Category: Radical

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University of Massachusetts. Hiring a flock of “radical economists”, 1973

 

One wonders what exact path was taken by the following memorandum from the Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for us to find a copy that landed the files of George Stigler at the University of Chicago. Anyhow it is fairly clear that Dean Dean Alfange, Jr. (not a typo, his first name is really “Dean”), a political scientist and then acting department head of the economics department, felt sufficient local push-back for his wholesale acquisition of the cream of academic radical economics that he put together a full paper-defense for the deal, including letters of support by Harvard’s John Kenneth Galbraith and Stanford’s John Gurley. 

Still, Chicago had no dog in this fight so I am modestly surprised that Stigler would have received and even kept his copy of the memo. I guess without academic gossip, faculty clubs would have one less excuse to serve booze to the senior and junior ranks of academic barflies.

A friend of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror writes:

“The most plausible reason the memo on U Mass hiring found it’s way to Stigler’s files is James Kindahl, a U Mass economist mentioned in the dean’s memo. He was Stigler’s PhD student, friend and co-author.”

____________________________

The U-Mass Dean’s Apologia

University of Massachusetts
Memorandum

Date: February 26, 1973

From: Dean, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences
To: Members of the Department of Economics
Subject: Recruitment

Offers of appointment have now been formally extended to the following persons:

Rank

 Effective Date

Term
Robert Coen

Professor

1973

Tenure
Richard Wolff

Associate Professor

1973

Tenure
Samuel Bowles

Professor

1974

Tenure
Richard Edwards

Assistant Professor

1974

3 years
Herbert Gintis

Associate Professor

1974

Tenure

I believe that you have already been notified that offers of appointment have also been extended to Stephen Resnick as Professor with tenure, effective September, 1973, and to Leonard Rapping as Visiting Professor for the Fall semester, 1973-74. The latter offer has been accepted. Earlier, offers were made to, and accepted by, Ronald Oaxaca, Thomas Russell, and Josephine Gordon at the Assistant Professor/Instructor level. An offer to Marilyn Manser as Assistant Professor/Instructor was extended, but has been declined.

If the offers currently outstanding are accepted, I do not think it would be either immodest or inaccurate for me to suggest that this will have been the most successful and effective recruiting year in the history of the department. We will have filled our long standing gaps in macroeconomics and monetary economics with excellent appointments, we will have added some very promising younger economists in applied fields, and we will have brought in a group of “radical” economists who are, by general agreement, the very best representatives of that school of economists in the United States.

I should have thought that these recruiting efforts needed no justification or defense. However, on the day when the five most recent offers listed above were sent out, I received a memorandum from Jim Kindahl suggesting certain reservations about the recruitment of the “radicals,” and asking me to explain my actions to the department. The remainder of this memorandum is written in response to that request.

First of all, it was suggested that the recruitment of the “radical” group was somehow carried on clandestinely. I am left rather puzzled by that because I hardly thought that the matter was a secret. Each of the members of this group visited the campus and spoke openly and frankly with many members of the department. I have also had occasion over the past few months to speak with a substantial number of the members of the department, and I found no one who was unaware of my recruiting intentions. Those members of the department who chose not to discuss personnel matters with me did so despite the fact that I invited discussion of such matters with faculty individually or in groups. Moreover, the question arose in the department meeting in January, and no one present seemed to me to be in the dark. It is true that I made no formal announcement of recruiting plans to the department, but it should be remembered that the department has no personnel committee, that it rejected my desire to establish an advisory committee on personnel matters, and that it certainly has not been the practice in the recent past to publicize and to encourage broad discussion of recruitment plans within the department as a whole.

Second, it was indicated that a substantial number of department members either have reservations regarding, or are definitely opposed to, the recruitment of the “radical” group. I suppose that to be true. The Department of Economics has not been known in the past for its ability to establish a broad consensus on significant personnel matters, and I assume that no meaningful step in any direction could be taken that a substantial number of members of the department would not either have reservations regarding or be opposed to. With knowledge of this circumstance, the department practice in the recent past has been deliberately to ignore this lack of consensus and to move ahead in the direction thought most advisable by the department leadership. While my strongest desire both as Dean and as acting department head is to establish a departmental consensus on fundamental issues, and my hope is that the work of the department head search committee can be an important vehicle in this regard, it nevertheless seems to me necessary, in the short run, to accept the lack of consensus as a given, and not to allow it to bring the development of the department to a standstill.

It was not my original intention to serve this year as acting department head, nor was it my intention to act without a personnel committee. I had hoped to appoint a member of the department to serve as acting head, but Vice-Chancellor Gluckstern prevailed upon me to act in that capacity after some members of last year’s personnel committee persuaded him that that arrangement would be preferable to having an acting head from within the department. The decision not to have a personnel committee was, of course, an action taken by an almost unanimous vote of the department with full knowledge that I would be serving as acting head. Following that vote, I sought to establish an informal advisory committee to assist me on personnel matters, but I abandoned that plan after protests arose within the department that such a committee would be, in effect, a de facto personnel committee, whose establishment would contravene the department vote not to have such a committee. The point is that I did not maneuver myself into the position that I have been in with relation to the Department of Economics this year. Instead, it would be accurate to say that I was maneuvered into it by departmental action. However, having found myself thrust into the position, I resolved to act vigorously in the area of recruitment in order to dispel the possible image of this department as one so riven by internal disagreement that it could not move forward.

