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Economics Programs Economists Harvard Radical

Harvard. Leontief and Galbraith report on conflict within department, 1972

In December 1972 the conflict about opening the Harvard economics faculty to include “broader and necessarily ‘softer’ questions of social structure, social functions and social reform” exploded beyond the confines of the economics department. This post provides two letters/memos sent to Harvard’s President Derek C. Bok written by Wassily Leontief and John Kenneth Galbraith, respectively, that supported curriculum reform involving the continued appointments of young radical economists. It would appear from Leontief’s account that a relatively silent majority of the younger mathematical economists in the department was able to block the recommendation of their more senior colleagues to expand course offerings to meet the demand of students for courses outside the confines of “orthodox technical economics”…a revolution that devoured its own parents.

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Background tip:

Talk presented by Tom Weisskopf “The Origins and Evolution of Radical Political Economics” (September 25, 2012).

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Photocopy Leontief to Harvard President Derek C. Bok

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Wassily Leontief
Professor of Economics

309 Littauer
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
(617) 495-2118

December 21, 1972

Mr. Derek Bok
President
Harvard University
Massachusetts Hall 1

Dear Derek:

I am writing in response to your request for my views on the conflict that for some time has been straining the relationships within the Executive Committee of our Department on the one hand and Executive Committee and the graduate student body on the other. It developed along rather familiar lines and finally broke into the open.

The controversy, as I see it, centers on the question whether the Department of Economics should widen the range of its intellectual concerns and of its teaching responsibilities beyond the narrowly delineated field of orthodox technical economics by inclusion of broader and necessarily “softer” questions of social structure, social functions and social reform: questions raised for example in the old Marxist and the new radical economics.

While a minority in the Executive Committee favors a move in this direction, arguing that it would reflect the natural growth and extension of our discipline, the majority opposes it on the grounds that this would amount to politicalization of the field and lowering of intellectual standards. Somewhat paradoxically, the minority favoring a change comprises mostly senior members of the Department while the core of the majority group consists of the younger mathematical economists. Needless to say, the students are on the side of the minority. While the minority did most of the talking, the majority was content with voting.

Last spring a mixed faculty-student committee appointed by the Chairman proposed a modest curriculum reform that would reflect the interest in the new subjects. After a stiff fight, the report was first accepted, then watered down, and finally scuttled.

The division within the Department was clearly reflected in a series of votes on new appointments. Three years ago, the junior staff contained four radical economists: Herb Gintis, Tom Weisskopf, Art MacEwan and Sam Bowles. All were let go. Gintis is now lecturer in the Department of Education, Tom Weisskopf was avidly acquired by the Department of Economics of the University of Michigan, Sam Bowles failed a week ago to receive a permanent appointment, and Art MacEwan was denied this week a second three-year appointment. The slate is clear except for Steve Marglin, who was elevated to full professorship before his interests had shifted into the field of institutional analysis and criticism.

Adverse votes are invariably based on lack of intellectual distinction and creditable contributions to knowledge by the candidate; this notwithstanding the fact that several permanent slots were filled in the past by scholars of admittedly indifferent stature on the ground that a vacancy had to be filled in some narrowly defined specialized field.

Reluctantly the minority on the Executive Committee came to the conclusion that its advice and counsel will be disregarded in the future as it was in the past; that crucial decisions will be made on the basis of an often silent, but invariably effective majority vote. The rising tension finally led to acrimonious exchanges at the last meeting of the Executive Committee.

The obvious frustration of the graduate students finds its expression in sharp verbiage used by the radical minority and sullen indifference and cynicism among the rest. I hardly need to add that the students are quite aware of the division within the Executive Committee.

This is where we stand now. At best one could observe that as a whole the senior teaching staff of the Economics Department is much less effective than one could have expected it to be considering the distinction of its individual members. At worst, the continuation of the conflict might result in resignations and damage all around.

After you called me up, Jim Duesenberry asked several members of the Department to serve on a committee that would review the intellectual problems involved and try to find some way out. The proposed composition of the committee (Arrow, Bergson, Dorfman, Galbraith and me) assures that its report will give full weight to the minority point of view.

I myself feel that nothing short of a clear-cut reversal in the present trend can prevent further deterioration of the situation. Needless to say, I will do all I can to bring about a constructive and peaceable solution of the difficult problems we are facing. Some counsel and some help from you and John [probably economist John T. Dunlop who was serving as Dean] most likely will be needed. Let me add that some of my colleagues who up to now held an opposing point of view have offered their full cooperation.

I have dictated this letter but had no time to proofread it since Estelle and I are leaving for London two hours from now. In case of need, please do not hesitate to call me. My secretary, Mary Conley, will know all the time where I can be reached.

With best wishes from Estelle and me to Sissele and you.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Wassily Leontief

WL:mc

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Carbon copy Galbraith to Harvard President Derek C. Bok

December 22, 1972

President Derek C. Bok
Massachusetts Hall

Dear Derek:

This I hope will diminish the concern you may have had following my telephone call of the other evening. My personal anger, as usual, has been difficult to sustain although I surely intend to stay with this problem until things are put right. I’ve met with the young radicals and I think they are persuaded that Toronto is not a good forum and that neither Arrow nor I is the man they most want to embarrass. John has operated with usual skill and panache. He accepts the idea of a commission to consider and act before things get worse, and I am drafting up the terms of reference for discussion with Jim Duesenberry. I’ve gone over the rough outlines with Wassily. With considerable approval, I’ve raised the question of conflict of interest with external corporate enterprises. I enclose a document on that subject.

In any case, a Merry Christmas.

Yours faithfully,

John Kenneth Galbraith

JKG:kv

Enclosure

 

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526. Folder “Harvard Dept. of Economics, Discussion of appointments, outside interests and reorganization, 1972-1973 (1 of 2)”.

Image Source: Wassily Leontief from Harvard Class Album 1957.

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Economics Programs Harvard

Harvard. Galbraith’s Proposal to Split the Economics Department, 1973

 

During the early 1970s the Harvard economics department went through an identity crisis in which the orthodox mainstream was challenged by a not-so-silent minority of proto-heterodox economists and a dissatisfied graduate student body. The following three artifacts from the discussion of that time come from John Kenneth Galbraith’s papers. I would not exclude the possibility that some/much of the December 26, 1972 memo from the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences was inspired, if not directly penned, by Galbraith.

Galbraith was incapable of writing even an intrauniversity memo without flashes of wit as both the draft and final versions of his memo clearly demonstrate. And yet, there remains an overwhelming pathetic, quixotic note to his proposal of dividing the economics department in order to save its diverse, social elements.

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When the Dean Asks
How to Fix the Harvard Economics Department

December 26, 1972

From: THE DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

To: THE CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Re: TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR A STUDY OF AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Recent developments and discussions suggest problems of some concern in the Department of Economics. In the belief that such problems, if attacked in timely fashion and a spirit of goodwill, will be more readily resolved than if allowed to persist and be aggravated, I am proposing action which I trust will meet with the approval of all concerned. I shall first identify those matters on which, I believe, there will be general agreement and then suggest terms of reference for the appropriate action.

  1. The Department of Economics has become very large. In the current catalogue I count 25 tenured members, 56 non-tenured members, 5 visiting professors and 13 economists in associated departments principally the Kennedy School, in addition to the large force of teaching assistants. It is not surprising that so large a body should have problems in maintaining a sense of common purpose and identity.
  2. There has of late been a deep difference of view on appointments in the Department. This has led to the suggestions that the Department, its size notwithstanding, is not emphasizing an adequate representation of diverse, socially unpopular or methodologically different positions, and that standards for promotion operate to exclude or minimize the representation of such views.
  3. There will be agreement that a majority may be less urgently seized of the need for representation of a minority view than the minority.
  4. In recent years there has been dissatisfaction among students, principally graduate students, with instruction in the Department. Again I state the fact without passing on the merits of the position. I do note that, historically, students have found satisfaction and pride in their association with the Department.
  5. The question has been raised whether some appointments are being appraised in accordance with contribution or non-contribution to or effect on corporate profit-making which, however useful and legitimate, is external to the scientific work and teaching of the Department.

In light of the foregoing I propose to ask the three past presidents of the American Economic Association together with the two American Nobel Prize winners who are engaged in active teaching (one of whom is also current President of the American Economic Association), together with the Chairman of the Department of Economics to examine the Department as a matter of urgency and to report. The following are the terms of reference for this examination:

  1. The group shall be denoted the Special Study Committee, and hereafter as the Committee.
  2. In its deliberations the Committee will consult to the fullest extent with students of the Department as well as with tenured and non-tenured members of the Department, and will discuss its provisional findings with students and faculty.
  3. The Committee will consider and report on whether the present personnel of the Department reflects an appropriately broad spectrum of method and view and, as necessary, on corrective steps. Corrective steps may specifically include recommendations for change in past action.
  4. The committee will consider whether the present teaching of economics is sufficiently broad, and specifically whether there should be a second and alternative track to a doctorate in economics embracing both course work and examinations and in which the primary emphasis would be on history of economic thought, institutional economics and socialist thought, or subject matter disciplines not required by the present framework.
  5. The Committee shall consider possible division or subdivision or other reorganization of the Department to provide greater knowledge of candidates for appointment or promotion, greater corporate responsibility for instruction and other possible gains from smaller size. In this connection special attention should be given to the relationship with the Kennedy School of Government.
  6. The effect of external corporate or other activities of Departmental members as these may bear on appointments, teaching or research, shall be examined with recommendations.
  7. The report of the Committee shall be made public and, in the absence of specific and fully-supported objection, it is my hope that its conclusions will be found acceptable to the Department. There is no intention to alter the constitutional arrangements by which tenured members, as now or in a suitably reorganized or subdivided Department, if that is the decision, are responsible for appointments and instruction.

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Galbraith Draft Statement (undated)
[handwritten additions in bold italics]

Draft #2

MEMORANDUM

MEMO:

The President
The Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Members of the Department of Economics

From: John Kenneth Galbraith

 

In these last weeks tensions long present in the Department of Economics at Harvard have come to the surface. The consequences are attracting interest and discussion well beyond the confines of the Department and the University. It is doubtful if anyone, and certainly any active participants, can state the issues with complete impartiality but some of the basic circumstances admit of agreement. They are.

(1) The Department has become very large—the current catalogue lists twenty-five regularly tenured professors, thirty-five nontenured professors, thirteen members in an adjunct relationship from other parts of the University and five visiting professors. In addition there are a large number of teaching assistants. The Department has become a parliamentary and not a corporate body. Long before the recent explosion I expressed my concern not only to my colleagues but also to the top management over our increasingly ungainly and ineffective mass and its dangers. I encountered little or no disagreement.

(2) The Department has for some years been deeply divided in its views. There has been an ineffective and mostly unchanging minority, and an effective and largely unchanging majority.

(3) While the basis of the division is diverse, including the polemical folk-tendencies of academic life, our learned delight in self assertion, our sensitivity to the intellectual shortcomings of others, differences in reaction to change, political attitudes, it is also a difference in the view of economics. I doubt that any statement of this difference can avoid prejudice. I shall content myself with being dull. It partly involves the acceptance or rejection of the established economic institutions; partly acceptance or rejection of accustomed preconceptions of economic thought, partly the trade-off between precision in established modalities and lesser precision in more innovative, critical or experimental work; partly it has to do with the degree of commitment to measurement and mathematics.

(4) While the underlying fact is a difference in the view of the subject (including the importance of representing the minority views) the argument over appointments invokes competence. Each side with no slight sense of moral righteousness defines competence in its own image. What is unscientific or soft to one side is irrelevant or unreal or unuseful to the other. Certainty in these positions is enhanced by the effect of professional esteem on ego. The members of the majority rightly reflect on the high regard in which precision and excellence of their work is held in their particular spheres of econometric, mathematical or applied work. The members of the minority rejoice similarly on their standing in the profession generally. Given these attitudes, the likelihood that one side will yield gracefully to the other is (if possible) even further reduced. Thus the absolute certainty of continued conflict.

(5) The difference comes to a head over appointments. This reflects a clear view of the reality. It is recognized by all that it is people who determine what is taught and investigated—and wholly so in such an unstructured environment as Harvard. The majority, not unnaturally, has prevailed. In this context a minority should not be expected to acquiesce. To do so is to accept eventual extinction. No one who is serious about his views or methods should countenance that.

(6) The students, once pridefully associated with the Department, are discontented. Their affiliation is largely, although by no means completely, with the minority. As a consequence some members of the majority hold or harbor the thought that the minority is acting less out of conviction than a desire to seek popularity or appease student opinion. Members of the minority react with a strong (and in my own case previously undisclosed) concern for the quality of our institution.

(7) There is a question as to the bearing of subjective judgments formed in connection with the business activities of members—or in consequence of those activities—on promotion of those whose disposition or work leads to criticism of cherished and remunerative economic institutions.

Aggravated problems sometimes allow of simple choices. This is so in the present case. One course is to continue as now, and enjoy the acrimony and continue to invite, by our public bickering, disesteem for the subject, the Department, the University, our students and ourselves. The other is to move to the obvious and forthright resolution, on which will be to the benefit of all concerned.

The solution is to divide the present vast Department into two parts. One part, a Department or Division of General Economics*, would reflect the specialized interests and scientific purpose of the majority, including those whose identification with the minority has been based not on identity of professional interest but concern for academic diversity. A second part would be the Department of Social Economics. This initially much smaller Department would consist of those tenured and untenured members whose active identification with the social issues of planning, economic structure, criticism, or socialism or institutionalism leads them to make the transfer. The new Department, born out of a need to ensure diversity, would itself be under the normal academic obligation to perpetuate diversity. It would develop an undergraduate and graduate curriculum and degree requirements compromising nothing in depth and rigor, in accordance with the interests of its members and of students. Subject to established ad hoc procedures—and its resources—it would make its own promotions and appointments.

*No difficulty should be made over a name. The parent Department could be called the Department of Economics.

The initial resources of the new Department would consist of the present financial commitment to those making the change. There would, some minor administrative costs apart, be no added burden on the University budget. I would make the transfer and make the revenues from the Paul M. Warburg Professorship, including the supporting research revenues (on neither of which I have drawn in net amount in recent years) available for a new professorial appointment. I believe, not without knowledge, that money for one or two added professorships as well as for research could be raised from sources not presently open either to the University or the Department. Scholarship funds would be divided in accordance with student demand. I am willing to commit a good share of personal time in the next year to money raising, a task in which, unlike my economics, my competence has been sufficiently established.

May I note in summary the advantages of the foregoing proposal.

(1) The basic cause of distress and conflict in the present Department of Economics would be removed. Each of the new Departments or Divisions will be in a position to develop the subject in full accordance with its own lights. Neither will be in the academically repellant position (however agreeable in practice) of imposing its standards or preferences on the other.

(2) The problem of excessive scale and consequent diminution in sense of communal responsibility for teaching, research and appointments is solved in the case of the new small Department or Division. It is alleviated for the larger parent Department.

(3) The Department of Social Economics if it is to attract, retain and place its graduate students, will have to demonstrate itself in competition with its older and more prestigious parent. This competition will be exceedinglyhealthy for both. This is an appealing point. While businessmen favor competition more often in principle than in practice, this is not an error into which any good economist will allow himself to fall.

(4) Undergraduate instruction in the new Department will benefit no alone from the members’ commitment to their subject matter but also from the greater sense of community as between teaching assistants, tenured and non-tenured faculty in a much smaller department and the present Department will be better. In the present Department not even all tenured and untenured members are known to each other. Teaching assistants are known only to a fraction of the faculty members and even less is known about their performance. And again in undergraduate teaching the vigorous competition of the new Department will be good for the older one.

