR, ECONOMIST AND ADVOCATE OF LAND TAX REFORM DIES

C. Lowell Harriss, an economist whose groundbreaking theories on land tax reform led to a widening of public spaces and improved quality of life in domestic and international urban and rural areas, died on December 14, 2009 at his home in Bronxville, N.Y. He was 97.

He died from natural causes.

An author of 16 books on economics and hundreds of articles, Professor Harriss was one of the last living economists to experience the Depression. He was known for his seminal work on taxation of land, property tax, finance reform, land values and planning land use.

He was a professor emeritus of economics at Columbia University, where he taught for 43 years, from 1938 to 1981. He also taught at Stanford University, UC-Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, The Wharton School, the New School for Social Research and Pace University. He earned Fulbright professorships from the Netherlands School of Economics (now Erasmus University), Cambridge University, and the University of Strasbourg, France.

His professional interests beyond education were extensive, including: Executive Director of The Academy of Political Science; President, National Tax Association-Tax Institute of America; Vice President, International Institute of Public Finance; Chairman, Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, Inc.; Trustee, American Institute for Economic Research; Advisory Member, American Enterprise Institute; Academic Advisor, Center for the Study of the Presidency; and Advisor, Thomas Jefferson Research Center. He was a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and a board member of the American Institute of Economic Research in Cambridge, both institutions that serve as leading resources for policy makers and practitioners including the use, regulation and taxation of land.

He advised state, federal and foreign governments on tax policy including the U.S. Department of Treasury; the City of New York; New York State; the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; the Federal District of Venezuela; the Ministry of Finance, Republic of China; the United Nations; and the Agency of International Development of the U.S. Department of State.

In addition to his academic and professional pursuits and achievements, Professor Harriss was well known for his great respect of the role that humor has in making daily life enjoyable and more civilized. He often said that “a smile costs nothing.” He was known for his frequent compilations of cartoons, which he distributed in his mailings to colleagues and friends. As he said, “they get people’s attention”.

Clement Lowell Harriss was born Aug. 2, 1912, in Fairbury, Nebraska. He attended Harvard College and graduated summa cum laude in 1934. Upon graduation, he received a Sheldon Fellowship which enabled him to travel for 13 months throughout Europe, the Balkans, Turkey and Northern Africa, before arriving in Berlin the day Hitler assumed the presidency. This experience was the beginning of a lifetime of travel that would take him around the world nine times and stimulate his academic and personal curiosity and inquiry.

Professor Harriss met and married Agnes Bennett Murphy in 1936. While pursuing graduate studies at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, he began his teaching career in 1938 at and received his Ph.D. in 1940 from Columbia University.

Professor Harriss served as an officer in the Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1946, working on aircraft and manpower procurement, later on the economic problems of the shift of fighting to the Pacific, and finally, on the problems of economic demobilization and the postwar aircraft industry.

He is the namesake of the C. Lowell Harriss Scholarship at Columbia College, the C. Lowell Harriss Chair of Economics at Columbia University, and the Professor C. Lowell Harriss Scholarship at the School of General Studies at Columbia University. In 1996 he accepted the Nobel Prize in Economics on behalf of long-time Columbia colleague William Vickrey, who had died shortly before the ceremony.

He is survived by his sister, Marion Engelhart, of Gross Pointe, Michigan, his four children, L. Gordon Harriss, of Bronxville, New York; Patricia Harriss, of Bronxville, New York, Martha Harriss, of New York, and Brian Harriss, of Greenwich, Connecticut, five grandchildren, and by his two daughters in law, Elizabeth Harriss, Bronxville, New York, and Lucinda Harriss, Greenwich, Connecticut. His wife died in 1992.

Source:  Columbia University. Department of Economics. Webpage: In Memoriam; C. Lowell Harriss (1912-2009).

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In Memoriam: from Columbia College Today

C. Lowell Harriss ’40 GSAS, professor emeritus of economics, died on December 14, 2009, at his home in Bronxville, N.Y. He was 97.

Born in Fairbury, Neb., on August 2, 1912, Harriss graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1934. Upon graduation, he received a Sheldon Fellowship, which enabled him to travel for 13 months throughout Europe, including Berlin and the Balkans, as well as Turkey and Northern Africa. This trip was the beginning of a lifetime of travel that would take him around the world nine times.

Harriss served as an officer in the Army Air Corps from 1943–46, working on aircraft and manpower procurement, on the economic problems of the shift of fighting to the Pacific, and finally on the problems of economic demobilization and the postwar aircraft industry. He began teaching at Columbia in 1938 while pursuing a Ph.D. in economics at GSAS and remained at Columbia until retiring from teaching in 1981.

University Trustee Mark E. Kingdon endowed, in 1998, the C. Lowell Harriss Professorship of Economics in honor of “my teacher, mentor and friend.”

“I took Professor Harriss’ public finance course in the late 1960s, when it was not cool to be a conservative, especially at Columbia,” said Kingdon. “I remember Professor Harriss warning us about the extraordinary power of the government: ‘Nothing can be as cruel as the government.’

“During the 1970 student strike, I learned later, a classmate was picketing a building that the professor wanted to enter. ‘You can’t go in,’ my friend declared. ‘Why not?’ Professor Harriss asked. ‘Because then you would be a scab.’ In response, Professor Harriss brushed by and entered the building while declaring, ‘A scab is part of the natural healing process.’

“Teachers in the department on both the left and right loved the man. He was soft-spoken, tolerant, smart, non-dogmatic but firm in his beliefs. His classroom style was brusque, informative and clear. He committed many random acts of kindness, such as writing a complimentary note about me to my father, and helped students with letters of recommendation to his many friends that led to jobs or entry into grad school.

“I watched him age gracefully almost to the very end, vigorous in mind, body and spirit, an inspiration to us all. I miss him very much.”

Harriss also taught at Stanford, UC Berkeley, Yale, Princeton, The Wharton School, the New School for Social Research and Pace. He earned Fulbright professorships from the Netherlands School of Economics (now Erasmus University), Cambridge and the University of Strasbourg, France.

One of the last living economists to have experienced the Depression, Harriss authored 16 books on economics and hundreds of articles. He was known for his seminal work on taxation of land, property tax, finance reform, land values and planning land use.

Harriss also had advised state, federal and foreign governments on tax policy including the Depart- ment of Treasury; the City of New York; New York State; the Common- wealth of Puerto Rico; the Federal District of Venezuela; the Ministry of Finance, Republic of China; the United Nations; and the Agency of International Development of the U.S. Department of State.

Harriss met and married Agnes Bennett Murphy in 1936. She predeceased him in 1992. Harriss is survived by his children, L. Gordon ’68, Patricia, Martha and Brian; five grandchildren; and sister, Marion Engelhart.

Source: In Memoriam. Columbia College Today, March/April 2010.

Image Source:  In Memoriam. Columbia College Today, March/April 2010.