It was obvious to me that the previous recruiting posture of the department—that one hired the best economists one could find, irrespective of field, and presumably also irrespective of whether the person hired would want to teach anything that any students would have any interest in taking—was arrant nonsense, and that it would have to be abandoned before it led to the creation of a department so totally out of balance that it would be incapable of, and uninterested in, meeting the needs of both graduate and undergraduate students. At the start of the year, it seemed to me apparent that there were four pressing recruiting needs to be addressed. First, it was necessary to seek to fill the persistent gaps in macroeconomics and monetary economics that had continued to exist despite the report of the visiting committee and despite the urging of many members of the department that special efforts be made to recruit in these areas in order to meet vital teaching needs. Second, it was necessary to strengthen the department in applied fields, where faculty were spread so thin that it was difficult for individuals to find colleagues with whom effectively to interact. Third, it was absolutely essential that the department become sensitive and responsive to the Affirmative Action program of the university, and that a concerted effort be undertaken to identify and recruit qualified female and minority group candidates. Fourth, it seemed to me impossible for the department to continue to remain insensitive to the ferment taking place within the discipline of economics, in which a substantial number of economists—including some of the most prestigious members of the profession—were challenging the dominant neo-classical paradigm, and calling into question the ability of the profession, utilizing that paradigm, adequately to deal with many of the most urgent social problems in the nation and the world. It is hardly for me to argue that the alternative Marxian paradigm of the “radical” economists is sound and potentially fruitful, and to seek to add “radicals” on that premise. However, it is equally inappropriate to seek to exclude the proponents of that paradigm from appointment in the department on the premise that their approach is demonstrably unsound. As James Tobin explained to me, it is not clear whether the “radicals” can devise the tools adequate to the task of coming to grips with the social problems on which they wish to work, but, on the other hand, it is manifest that conventional economists have as yet been unable to devise tools adequate to this task. In the meantime, an increasing number of younger economists and students have been gravitating toward the “radical” paradigm as more relevant and useful. In this context, a healthy department should, in my view, contain some proponents of the “radical” perspective.

My recruiting efforts this year have been focused in each of these four areas. Robert Coen, to whom an offer has now been extended, was identified by the visiting committee as typical of the macroeconomist that we lacked and needed. Thomas Russell, who has accepted a position in monetary economics, was recommended to me, in the strongest terms, by Dwight Jaffee of Princeton, among others. Additional strength in applied fields will be provided by the appointment of Ronald Oaxaca in labor economics and Josephine Gordon in urban economics, both of whom will also broaden the department from the standpoint of Affirmative Action. In the Affirmative Action area, I have, of course, been strongly assisted by the departmental committee that I appointed to identify female and minority group candidates. The work of this committee is by no means done, particularly since our offer to Marilyn Manser has not been accepted, and continued efforts toward the achievement of Affirmative Action goals may still be anticipated.

It is my manner of seeking to meet the fourth department need, however, that appears to have occasioned the controversy to which Jim Kindahl referred in his memorandum. I was, of course, never unaware that the appointment of “radical” economists to the department would be a controversial matter. I decided to proceed to recruit in this area despite this.  My experience with certain personnel issues in the department over the past couple of years, including the question of a visiting appointment for Sam Bowles this year, has satisfied me—although I know that others involved would conscientiously contend for differing interpretations—that what was occurring was a manifestation of what John Kenneth Galbraith described in his AEA presidential address in December as a “new despotism,” which “consists in defining scientific excellence as whatever is closest in belief and method to the scholarly tendency of the people who are already there. This is a pervasive and oppressive thing not the less dangerous for being, in the frequent case, both self-righteous and unconscious.” Because of this, I had no doubt that the department needed to be broadened and balanced in order to reflect more widely the professional views that are held in the discipline at large.

Sam Bowles, who was, of course, on the campus during the Fall semester, if not in the Department of Economics, assisted me in identifying potential appointees. I was immensely gratified when he himself expressed a willingness to be considered for a position, and his interest led to a similar interest on the part of others of the most outstanding “radical” economists in the United States. I had not initially contemplated the recruitment of a group of “radical” economists, as such, but when the quality of the individuals we might be able to attract became apparent to me, it was obvious that an unparalleled opportunity was at hand to make a major step forward in terms of the professional excellence of the department. As one very traditional member of the department said to me, “Who could have thought that persons of this ability would simply drop in our laps?” The idea of hiring a “radical” group was one that I found to have support among a number of prominent economists, and letters I received from two of these—John Kenneth Galbraith and John Gurley—are reproduced and appended to this memorandum. Still another economist of gigantic national reputation—who could certainly not be described as a “radical”—called me on his own initiative to commend me for my insight into the nature of the economics discipline and to praise me for my courage in going forward with my recruiting plans. While I was most flattered by these encomia, I did not feel that I had displayed either insight or courage, simply common sense. I was also equally aware, that, in the light of the intense divisions within the profession, a substantial number of extremely prominent economists might look with disfavor upon the recruitment of a “radical” group, but, as no attempt seems to have been made in the past to follow a course of recruitment that would have support across the spectrum of prominent economists, I was not deterred by that realization from following a course that I looked upon as a means of redressing the imbalance of the past. I sought, however, to insure that recruitment here would take into consideration the fields in which faculty could be most effectively utilized, and, thus, the “radical” group will add to our resources in the following fields in which added strength can readily be justified: economic development, economic history, industrial organization, and the economics of education.