(5) Problems associated with the corporate business activities of professors will be at least partly resolved. No question of concern for attitudes of business clients, however subjective, will be thought to influence those who are passing on appointments in the new Department. Subject no doubt, to appropriate safeguards the activities of present members of the Department with their potential for useful employment, income and information could perhapsremain.

(6) The two Departments through a coordinating committee might [illegible word] combine for the time being on the elementary course.

(7) The creation of the new Department with an admixture of old and new members intent on developing both old and new lines of inquiry will affirm, as nothing else, Harvard’s avidly proclaimed commitment to free inquiry by people of the highest calibre and to whatever result.

(8) Nothing is forever. If, after say ten years, there is demand for reunification, why not.

With so much to be gained—and also so much trouble to be avoided—I hope that we can proceed to consider this solution with a minimum of delay. Needless to say—perhaps on the basis of past departmental performance it is very necessary that I say—I am ready at any notice to lend a hand.

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Memo On Splitting the Harvard Economics Department
[Apparent Final Draft]

June 18, 1973

From:  JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH

To:

PRESIDENT DEREK C. BOK
DEAN-DESIGNATE HENRY ROSOVSKY
PROFESSOR JAMES S. DUESENBERRY
MEMBERS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Re: THE DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

The Department of Economics is, I would judge, entering into a period of considerable calm and tranquility. The older dissidents and heretics in the Department will, with one or two exceptions, soon be retiring. And, in any case, they are now a harmless minority. Within a year or so the younger generation of dissidents will be safely gone. Thus the expectation of a period of scholarly calm.

My purpose in this memorandum is to suggest that the prospect is not as happy as these developments imply. And it is to suggest some steps which, without unduly disturbing the equanimity of the situation, the Department and the Administration would be wise to consider. May I note that these are matters on which I have no personal, as distinct from general, professional concern. I am one of those who will be contributing, however modestly, to a more seemly, tranquil and comfortable life by a comparatively early departure.

The problems remaining after the prospective changes are two. There is first the fact that, while faculty affairs have been generally arranged to the satisfaction of all, the students remain deeply dissatisfied. Let no one doubt this or seek, by the usual academic rationalizations, to explain it away. I was much exposed to this in the special seminar last autumn; I determined then to inform myself in a minor way during the spring, which I have done. The students, over a wide political spectrum, deeply dislike their work and the Department. This is especially true of the first-year students who, in a puzzling exercise in public relations reflecting an odd attitude toward education, are now blithely told at the outset to expect the worst year of their lives. Those who have been here two or three years also look back with discontent on their educational experience. My first year of graduate work was one of the most vital and interesting of my life. So, I believe it was with most of my generation.

The complaint of the students is straitforward. They are squeezed, especially in their first year but increasingly as a test in later work, into a narrow model-building, problem-solving, quasi-mathematical routine that they find boring and unrelated to the world in which they live. The emasculated careerist may accept the routine and do well. The student who thought that economics was a window on the problems of the world is abjectly disappointed.

These student reactions are heavily discounted by most although not all of the senior faculty. The rationalization is that such student attitudes are inevitable—that the modern student is inherently lazy, feckless, radical and dissatisfied. It is even suggested, not without scholarly vigor, that those who express concern about students are courting a student popularity in a sadly unscholarly tradition. As I say, this rationalization seems to me unwise and something that very soon will have a more practical consequence. A bad reputation in these matters is not easily kept a secret. It could happen that eventually the Department will have very few graduate students of indigenous origin of any consequence, a few committed careerists, mathematicians and model-builders apart. Numbers and quality of applicants will decline. In consequence, the ratio of faculty to active, teachable graduate students, which is now approaching one to one, will pass that point and will widen as a ratio of students to teachers. This is not hyperbole. A course was recently described to me by a graduate student in which he was the only participant along with three faculty members. We have a fair number of seminars with only a handful of students, sometimes but one. Faculty life will continue in comfort. Workshops will serve, as already now, to disguise the shortage of students. But still there will be nervousness.

There is another and more subjective danger. The harmony which one now foresees is based on a general commitment to neoclassical economics or its applied refinements. Accomplishment in model-building and refinement is, I think nearly all will agree, an increasingly stern requirement. We would not again hire a labor economist who, like Professor Dunlop or Professor Slichter, made his career out of a practical association with the unions and the problems of labor mediation. Professor Leontief, were he now showing the experimental tendencies that marked his early career, would be in trouble. Even his work, when firmly established, was not strongly supported. We would not have an economist who was too much preoccupied with the practical details of tax reform—unless he protected his flank by suitable theoretical or econometric exercise. My own past tendencies would certainly not be acceptable for promotion—although on the merits of this, with characteristic tact, I disqualify myself. What is not in doubt is that we are now very strong in the journals but much less strong in the obscenely practical matters on which many people, including many students, expect economists to be useful. This could be damaging to the reputation of the Department. The latter has always depended in appreciable measure not on the great scientists but on its vulgar practitioners.

Now let me say a word on reform. Mention of reform leads to thoughts of reform of the Department—so it is with faculty and also students. The present course of instruction is wrong. Let us find the right one. The problem is that no one line of graduate economic instruction can now serve all interests, reflect all points of view. Nor does it deal with the highly important fact that instruction is far less important than the inclination of the people who guide it. The Department is now a vast parliamentary body. So long as there is only one educational track, as a matter of course it will reflect the preferences of the majority. All of us, in the oldest of academic traditions, appraise excellence using ourselves as the yardstick. Reform requires that we begin to provide real choices as to teachers and as to work. Three possibilities occur to me:

  1. We should have in the Department of Economics two tracks to two Ph.D.’s. One of these would be in economics, another in (say) social economics. Professors in the Department would be grouped into two broad Executive Committees around these tracks. And each of these two Executive Committees would have responsibility not only for developing graduate work in its track and for examination therein but also for recruitment and promotion. This would broaden the choice for students; would mean that we would have two more nearly corporate bodies rather than one parliamentary body to guide instruction and appointments; would foster the kind of competition which all economists intrinsically and devoutly applaud; and would reduce by half the present parliamentary tendency to exclude the minority view. The first track would continue the present program with all of its neoclassical and model-building rigor. The second track would be experimental, humane and with a much stronger orientation to the emerging issues of our time. It would not, and this must be emphasized, involve any less effort.
  2. The second possibility would be to establish within the Department an institute—an Institute for Economic Innovation. This would enlist the members of the senior faculty so inclined, would develop a program purely of graduate instruction and would lead also to a degree which would reflect its own course of instruction. The purpose of constituting this as an institute would be twofold: to get the energy and attention of one man who would see the institute as the projection of his own efforts, and to use the institute as a device for raising new funds for both chairs and research. It is my near certainty, based on some experience as a medicant, that this enterprise, properly presented, would be very attractive to donors. I am not sure, however, that given the present size of the Department, it would not be wiser simply to allot some Graustein appointments to the Institute for the next few years.
  3. The third and final possibility would be to have two Departments of Economics—one Department of Economics and one Department of Social Economics. There are advantages to this—again the healthy competition in which all economists theoretically rejoice, elimination of the present diseconomies of scale, the much more clearly defined differentiation of purpose. It would not be as difficult a solution as seems at first glance. Those who approve of the Department as it is would remain with the Department of Economics. The rest would make the new Department. It would form its character from those who join it in the feeling that a more strongly innovative, humane and applied—in the modern sense—approach to economics is in order. The problem is, of course, that it involves the largest disruption in established institutional arrangements. That is not something to be undertaken lightly. Sometimes, though, that is good.

I am persuaded that in one or another of the above arrangements lies the only hope for a satisfactory future. For a while the tranquility that is in prospect will be greatly enjoyed. Given the sterile tendencies of the accepted economics and the attitudes of the students, it will be, if not the tranquility of the tomb, certainly that of a kind of somnambulant decay.

J.K.G.

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526. Folder “Memorandum on Reorganization of the Department of Economics”.

Image Source: Harvard Class Album 1958.

Categories
Costs of education Economics Programs Harvard

Harvard. Printed Graduate Economics Brochure. (First draft was by J. K. Galbraith), 1967

 

 

Economics in the Rear-view Mirror provides transcriptions of material concerning both course content (as revealed in syllabi, reading lists, exam questions, lecture notes, etc.) as well as concerning the procedures followed in different undergraduate and graduate programs of economics.

What helps to distinguish the following graduate program brochure for Harvard that was still hot off the press in September 1967 is that the authorship of its first draft can be unambiguously attributed to John Kenneth Galbraith. Sentences like “Economics, especially in the fields of research, teaching, and the public service, is a profession of good but not munificent reward” and “There are few differences between human beings more profound than the capacity to conserve or spend money” are certainly consistent with recorded Galbraithian style.

I’ll note here that John Kenneth Galbraith was simply incapable of writing the most mundane of his administrative correspondence without turning a brilliant phrase or two. I have wondered how long he might have eluded arrest had he ever tried his hand at writing a ransom note.

It is striking that even at this relatively late date, so little effort was made to render the brochure gender-neutral. Clearly it was still a (Mad-) Man’s World.

An interesting comparison is Robert Solow’s brochure for the M.I.T. economics program in 1961.

____________________

Harvard University
Department of Economics

M-8 Littauer Center Center
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Office of the Chairman

September 19, 1967

Professor J. Kenneth Galbraith
207 Littauer

Dear Ken:

Sometime ago you were kind enough to do a first draft of a brochure describing our graduate program to prospective students. After a long delay, I solicited additional suggestions for this and prepared a revised manuscript. A copy of the printed version is enclosed for your perusal.

Thank you again for your help.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Richard E. Caves
Chairman

REC:eb

____________________

Graduate Study in Economics at Harvard

PUBLISHED BY THE DEPARTMENT

Introduction

This booklet is meant to tell the student who is considering graduate work in economics some of the things he will wish to know about work in this field at Harvard University. And it also tells something of the University and larger urban community in which he will find himself.

Harvard University, which was founded in 1636, is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States. It comprises Harvard and Radcliffe colleges, which give undergraduate degrees and the graduate schools. Graduate work in economics is offered under the auspices of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Undergraduate enrollment at Harvard and Radcliffe is about 6 thousand; in all graduate schools and departments about 9 thousand. Although by no means large by present-day standards, Harvard is part of what is, without doubt, the largest and most concentrated educational center in the United States. It shares residence in Cambridge and along the Charles River with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a long-standing arrangement between the two institutions allows the graduate students of each to register for courses in the other. Boston University, Boston College, Tufts University, Northeastern University, Brandeis University and Wellesley College are all within a few miles. And there are many smaller or more specialized institutions nearby. This large academic community, together with the strong cultural, artistic and literary tradition of the Boston area, brings a steady flow of visiting scholars, artists and public figures to this community from all parts of the world. The student at Harvard is identified not only with a university but with a major intellectual and cultural center. His problem, he will soon discover, is not to seize all of his opportunities —  lectures, seminars, discussion groups, debates, conferences, concerts, plays, museums, and exhibitions — but to discriminate among them.

 

Economics at Harvard

Graduate work in economics at Harvard is just under a hundred years old. The first successful Ph.D. candidate, Dr. Stuart Wood of Philadelphia, later a prominent civic leader and businessmen in that city, took his degree in 1875 with a thesis on the work of the pioneer and prolific American economist, Henry C. Carey. The second doctorate was awarded a few years later to Frank William Taussig, who became a dominant figure in the field and a famous Harvard teacher for the next half century. Until the beginning of the present century, faculty, students, and courses were comparatively few in number — only five men held the rank of professor before 1900, and one of these was in sociology which was then considered a branch of economics. But in the early nineteen hundreds there was a rapid expansion in faculty, students, and course offerings which, with few interruptions, has continued to this time. The Harvard Department of Economics now has 24 full professors, listed at the end of this pamphlet. The junior staff consists of about 30 instructors and assistant professors, young scholars doing teaching and research.

Throughout the years, several traits have persisted in the Department’s collective personality. It does not run to any particular ideology or methodological disposition; its members display a wide range of attitudes toward economic policy and the advancement of economic science. By long tradition, the Department sees itself not as an organization committed to a particular method, point of view or problem, but as a gathering of individuals scholars each committed to pursue the truth in accordance with his own lights. Members teach and do research as individuals and not as members of the school. The same latitude is allowed to students.

Harvard’s is a “full-line” department, concerned both with the development of economic theory and quantitative research methods, and with their use in all of the major fields of applied economics. The Department has been active in opening up teaching and research in new fields of applied economics: early in the 1950’s it began building a strong program in economic development; now work is fast expanding in such areas as urban economics and the economics of human resources.

The close association of many members of the Harvard Department of Economics with public policy has been sufficiently featured in recent history so that it requires no further comment. It is not, however, especially new. Professors Taussig and Edwin Gay held high positions in World War I in the Wilson Administration. Just before, during, and after World War II such members as Edward S. Mason, Alvin H. Hansen, John H. Williams, and Sumner Slichter likewise occupied various positions of high responsibility. In recent times, the close association between the Department of Economics and the John F. Kennedy School of Government has reinforced this interest in public service and, as a consequence, a number of Harvard Ph.D.’s continue to go into public life.

Finally, the Department prides itself on being a major research center. For many years it has published two leading professional journals, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. Various members have maintained large-scale research projects, such as Professor Wassily Leontief’s Harvard Economic Research Project (input-output analysis), Professor John R. Meyer’s projects in transportation and urban economics, and Professor Hollis B. Chenery’s work on development planning.

Most Harvard professors engage actively in both undergraduate and graduate teaching. (Under ordinary circumstances each professor gives two courses, a course and a seminar or their equivalent each semester.) As in all universities worthy of the name, there is a primary concern among Harvard scholars for advancing the state of knowledge in their discipline. In recent years there has been a popular myth that research is somehow in conflict with good teaching. In actual fact, good teaching at the highest level is rarely done by men who are not also engaged in advancing knowledge. But the high ratio of faculty to students is designed to ensure that all students will receive the personal attention of accomplished scholars.

 

General Nature of the Graduate Program in Economics

Each year between 40 and 50 graduate students are admitted for advanced work (normally toward the Ph.D.) in economics. Usually about two-thirds of them are United States citizens; the balance come from countries scattered over much of the globe. About 180 graduate students are in residence each year, and between 30 and 35 complete their Ph.D.’s. What program do they undertake? Where do they go upon its completion?

Most students apply to begin graduate study immediately after completing their undergraduate degrees, in are judged for admission on the basis of the general promise shown by their undergraduate records. More store is set by a distinguished record in general than by the extent of undergraduate specialization in economics. Nonetheless, an undergraduate major or extensive coursework in economics is definitely helpful. So are undergraduate courses in mathematics, at least through calculus, since mathematics nowadays is a standard working tool for many economists. Undergraduate work in statistics is useful but less necessary.

Students are ordinarily admitted only for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. For those without previous graduate studies, this program requires two years of coursework (and residence at the University), followed by another year or two (usually two) of work on a doctoral dissertation.

The practice at Harvard is to think of graduate studies in economics as falling into three parts. First, there must be mastery of the general body of economic theory and history which are part of the common qualification of all economists. Second, there should be competence in standard statistical research tools which are useful or necessary in handling economic problems. Finally, there are the various specialized or applied fields of economics in which, aided by his economics theory and his tools of analysis, the student extends and deepens his knowledge in accordance with his particular interests. A typical graduate program at Harvard reflects this general delineation of the subject as a field of study.

