During the 1973-74 academic year Dale Jorgenson served as the placement officer for 34 Harvard economics Ph.D.s (in hand or anticipated) planning to go on the market. A fifth year student offering the field of economic development with a thesis on government investment planning in Tanzania hoped to spend his first post-doc year at Harvard. Jorgensen apparently offered him a discouraging word, leading William Edmund Clark to approach John Kenneth Galbraith for help. Galbraith’s note to the department chair, James Duesenberry, is transcribed below. Galbraith could not pass up the opportunity to lend a helping hand simultaneously with a discrete back-of-the-hand at Jorgenson.
Archival artifacts from the feud involving Jorgenson and Galbraith, inter alios, in the Harvard economics department at this time were the subject of an earlier post.
Curatorial due diligence demanded that I track down whatever happened to the Harvard economics Ph.D. alumnus William Edmund Clark. It turns out that he went back to his native Canada where he entered government service. He became much more than another faceless government economist. He rose rapidly through the bureaucratic ranks and within a decade “enjoyed” sufficient notoriety to become a Trudeaucratic target of Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney’s new government in the mid-1980s to be purged from the ranks of the civil service. From there Clark went on to an enormously successful career as a financial mover-and-shaker over the following three decades. “Red Ed” Clark also went on to make his mark in philanthropy.
The details of Clark’s truly remarkable life after his Harvard Ph.D. can be found in his Wikipedia article. John Kenneth Galbraith must have seen something that Dale Jorgenson either failed to see or didn’t want to encourage.
__________________________
Galbraith Tries an End-Run
around Jorgenson
December 20, 1973
Professor James Duesenberry
Littauer M-8
Harvard University
Dear Jim:
W. E. Clark, vitae attached, was in to see me the other day. He would like to stay on at Harvard; he has been told by Jorgenson that, in effect, there isn’t much interest in him. I find it difficult to plead we lack interest in anybody with this kind of record. I continue to suspect Mr. Jorgenson of an influence on our enterprise that is both inimical and evangelical. Couldn’t there be some corrective action without some fuss.
Yours faithfully,
John Kenneth Galbraith
JKG: efd
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
William Edmund Clark
Curriculum Vitae
- Born: October 10, 1947
- Marriage Status: Married
- Children: One Son
- Education:
Honors B.A., University of Toronto 1969. Economics
A.M. Harvard University 1971. Economics
Ph.D. Expected Harvard University. 1974 (Summer) Economics
- Awards, Grades:
- Stood first in class last three years at University of Toronto
- Received Excellent Minus on written Theory for Ph.D.
- Received Excellent on Orals for Ph.D.
Topics: Economic Development; Theories of Social Change - Woodrow Wilson Scholar
- Thesis. Pattern of Government Controlled Investment in Tanzania
Thesis Advisors: A. O. Hirschman; A. MacEwan - Teaching Experience:
Summer Course, Acadia University, Nova Scotia 1970
Teaching Fellow, Harvard University 1971/72.
- Other Work Experience:
Researcher, Center of Criminology, University of Toronto, 1966 (summer)
Researcher, Ford Foundation Project on Higher Education, University of Toronto, 1968 (summer)
Head, Research Project on Student Aid, Financed by Ontario Government and Ford Foundation, 1969 (summer)
Member, University of Toronto Tanzania Project, 1971-73
Team head, University of Toronto Tanzania Project, 1972-73
- Publications:
“Access to Higher Education in Ontario” joint article with D. Cook and G. Fallis
- Address: 11 Peabody Terrace Apt. 702 Cambridge, Mass. 02138
Telephone: 617-492-0416 - References:
A.O. Hirschman, Harvard University
A. MacEwan, Harvard University
D. Nowlan, Dept. of Economics, University of Toronto
D.F. Forster, Provost, University of Toronto
A. Sinclair, Chairman, Dept. of Economics, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. John Kenneth Galbraith Personal Papers. Series 5. Harvard University File, 1949-1990. Box 526. Folder “Harvard Economics Dept. of Economics: General correspondence, 1967-74 (1 of 3)”.
Image Source: “Turbulence follows former ‘Trudeaucrat”, National Post (Toronto), Aug 9, 1999.