I have spoken about the “radical” recruitment with a variety of members of the department, including some who would not want to be described as among my supporters. There were some expressions of uneasiness about the size of the group because of the fear that it might come to dominate the department and establish its own orthodoxy from which others would dissent only at their peril. Reservations were also expressed about one of the members of the group whose credentials were less conventional that those of the others. But, by and large, I received indications of support as long as standards of professional quality were maintained. I believe that the sentiments and concerns that were expressed to me were sincere and proper. I have tried to heed them. There is no question in my mind but that customary standards of professional quality have not only been met, but have been far surpassed in these cases. Of the four appointments at the two higher ranks, two, from every indication I received, had widespread support within the department and were extraordinarily well recommended by outstanding traditional economists. The third, although less well known to members of the department, received brilliant letters of recommendation and is regarded as a superb economist by those who have worked closely with him. Because of the reservations expressed with regard to the fourth member of the group, his credentials were subjected to exacting scrutiny, and I am fully satisfied that, despite his less conventional background, his, too, is a distinguished appointment. He has had an active and ongoing program of research; his publications have been well received by those who are most familiar with them, and, perhaps most importantly, the evidence is clear and uncontradicted that he is an extraordinary and gifted teacher.

There remains to be discussed the concern that was expressed regarding the establishment of a possible “radical” orthodoxy. I do not see how it would be possible for a relatively small minority of the department to gain control and establish an orthodoxy without my support, and I want to take this opportunity unequivocally to assure all members of the department that I do not intend to permit that to occur. I am committed as a matter of principle to the establishment of a balanced department and to the maintenance of an atmosphere of toleration for differing methodologies so that theorists and applied economists, neo-classicists and “radicals” can work together and flourish undisturbed by fears that their work will be judged, not by its quality, but by whether or not others in the department would do it in the same way. Education, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, becomes merely indoctrination unless students are allowed to be exposed to all approaches and perspectives that are widely held within a discipline, and given the opportunity to select among them. It is my fervent hope that education, in the best sense of that term, can be given to students in economics at this institution.

Now that the offers discussed above have been formally extended on behalf of the university, it remains only for them to be accepted, and I have been led to believe that these acceptances may be expected. Since that is the case, I will suggest to all members of the department who do not share my enthusiasm over the success of this year’s recruitment that, at this stage, accommodations would be far more fruitful than recriminations. The Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts is now “on the map.” We are in a situation in which we can compete far more effectively with the most outstanding departments in the recruitment of faculty. I have been told that there are a sizeable number of graduate students at Harvard who are waiting only for word of the actual appointments of Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis before applying for transfer here, and that is only symptomatic of what may safely be expected to be an enormous increase in the number and quality of the applicants for admission to our graduate program. A corresponding increase in the undergraduate interest in our economics may also be anticipated. In short, I believe that if our outstanding offers are accepted, we will have reached the point at which the frustrations and the miseries of the past can at long last be put behind us. I have little doubt that, within a relatively few years, we will deservedly have the reputation of being one of the genuinely outstanding departments of economics in the United States.

[signed]
Dean Alfange, Jr.
Dean, Faculty of Social
and Behavioral Sciences

DA,Jr/jhg

Source:  University of Chicago Archives. George Stigler papers. Box 3, Red Folder “U of C Econ., Miscellaneous”.

____________________________

The U-Mass Dean
Requesting Cover from Galbraith

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts
Amherst 01002

College of Arts and Sciences
Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Office of the Dean

February 2, 1973

Professor John Kenneth Galbraith
Chalet Bergsonne
Gstaad, Switzerland

Dear Professor Galbraith:

I would like to express to you my very deep appreciation for your indirect encouragement of my effort to bring to the Economics faculty of the University of Massachusetts a group of “radical” economists to broaden the base of what has heretofore been an extremely narrowly focused department. I was particularly gratified by the kind words of support that you included in the letter of reference that you sent me on Herb Gintis.

By this time, Sam Bowles will probably have spoken to you about the possibility of your sending me a general letter of support for the appointment of the five-man group that we hope to recruit over the next two years—Steve Resnick and Rick Wolff in 1973, and Sam Bowles, Herb Gintis, and Rick Edwards in 1974. So that your memory may be refreshed on the accomplishments of this group, I am enclosing a vita for each of them.

I am now reasonably satisfied that my proposal will be supported at the campus level by the Provost and the Chancellor, and, while I have no reason to expect that any objections will be forthcoming from either President Robert Wood or the Board of Trustees, I believe that a letter from you could be instrumental in persuading people that this is a respectable venture, should any questions be raised in the President’s office or at the Board of Trustees. I have heard, indirectly, that a member of either the Harvard or MIT faculty has already written to President Wood advising him to be cautious in giving his approval to my proposal, and your letter would serve as a vital counterweight to that point of view.

I think it would be most useful if you could address the letter to me, rather than to President Wood, because it would then allow me to present it to him at the most propitious time, but I would certainly bow to your preference on this matter.

Once again, I am deeply appreciative of your support.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Dean Alfange, Jr.
Dean, Faculty of Social
and Behavioral Sciences

DA,Jr/smr

 

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)”.

____________________________

Galbraith Obliges

John Kenneth Galbraith
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

February 13, 1973

Dean Dean Alfange, Jr.
Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
South College
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts 01002

Dear Dean Alfange:

I was enormously impressed to hear of the proposed appointments—Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis together with Resnick, Wolff and Edwards—at the University of Massachusetts. I have always been proud of my association with the University—including that of an honorary alumnus—but never more than now. With one step you are putting the Amherst campus in the forefront of progressive economic thought in the United States. And this is at a time when discontent with the established modalities in economics—its divorce from reality, its commitment to small refinement—is notably strong among students, the aware public and within the profession itself.