Although there is no required course program, the student ordinarily spends his first year insuring his competence in economic theory, economic history, and quantitative methods. Should he carry four courses, which for most students is a normal load, he will also have the opportunity to begin work in an area which reflects his specialized interest. During his second year, in addition to further study in economic theory and quantitative methods, he goes more deeply into his field or fields of specialization. Then, and while writing his dissertation, he takes part in working seminars that bring him into close touch with the research of the faculty and other students. On all of these matters he has the guidance of a faculty member who serves as his adviser. There is no foreign language requirement for the Ph.D. degree, except as an alternative (not particularly recommended) to showing competence in mathematics. At the end of their second year students ordinarily take their “generals” which consists of a written examination in economic theory and an oral examination which includes economic history, statistics and quantitative methods, and two specialized fields. Thereafter, under the guidance of the faculty member, the student writes his thesis, which must demonstrate capacity for original research.

Upon completion of his degree, a wide choice of career opportunities awaits the student. Just as it is the prime function of the University to continue and enlarge man’s store of knowledge, so it will always be the function of its best students to teach their discipline and to enlarge and modernize it by research. In the past a large portion of Harvard Ph.D.’s in economics have gone on to be college and university teachers and to continue investigation in the field. So, unquestionably, will it be in the future. Without ever making it a formal goal, the Department has long considered the training of the next generation of scholars and teachers to be its primary function. At the present time, these serve an especially insistent demand.

Outside of college and university teaching, the range of career opportunities is now wider than ever before. Harvard’s traditional involvement in public policy leads to a ready demand for its graduates in the U.S. and other governments. There is an insistent and increasing demand for trained economists from the business community, including, but by no means confined to, those were skilled in statistical methods and in modern techniques of data processing in the application of economic and statistical analysis to managerial problems.

 

Programs with Other Schools and Departments

The Ph.D. in Business Economics, administered jointly with the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, enables a student to divide his fields equally between the Department and the Business School. The Ph.D. degree in Political Economy and Government permits a student to take a substantial share of his work in fields of government and law. Separate leaflets are available specifying the requirements for these degrees.

Graduate work in economics at Harvard is enriched by the opportunities for association with scholars and students in a variety of centers and programs including the area of programs in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, the Harvard Development Advisory Service, the Center for International Affairs, the International Tax Program, the Joint Center for Urban Studies, the Program in Technology and Society, the Population Center, the Programs in Decision and Control, and others.

 

Physical Facilities

Universities, scholars have often warned, do not consist of bricks and mortar, although, is less frequently observed, they do not usually exist without them. Pending completion in the early 1970s’s of the John F. Kennedy complex, which will house several departments, institutes, and research centers, the Department of Economics is housed principally in the Littauer Center of Public Administration, which also contains the Department of Government, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a library serving these departments. This library contains all the books and journals assigned in graduate courses, as well as general reading, reference and research materials in the fields of economics, government, and public affairs. Littauer Center also provides the seminar rooms where many of the graduate courses meet and a coffee bar for student use.

Nearby are excellent computer facilities, and the Department makes arrangements to provide training in computer use to its graduate students and computer time for research on dissertations and major term papers. Computation facilities will be expanded considerably in the next few years as remote console stations come into use.

Littauer Center is located just outside of Harvard Yard, which contains many other facilities of interest to graduate students. The Yard is dominated by Widener Library, the main unit of the Harvard University Library, the total holdings of which run to eight million volumes. The Baker Library at the Harvard Business School, across the Charles River from the Yard, contains extensive materials of interest to economics students, including special collections in transportation and the history of economic thought. Other important libraries are the Lamont Library, in the Yard, which is used extensively for undergraduates for course reading; and the Langdell Library of the Harvard Law School, close to Littauer Center.

Harvard undergraduate upperclassmen live in residential units called Houses, each House having a staff, dining hall, a small library, and recreational facilities. A number of more advanced graduate students who have acquired teaching responsibilities are appointed to the house staffs as tutors. Unmarried tutors frequently live in the house of which they are a member.

 

Graduate student finances

Economics, especially in the fields of research, teaching, and the public service, is a profession of good but not munificent reward. And many graduate students have passed the stage in life when they can continue to call heavily on their families for financial assistance. Finally, the Cambridge community is not inexpensive and Harvard, a private foundation, still draws a large share of its revenues from tuition. For all of these reasons it is recognized that many students will require financial help. The Department of Economics believes that, in recent years, no student of energy and ability has had to withdraw for purely financial reasons.

A large number of students come to the University with National Science Foundation, Danforth, and other fellowships from outside sources. The Department naturally expects all students offered such awards to except and use them.

Harvard fellowships, including “Graduate Prize Fellowships,” are the main reliance for support of graduate studies. They are designed to allow the highly qualified students to work uninterruptedly up to his degree with knowledge that his basic financial needs are assured. Up to seventeen of the “Graduate Prize Fellowships” are awarded each year, and assuming satisfactory progress, are held by the student for four years. During the first year these Fellowships pay $4,000 of which $2,000 is for tuition and $2,000 for stipend. In the second year the stipend rises to the $2,200. In the third and fourth years, while working on the dissertation, the student holds a teaching Fellowship: he gives two fifths of his time to teaching and receives a stipend of $2,400 together with tuition. Graduate students in the latter years of their training play an important and valued role in Harvard’s undergraduate instruction, and nearly 60 of them hold Teaching Fellowships each year. This enables them, in turn, to show substantial experience in seeking teaching positions after completion of their degrees.

In the award of Teaching Fellowships, as in all other aspects of its work, the Department of Economics accords equal opportunity, depending only on qualification, to women students. It does not encourage the student to assume a teaching burden that interferes with steady and substantial progress toward the completion of his coursework and dissertation; Teaching Fellowships are therefore not available to first-year students, and not usually in the second year.

There are few differences between human beings more profound than the capacity to conserve or spend money. These differences are enlarged by wives, children, travel, and other requirements. Hence, it is nearly impossible to answer the question: how much does a student in Cambridge need? In general, it is the experience of unmarried graduate students that the funds provided by a Graduate Prize Fellowship adequately cover minimum needs. Loan funds are, of course, available in case of emergency. For married students some auxiliary income, such as a wife’s earnings, is unquestionably important. (Like most universities Harvard is willing to finance students but reluctant to support a student household.) Accordingly the problem of employment opportunity, with which that of housing is closely associated, is important. To these we now turn.

 

Housing and Employment

For the unmarried student, housing presents few problems. There are dormitories for both men and women — old ones with large rooms and thick walls and new ones with less space and better design. Current rates for dormitory rooms and for meals — these are not excessive — are given in a special supplement to the General Catalogue which may be obtained, along with an application blank, from the Registrar, Harvard University.

In earlier times graduate students at Harvard, as at other universities, lifter rather bleak boarding house existence and saw a little of each other as a community. Harkness Commons and the Radcliffe Graduate Center, both built since World War II, provide a congenial social atmosphere for all students who are so disposed. Both have good cafeterias. The student who wants solitude for his own work can still find it at Harvard, but it is a matter of choice and not of necessity or conformity.

The problems of the married student, especially the student with a young family, are more complex. Cambridge is a comparatively old city surrounded by the numerous other cities and towns which comprise the Greater Boston area. Housing in the area as a whole can best be described as ample, expensive, and generally unsatisfactory. One exception is provided by Harvard itself, which has over nine hundred apartments available for married students in buildings which it owns. These are closely convenient to the university and residence thus have ready access to the functions and activities of the University community. They obviate the need for a car. But, like privately owned dwellings in Cambridge, this convenience has a cost — but not an out-of-line one. Dwellings at a greater distance from the University generally provide more space at a lower price period

The University Housing Office, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides listings and guidance to housing. It also receives applications for university-owned housing. Married student should get in touch with this office as soon as they are admitted and use its services on arrival in Cambridge. The Housing Office strongly urges married students who have not previously obtained Harvard or other housing to come early — if possible in August — to look for accommodations. “Usually the only way of obtaining an apartment,” it advises in its bulletin, “is by persistent personal search.”

The University community, in its varied activities, is a substantial employer, and the Boston area offers the manifold job opportunities of the large metropolitan area. The wife who has teaching, secretarial, stenographic, nursing, statistical, library, or other skills can be fairly certain of finding employment. And even the wife who is limited in her opportunities by pregnancy or young children can usually arrange some additional income by caring for the children of working parents. The chances of finding and the convenience of holding a job increase with proximity to the University and may help offset some of the higher costs of such close-in living. As in all imperfect markets time must be allowed to find employment, so, as with those must find housing, an early arrival in Cambridge is urged. A special office at Harvard, that of The Adviser for Harvard Wives, counsels on job opportunities as well as on doctors, dentists, shopping information and other practical questions facing the newly-arrived at family.

Students who are in need of assistance on any matter, academic, financial or personal, should not hesitate to appeal to the Dean of the Graduate School, the Chairman of the Department or to a senior professor for help and counsel.

 

Graduate Student Life

Although the Harvard community is large and urban, it seeks not to be distant and impersonal. It is certainly not dull.

Economics graduate students come into contact with each other through their courses, informal meetings in library and coffee room, in social affairs organized by the Department and the Graduate Economics Club (which undertakes to represent student interests before the Department, invites outside speakers, and otherwise looks after graduate-student well-being).

Although the rigors of graduate course work leave most people with only limited time for recreation, the cultural advantages of Harvard in the Cambridge and Boston areas generally are unmatched. The Old New England character of Harvard Square and its immediate environs is increasingly spiced by a lively “Village” atmosphere. Cambridge and Boston cater to cultural taste running from low-brow to high-brow. At the latter end of the spectrum come much local theater (both pre-Broadway and off-Broadway), the strikingly original Boston Opera Group, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (especially its bargain series of open rehearsals, populated mostly by students), and many individual concerts, art exhibitions, and the like. The years spent earning a Ph.D. at Harvard will be filled with new experiences, contacts, and horizons, as well as solid and satisfying work.

 

Sources of Additional Information

Courses are listed in Courses of Instruction for Harvard and Radcliffe common commonly called the Course Catalogue; it is issued in September for each academic year. Formal requirements for the Ph.D. in economics are outlined in the leaflet “Higher Degrees under the Department of Economics,” Supplement to the General Announcement. A similar leaflet describes “The Ph.D. in Business Economics.” One issued by the Committee on Higher Degrees in Political Economy and Government outlines “Requirements for the Degrees in Political Economy and Government.” A few graduate students find it useful to attend the Harvard Summer School, in which a very limited range of graduate economics courses is offered each year; a Preliminary Announcement listing all courses is available shortly after the beginning of the calendar year.

 

Professors and Associate Professors
Department of Economics, 1967

Abram Bergson
Richard E. Caves
Hollis B. Chenery
Robert Dorfman
James S. Duesenberry
John T. Dunlop
Otto Eckstein
J. Kenneth Galbraith
Alexander Gerschenkron
Gottfried Haberler
Albert O. Hirschman
Hendrik S. Houthakker
Simon Kuznets
Harvey Leibenstein
Wassily Leontief
John Lintner
Edward S. Mason
John R. Meyer
Richard A. Musgrave
Dwight H. Perkins
Howard Raiffa
Henry Rosovsky
Thomas C. Schelling
Arthur Smithies

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers.  Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526, Folder “Harvard Department of Economics: Graduate Student Brochure (JKG wrote 1st draft), September 1967”.

Image Source: Littauer Center (July 1970). Harvard University Archives.

Categories
Harvard Seminar Speakers Sociology Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Social Influences on Economic Actions, outline and readings. Musgrave and Spechler, 1973

 

The outline below for an ambitious Harvard course organized jointly by Richard Musgrave and Martin C. Spechler in 1973 comes from John Kenneth Galbraith’s papers. Galbraith was invited to give a lecture on institutional economics and a couple of pages of keywords in the folder would appear to confirm that Galbraith indeed lectured on the topic.

Biographical information for Richard Musgrave was provided a few blog postings ago. Martin Spechler too was a Harvard alumnus (indeed all three of his academic degrees come from that institution) and so I’ll first insert the chronology of his academic jobs so one can meet another economic Ph.D. alumnus. Spechler’s main research field was comparative economic systems complemented by a strong interest in the history of economics (see the link to his 2007 c.v. below). 

______________________

Martin C. Spechler (b. January 25, 1943, New York City)

A.B. in Social Studies (1964), A.M. in Economics (1967), Ph.D. in Economics (1971). Harvard

1965-1971. Harvard. Teaching fellow in economics and social studies.
1971-1973. Harvard. Lecturer on economics and on social studies.
1971-1974. Harvard. Head tutor in economics.
1973-1975. Harvard. Assistant professor of economics.
1974-1980. Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Department of Economics, lecturer.
1980-1982. Tel Aviv University. Department of Economics and School of General History. Senior lecturer (acting).
1982-1983. University of Washington, Seattle. School  of International Studies. Visiting associate professor.
1983-1984. University Iowa, Iowa City. Visiting associate professor.
1984-1986. Indiana University, Bloomington. Visiting associate professor of economics and research associate, West European Studies.
1986-1990. Indiana University, Indianapolis. Associate professor of economics
1990-. Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis. Professor of economics.

Source:  Martin C. Spechler c.v. (December 2007).

______________________

ECONOMICS 2080
Tentative Lecture Schedule
[1973]

1. September 27 Spechler on Marxism
2. October 4 Unger on Weber
3. October 9 (Tues.) Galbraith on institutionalism
4. October 18 Duesenberry on consumer behavior
5. October 25 (?) on entrepreneurs
6. November 1 M. Roberts on government bureaucracy
7. November 8 J. Bower on corporate organization
8. November 15 Doeringer on workers and unions
9. November 20 (Tuesday) Bowles (?) on Marxian theory of the state
10. November 29 D. Bell (?) on elite theory
11. December 6 J. Q. Wilson on pluralism
12. December 13 Hirschman on trade policy
13. December 20 Musgrave on objectivity in economics and social science

 

Harvard University
Economics 2080

Social Influences on Economic Action
Fall Term, Thursday 4-6

Martin C. Spechler
Holyoke 833, Office; 10-12 (daily)

Richard Musgrave
Littauer 326

            Designed to be taken in one semester to be followed by a seminar, this course examines the social context of economic activity. It covers theoretic and applied writings in several significant traditions: Marxist, Weberian, institutionalist, and liberal. The list includes a more thorough reading of Marx and Weber than is usually available elsewhere and articles reporting contemporary research of a scale suitable for dissertations. Since certain topics of interest, such as stratification, are treated elsewhere in the Economics or allied departments, the range of topics is intentionally incomplete. But each topic includes competing paradigms and case studies making use of them. Each topic takes off from the limits of conventional economics to show that different assumptions and procedures show promise of answering important questions about economic life.

It is envisioned that the course will be taught during the first year in a conference format, with guest lecturers but with one or two Department members responsible for the entire course and always present in class. The course will culminate in the writing of a long (30-40 pages) case study, employing some or all of the theoretical perspectives which have been presented. There will also be a shorter paper early on to fix the theoretical perspectives in mind.

The course is intended for graduate students with some preparation in economics. To facilitate discussion, one might have to limit enrollment, though a diverse group would be highly desirable.

Works marked (*) are assumed as background; those marked (**) are supplementary.

A. The Content and Limits of Modern Economics: A Point of Departure

*Lord Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (2nd ed. 1935).

Emile Gruenberg, “The Meaning of Scope and External Boundaries of Economics.”

Kenneth E. Boulding, “The Verifiability of Economic Images.” Both in Sherman Roy Krupp, The Structure of Economic Science. (Prentice Hall, 1966), pp. 129-165.

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Analytical Economics (Harvard University Press, 1966), Part I (especially pp. 92-129).

B. Three Social Perspectives on Economic Action

What are the hallmarks of “modern” — now misleadingly termed “Western” — society? What changes in productive relations, in ethos, and in political arrangements favored its development? This section examines in depth three major interdisciplinary systems which undertake to define, explain, and analyze the working of modern society, particularly the limits placed on the market by social forces.

Week 1 (September 27) Marxism

Karl Marx, “Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”

________, “Estranged Labor”

________, “Private Property and Communism”

________, “The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society”

________, “The German Ideology”, Part I

________, “Wage Labor and Capital”

________, “Capital”, Vol. 1 (selections) all in The Marx-Engels Reader (ed. By Robert C. Tucker), Norton Publ., pp. 306 [30-36 intended?], 56-83, 110-164, 167-317, 577-588.

Friedrich Engels, “Letters on Historical Materialism” in Tucker, ed., pp. 640-651 and 661-664.  OR

Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory, Vol. I, chapters 5, 11; Vol. II, 12-14.

Week 2 (October 4) Weber

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, entire.

________, The Religion of China, IV, V, and VIII.

________, *General Economic History, Part IV

“Power, Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany,” and “National Character and the Junkers,” all in Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, pp. 159-195, 363-395.

Week 3 (October 11) Institutionalism

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, in Max Lerner, The Portable Veblen (Viking pb) chapters IV, VI.

________, “On the Merits of Borrowing,” from Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, pp. 349-363 in M. Lerner, The Portable Veblen, op. cit.

________, The Theory of Business Enterprise, chapters III, IV, VII.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics and the Public Purpose (Houghton-Mifflin, 1973), chapters V, IX-XIV, and XIX.

Possible paper topics (illustrative only) for section B. Due October 18:

Paper: What do Marxist, Weberian, and Historical-institutional theories have to say about kinds of modern economies which have developed in the world?

**England, 1642-1851

David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, introduction and chapter 1.

Barrington, Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, chapters I and VI.

E.J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, chapters 1-7.

**Japan and China Compared

M. J. Levy, “Contrasting Factors in the Modernization of China and Japan,” in Simon Kuznets, Economic Growth: Brazil, India, Japan (Duke, 1955), pp. 496-536.

Henry Rosovsky, “Japan’s Transition to Modern Economic Growth, 1868-1885,” in Henry Rosovsky (ed.) Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron (Wiley, 1966). Bobbs-Merrill Reprint No. Econom-264.

Thomas C. Smith, “Japan’s Aristocratic Revolution,” Yale Review V (50), 1960-61, pp. 370-83, reprinted in R. Bendix and S.M. Lipset, Class, Status and Power (2nd ed.), pp. 135-40. The samurai class as modernizers.

Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins, op. cit., IV, V, VIII, IX. Particular attention to feudal land patterns as an obstacle to economic and political modernization.

or R.H. Tawney, Land and Labour in China (Octagon, 1964)

or Johannes Hirschmeier, The Origins of Entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan (Harvard, 1964).

**Indonesia, 1945-

Clifford Geertz, Peddlers and Princes (Chicago, 1963). An excellent example of economic anthropology in the Weberian tradition.
[Other suggestions and bibliography available from the instructors.]

C. How do Consumers, Workers, and Entrepreneurs form their Preferences for Market Activities?

This section examines the empirical evidence to date on the relative role of material incentives and job characteristics on productivity, on the effects of advertising on consumer attitudes, and on the relationship between historical experience and decisions about the future.

Week 4 (October 18) Consumer Behavior

*Robert Ferber, “Research on Household Behavior,” American Economic Review, Vol. 52 (1962), pp. 19-63. Reprinted in A.S.C. Ehrenburg and F.G. Pyatt, Consumer Behavior (Penguin, 1971).

*Karl Marx, “Alienated Labor,” and “Needs, Production, and the Division of Labor,” from Early Writings, ed. J. B. Bottomore, pp. 120-134.

*James S. Duesenberry, Income, Saving, and the Theory of Consumer Behavior, chapters I-IV.

J.K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society, (Revised edition), chapter 11.

Lester Telser, “Advertising and Cigarettes,” Journal of Political Economy (October, 1962), pp. 471-99).

Tony McGuiness and Keith Cowling, “Advertising and the Aggregate Demand for Cigarettes: An Empirical Analysis of a U.K. Market,” paper no. 31, Centre for Industrial Economic and Business Research, University of Warwick, England. On reserve in Littauer.

Lester D. Taylor and Daniel Weiserbs, “Advertising and the Aggregate Production Function,” American Economic Review, (September 1972), pp. 642-55.

George Katona, Burkhard Strumpel and Ernest Zahn, Aspirations and Affluence (McGraw-Hill, 1971), chapters 6-12. The effects and causes of consumer attitudes in the United States and Western Europe.

Week 5 (October 25) Entrepreneurs

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, (Harper Torchbook, 1962), chapter XI-XIV.

Thomas C. Cochran, “Cultural Factors in Economic Growth,” and David Landes, “French Business and the Business Man: a Social and Cultural Analysis,” in Hugh G.J. Aitken, Explorations in Enterprise (Harvard University Press, 1965), pp, 122-38, 184-209.

Alexander Gerschenkron, “Social Attitudes, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development,” in Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Harvard, 1962), pp. 52-71. [note: workers’ attitudes will be discussed in week 8.]

D. How Do Large Organizations Behave?

The opportunities created by market power and the size of the hierarchy in modern economic bureaucracies probably allowed behavior far from the competitive norm. What are the elements of structure, control, and attitudes which influence corporate behavior? The readings include the Weberian, and the “bureaucratic politics” points of view; and the case comparisons include the U.S. Navy, French enterprise, the Society of Jesus, the Soviet industrial planning system, and the most important American public enterprise.

Week 6 (November 1) Government Bureaucracy

Max Weber, “Bureaucracy,” in Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber, pp. 196-244.

Charles Lindblom, “The Politics of Muddling Through,” Bobbs-Merrill Reprint, Public Administration Review XIX (Spring, 1959), pp.79-88: why strict means-end rationality is impossible in government bureaucracies.

A. Wildavsky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process, (Little, Brown, 1964) chapter 2.

Stanley Surrey, “Congress and the Tax Lobbyist: How Tax Provisions Get Enacted,” Harvard Law Review (1957), pp. 1145-70.

Sandford F. Borins, “The Political Economy of ‘The Fed,’” Public Policy (Spring, 1972), pp. 175-98.

Sanford Weiner, “Resource Allocation in Basic Research and Organizational Design,” Public Policy (Spring, 1972), pp. 227-55.

Benjamin Ward, The Socialist Economy: A Study of Organizational Alternatives, chapters 5 and 6.

The latter considers whether socialization, such as occurs in the Jesuits and the Navy, would overcome some of the control anomalies which have frustrated Soviet planning.

**Joseph Berliner, Factory and Manager in the U.S.S.R. (Harvard, 1957); a classic on informal organizations versus system goals.

Week 7 (November 8) Corporate Organization

A Harvard Business School case will be distributed for discussion.

*R.H. Coase, “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica, (1937) reprinted in G. J. Stigler and Kenneth Boulding,Readings in Price Theory (AEA, 1952), pp. 331-351.

Armen A. Alchian and Harold Demsetz, “Production, Information Costs, and Economic Organization,” American Economic Review (December, 1972), pp. 777-95.

Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration (Row Peterson, 1957), chapter 4.

David Granick, Managerial Comparisons of Four Developed Countries (MIT, 1972), chapters 1-5, 9-13.

**Alfred Chandler, Jr. Strategy and Structure, chapters 1-3, 5-7, conclusion.

**Philip Selznick, TVA and the Grass Roots (Harper pb, 1966).

**Michelle Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Phoenix pb, 1964).

**Alfred Chandler. Pierre Dupont and the Modern Corporation.

Joseph L. Bower, “The Amoral Organization,” in R. Marris and E. G. Mesthene, Technology, the Corporation, and the State (forthcoming) or Harvard Business School 4-372-285.

Week 8 (November 15) Workers and Unions

Victor Vroom,”Industrial Social Psychology,” in Gardner B. Lindzey and Elliott Aronson, eds., The Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. V. (2nd ed.), 1969, pp. 196-248.

Work in America, report of a Special Task Force to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (MIT Press, 1973), chapters 1, 2, 4, 5.
Mancur Olsen, Logic of Collective Goods (paperback, rev. ed., 1971), chapter III, pp. 66-97.

Suggested:

**John Goldthorpe et al., The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure, Cambridge University Press, 1969, pb).

**Andre Gorz, A Strategy for Labor (Beacon pb., 1968), chapter 4.
Leonard Goodwin, Do the Poor Want to Work? (Brookings, 1972).

E. Does Economic Power Give Rise to Political Power?

            Marxist, elite and pluralist theorists all answer differently as to under what circumstances market power and material privilege are translated into political power and what sorts of groups (classes, corporations, trade associations, ideological coalitions, parties) contend for ascendancy. The readings examine such mechanisms as control of mass media, the common training and outlook of American and European elites, pressure group influence on Congressional elections, and the weakening of countervailing interests.

*Otto Eckstein, Public Finance (2nd ed.), chapters 1-2.

Week 9 (November 20, Tuesday) Marxian Theory of the State

Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (Basic Books), entire.

Week 10 (November 29) Elite Theory

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, chapters 1-13.

G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? (Spectrum pb. 1967), 1-5, 7.

Week 11 (December 6) Pluralism

Arnold M. Rose, The Power Structure, (Oxford pb, 1967), pp. 1-10, 15-24, 26-39, 70-78, 89-127, 131-133.

**J.K. Galbraith, The New Industrial State, chapters I-IX, XXV, and XXXV: A strong statement of the technological impetus towards convergence.

**Walter Adams, “The Military-Industrial Complex and the New Industrial State,” American Economic Review (May, 1968), pp. 652-665.

Stanley Lieberson, “An Empirical Study of Military-Industrial Linkages,” American Journal of Sociology, (1971), pp. 562-82.

George J. Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economic and Manag. Sci., (Spring, 1971), pp. 3-17.

Joseph C. Palamountain, Jr., The Politics of Distribution (Harvard University Press, 1955), II, IV, VII, VIII.

J.Q. Wilson, “Politics of Business Regulation” (revised ed.), mimeographed.

Week 12 (December 13) Trade Policy

Raymond A. Bauer, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and Lewis Anthony Dexter, American Business and Public Policy, The Politics of Foreign Trade (Aldine, 2nded., 1972), Parts II, IV-VI.

F. Validation of Theories about Economic Action

Week 13 (December 20) Objectivity in Economics and Social Science

*Milton Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics.”

Max Weber, “The Meaning of ‘Ethical Neutrality’ in Sociology and Economics,” and “’Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy,” in Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Free Press, 1949), pp. 1-112.

Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge Cambridge University Press pb. (Essays by T.S. Kuhn, S.E. Toulmin, K.R. Popper, and I. Lakatos), pp. 1-24, 39-59, 91-196.

Term papers due by January 17.

Source:  John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5 Harvard University File, 1949-1990, Box 521, Folder “[courses]: Economics 280: Musgrave Lecture. 9 October 1973”.

Image Source: Martin C. Spechler from the Department of Economics webpage, Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis archived at the Wayback Machine (February 18, 2003).

 

 

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Socialism Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Readings and Exams for Methods of Social Reform. Carver, 1902-03

Thomas Nixon Carver

 

“The trouble with radicals is that they only read radical literature, and the trouble with conservatives is that they don’t read anything.”

Thomas Nixon Carver quoted by John Kenneth Galbraith (A Life in Our Times)

This conservative Harvard economic theorist regularly taught the course on schemes of economic reform at Harvard early in the 20th century. He was certainly more forgiving than sympathetic to his radical subjects. 

Variations of this course syllabus have been transcribed earlier here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror:

___________________

Course Description

[Economics] 14. Methods of Social Reform, including Socialism, Communism, the Single Tax, etc. Tu.,Th, at 1.30. Professor Carver.

The purpose of this course is to make a careful study of those plans of social amelioration which involves either a reorganization of society, or a considerable extension of the functions of the state. The course begins with an historical study of early communistic theories and experiments. This is followed by a critical examination of the series of the leading socialistic writers, with a view to getting a clear understanding of the reasoning which lies back of socialistic movements, and of the economic conditions which tend to make this reasoning acceptable. A similar study will be made of Anarchism and Nihilism, of the Single Tax Movement, of State Socialism and the public ownership of monopolistic enterprises, and of Christian Socialism, so called.

Morley’s Ideal Commonwealths, Ely’s French and German Socialism, Marx’s Capital, Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto, and George’s Progress and Poverty will be read, besides other special references.

The course will be conducted by means of lectures, reports, and classroom discussions.

Source: Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Division of History and Political Science comprising the Departments of History and Government and Economics 1902-03. The University Publications, New Series, No. 55 (June 14, 1902), p. 42

___________________

Course Enrollment
(Harvard, 1902-03)

[Economics] 14. Professor Carver.— Methods of Reform. Socialism, Communism, the Single Tax, etc.

Total 15: 2 Graduates, 8 Seniors, 2 Juniors, 1 Sophomore, 2 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1902-03, p. 67.

___________________

Course Enrollment (Radcliffe, 1902-03)

[Economics] 14. Professor Carver.— Methods of Social Reform.

Total 6: 4 Undergraduates, 2 Others.

Source: Radcliffe College. Report of the President of Radcliffe College, 1902-03, p. 43.

___________________

Economics 14
[handwritten note: 1902-03]

Topics and References
Starred references are prescribed

COMMUNISM

A
Utopias
1. Plato’s Republic
2. *Sir Thomas More.   Utopia.
3. *Francis Bacon.   New Atlantis.
4. *Tommaso Campanella.   The City of the Sun. (Numbers 2, 3, and 4 may be found in convenient form in Morley’s Ideal Commonwealths.)
5. Etienne Cabet.   Voyage en Icarie.
6. Wm. Morris.   News from Nowhere.
7. Edward Bellamy.   Looking Backward.

 

B
Communistic Experiments
1. *Charles Nordhoff.   The Communistic Societies of the United States.
2. Karl Kautsky.   Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation.
3. W. A. Hinds.   American Communities.
4. J.H. Noyes.   History of American Socialisms.
5. J. T. Codman.   Brook Farm Memoirs.
6. Albert Shaw.   Icaria.
7. G.B. Landis.   The Separatists of Zoar.
8. E.O. Randall.   History of the Zoar Society.

 

SOCIALISM

A
Historical
1. *R. T. Ely. French and German Socialism.
2. Bertrand Russell. German Social Democracy.
3. John Rae. Contemporary Socialism.
4. Thomas Kirkup. A History of Socialism.
5. W. D. P. Bliss. A Handbook of Socialism.
6. Wm. Graham. Socialism, New and Old.
7. [Jessica Blanche] Peixotto. The French Revolution and Modern French Socialism.