As you surely know, Bowles and Gintis had the strong backing at Harvard of (with others) Kenneth Arrow, Wassily Leontief and myself—together we are three of the last four presidents of the American Economic Association and the only members of the Department to have held this position. Arrow, of course, is our currently active Nobel Prize winner. I know Renick and Wolff only by reputation—and their impressive vitaes—and Edwards only as one of our younger staff members, but they are all obviously men of interest and promise. All of them are concerned with breaking new ground—with bringing a searching and critical attitude to bear on existing ideas and institutions. At the same time all are committed to a rigorous methodology and all are strong defenders of the civil and tolerant tradition in our university and academic life. These matters seem to me important and especially, perhaps, the commitment to hard, diligent and rigorous work. There has been a dissenting tradition in university life in these last years which would liberate man from both physical and mental toil. These men have no part of such nonsense. And, in the end, it is always the critical, not the routine and sycophantic, work which wins respect and attention.

You will understand why, along with others, I regret that we will not have these scholars at Harvard. (I am especially disappointed about Gintis whose promotion the Department supported and who, I thought, would be ours.) I have found association with members of this group exceedingly agreeable, stimulating and specifically useful in recent years, and my own writing has benefited greatly therefrom. In case this seems like casual praise, may I say that I would personally welcome some opportunity for continued association with the seminar work which these men will be doing at Amherst or—better still—which they might be persuaded to offer at the Boston campus, if that is a practical possibility.

Let me again affirm my admiration for your initiative and congratulate you on your good fortune. As one of the most liberal states in the Union, it seems to me clear that Massachusetts and its University are worthy of each other.

Yours faithfully,
[signed]
John Kenneth Galbraith

JKG: mjh

Source:  Photocopy:  University of Chicago Archives. George Stigler papers. Box 3, Red Folder “U of C Econ., Miscellaneous”.
Carbon copy: 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)”.

____________________________

Handwritten Note in Support of the U-Mass Hiring from Gurley

Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305

Department of Economics

January 28, 1973

Dear Dean Alfange:

I have recently heard that the economics department at your university is considering hiring a group of younger economists—Bowles, Gintis, Woolf [sic], Resneck [sic], and Edwards—all of whom have contributed greatly to refashioning economics from its neo-classical form into a social science that has much more relevance to the present-day world. I admire the work of these young economists, some of which has already revolutionized certain areas of economics, and so I hope that they will in fact come to U. of M. as a group. If they do, the economics department there will soon become of the leading ones in the country so far as the younger generation of economists and graduate students are concerned.

I wish you and this undertaking the very best of luck.

Sincerely,
[signed] John G. Gurley
Professor of Economics

Source:  University of Chicago Archives. George Stigler papers. Box 3, Red Folder “U of C Econ., Miscellaneous”.

Image Source: Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis at the Sydney Radical Education Conference,  Copy of “Education for Liberation” by Robert Mackie.

Categories
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.

_____________________

Background tip:

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

_____________________

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.

Categories
Chicago Economist Market Economists Harvard Radical

Harvard/Chicago. Gottfried Haberler and Milton Friedman on Samuel Bowles, 1970

 

The following exchange between Gottfried Haberler and Milton Friedman is really quite remarkable. It is the second observation by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror of Gottfried Haberler trashing a liberal/radical economist on the q.t. The first instance involved John Kenneth Galbraith in 1948 (though I cannot say that I would personally fault Haberler for his having ranked Paul Samuelson above John Kenneth Galbraith as an economist). It will come as a surprise to some people that Milton Friedman defended the scholarly honor of one of the leading, if not the leading, radical economists in 1970. As we see below Friedman in no uncertain terms let Haberler know that he still considered his earlier support of Samuel Bowles for an untenured appointment at the University of Chicago to have been based solely on the analytical merits displayed by Bowles. 

You do not want to miss the Harvard anecdote relayed by Roy Weintraub that is posted below as a comment!

__________________

PERSONAL

May 14, 1970

Professor Milton Friedman
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois 60637

Dear Milton:

I was told that Chicago has made an offer to Sam Bowles and that you supported it warmly. Frankly, I am somewhat surprised. He has certainly some analytic abilities but in general he is very radical, almost as wild as Arthur MacEwan, and thoroughly demagogic in his interventions in faculty meetings and talks to students. I would really like to know whether it is true that Chicago offered him a job.

Sincerely yours,

Gottfried Haberler

H:w

__________________

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS
1126 EAST 59THSTREET
CHICAGO—ILLINOIS 60637

May 19, 1970

Professor Gottfried Haberler
Department of Economics
Harvard University
326 Littauer Center
Cambridge, Masachusetts 02138

Dear Gottfried:

Some years back I had occasion to read some of the work which Bowles had done in connection with our consideration of him at that time. I was very favorably impressed indeed by the intellectual quality of the work and the command that it displayed of analytical economics. At that time I was very much in accord with our decision to make him an offer of a position. He turned us down to stay at Harvard.

I have very vague recollections about what has happened this year. I do not know for certain whether or not we did make an offer to him this year. We may have done so; and if so, I would not have objected since the only consideration I would have considered relevant would have been his intellectual qualities.

I will try to find out more definitely and let you know.

Sincerely yours,
[signed, “Milton”]
Milton Friedman

ah

[Handwritten addition: P.S. I have checked. No offer was made to him this year. We made an offer some years ago at the Ass’t Prof level when he first went to Harvard. We made a later offer a couple of years ago again on a term basis. There is no offer outstanding now.]

Source:  Hoover Institution Archives. Gottfried Haberler Papers. Box 12, Folder “GH—Milton Friedman”.

Image Source: University of Massachusetts Amherst . Police Department, “Board of Trustees fee increase demonstration: Economics professor Samuel Bowles speaking to protesters, April 15, 1976“, University Photograph Collection (RG 110-176). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.

Categories
Economists Harvard Radical Salaries

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. alumnus. Not hired as a teaching assistant. W. H. Crook, 1928

 

The meat of the following post is found in the correspondence regarding a one year appointment of a Harvard graduate student in 1922 as Thomas Nixon Carver’s assistant for Economics 8 (Principles of Sociology). Wilfrid Harris Crook’s appointment was shot down by the Harvard Corporation over the express positive recommendation of the department chairman (who happened to be Thomas Nixon Carver himself). There were two economics faculty members (unnamed) who voted against hiring Crook, and one suspects that one or both had raised red flags of pacifism and socialism in their dissent high enough for President Lowell to have seen them. I am simply amazed that any candidate for a humble teaching assistantship would have been vetted by the President of the university himself.

For those interested in what had become of Crook, who eventually went on to complete his Ph.D. in 1928, I have assembled a few snippits of biographical and career data. His irregular employment is consistent with both a difficult personality (“In a world of teetotalers Crook would be a conscientious drunkard”) and the challenges posed by dual academic careers.

Small world:  The above image of Crook’s calling card from his time as Assistant Minister, Central Congregational Church, Boston, 1916-1918 was found in the online material from the W.E.B. Du Bois archive.

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Scraps of information from the life and career of Wilfrid Harris Crook

Born: May 16, 1888 in Swinton, Lancastershire, England.

Married: Lucy Mildred Cluck, Sept. 1 1917 in New London, New Hampshire. (still together in 1930 according to the U.S. Census)
Son: Sydney L. Crook (b. ca. 1919)

Married: Evelyn Buchan Sept 8 1931 in Glens Falls New York. She was a professor at the University of Maine at the time according to the Bangor Maine City Directory, 1931.

1929-30. Bowdoin College Catalogue. Listed as Assistant Professor of Economics and Sociology. Besides listed with the other members of the department of economics and sociology, he is listed for the three semester courses in sociology (Principles of Sociology, Applied Sociology, and Social Evolution of the Hebrew People)

1930-31. Bowdoin College Catalogue. Listed as Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology on leave of absence.

1933-34 Boston City Directory: Wilfrid H. Crook and Evelyn B.  instr. Simmons College (see item below)

1935 Haverhill, Mass. City Directory.  Crook Wilfrid H. inst. Bradford Junior College.

1935 Wilkes-Barre, Penn. City directory. Wilfrid H. Crook and Evelyn B. instr. Bucknell University Jr. College.

Bucknell Junior College, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (1942, Draft registration of Wilfrid H. Crook)

Wilfrid H. Crook born 16 May 1888, Social Security Claim date 30 April 1956.

Died April 16, 1963 in DeKalb, Georgia

Two details about Wilfrid H. Crook’s second wife Evelyn Buchan

From a UP report, Sept. 17 1946, Albany in the Dunkirk Evening Observer (Dunkirk, New York)

“Three professors of sociology join the faculty today of the Associated Colleges of upper New York. They are Mrs. Evelyn Buchan Crook, who has taught at five other universities….The associated college [is] located at Sampson…”

From The 1962 Yearbook of the Westminster Schools, Atlanta, Georgia (Vol. V):  Mrs Wilfrid Harris Crook, Testing and Counseling, Ph.B. and M.A., University of Chicago. (Note how in 1962 women still lost both their first and last names upon marriage!)

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Economics Ph.D. awarded 1928

Wilfrid Harris Crook, A.B. (Univ. of Oxford, England) 1911, A.M. (ibid.) 1914. Subject, Economics. Special Field, Labor Problems. Thesis, “The General Strike in Theory and Practice to 1914.” Assistant Professor of Economics and Sociology, Bowdoin College.

Source:  Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College 1927-28, p. 113.

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Instructorship at Simmons College

Wilfrid Harris Crook, Special Instructor in Economics. B.A., Lincoln College, Oxford, 1911; M.A., 1914; Hibbert Scholar, 1915; Harvard, 1914-16, 1921-1923; Ph.D., 1928.

Formerly: Assistant Minister, Central Congregational Church, Boston, 1916-1918; Editorial work, New York, 1919-1920; Special Instructor in Economics, 1922-1923; Assistant and Associate Professor of Economics and Sociology, Bowdoin College, 1923-1931.

Publications: The General Strike, 1931; articles in Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, The Survey. The Nation.

Source: 1933 Microcosm, Simmons College Yearbook, p. 35.

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The case made against hiring Wilfrid Harris Crook as a teaching assistant at Harvard in 1922…in spite of the departmental recommendation to hire him

Economics department’s recommendation to hire

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Oct. 23, 1922

The Division Department of Economics respectfully recommends to the Corporation the appointment of W. H. Crook [as] Assistant [in] Economics for one year from Sept. 1, 1922 at a salary of $400. Courses in which instruction or assistance is to be given: Economics 8.

Remarks:  See letter to President Lowell.

[Signed|
T. N. Carver
Chairman.

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Letter to President Lowell from the economics department chairman

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Cambridge, Massachusetts
October 24, 1922

Dear President Lowell:

At a meeting of the Department of Economics held Monday afternoon, October 23, it was voted to recommend to the President and Fellows that W. H. Crook be appointed Assistant for one year in Economics 8, and that C. N. Burrows be appointed as Assistant for the first half-year in Economics 9a.