 

B
Expository and Critical
1. *Albert Schaeffle. The Quintessence of Socialism.
2. Albert Schaeffle. The Impossibility of Social Democracy.
3. *Karl Marx. Capital.
4. *Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. The Manifesto of the Communist Party.
5. Frederick Engels. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
6. E. C. K. Gonner. The Socialist Philosophy of Rodbertus.
7. E. C. K. Gonner. The Socialist State.
8. Bernard Shaw and others. The Fabian Essays in Socialism.
9. The Fabian Tracts.
10. R. T. Ely. Socialism: An Examination of its Nature, Strength, and Weakness.
11. Edward Bernstein. Ferdinand Lassalle.
12. Henry M. Hyndman. The Economics of Socialism.
13. Sydney and Beatrice Webb. Problems of Modern Industry.
14. Gustave Simonson. A Plain Examination of Socialism.
15. Sombart. Socialism and the Social Movement in the Nineteenth Century.
16. Vandervelde. Collectivism [and Industrial Evolution].

 

ANARCHISM

1. *Leo Tolstoi. The Slavery of Our Times.
2. Wm. Godwin. Political Justice.
3. Kropotkin. The Scientific Basis of Anarchy. Nineteenth Century, 21: 238.
4. Kropotkin. The Coming Anarchy. Nineteenth Century, 22:149.
5. Elisée Reclus. Anarchy. Contemporary Review, 45: 627. [May 1884]

 

RELIGIOUS AND ALTRUISTIC SOCIALISM

1. Lamennais. Les Paroles d’un Croyant.
2. Charles Kingsley. Alton Locke.
3. *Kaufman. Lamennais and Kingsley. Contemporary Review, April, 1882.
4. Washington Gladden. Tools and the Man.
5. Josiah Strong. Our Country.
6. Josiah Strong. The New Era.
7. William Morris, Poet, Artist, Socialist. Edited by Francis Watts Lee. A collection of the socialistic writings of William Morris.
8. Ruskin. The Communism of John Ruskin. Edited by W. D. P. Bliss. Selected chapters from Unto this Last, The Crown of Wild Olive, and Fors Clavigera.
9. Carlyle. The Socialism and Unsocialism of Thomas Carlyle. Edited by W. D. P. Bliss. Selected chapters from Carlyle’s various works. [Volume 1; Volume 2]

 

AGRARIAN SOCIALISM

1. *Henry George. Progress and Poverty.
2. Henry George. Our Land and Land Policy.
3. Alfred Russell Wallace. Land Nationalization.

 

STATE SOCIALISM

An indefinite term, usually made to include all movements for the extension of government control and ownership, especially over means of communication and transportation, also street lighting, etc.

1. R. T. Ely. Problems of To-day. Chs. 17-23.
2. J. A. Hobson. The Social Problem.

 

WORKS DISCUSSING THE SPHERE OF THE STATE IN SOCIAL REFORM

1. Henry C. Adams. The Relation of the State to Industrial Action.
2. *D. G. Ritchie. Principles of State Interference.
3. D. G. Ritchie. Darwinism and Politics.
4. *Herbert Spencer. The Coming Slavery.
5. W. W. Willoughby. Social Justice.

Source:  Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and reading lists in economics, 1895-2003. Box 1, Folder “Economics, 1902-1903”.

______________________

Economics 14
Mid-year Examination, 1902-03

  1. Give an account of More’s Utopia.
  2. Is there any ground for supposing that Utopian schemes have influenced social development? Give reasons.
  3. What were the periods of greatest activity in the founding of communistic settlements in America? What stimulated the activity in each period, and what were the general conditions favorable to such activity?
  4. Does the history of communistic experiments in America throw any light on the probable success or failure of socialism on a large scale? Give reasons.
  5. Give an account of the communistic plans and activities of Etienne Cabet.
  6. Describe the Communist Manifesto. What place does it hold in socialistic literature, and why?
  7. Compare the socialism of Rodbertus with that of Karl Marx.
  8. Outline Marx’ theory of surplus value.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Mid-year Examinations 1852-1943. Box 6. Papers (in the bound volume Examination Papers Mid-years 1902-1903).

______________________

Economics 14
Year-End Examination, 1902-03

  1. Give some account of Fourier and the Fourieristic experiments in the United States.
  2. Distinguish between Utopian and Scientific Socialism.
  3. What part has religion played in the history of Communistic Experiments?
  4. How does Karl Marx explain the existence of poverty?
  5. Trace briefly the history of the German Social Democratic Party.
  6. Distinguish between land and other forms of property.
  7. How do you account for the share of the capitalist in distribution?
  8. Is there any relation between the unequal distribution of workers among different occupations and the unequal distribution of wealth?
  9. What is meant by the term “Natural Monopolies.”
  10. Define “Christian Socialism” and explain how it differs from Marxian Socialism.

Source:  University Archives. Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 6. Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics, History of Religions, Philosophy, Education, Fine Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Music in Harvard College, June 1903 (in the bound volume Examination Papers 1902-1903).

Image Source: Harvard Class Album, 1906.

Categories
Funny Business M.I.T.

M.I.T. Faculty skit. Robert Solow as the 2000 year old economist.

Would Mel Brooks' famous 2,000-Year-Old Man have understood modern language? Researchers say there's a possibility.

 

 

A skit in economics typically involves a humor transplant of some sort. The following script from the faculty contribution to an annual M.I.T. economics skit party (ca.  1979-80 which is when Luis Tiant pitched for the Yankees) took its inspiration from  two greats in American comedy, Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks, who sometimes performed as interviewer and 2,000 year-old man, respectively.

While it is fairly clear that Robert Solow performed and probably wrote the entire skit, the identity of the interviewer still needs to be established. Hint: there is a comment box at the bottom of this post. 

The script comes from a file of such Solovian skits that Roger Backhouse has copied during his archival research and has shared with Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.

_________________

 

Q: You have probably all heard the interviews with the recently discovered 2000-year-old man. We are fortunate to have with us tonight another great find, the 2000-year-old economist, Robert M. Solow. By the way, Dr. Solow, just what does the M stand for?

A: Methuselah, dummy.

Q: Dr. Solow has seen so many skit parties in his life, that he was not very happy about appearing at this one. Do you remember the first skit party you ever went to?

A: No. Skit parties are like hangovers – best thing to do is forget ’em and swear never to do it again. I do have a hazy recollection of an early skit party, I think it was what the one where I first heard the joke about bordered determinants…

Q: What is the joke about border determinants?

A: I don’t know, but they sure laugh[ed] their fool heads off.

Q: Any other recollections about that skit party?

A: Well, you could hear them building pyramids in the background, I remember, and there was this Sphinx-like object, looked a lot like Dick Eckaus… You don’t suppose that, even then???? Nah, forget it.

Q: Turning to more serious issues, what is the biggest change in economics since the old days?

A: Mechanization, by cracky. First the electric typewriter, then the computer, then the Xerox machine [handwritten insert: but not fast enough for (3 or 4 illegible words)]. Nowadays people write papers at the rate they used to wipe their… glasses. I believe Feldstein has solved the problem of hooking the typewriter directly to the Xerox machine, and the whole paper is reproduced without being touched by human hands. There is even a rumor that he has a secret way of getting the paper written without human intervention…

Q: Come come, Dr. Solow, you don’t believe that.

A: Well, have you looked at any of Feldstein’s recent papers? Now in the good old days, stand-up roll-top desks, quill pens, the main-frame abacus, a man thought twice before he wrote a paper. At least he thought once. If only old Tom were here.

Q: Tom who?

A: Tom Gresham. You know: bad working papers drive out good. Not to mention Dave Hume, the inventor of the quantity theory of working papers. As Milton used to say: any way you slice it, it’s still baloney.

Q: Is that Milton Friedman?

A: No, Milton Horowitz, the inventor of the pastrami sandwich. I believe he appears in a footnote in Joskow’s classic mustard-stained work on the subject.

Q: Let’s come to your recent impressions. What do you see as the most important recent development in economics?

A: That’s easy – the increase in the mandatory retirement age to 70. Of course it’s got a long way to go before it does me any good, but I underestimate the DRI Mandatory Retirement Age Monitor estimates the retirement age to be rising at 1.73 years per year, so time is on my side.

Q: Apart from its effects on you personally, why do you think this is an important development?

A: It saves a lot of time at department meetings never to have to make a tenure appointment again. And you know what department meetings are like – even worse than skit parties.

Q: How do you think the change will affect students?

A: They’ll love it. Courses will be the same year after year. Reading lists will never change. Textbooks will go on and on and on. Can you imagine the 200th edition of Dornbusch and Fischer? I hope it’s printed on better paper than the low-grade papyrus of the first edition… I do wonder about Eckaus and that Sphinx…… Exams will be the same year after year. Students hate change. Look at what happened when you fellows tried to change 14.121 this year.

Q: Turning to economic theory, what has been the most important development you have witnessed in the last 2000 years?

A: The two-dimensional diagram.

Q: Be serious.

A: I am serious. Can you imagine Bhagwati, the Picasso of the Production Possibility Locus, trying to fit all those curves in a one-dimensional diagram, which was all we had in the old days? There wasn’t hardly room for anything besides the axis.

Q: Come, come. Bhagwati would find a solution for that little difficulty. Who needs an axis?

A: Maybe so, but can you imagine four-color one-dimensional diagrams? How could we have expensive textbooks without four-color diagrams? How could we have expensive professors without expensive textbooks? How could……

Q: OK, OK. What is the second most important development in economic theory in your lifetime?

A: The subscript.

Q: Don’t you know the difference between trivia and serious economic theory?

A: Sure. Trivia are worth remembering, but serious economics is OK to forget.

Q: Maybe we better stick to trivia…

A: I was just kidding. I really know the answer. There is no difference between trivia and serious economic theory.

Q: Tell us about the most interesting experience you ever heard of an economist having?

A: Easy. Happened to an agricultural economist I knew, feller named Samuelson, farm boy from Gary, Indiana. He was digging on the farm one day, checking out the law of diminishing returns, and he found a potato growing with a nickel in it. Marvelous thing. Folks came from miles away to see a potato with a nickel in it. Old Samuelson frittered away the rest of his life looking for another potato with the nickel in it. Never could find one. He did find a couple with three cents in them, but somehow it wasn’t the same. Never accomplished another thing, old Samuelson. Wonder whatever became of him? He’d be 2009, I reckon. By the way, whatever became of that other farmer, Weitzman?

Q: You mean Chaim Weitzman, the founding father of Israel? His last words were: you don’t have to convince me, Professor [Frank] Fisher, I’m Jewish too.

A: No, I mean Marty Weitzman, old quick and dirty, the lion of Levittown.

Q: Why do you ask?

A: Reminds me of the fellow I used to know, a Secretary of the Treasury named Hamilton……

Q: Reminds you of who? Oh, I get it, they both got killed in the dual.

A: Watch out, Buster – the agreement was that I tell the jokes and you prove the theorems.

Q: All right. Let’s get away from personalities. What do you think of recent macro theories?

A: Not much.

Q: What about rational expectations?

A: If there were any truth in that, it would have been thought up long ago.

Q: Not necessarily. The old-timers could have thought that someone would think of it, without thinking of it themselves.

A: That’s true, but the old-timers were too sensible to think that anyone would think a thought like that.

Q: How about the quantity theory?

A: Ingenious.

Q: Really?

A: Imagine saying that velocity is so stable that only money matters, and so unstable that no use can be made of the theory, and imagine getting away with both statements.

Q: But what is macroeconomics left with then?

A: Well, the old Ioto-Sigma Lamba-Mu [Greek for “IS-LM”] curves were good enough for Aristotle, it’s good enough for me.

Q: Would you care to comment on the theory of built-in stabilizers?

A: If you’re not going to be serious, we might as well go watch a ballgame. I understand Louis Tiant, the 2000-year-old pitcher is going for the Yankees.

Q: Use your 2000-year-old imagination. I’ll give you an example of built-in stabilization – Social Security.

A: How so?

Q: The less likely it is that anyone will ever be able to collect benefits, the likelier it becomes that they make even more money consulting on Social Security. Take [Peter] Diamond, for example.

A: You take Diamond.

Q: No thanks. Imagine a man leaving a perfectly good career in public finance to go into law and economics and make a hash out of both fields.

A: Stick to the straight-man lines, please.

[Handwritten insert begins here]

Q: What do you think of the proliferation of journals?

A: I think it is terrific. Of course it has been going on for a long time – ever since BJEA, the Babylonian Journal of Economic Analysis was challenged by the SEJ, the Sumerian Economic Journal.
What I particularly like is the increased specialization. Like JHR, the Journal of Human Regressions and JME, the Journal of Mathematical Existence.

Q: The Journal of Mathematical Existence – isn’t that the one that started with the famous 2-line proof: I count, therefore I am?

A: Yes and was followed by a 47 page proof that without continuity existence was still generic.
I also like this trend toward paired journals.

Q: Paired journals?

A: Yes, like the two Harvard journals – one publishes theory without measurement and the other measurement without theory.
And then there’s the 2 JPE’s – the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Private Enterprise.

[handwritten insert ends]

Q: What do you see as the greatest danger facing the economics profession?

A: The threatened extension of truth-in-lending legislation to truth-in-teaching. We could have the biggest rash of malpractice suits since Nicky Kaldor retired.

Q: I think you’re onto something there. How foresighted of this department to have hired an expert on malpractice like Marilyn Simon [joined faculty 1977-78 academic year], the world-famous author of Unnecessary Surgery – The View from the Inside.

A: Simon only writes about malpractice – [Jeffrey E.] Harris actually does it, I understand.

Q: You seem to have discovered a lot since you turned up around here. Anything else new on the malpractice front?

A: There’s a rumor that the University of Chicago has had to recall all the degrees issued during the last five model years.

Q: You mean…

A: Right. Defective transmission mechanisms.

Q: Gad. Are there any good defenses against malpractice suits in your long and varied experience?

A: You can hire a mathematician for the faculty.

Q: What good does that do?

A: How the hell would I know? All I can say is that every department seems to be hiring mathematicians these days. It’s got to be for something.

Q: I’m looking for some more tried and true defense.

A: There’s always the Long-and-Variable Lags defense. See the Supreme Court decision in Tobin versus Friedman, in which Friedman successfully argued that first it’s true, second he never said it, and third wait till next year.

Q-: How about the Roy Lopez Defense?

A: You mean P–K4, P-K4; N-KB3, N-QB3; B-QN5, P-QR3?

Q: No, I mean Roy Lopez, the middle line-backer for the Princeton Economics Department – anyone sues for malpractice, he breaks their legs.

A: Sounds good. There’s also the classic defense due to Stanley Fischer, that truth should be indexed. Today’s malpractice is tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

Q: Speaking of conventional wisdom, have you spoken with Professor Galbraith since your return?

A: No, but I have been reading his latest book: Why Are People Poor?

Q: I’ll bite; why are people poor?

A: Not enough income, according to Galbraith.

Q: Does he have a remedy?

A: Move to Switzerland.

Q: I see.

A: I can’t wait until the news reaches Calcutta.

Q: One last question, to return to the subject with which we started. Do you see any trends in student skits?

A: Longer.

Q: Longer and funnier?

A: Longer.

Q: Any final comment?

A: Let me ask you a question. What do you consider the most remarkable thing in this interview?

Q: That’s easy. We never mentioned IBM.

 

Source:  Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archives. Papers of Robert M. Solow. Box 83.

Image Source:  Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks performing the 2000 year old man from NPR KNAU, Arizona public radio article “Could You Talk To a Caveman?” (May 9, 2013) .

Categories
Harvard Regulations Undergraduate

Harvard. Undergraduate concentration in economics, 1953

 

In this post we find the requirements for a major in economics (Harvardspeak = “concentration”) and for graduation with honors 65 years ago at Harvard. 