Sincerely yours,

[signed]
T. N. Carver
Chairman

President A. Lawrence Lowell

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Elaboration by economics department chairman regarding the case of W. H. Crook

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Cambridge, Massachusetts
October 24, 1922

Dear President Lowell:

The case of W. H. Crook was pretty thoroly [sic] discussed at the Department Meeting before the vote was taken. The vote stood eight in favor of the recommendation, two against it, the Chairman not voting.

When I talked with you about the case several days ago you stated that if new information could be furnished regarding the case you would take it into consideration. I asked Dean Sperry to write you what he knew about it. Mr. Crook has given me some documents, including his certificate of discharge from military service on the ground of physical unfitness, his correspondence with the Hibbert Trustees, etc. The information is pretty well summarized in the enclosed copy of a letter which he wrote to Professor Bullock in 1921. I think that this correspondence with the Hibbert Trustees and other documents which he submits support every important statement which he makes in the letter. It appears that his anti-war attitude in this country was by no means so positive as it has been made out to be. Being a pacifist he could not do otherwise than urge peaceful mediation on the part of this country rather than actual war. After war was declared he seems to have quite accepted the situation, did not take advantage either of the fact that he was an ordained minister or a conscientious objector to evade the draft. In fact I think he showed a much finer spirit in refusing to enjoy the luxuries of peace in war time than many of our people who pass as respectable.

I should be glad to hand you the other correspondence which Mr. Crook gave me if you care to be bothered with them. Their only value, however, would be to verify what Mr. Crook has said.

Very sincerely,
[signed]
T. N. Carver
Chairman

President A. Lawrence Lowell

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President Lowell’s letter to Harvard Corporation member John F. Moors

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
CAMBRIDGE

PRESIDENT’S OFFICE

October 25, 1922

Dear John:

Would you mind looking over these papers and sending them back to me as soon as you can, for it is a question that will come up at the next Corporation meeting. Professor Bullock evidently thinks Crook a rather blatant propagandist for socialism and pacifism; and of course this is one of the cases where we shall be somewhat blamed whatever we do. But while protecting free speech on the part of our professors, I do not think that we are obliged to appoint to the instructing staff men who would bring us into unnecessary criticism, or people of a quarrelsome disposition. This last impression of Crook I derive rather strongly from the enclosed letter from Dean Sperry. This is a question of balance of judgment. What do you think?

Very truly yours,
[stamp] A. Lawrence Lowell

John F. Moors, Esq.
111 Devonshire Street
Boston, Mass.

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Theology Dean’s assessment of Wilfrid Harris Crook

The Theological School in Harvard University
Andover Hall, Francis Avenue
Cambridge, Mass.

Office of the Dean

October 20, 1922

My dear President Lowell:

Professor Carver tells me that the name of Wilfrid Harris Crook has been suggested as an assistant in one of the economics courses, and that objection to this appointment has been filed with you, on the ground that he was an ‘English draft dodger’, etc. Professor Carver asks me to send you a word on the matter.

I know Mr. Crook well. He was my assistant for two or three years in Central Church, Boston.

The basic fact about Crook is this. He comes of a long line of English dissenters and Non-conformists. And the ‘dissidence of dissent’ is bred in his blood and bone. He had been, for years, a more or less doctrinaire pacifist of the Tolstoian type.

But he is not a ‘draft dodger’ in any correct sense of the word. In the spring of 1914 he had received from the Hibbert Trustees and Manchester College, Oxford, their Hibbert Fellowship for foreign study. He had intended to take the academic year 1914-15 doing economics in Germany, and was caught there at the outbreak of the War.

He came back at once to England, and with the consent of the Hibbert Trustees transferred his fellowship to this country and to Harvard. The draft was not then in force in England. Whether he ought to have stayed and volunteered, or faced the ultimate consequences of not volunteering is another matter.

He has been in this country ever since. He remained a ‘doctrinaire pacifist’ all through the War. His native non-conformity, with its anti-imperialist heckling temper was not understood here at all. His best friends deplored a good many of his utterances, and found it hard to bear with him at times. While he made a good many enemies who did not hesitate to go far beyond the facts and accuse him of actual political irregularities of which he was technically quite innocent.

The whole case of the man was put in a nutshell by the Chairman of my Parish Committee, who once said that, “In a world of teetotalers Crook would be a conscientious drunkard.”

It seemed impossible for him to do much useful work in our Parish in Boston after we had entered the War and he eventually dropped out. His opinions on War in general were abhorrent to most of our people at that time. But I never heard anything but words of respect and affection for the man’s character, his personal charm and his transparent integrity.

He must have been under suspicion here during the War. But so far as I know he never ran foul of any actual trouble with the authorities.

He was, I think, in process of becoming an American citizen during the war, and was called for the draft but dismissed at once for a shockingly bad heart, the result of rheumatic fever.

My impression is that his citizenship has since been granted, and that if there had been any technical case against him it would have appeared at that time and would have held that matter up permanently.

Perhaps he ought to have gone back to England, perhaps he ought to have felt differently here. All that is debatable ground.

Technically, I think his case stands clear. As to the basic fact of the man himself, it is the problem of the rather remote idealism of the Tolstoian type.

He has been plugging along latterly for the Ph.D. degree in economics. My latest impressions of him are of a man somewhat sobered and reluctantly making concessions to the stubborn world of hard facts, which his dissenting heredity and romantic temperament incline him to regard as given over to Satan.

Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Willard L. Sperry

President A. Lawrence Lowell
Harvard University

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President Lowell’s response to Theology Dean

October 24, 1922

Dear Mr Sperry:

Thank you very much for your letter about Mr Crook. He does not seem to be the kind of person the Corporation would like to appoint as a member of the instructing staff.