Earlier posts here at Economics in the Rear-view mirror include the 1953 General Examination questions and a Harvard Crimson article that briefly summarized the requirements transcribed here.

This artifact was found in John Kenneth Galbraith’s personal files from Harvard University that are kept at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. His papers provide a treasure trove of economics department administrative memoranda, among other delights.

___________________

CONCENTRATION IN ECONOMICS
[February 1953]

Every concentrator in Economics is required:

  1. To complete a certain number of courses in Economics, Government, and History;
  2. To choose for more intensive work a special field within the general area of Economics;
  3. To submit a Plan of Study, fulfill the general requirements with respect to distribution, and participate in the departmental tutorial program;
  4. To pass one general written examination in Economics at the end of the senior year.

Every candidate for graduation with Honors is required in addition:

  1. To complete an honors thesis, and to take one more than the required number of courses in Economics. He is also to take three of the basic courses, including Economic Theory.

These requirements are discussed below under the Roman numerals indicated.

 

I. BASIC REQUIREMENTS IN ECONOMICS, GOVERNMENT, AND HISTORY

Every concentrator in Economics is required to complete as a minimum:

  1. That each concentrator is required to take Economics I and two of the five following basic courses:
    1. Money and finance (Econ. 141)
    2. Marketing organization and control (Econ. 161)
    3. Labor and social reform (Econ. 181a and b)
    4. Economic History (Econ. 136)
    5. Economic Theory (Econ. 101)
  2. Each non-honors concentrator will take a minimum of four courses in Economics while the minimum for honors candidates will be five courses. Ordinarily each undergraduate will take one general examination namely a departmental examination in his senior year. This examination is designed to test his knowledge of the general field of economics as it has been developed in course work and synthesized in tutorial.
  3. For both honors candidates and non-honors candidates, two full courses are required, or the equivalent in half-courses, in Social Sciences outside Economics—one such full course to be chosen from two of the three fields, History, Government, and Social Relation. In each of the two courses selected, such choice may be from either (a) courses administered by the Department in question, or, (b) courses in that field given under the heading of General Education, Second Group Courses.

II. SPECIAL FIELDS WITHIN ECONOMICS

Every concentrator is required to choose from the list below a special field for more intensive work.

Courses desirable as preparation in these fields should be selected in consultation with the student’s tutor or adviser. The written examination in the senior year will be arranged to encourage familiarity with the main questions in the whole field of the student’s choice, as well as intensive analysis of some segment of the field.

Economics courses directly relevant to the special field are listed. Other Economics courses are relevant in part.

(1) Economic Theory

Courses which fall definitely within this field are Economics 101 (Economic Theory and Policy), 104a (Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory), and 115 (Economics and Political Ideas in Modern Times).

(2) Economic History

Economics 136 (Economic History of the Colonies and the United States), falls within this field.

(3) Money and Finance

This field covers money, banking, and business cycles; international trade, capital movements, and monetary problems; public expenditures, revenues, and credit. Related topics are some aspects of corporate finance and the investment process, financing of social security, inflexible prices and monetary policy, agricultural credit, and the like.

Within the field fall: Economics 141 (Money and Banking), 143a and 143b (International Trade and Economic Relations), 145a (Business Cycles), 151 (Public Finance).

(4) Market Organization and Control

The major topics in this field include the corporation; the structure and functioning of markets; business practices; and government control in industry, trade, agriculture, and public utilities. Related topics are international markets, corporate taxation, inflexible prices and monetary policy, and the like.

Economics courses directly in this field are: Economics 161 (Business Organization and Control), 171 (Economics of Agriculture) and 107 (Consumption, Distribution, and Prices).

(5) Labor Economics and Social Reform

This field covers labor problems; population, social stratification, distribution of wealth and income, social security; collectivism and other proposals for social reform. Related topics are taxation as an instrument of social policy, the financing of social security, the corporation and social stratification, and the like.

Economics courses directly in this field are: 181a (Trade Unionism and Collective Bargaining), 181b (Public Policy and Labor), 111b Socialism) and 186a (Social Security).

III. ADVISERS AND TUTORIAL INSTRUCTION: PLAN OF STUDY

(1) Every concentrator in economics is assigned to a tutor or, in the case of seniors who are not candidates for honors, an adviser. All concentrators except such seniors are required to participate in the tutorial program of the Department. In general, the purpose of tutorial is not to prime the student for examinations. Rather, it is to induce clearer thinking on a somewhat wider and more integrated range of problems than those discussed in the separate courses. A further purpose is to train students to organize and state their ideas in readable and cogent form.

Sophomores are assigned to tutorial groups of not more than six in the House of their residence. These groups meet with a tutor who is also a member of the House staff either once a week for approximately an hour or once every two weeks for approximately two hours. The objective of Sophomore tutorial is to give the student a sense of the relevance of economics as one of the social sciences and the relation of economics to the other social sciences as a factor in making policy decisions.

Juniors who are not candidates for honors are assigned to tutorial groups of not more than six which are organized in a manner similar to that of Sophomore tutorial. Juniors who are candidates for honors usually meet individually with tutors for a half hour once a week. Juniors who wish to become honors candidates meet in special groups. If their performance in tutorial at mid years warrants a grade of satisfactory or better, and if their course grades are adequate, they will be accepted as honors candidates at the beginning of the spring term.

Seniors who are candidates for honors will meet with tutors who will advise them in preparing and executing their honors theses. This will also include a liberal background of reading supplementary to the student’s course work in the field in which his thesis lies. Wide discretion is left to the individual tutor and student. Seniors who are not candidates for honors are assigned to advisers at the beginning of the fall term. The advisers consult with students an assist them to select courses. At the beginning of the spring term such seniors have the option of attending voluntary tutorial group meetings once every two weeks. The purpose of such tutorial is to synthesize the course work of the past three years. To the degree that the general examination also represents an attempt to synthesize course work, such tutorial will of necessity help prepare for the general examination, but such preparation will be merely incidental to the specific purpose of tutorial which will be rather to relate the fields of economics to a pattern of relevant judgment.

(2) Every new concentrator in Economics must file a Plan of Study in University 2 containing a selection of courses sufficient to meet the requirements for concentration and distribution as set forth in Rules Relating to College Studies. This Plan must be signed by the student’s adviser or some other representative of the Department of Economics. It is, however, merely a preliminary statement of intent and may be altered at a later date with the approval of the student’s adviser.

IV. THE DEPARTMENTAL EXAMINATION

This examination is given at the end of the senior year. The Departmental Examination is a three-hour written examination covering all phases of Economics. At the option of the Examiner, there may be given in addition an oral examination. This last is usually given when the mark of the student is in doubt. Furthermore, in determining whether a degree in Economics will be awarded and the level of the degree, performance in tutorial will be taken into account.

This examination has been established, not in order to place additional burdens upon candidates for the A.B., but for the purpose of securing better correlation of the student’s work, encouraging more effective methods of study, and furnishing a more adequate test of attainment.

V. CANDIDACY FOR HONORS, AND THE HONORS THESIS

Every candidate for the degree of A.B. with Honors in Economics will make application, not later than the beginning of his Senior year, at Holyoke 8. Acceptance of candidacy depends upon the over-all record of the student, and not upon grades alone; but in general it is expected that a B-minus average or better should have been attained in Economics course. It is required that a candidate recommended for honors attain a grade of C or higher in at least two-thirds of his other courses. In addition, to be eligible for honors, all candidates must maintain a grade of satisfactory or better in tutorial.

The candidate for honors will submit toward the close of his Senior year a thesis on some subject in economics chosen in consultation with his adviser. The thesis should evidence independent and effective work, and an integrated understanding of the general field in which the thesis subject lies: but the Faculty does not intend to call for research on a graduate level. The requirements are such that the degree with honors is attainable by a student of good ability. An honors candidate may, if he chooses, elect Economics 99 for one term only, in order to devote extra time to work on his thesis with his tutor. A penalty of five points will be imposed on all theses running over 40,000 words in length.

The grade of Honors which a student attains depends in part on the range and character of his work in Economics, History, and Government; but mainly on the average of his course grades in Economics, on his Departmental examination, and on the quality of his thesis. The usual grades of Honors are Honors (cum laude), High Honors (magna cum laude), and Highest Honors (summa cum laude). If the student’s work is judged unworthy of Honors, but worthy of a degree, he may be recommended for the degree without Honors.

 

Source:  John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Personal Papers of John Kenneth Galbraith.Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 528, Folder: “Tutorials 9/17/51-9/57”.

Categories
Business School Columbia Economists Harvard

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. (1923) alumnus and Columbia Business School Dean, J. E. Orchard Memo on Galbraith, 1946.

 

John Ewing Orchard (b. 19 July 1893 in Exeter, Nebraska; d. 28 January 1962 in Charlottesville, Virginia) wrote the following summary of a telephone conversation with his former boss, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. (who supervised the work of John Kenneth Galbraith at the Lend Lease Administration during WWII) and incidentally went on to serve as the Secretary of State). From this memo it is clear that Galbraith’s name came up for consideration for the Deanship of the Columbia School of Business. Orchard, a Harvard economics Ph.D. (1923), might have had ulterior motives in entering this document into the record — it can be found in the papers of then chairman of the economics department, Robert Haig, that have been deposited in the Central Files of the Columbia University administration. We see below that Orchard himself was later appointed to the Deanship of the business school…coincidence?

In any event, in case there might be any doubt in somebody’s mind, John Kenneth Galbraith had done nothing in government service that would have enhanced his prospects to become an academic Dean. His comparative advantage was to be found in other endeavors. Whether John Kenneth Galbraith indeed had “poison in his soul” as noted by Stettinius is left to his legions of admirers and detractors to determine. However, given Galbraith’s life motto “Modesty is a most overrated virtue”, I presume Stettinius had confused poison with an ego of legendary proportion.

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Kenneth Galbraith

Stettinius on Galbraith

Telephone conversation with Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., concerning Galbraith, October 23, 1946.

Galbraith worked with Stettinius on the National Defense Council in 1940. Stettinius stated that there was no question but that Galbraith was a brilliant economist, but he was a difficult person to work with. He seemed always to be taking a belligerent left wing position and never was in the middle of the road. I gathered that there was little give and take as far as Galbraith was concerned. Stettinius also said he seemed to have “poison in his soul”.

After Galbraith left OPA, Stettinius, as a result of considerable pressure, took him into the Lend Lease Administration. His experience with him there was not satisfactory, for after Stettinius had assigned him to a responsible position, Galbraith did not establish friendly working relations with his associates. He did not seem to be interested in the work or in the organization and after a couple of months he quit. Stettinius stated that he did not believe that Galbraith would make a good dean.

John E. Orchard

Source:  Columbia University.  Central Files. Box 386, Folder 7/7 “Haig, Robert Murray”.

____________________

John Ewing Orchard,
Harvard economics Ph.D. 1923

John Ewing Orchard, A. B. (Swarthmore Coll.) 1916, A.M. (Harvard Univ.) 1920.

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Economic Resources. Thesis, “The World’s Coal Resources and some of their Influences on National Economy.” Instructor in Economic Geography, Columbia University.

Source:  Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1922-1923, p. 52.

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Guggenheim Fellowship, 1931

JOHN E. ORCHARD
Fellow: Awarded 1931
Field of Study: Economic History
Competition: US & Canada

As published in the Foundation’s Report for 1931–32:

ORCHARD, JOHN EWING:  Appointed to study the transition that is occurring in China from agriculture and from household industries to modern manufacturing, investigations to be carried on chiefly in China; tenure, eight months from June 20, 1931.

Born July 19, 1893, at Exeter, Nebraska. Education:  Swarthmore college, A.B., 1916; Harvard University, M.A., 1920, Ph.D., 1923; University of Pennsylvania, 1917–18; University of Chicago, Summer, 1920.

Assistant in Geography and Industry, 1917–18, University of Pennsylvania; Assistant Mine Economist, United States Bureau of Mines, 1918–19; Instructor in Economic Geography, 1920–24, Assistant Professor, 1924–29, Associate Professor, 1929—, Columbia University.

Publications: Japan’s Economic Position: The Progress of Industrialization, 1920; chapter on Marine Insurance in Influence of the Great War on Shipping, by J. Russell Smith, 1919; chapter on Gold in Political and Commercial Geology, edited by J. E. Spurr, 1920. Articles in Quarterly Journal of Economics, Geographical Review, Journal of Geography, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

 

Source:  John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Website. Fellow page: John E. Orchard.

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Dr. Orchard New Business School Dean
[Columbia Daily Spectator, 9 January 1947]

Dr. John E. Orchard, professor of economic geography at Columbia and one of the country’s outstanding authorities on the Far East, will replace Dean Robert D. Calkins as director of the School of Business, it was announced yesterday by Dr. Frank D. Fackenthal, acting president of the University.

Dean Calkins, who has been the head of the Business School since 1941, resigned in order to accept an appointment as vice president and director of the General Education Board in New York City.

Professor Orchard, a graduate of Swathmore and Harvard Universities, has been a member of the teaching staff of the School of Business since 1920.

Active In Government

From May 1941 until January 1946, he served as a member of several important government agencies in Washington D. C. He was senior assistant administrator to Edward Stettinius when the latter was Lend-Lease Administrator. Later Dr. Orchard was appointed special assistant to Mr. Stettinius when he was Under Secretary of State. Dean Orchard served as special assistant to William Clayton, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Affairs. His last Washington assignment was as senior consultant to the Foreign Liquidation Commissioner, Thomas B. McCabe. He spent the years of 1926-27, 1931-32, and 1938-39 in Asia and in 1930 published a book entitled “Japan’s Economic Problem”.

Source:  Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume LXIX, Number 34, 9 January 1947.

Image Source: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Website. Fellow page: John E. Orchard.

Categories
Economists Gender Harvard Radcliffe

Harvard-Radcliffe. Economics Ph.D. alumna, Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain, 1950

 

 

According to her New York Times obituary, Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain (April 24, 1918—April 1, 2013) became known as “the fairy godmother of women’s studies” during her time as program director at the Ford Foundation (1971-1981). But before beginning her highly successful career in research project sponsorship, she had taught at Connecticut College, the School of General Studies at Columbia University, and at Hunter College, having studied undergraduate and graduate economics at Radcliffe-Harvard. She was awarded in 1950 a Ph.D. for her thesis, “Investment Policy in Large Corporations”.

After listing her scholarship awards at Radcliffe along with the dates of her academic degrees, I include two items that provide the testimony of a few of those who knew her professionally and personally. We learn (among many genuinely important things) that towards the end of her long life, she was a regular reader of Paul Krugman’s New York Times columns and “for whatever reason[,] she wanted to see, meet, engage, or possibly hang out with men”. She was clearly an inspirational figure for many and that “she loved being an economist”.

________________________

From the Radcliffe College Annual Presidential Reports

Freshman Year

Marian [sic] Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of an “Emergency Award” from the Permanent Charity Scholarship Fund.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1935-36, p. 37.

 

Sophomore Year

Marion [sic] Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of a Lois M. Parmenter Undergraduate Scholarship.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1936-37, p. 32.

 

Junior Year

Mariam Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of a partial Abby Y. Lawson Memorial undergraduate scholarship.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1937-38, p. 31.

 

Mariam Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of a partial Permanent Charity Fund undergraduate scholarship.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1937-38, p. 33.

 

Senior Year

Mariam Kenosian (class of 1939). Recipient of an Ellen M. Barr undergraduate scholarship.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1938-39, p. 30.

 

Mariam Kenosian Bachelor of Arts (June 1939) cum laude (Honors) in economics.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1938-39, p. 35.

 

Graduate School

Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain, Master of Arts (March 1948).

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1947-48, p. 21.

 

Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain, Ph.D.  (June 1950).

Subject, Economics. Special Field, Business Organization and Control. Dissertation, “Investment Policies of Large Corporations”.

Source: Radcliffe College, President’s Report for 1949-50, p. 20.

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In Memoriam: Mariam K. Chamberlain, 1918–2013
Posted on April 3, 2013

Dr. Mariam K. Chamberlain, a founding member of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the founding president of the National Council for Research on Women, was the driving force behind the cultivation and sustainability of the women’s studies field of academic research. She is the namesake of IWPR’s prestigious Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship for Women in Public Policy, which trains young women for successful careers in research. Throughout her life, Dr. Chamberlain fought discrimination, established new roles for women, and championed the economic analysis of women’s issues. She passed away on April 2, 2013, at 94, just a few weeks shy of her 95th birthday, following complications from heart surgery.

A Lifetime of Lifting Up Women’s Voices in Academia and Research

The daughter of Armenian immigrants, Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain was born and raised in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a working class suburb of Boston. Interest in the prevailing conditions of the depression led her to economics. She attended Radcliffe College on a scholarship and worked as a research assistant in the summers for Wassily Leontief, who later won the Nobel Prize in economics. During World War II, she worked at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), on the staff of a “brain trust” of economists and other social scientists assembled by General William (“Wild Bill”) Donovan to aid in the war effort. As part of the research and analysis branch, she worked on estimates of enemy, military, and industrial strength.

In 1950, Mariam Chamberlain received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, making her one of the few women of her generation to earn a Ph.D. in the field. In 1956, Dr. Chamberlain joined the Ford Foundation, where she served as a program officer in Economic Development and Administration, and then Education and Public Policy, until 1981. While at Ford, she spearheaded the funding of the academic women’s research and women’s studies movement; she is said to have provided nearly $10 million in support of new feminist initiatives. Her projects fostered a new analysis of women’s position in society, expanded women’s choices in the university, and supported the development of equality in law. She played a major role in building the academic infrastructure necessary to better understand women’s experiences and inform improved policies for women. In short, she paved the way for organizations like IWPR to thrive, and stocked the research pipeline with skilled women and men who have made important contributions to the study of women and public policy.

Economics and the elimination of discrimination against women around the world remained the heart of her wide-ranging activities. After leaving the Ford Foundation in 1982, she headed the Task Force on Women in Higher Education at the Russell Sage Foundation. The Task Force’s work culminated in a published volume, Women in Academe: Progress and Prospects. Before leaving Ford, she had funded an initial meeting of a group of women’s research centers. That meeting established the National Council for Research on Women, which unanimously elected her its first president. She served in that role until 1989, after which she continued to go into the office every day as Founding President and Resident Scholar.

A Legacy of Training the Next Generation of Women Policy Researchers

IWPR owes much to Dr. Chamberlain. In 1987, Dr. Heidi Hartmann founded IWPR out of a need for comprehensive, women-focused, policy-oriented research. Dr. Chamberlain, who dedicated her career to lifting up women’s voices in academia, recognized the importance of a policy research institute centered on women, grounded by social science methodology, economics, and rigorous data analysis. Applying academic research to inform better policies for women was a natural extension of Dr. Chamberlain’s work, and she became a founding member of IWPR and served on its Board of Directors for nearly 20 years.

IWPR endowed the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship in Women and Public Policy to recognize the legacy of Dr. Chamberlain’s tireless efforts to open doors for the women researchers who came after her. Nearly 20 young women have gained valuable research experience as Fellows at IWPR since the beginning of the Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellowship. Past Mariam K. Chamberlain scholars have gone on to hold positions at government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Congressional Research Service, earn advanced degrees from universities such as Harvard University, Columbia University, Stanford University, The George Washington University, and Brown University. Rhiana Gunn-Wright, IWPR’s current Mariam K. Chamberlain Fellow, was just recently named a 2013 Rhodes Scholar. The fellowship has allowed IWPR to expand its research capacity, strengthen its commitment to cultivating the next generation of women researchers and leaders, and ensure that a pipeline of experienced women researchers are at the policy-making table.

The fellowship helps sustain Dr. Chamberlain’s legacy, built on the belief that relying on credible data and research, rather than anecdote and bias, leads to better policies for working women, which in turn contribute to improved long-term outcomes for their families. May she not only rest in peace, but rest assured that, because of her efforts, there are many more women able to take up the torch she leaves behind.

Source:  Institute for Women’s Policy Research.  Blog post captured by the internet archive, Wayback Machine, on May 13, 2013.

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Excerpts and selections from speeches at Mariam Chamberlain’s Memorial

From Florence Howe, founder of Feminist Press, blog post (July 15, 2013).

From the Eulogy by David Kenosian (nephew)

I got my first impressions of Mariam through my father, her younger brother Harry, who told me about her life as the daughter of Armenian immigrants in Chelsea, Massachusetts, as a student at Radcliffe, and as a pioneering career woman. He admired his sister because, I think, she epitomized what he saw as key Armenian values, education and hard work. She herself affirmed those values; she insisted that her older brother Tony was the scholar in the family who set the standards of achievement. But following Tony’s example meant overcoming poverty and possibly the reservations of her parents who, like many Armenian parents back then, assumed that their daughter would marry and have a family. In continuing her education Mariam took the best of Armenian culture to break free from its constraints, and later did the same on a larger scale. At Harvard she like other women had to use a different entrance to some buildings than men. She later committed herself professionally to opening doors for women across the country in decades of tireless work.

Mariam’s talents impressed her professor, Edward Mason, who helped build an economic research branch in the OSS. Last December, Mariam told my nephew Tom and me that Edward Mason took her and other assistants to a summit meeting in Canada to support the American delegation: without eight years of entering Radcliffe, Mariam had gone to a conference where Churchill and Roosevelt met. With characteristic modesty she added that she never saw Churchill or Roosevelt. As a woman, she had a better working relationship with her British counterparts than with the men in the American delegation. You can see the hallmarks of her later career; her determination to overcome barriers, her service in the cause of justice, and the collaborative and at times international spirit of her work…

 

Professor Lois Gray, “On Mariam Chamberlain”

I first met Mariam Chamberlain in 1959—fifty-four years ago—not in New York City where we both lived but in Jamaica, West Indies, where her husband, Neil Chamberlain, and I were invited as speakers at an International Conference on Labor. Neil, a leading scholar and writer in the field of industrial relations, was my professor at Columbia University where I was studying for my Ph.D. Both of us brought out spouses to the conference. Neil bonded with my husband who was a labor leader, and Mariam and I discovered our common interest in opportunities for working women. A long lasting friendship grew out of this chance encounter in the Caribbean. [Note: Mariam and Neil were married in 1942 and divorced in 1967?/1970?]

Over the years I came to know about and admire Mariam’s path-breaking role at the Ford Foundation where she was responsible for funding women’s studies programs in universities throughout the United States and other countries. At our occasional lunches she casually referred to experiences in Nairobi, Pakistan, Europe, and South America. I also witnessed her emergence as a leader in the American Economics Association, where she was able to bring feminist issues to the fore in a profession dominated by men. In the year 2000 we were both involved in a comparative analysis of women’s progress toward leadership recognition in various professions, ranging from military to corporate. I wrote the section on Women in Labor Unions, and Mariam, on Academic, for a book published by the American Woman. We had fun comparing notes on our findings. (Women do better in achieving leadership roles in academe than in corporations or unions.) Throughout my more than fifty years of knowing Mariam Chamberlain, I never ceased to be amazed—awed—by her any accomplishments in creating lasting institutions and programs for the advancement of women. Always unassuming and laid back, Mariam was a powerhouse who changed our world. Her life of selfless dedication is a role model for us all.

 

From Dr. Debra L. Schultz, “Remarks”

…Because of Mariam, I learned that as a woman, one simply obtained a PhD. I had no role models for this and she demystified it for me. If getting a doctorate in economics at Harvard as the girl child of Armenian immigrants during World War II was no big deal, what did I have to complain about?

Mariam loved being an economist. During our last visit in March, she reminisced about her time as a Radcliffe undergraduate, when her mentor, future Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief, would read the students chapter drafts sent over by John Maynard Keynes! For a moment, I felt her transform into that excited young woman intellectual and it was thrilling.

Averse to the touchy-feeling side of feminism, she nevertheless drew circles of adoring young women around her, by keeping track of our every personal and professional move. I’m proud to have followed in her footsteps to become a feminist in philanthropy—I never knew such a thing existed before Mariam and the Ford stories—and to work with women internationally, which Mariam did decades before it was trendy.

Mariam never seemed to inhabit a particular age, and she also had a slightly naughty twinkle in her eye. Very little got past that eye, even if she pretended not to notice slights or injustices that came her way. Her satisfaction came from supporting, connecting, and catalyzing. When I had the great opportunity to help start the first international women’s program at the Soros Foundation, Mariam told me ruefully that as a program officer, “you give away your best ideas and let others implement them.” She modeled a generous way of empowering others, not aggrandizing herself…

 

Marjorie Lightman, “Remarks”

…Since girlhood Mariam had probably regarded the people and opinions voiced around her with an alienated eye. She certainly set expectations for herself in line with an internal compass. After all, at 18, while her brother chose Boston College she chose Radcliffe.

Mariam often told me that she was fortunate to have always worked in organizations that were young and making their mark on the world. Who would not thrill at Harvard classes reading John Galbraith’s newest works in manuscript; or working at the OSS in Washington during the World War II, when Gen. Wild Bill Donovan brought together “best and the brightest” to outwit the enemy?

Her commitment to elite institutions on the rise never wavered. When she lived in New Haven with her husband, Neil Chamberlain, who was an economist at Yale, she became part of the Yale Growth Center – an economic think tank founded in 1961. After her divorce, she joined the Ford Foundation, which under McGeorge Bundy had the heady atmosphere of new possibilities and the kind of intellectual energy that made risk into an adventure.

Working under Marshall Robinson she became part of Ford’s audacious $40 million investment in reconceiving business education. The plan to effect change in undergraduate business education and to institute an academically acceptable Masters in Business administration privileged large and mostly elite institutions with funding that sometimes dwarfed mere mortals. Rarely have a foundation’s plans been so successful.

By the time women’s clamor for change had reached the ears of Ford in the early 1970s, Mariam had become a skilled program officer and absorbed lessons of success from the business education program. With a pot of money that was approximately ¼ that spent on business education, she sought out nascent organizations that could become long-lasting institutions and anchor women-centered research and education into the future.

She spread her funds among research centers, academic programs, and scrappy grass-roots organization and coalitions. Not surprisingly they included Stanford, Michigan, Wellesley, and two centers at Radcliffe – Schlesinger and the Bunting. However, risk was the nexus of her intellectual landscape. She was, after all, an economist who thought in algebraic equations. The unknown “x” factor was central to her calculations. And it was in this space – between the provable, the probable and the possible – that she made her most original decisions. She believed that the Feminist Press, IWPR, and the National Council for Research on Women would be the institutions of the future.

It was also in this space that our friendship thrived. We had very different kinds of minds and education. We often disagreed. Her conviction that economics was the queen of disciplines was never shaken. She would ask why I spent my time on history, let alone ancient history. Just recite the facts, she would say. I would respond that the facts had different interpretations. She would parry: not if you presented them properly. I liked life lived on the margins. She was unwavering in her conviction that change came through institutions. She wanted data; I insight. We were intellectual sparring partners who never were bored by our exchanges and who never were threatened by our differences…

 

From “Eulogy” by Mary Rubin

…In 1982, Mariam asked me to join her at the Russell Sage Foundation on a book project to examine progress and prospects for women in higher education, a companion assessment to an earlier book by Alice Rossi. Immediately she welcomed me into Russell Sage’s heady atmosphere of notable social scientists, and often invited me to tag along at elegant meals and meetings she hosted for prominent feminists. Today, whenever I invite a guest for lunch at the Harvard Club, I relish following the tradition she established.

Becoming a Resident Scholar at Russell Sage represented a crucial transition in Mariam’s life. She could have chosen to envelope herself in nostalgia for what Ford had enabled her to achieve. But that was never Mariam’s way. Instead, she stayed vigilant for opportunities. She maintained her accessibility to a steady stream of feminist scholars and practitioners who arrived seeking her advice and contacts in the foundation world. In these meetings, I learned to pay as much attention to what she didn’t say as to what she actually said.

Not only did she help me to find my voice in discourse with thinkers who’d completed their doctorates before I was born, she introduced me to Zabar’s coffee beans, elegant Italian leather boots by Galo, and the pleasures of eating only hot fudge sundaes for dinner. I had barely started working for her when she agreed to guarantee the lease on my first-ever apartment—a railroad flat on the Upper East Side with a claw foot bathtub in the kitchen. In characteristic fashion, she shared my delight, while simultaneously withholding her opinion of its truly miniscule size.

No matter how early I arrived at work, or how late I stayed, she was always ensconced in her office; however, she never pressured me to adopt the same schedule. She set high expectations, but rarely criticized. Hers was a quiet form of guiding and shaping. She taught me to listen intently, to ask probing questions, to be steadfast in advocating my perspective. Her goal always was to win others over, never to squash them. When a discussion moved in an unproductive direction, I watched how she lightened the atmosphere by describing a favorite New Yorker cartoon—and then resumed her line of argument. I’m guessing she used this technique frequently while at Ford…

 

Dorothy O. Helly, “Remarks”

I came into Mariam’s orbit in the late 1970s through Marjorie Lightman and the Institute for Research in History. We connected in the following years over a number of shared interests, one in particular being curriculum transformation, first at Hunter College and later among the faculty throughout the City University. She often urged me to “write it up,” for to Mariam, if it was worth doing, it was worth telling others about it. We traveled in the same groups that went to Nairobi and Beijing, and through these years of international women’s studies concerns, I became a “station” on the way for women from abroad seeking information about grants, coming to me at Hunter and being sent by me to Mariam, wherever she was located, from Russell Sage to Roosevelt House to the latest offices of the National Council for Research on Women.

Mariam, Florence, and Helene became a troika in my life as well, and they always surprised me with their delightful hostess gifts at the annual New Year’s party my husband and I gave to celebrate the Millennium and the decade that followed.

Mariam and I met up over the years at the conferences of National Women’s Studies Association and the Berkshire Conference on Women’s History, often having at least one dinner together to discuss whatever was the latest news or just to schmooze. Many times these dinners included at least one other woman, and I listened to their projects being presented to her for help and approval. I remember in particular the dinner with Heidi Hartmann when her policy organization was barely more than a gleam in her eyes.

I also remember being in the same university dormitory in Nairobi and chatting in the hallway before going to bed. We were in the same Swiss-run hotel in Beijing, seeing each other at breakfast and dinner. In other words, Mariam and Women’s Studies were intertwined in my life, a person with whom one could talk about the latest issues, particularly transforming the curriculum and the problems facing the new Ph.D. programs in Women’s Studies. I know that Mariam was an important sounding board for many people. It was a way for them and her to keep up with the latest activities in the field . It also provided a way to tap her suggestions, based on her wide, wide knowledge of who was doing what and, of course, where it might be possible to get project funding.

Mariam’s generosity was open and casually extended. When she had to cancel her trip to Australia for a meeting of the International Congress on Women, she offered me her prepaid room. I accepted, and then, in the same spirit, shared it with another woman who did not have a place to stay. Mariam, of course, wanted a full report when I returned.