I asked Mr. Foote to inform me about the denominational relations of the members of the Faculty, and I think you would be interested in his answer, which you need not return. It shows very clearly that the School has not been Unitarian; but I am not sure that the publicity would do us any good.

Very truly yours,
[stamp] A. Lawrence Lowell

Rev. Willard L. Sperry
Andover Hall
Cambridge

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Harvard Corporation member John F. Moors responds to President Lowell

MOORS & CABOT
111 Devonshire Street
Boston, Mass.
Telephone Main 8170

Members
Boston Stock Exchange

John F. Moors
C. Lee Todd
Francis E. Smith
William Ferguson
Willis W. Clark

October 26, 1922.

President A. Lawrence Lowell,
Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass.

Dear Lawrence:

I have read and return herewith the documents received from you today about Mr. Crook.

Let me say at the outset that it speaks well for Carver, who himself analyzes socialism, to advocate a man of the Crook type, for Carver, we know, is himself so far from being a socialist that it would be very easy for him to feel prejudiced.

Our bookkeeper in this office is a prominent member of Mr. Sperry’s church. I have today asked him about Crook and find that, though he likes him personally and respects him as a man, he has pronounced abhorrence of his views and says that in thus speaking he feels sure that he reflects a vast majority of the congregation.

I have heard Crook speak and have addressed audiences in the Chapel of the Central Congregational church at which Crook as assistant minister has been present. His voice is soft, he is gentlemanly, he has no brilliant sparks such as Laski threw forth, he is, I think, very much as Sperry describes him, a natural dissenter of the outwardly rather meek but inwardly recalcitrant type. He would, I imagine, present socialism sympathetically rather than analytically.

While his letter to Bullock indicates that Bullock took a rough attitude toward him, which may have led him to feel sore, it seems to me that the first paragraph and the next to the last paragraph in his letter lack self-restraint; and I though this before I read the rest of the correspondence, my eye having caught this letter first.

Having seen Crook mostly in the pleasant relationship of a speaker being introduced (as speakers are introduced!) I should have said before I read the correspondence that I liked him. I suppose too that no one can really teach anything who does not heartily believe in it; and Carver’s reasonableness is the thing which most impressed me in the whole correspondence. I should like to back him up in it. But while all great men are cranks, all cranks are not great men. Judgment seems to lie in distinguishing which is the great man without the crankiness, which the crank without the greatness. I am inclined to think that Crook would get us into hot water without our being sure, when we were in it, that we were right.

Yours very truly,
signed]
John F. Moors

Dict. J.F.M.

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Department Chair T. N. Carver senses one or two other persons with a “vindictive disposition” are the source of Crook’s troubles

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Cambridge, Massachusetts
November 6, 1922

Dear President Lowell:

I have your letter of October 31 informing me that the Corporation did not think wise to appoint Mr. Crook as Assistant in Economics 8. The reason given must be based on information that was not in the possession of the Chairman of the Department. You state that it was not on account of his opinions but on account of his disposition, and that the Corporation felt that it would be a mistake to introduce into the teaching staff a man who has shown so much capacity for getting into trouble. So far as any information has come to the Chairman of the Department, Mr. Crook has had no trouble since early in the war on account of his own disposition. Such trouble as he has had seems to be due entirely to the vindictive disposition of one or two other persons.

I think that Mr. Crook would like to have the carbon copy of his letter to Professor Bullock which I enclosed with my letter to you of recent date. Will you kindly have some one return it to me and I will hand it to Mr. Crook?

Very sincerely,
[signed]
T. N Carver

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Wilfrid Harris Crook’s request to speak with Harvard Corporation member John F. Moors

20a Prescott Street
Cambridge, Mass.
November 9, 1922

Mr. John F. Moors
32 Mr. Vernon St.
Boston, Mass.

Dear Mr. Moors

Professor Carver of Harvard, in a letter of Nov. 6th, writes me as follows: The Department of Economics recommended your appointment as assistant in Economics 8, but the President and Fellows, as you learned the other day when in my office, declined to make the appointment. Inasmuch as all appointments have to be made by the President and Fellows, there is nothing more that the Department can do about it.”

As you are the only member of the Corporation with whom I am to any degree acquainted, I take the liberty of inquiring, for my own satisfaction, what were the reasons for the attitude of the Fellows to my appointment as Professor Carver’s assistant. I am studying for a Ph.D. at Harvard, and am meanwhile acting as Special Instructor of Economics at Simmons College. The decision is, therefore, one that causes me some degree of regret and of interest as to its cause.

I wonder if you will give me the privilege of a brief personal talk with you on this matter? If so, I should be glad to meet your convenience any afternoon next week, or any hour on Tuesday or Saturday, on which days I have no class.

Faithfully yours,
[signed]
Wilfrid Harris Crook

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Harvard Corporation member J. F. Moors declines with “kindest personal feelings”

MOORS & CABOT
111 Devonshire Street, Boston

November 10, 1922.

Rev. Wilfrid Harris Crook,
20a Prescott St.
Cambridge, Mass.

Dear Mr. Crook:

I wish I could give you the information which you ask for. It is, however, essential that the views of the individual members of the Board on which I serve and the nature of our discussions should not be divulged except through the President of the University.

I have sent him your letter.

With the kindest personal feelings, I am,

Yours very truly,

 

Dict. J.F.M.

 

Source:   Harvard University Archives. President Lowell’s Papers 1922-1925, Box 189, Folder 188 (1922-25).