We sat together, often literally, on the board of the Feminist Press, and across the table at Parnell’s with people like Marjorie and Blanche Cook. On the trip from Beijing, via Helsinki, we both accepted a $200 bribe from the airline to bump us off our flight to take another one three-hours later. That allowed us time to wander the Helsinki airport, window shopping, and my personal coup was to convince Mariam, who never seemed to buy herself any personal luxury, to purchase a large amber and silver ring. She wore that ring on occasions like Feminist Press and NCRW galas, and she was wearing it the last time I saw her this year. Like so many others, my life was touched by hers, and I have many happy memories by which to remember her.

 

From Lybra Clemons “Eulogy for Mariam”

…After graduate school and years of working at nonprofits, I began working at the National Council for Research on Women (the Council) in 2003. My office was next door to Mariam’s….

Towards the end, it was quite interesting to see Mariam. She had good days and not so great days. I have to say that her unpredictability was somewhat entertaining. I wonder if she was doing this for us….just to keep us on our toes and to get a giggle every now and then.

Honestly – I would walk in the door of Parnells (her favorite restaurant), and wonder what decade Mariam thought she was in today. Sometimes it was 1972….. and all of her stories would center around that decade. Then it was 1935…… But – we indulged her.

Again –there were days when Mariam was so sharp, that I felt downright stupid and couldn’t keep up. If you had not read and/or analyzed Paul Krugman, she was not amused.

One of our last outings together at Parnells was particularly interesting. Mariam, Gwen, Joan and I dined with Mariam and observed her becoming more concerned with the “lack of men”. She kept saying “where are the men?”… and pointing to people at Parnell’s. She would see a man and say “there’s a man”. Clearly she wanted to make sure we included men…. Well, I think that was the point. I love Mariam dearly, but for whatever reason she wanted to see, meet, engage, or possibly hang out with men – I knew that Parnell’s was likely the last place that we should look for sourcing these types of men. But – the point was well taken….

 

From “Remarks” by Helene Goldfarb

Good evening. My name is Helene Goldfarb and I am the President of the Feminist Press at CUNY. I am here to speak of Mariam as a friend for many years but also as a very important part of who the Feminist Press was and what it has become over the years because of her nurturing and caring. Mariam, who was a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, was one of the first to make a grant to the Feminist Press. It was for $12,000 for Who’s Who and Where in Women Studies. Interestingly, she wouldn’t let us use computers because she “didn’t want to become involved with us” but she changed her mind and introduced us to Terry Saario also at Ford who gave us our first large grant for the “Women and Work” high school series. Mariam continued her interest in the Press and gave us a small grant to bring five women to Copenhagen in 1980 and to organize two weeks of workshops and panels on women’s studies.

Even after she left Ford in 1982, Mariam’s interest in the Press never flagged. She became a very active member of the Board of Directors of the Press and remained on our board until she passed away last month. While she was not as active as she would have liked to be this past year or so, whenever Florence and I met her for dinner at Parnell’s, the Press was always on her mind. I miss those dinners at Parnell’s and Sunday is a little lonelier for the lack of them.

It is always a little difficult to express thanks publically for the many years she contributed not only expertise to the Press but also donations. Without her support, our Galas would not have been as successful and we certainly would not have been able to print many of the books that are found in bookstores today…

 

Heidi Hartmann

Mariam Chamberlain was a cherished adviser to myself and to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. She was a founding member and a generous supporter from its inception in 1987. She served 18 years on our Board of Directors. She was knowledgeable and wise about the ways of foundations, and while she was unfailingly encouraging and supportive, I learned to pay attention to the rare instances in which she expressed skepticism about the likelihood of getting funding for some particular project or other. More often her suggestions of where to go and whom to meet with led to productive relationships for IWPR. She understood that nonprofits would actually sometimes have negative profits, and I recall one instance when several of IWPR’s board members were a bit agitated about a couple of years in the red in a row, when she said something like, “aren’t deficits normal for nonprofits?” and then she lent us funds so we could pay our bills until some expected grants arrived. Her general view seemed to be that if an endeavor was worthwhile it might go through some ups and downs but it would prove its worth in the long run. And she was in it for the long run.

Mariam and I both studied economics at similar institutions and knew many of the same people and, despite the difference of a generation, had had some of the same experiences in being a small minority in a male-dominated field. I believe I first met Mariam at a business meeting of the American Economics Association, probably in the early 1980s when a group of progressive members was trying to pass a set of resolutions. My cohort was sitting together, and when our resolutions would come up we would all raise our hands while the rest of the hands remained down, except for one, a small, older, very professional-looking woman. The content and the outcome of the motions are long forgotten, but I recall Mariam like it was yesterday. That event provided a hint of the deep and abiding radicalism that was Mariam.

I got to know Mariam better at the 1987 NWSA meetings held at Spellman College when we, both being frugal, stayed in the dorms and asked them to assign us a roommate and we got each other. Just then in the process of forming IWPR, I shared my dreams for IWPR and we shared some personal stories in late night discussions. My mother is virtually the same age as Mariam and came to America on her own in 1938, and so I like Mariam was an immigrant daughter. And like her I rose up from poverty through getting good grades and earning a scholarship to a top school. Perhaps because Mariam was so much like my mother (both very smart, courageous, kind, and persistent), I thought of Mariam as my intellectual mother, an intellectual version of my own working-class mother.

Mariam loved IWPR because we use economics to advance women and she knew how much difference having numbers makes in the policy world. She loved being part of that world through IWPR. She valued the fellowship we named after her in 2001. IWPR typically funds a young woman en route to graduate school to work at IWPR for an academic year to learn practical research skills in a policy setting. More than 100 young people apply every year, and thousands of graduating students learn about Mariam and the opportunity to use social science to help achieve social justice. I am very pleased to let you know that Mary Rubin and the Borrego Foundation have generously provided IWPR with a challenge grant of $95,000 to honor Mariam’s 95 years by expanding our Mariam K. Chamberlain fellowship to give an opportunity to a second fellow each year.

Mariam’s choice to recognize the Feminist Press, the National Council for Research on Women, and IWPR in her will reflects her lifelong commitment to the radical idea of considering women fully human. Many of us here share that commitment and share our love of Mariam….

 

Image Sources:  Mariam Kenosian Chamberlain from Radcliffe Yearbook, 1939 and New York Times obituary (April 7, 2013).

 

Categories
Funny Business M.I.T.

M.I.T. Economics Christmas skit with basketball theme, 1961

Boston, MA - 1/1/1960: From left, Boston Celtics players Tom Heinsohn, Bill Russell, Capt. Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and Frank Ramsey pose together at the Boston Garden in Boston circa 1960. (Boston Globe Archive/) --- BGPA Reference: 170504_BS_001

 

Spoiler alert: you are about to encounter one of the least funny economics skits in the history of the genre, so this artifact is regrettably low on entertainment value.  Still the six acts have a certain seven-acts-of-man structure: Act I (the department recruits), Act II ( advising the first-year student), Act III (graduate student complaints), Act IV (choosing guest speakers), Act V (general examinations), Act VI (job market). 

After reading the skit, you might need a palate cleansing or better: for that purpose here are a few links to the key word “Funny Business” at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror that take you to some of the greatest hits of economics skits.

____________________

ANOTHER TWO POINTS FOR THE FACULTY,
ANOTHER FOUL ON THE STUDENTS

A Christmas Drama (with suggestions for a cast), December 15, 1961

ACT I

(The curtain rises on a scene of [Edgar Cary] Brown, [Franklin Marvin] Fisher, [Charles Poor] Kindleberger and [Abraham J.] Siegel seated around a table reading applications.

SIEGEL: Here’s a guy who may be OK…No…the place is no good. A cow college. They average only 50 points a game.

BROWN:  Here’s a good one.

FISHER: What’s his record?

BROWN: Pretty darn good. Worth at least tuition plus $500. Maybe $750.

FISHER: What’s his record?

BROWN: Pretty darn good. He’s from Podunk. And they’re pretty good. He was the best they had.

FISHER: How did he score, for crying out loud?

BROWN: He’s six-feet-five, weighs 195 pounds, and fast; he averaged 23.7 points a game. He has a great set shot, never misses from the foul line, and superb off the backboard. He’s just what we need in Graduate Economics at M.I.T.

 

ACT II

(An office: Siegel is advising a student.)

SIEGEL: For the first year I would take pretty standard fare: theory, history, statistics, finance, and international, plus of course the workshop. There’s no use trying to take too much. Pace yourself.

STUDENT (perhaps [Stephen Herbert] Hymer?): I don’t have much math. Why do I need to take statistics?

SIEGEL: Ando is very good. He doesn’t always make things completely clear, but you have to take statistics if you want to be able to handle averages, to work out the point per game and point per shot records; and you need probability to help compute odds on all the league games. Statistics is a must.

STUDENT: Why the history, finance and international?

SIEGEL: International is important. You ought to know how to schedule the Harlem Globetrotters, and who has the best chance in the Olympics. One of our best graduates played on the Oxford team against Poland and Czechoslovakia. That was Chuck Cooper, and it got him a job as Walter Heller’s assistant at the Council. Finance is important. When the gamblers start bribing players you need to know how to invest the funds. And history is vital. On the general exams they always ask who was James Naismith, the man who invented basketball. That’s for every student. The good students they ask when it was invented…of course 1891. And the very best students they ask where…past, Springfield, Mass. Remember, it’s not Springfield, Illinois. That’s Abe Lincoln.

STUDENT: OK. But tell me about the last one.

SIEGEL: Theory isn’t much. [Paul Anthony] Samuelson teaches about how to make inputs for two points, and when to dribble.

STUDENT: Samuelson teaches drivel?

 

ACT III

(A group of students, griping.)

STUDENT 1 (Francis Michel Bator?): This place is no good. It’s theory, theory, theory all the way. Anyone knows that the way to win at basketball is to practice. Practice makes perfect. Theory makes perfect fools. All you do is study and take exams. “Who was James Naismith? Who was Adam Yea-Smith? When do you chop down the tree?” Bah! I say we ought to study policy. With a two-point lead and three minutes to go, should you freeze the ball or plop in an input for an output of two points?

STUDENT 2 ([Paul Narcyz] Rosenstein-Rodan?): They tell me [Robert Merton] Solow has been converted from theory to policy. He is no longer interested in questions like whether the best set shot is an inverted rectangular parabola, but real issues, like the queuing problem: how many substitutes does a team need to field five men for an hour, with one personal foul every six minutes and four personal fouls per man disqualifying. If you have too many players on the bench you get unemployment. The team needs growth. Maybe you ought to add a man and play six.

STUDENT 3 ([Robert] Evans?): What’s bad is to have to play far away from the Sloan building. Those workshops on top on Walker and over in the Armory are OK, but they are too far away. We need the Ford Foundation to give us a workshop right here.

STUDENT 1: Haven’t you heard? The talk is that the new building to go up in the back lot is a library. But as I see its dimensions unfold- 90 feet by 50 – and transparent backboards and netting and grandstands, I can’t believe it’s a library. It must be a basketball court.

 

ACT IV

(A meeting of the G.E.A.)

RALPH BULL (played by [Robert Lyle] Bishop?): Do any of you fellows have suggestions for speakers besides Cousy, Russell, Jungle Jim Lusketoff, and that 6.8 outstanding economist, [John Kenneth] Galbraith, who can stand with his head coming up through the basket?

STUDENT B: What about Milton Friedman? He is under the five feet which some say is the minimum allowable in a monetary theorist, but he sure is good at the far-fetched shot.

STUDENT B: Why not get Clifford Odets?

RALPH BULL: Clifford Odets? Why him?

STUDENT B: Don’t you remember the famous line in “Awake and Sing”? “My brother Sam joined the Navy. He don’t know from nothin’, that dumb basketball player.” I want to know whether the emphasis is “that dumb basketball player” or “the [sic] dumb basketball player”. Are there any smart basketball players?

 

ACT V

KINDLEBERGER: As chairman of this exam, let me tell you that you have the right to pick the order of your exam. Do you want to start with Theory, or Statistics?

STUDENT (Samuelson?): I think I’ll start by jumping against Fisher, your professorship, sir. Ando’s the smaller, so I’ll take him last when I’m tired.

KINDLEBERGER: All right. (Student and Fisher face each other. Kindleberger blows whistle and throws imaginary ball. Cheers of amazement from faculty.)

FISHER: Very well. I have decided to let you combine Theory and Economic History.

STUDENT: Hey, Ref, your Ph.D.ship, sir, I’m not responsible for History. Isn’t that a foul?

KINDLEBERGER: I didn’t see nuthin’.

FISHER: Consider the population explosion of the last 150 years. Discuss the relative roles of (a) men and (b) women in this affair.

ANDO [Albert Keinosuke] : Good shot. That’s two points for our side.

STUDENT: I don’t know that, your cap-and-gownship, sir, but I know the roles are neither reflexive, symmetric, or transitive.

KINDLEBERGER: (blows whistle) Foul. You used big words in a generals. That’s only permitted the faculty.

FISHER: I’ll give Albert my free throw.

ANDO: (taking the foul shot) Please discuss the role of the nearly decomposable take-off in the application of a priori oligopoly theory to the A&P case.

STUDENT: Hey! You guys are ganging up on me.

ANDO: Well, you outnumber us in class.

STUDENT: (driving hard for basket) It can be set up as a nine-dimensional matrix problem and the latent roots dispensed with. I think the take-off is fine if done along the turnpike, watching out for model changes in passing cars.

ANDO: Fantastic! (Faculty huddle.)

KINDLEBERGER: That was a good answer. We’ve decided to give you an Excellent minus for being a good scorer, but to ask you to leave the Institute for fouling out on personals.

KINDLEBERGER, ANDO, FISHER: Rah, team!

 

ACT VI

DOMAR [Evsey David]: Well, you have the degree wrapped up, and now want a job. Not bad. You got a good grade on the orals, and would have gotten a top grade if you hadn’t thought that Stilt Chamberlain played for the Celtics and failed to distinguish Slippery Sam Jones from Casey Jones. Your thesis was entirely satisfactory, on a good topic: How to Get to the Boston Garden from Madison Square Garden: An Application of the Turnpike Theorem. And you even did languages: basketball communication in the Ivy League, or basketball with a broad A. Now the job. What do you think? Big Ten? Ivy League? Small liberal arts? Girls’ rules like Wellesley or Vassar? Or maybe the real big time: Kentucky, Long Island University, St. Joseph’s in Brooklyn, Notre Dame. L.I.U. is to economics like M.I.T. was to economics.

STUDENT (perhaps [Max Franklin] Millikan?): I don’t now if I’m ready for the Big Time.

DOMAR: What about applying some of your basketballmetrics for the government? They need our graduates. Or for an oil company. Maybe you would like to take a ball and a whistle and go abroad, demonstrating technical assistance to underdeveloped countries. There are jobs like that.

STUDENT: No. I guess I’m fussy. What I’d like is just what all the gang would like, to stay here at Cambridge with Harvard and the Celtics, and to referee like you and [Robert Lyle] Bishop and Samuelson, always blowing off your whistle and shouting foul, going first class to conferences, and shouting foul, foul, foul at the students.

 

Source:  M.I.T. Archives. MIT Department of Economics records, Box 2, Folder “GEA 1961-67”.

Image Source:  Boston Celtics players Tom Heinsohn, Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and Frank Ramsey in 1960. “Twelve of the greatest Celtics players of all time”  from Boston.com website (March 18, 2018)