Image Source: Crook, Wilfrid Harris, b. 1888. W. Harris Crook, 1915?. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

 

Categories
Harvard Radical Seminar Speakers Suggested Reading

Harvard. Critical Spirit in Economics, Grad student symposium, 1968

 

Fished out of miscellaneous items filed chronologically under the label “Harvard University Department of Economics” in John Kenneth Galbraith’s papers is the following early outline for a symposium organized by the Graduate Economics Club for the month of May, 1968. Faculty were invited to join in the discussions by the president of the Graduate Economics Club, David M. Gordon (New York Times obituary: March 19, 1996). I have yet to confirm whether any or all of the four Friday afternoon sessions actually took place. John Kenneth Galbraith sent his regrets less than a week before a session that was to consider the reception of the New Industrial State. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis were on the program that also included Hilary Putnam, a philosopher of science.

_______________________

Dear faculty member,

The Graduate Economics Club is sponsoring a series of discussion during the month of May, emphasizing certain broad questions of critical perspective in economic theory.

It is our hope that these discussions will initiate and promote an open discussion and exchange of ideas among students and faculty.

Enclosed you will find an outline of the first few of these round-table discussion. Central to the success of these discussions is the participation of the faculty. We cordially invite your attendance.

All meetings will be held in Littauer, the room to be announced.

Sincerely,

Graduate Economics Club,
Dave Gordon, Pres.

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THE CRITICAL SPIRIT IN ECONOMICS

  1. The Myth of an Objective Economics: The Separation of Positive and Normative Thought.
    Friday, May 3, 2:00 – 4:00.

    1. The Ideological Element in Conceptualization and Model-Building: Professor Hilary Putnam.
      Professor Putnam, a philosopher of science and logician at Harvard, will speak on the contributions of T. S. Kuhn and Karl Popper, after which the discussion will be opened to the group.
      Readings are (starred items are most important):

      1. *T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, esp. chap. 2, 4, 10, 12, 13. (72 pages)
      2. *Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, I, II; esp. pp. 27-30, 32-34, 40-42.
      3. *Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Author’s Preface (Xerox, pp. 9-15).
      4. *Milton Friedman, “The Methodology of Positive Economics,” in Essays in Positive Economics.
      5. Stephen Toulman, The Philosophy of Science, chap. 2, pp. 17-56.
      6. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, chap. 2, pp. 18-32.
      7. Pratt, Raiffa and Schlaiffer, Introduction to Statistical Decision Theory, Appendix A3, esp. A3.4.
    2. Examples from Economic Literature: These readings are meant to illustrate points made in the above readings:
      1. *Roy Harrod, “Scope and Method in Economics”, Economic Journal, Sept., 1938.
      2. *Oscar Lange, “Marxian Economics and Modern Economic Thought”, Review of Economic Studies, June, 1935.
      3. *Robert Solow, “Son of Affluence”, The Public Interest, Fall, 1967.
      4. *Robin Marris, review of Galbraith’s New Industrial State, Am. Econ Review, March, 1968, pp. 240-247.
  2. Paradigms in Development Economics
    Friday, May 10, 2:00 – 4:00

    1. Tensions, Preferences and Economic Development: Sherman Robinson.
      1. *Sherman Robinson, “Tensions, Preferences and Development”, Xerox in Littauer Library.
      2. *Gunnar Myrdal, Prologue to Vol. I of Asian Drama.
    2. Development paradigms
      1. *H. Chenery, “Comparative Advantage and Development Policy”, AER, March, 1961. Reprinted in Surveys of Economic Theory, AEA
      2. *Paul Baran, “On the Political Economy of Backwardness”, in Agarwala and Singh
      3. Gunnar Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions, chap. 2, “The Principle of Circular and Cumulative Causation,” and chap. 6, “National State Policies in Under-Developed Countries.”
    3. The Relevance of Economic Theory to Economic Development: Prof. Samuel Bowles.
      1. *Gunnar Myrdal, op. cit., chap. 4, “The Role of the State” and chap. 5 “International Inequalities”
      2. *Hla Myint, “Classical Theory of International Trade and the Underdeveloped Countries”, Economic Journal, June 1958, reprinted in Readings in Economic Development, T. Morgan, 1963.
      3. Hla Myint, “The Gains from International Trade and the Backward Countries”, REStud., 1954-55, pp. 29-42.
      4. Mason, Economic Planning in Underdeveloped Areas, chap. 2, sections 2, 5.
      5. Lenin, Imperialism.
      6. *Hobson, The Evolution of Modern Capitalism, chap. X, sections 9, 10.
      7. *Aron, Peace and War, Part II, chap. IX, “On Resources”, pp. 243-278.
  1. Welfare Economics and the Value of Efficiency Criteria: Herb Gintis.
    May 17, Friday, 2:00 – 4:00
    Professor A. Bergson has kindly agreed to participate.
    Readings to be Announced.
  1. The Role of the State in Economic Theory
    Friday, May 24, 2:00 – 4:00.
    Speakers and readings to be announced.

_______________________

Carbon Copy of Galbraith’s response

April 29, 1968

Mr. Dave Gordon
Graduate Economics Club
Littauer Center M-8

Dear Mr. Gordon:

Unhappily I will be in Italy on May 3rd, so I will not be able to attend the round-table discussion on that day. I am sorry.

Yours faithfully,

John Kenneth Galbraith

 

Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Papers of John Kenneth Galbraith, Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526, Folder “Harvard University Department of Economics: General Correspondence, 1967-1974 (3 of 3)”.

Image Source: David M. Gordon in Harvard Class Album, 1964.