Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T05:10:36.680Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Migrations and Boundary Work: Harvard, Radical Economists, and the Committee on Political Discrimination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

Tiago Mata
Tiago Mata*
Affiliation:
Technical University of Lisbon and Duke University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Argument

In the late 1960s, in the midst of campus unrest, a group of young economists calling themselves “radicals” challenged the boundaries of economics. In the radicals' cultural cartography, economic science and politics were represented as overlapping. These claims were scandalous because they were voiced from Harvard University, drawing on its authority. With radicals' claims the subject of increasing media attention, the economics mainstream sought to re-assert the longstanding cultural map of economic science, where objectivity and advocacy were distinguishable. The resolution of the contest of credibility came with a string of cases of dismissals and denial of tenure for radicals. The American Economic Association's investigations of these cases, imposing the conventional cultural map, concluded that personnel decisions had not been politically motivated. Radicals were forced to migrate from the elite institutions from which they had emerged to less prestigious ones. “Place” became a marker of their marginalization within the profession.

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 115 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, Andrew D. 1988. The System of Profession: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
American Economic Association. 1970. “Annual Business Meeting, December 29, 1969, New York Hilton Hotel, New York, New York.” American Economic Review 60 (2):487–489.Google Scholar
American Economic Association. 1972. “Minutes of the Annual Meeting December 28, 1971, New Orleans, Louisiana.” American Economic Review 62 (1/2):470–474.Google Scholar
American Economic Association. 1973. “Minutes of the Annual Meeting Toronto, Ontario December 29, 1972.” American Economic Review 63 (2):471–473.Google Scholar
American Economic Association. 1975. “Minutes of the Annual Meeting San Francisco, California December 29, 1974.” American Economic Review 65 (2):441–447.Google Scholar
American Economic Association. 1978. “Minutes of the Annual Meeting New York, New York December 29, 1977.” American Economic Review 68 (2):440–444.Google Scholar
American Economic Association. 1979. “Minutes of the Executive Committee Meeting.” American Economic Review 69 (2):379–384.Google Scholar
American Economic Association. 1981. “Report of the Committee on Political Discrimination.” American Economic Review 71 (5):1113–1115.Google Scholar
Barber, W. J. 1996, “Postwar Changes in American Graduate Education in Economics.” In The Post-1945 Internationalization of Economics, edited by Coats, A. W., 12–30. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Behr, T., Garlin, V., Morris, J., and Roehl, R.. 1971. “Towards a Radical Political Economics.” Review of Radical Political Economics 3 (2):17–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bluestone, B. 1969. “Report of the Secretariat.” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 1 (1):5–7.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1988. Homo Academicus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2004. Science of Science and Reflexivity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Breit, William. 1987. “Creating the ‘Virginia School’: Charlottesville as an Academic Environment in the 1960s.” Economic Inquiry 25 (4):645–657.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronfenbrenner, Martin. 1970. “Radical Economics in America: A 1970 survey.” Journal of Economic Literature 8 (3):747–766.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 1988. “Political Economy: 1957–1982.” In Ideas, their Origins, and their Consequences: Lectures to Commemorate the Life and Work of G. Warren Nutter, 119–130. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James M. 2007. “Virginia Political Economy: Some Personal Reflections.” In Economics from the Outside In: “Better than Plowing” and Beyond, 93–108. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.Google Scholar
Cary, Harold Whiting. 1962. The University of Massachusetts: A History of One Hundred Years. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Caute, David. 1988. The Year of the Barricades: A Journey through 1968. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Christiansen, J. 1974. “Could Karl Marx Teach Economics in America?” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 6 (3):32–33.Google Scholar
Coats, A. W. 1985. “The American Economic Association and the Economics Profession.” Journal of Economic Literature 23 (4):1697–1727.Google Scholar
Colander, D., Holt, Richard P. F., and Rosser, J. Barkley Jr., 2004. The Changing Face of Economics: Conversations with Cutting Edge Economists. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, B. 1973. “A Most Galbraithian Economist.” New York Times. February 18:296–304.Google Scholar
Dawidoff, Nicholas. 2002. The Fly Swatter: How My Grandfather Made His Way in the World. Toronto: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Edwards, R. C. and MacEwan, A.. 1970. “A Radical Approach to Economics: Basis for a New Curriculum.” American Economic Review 60 (2):352–363.Google Scholar
Edwards, R., Reich, M., and Weisskopf, T.. 1971. The Capitalist System: A Radical Analysis of American Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Eichel, L. E., Jost, K. W., Luskin, R. D., and Neustadt, R. M.. 1970. The Harvard Strike. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Epstein, N. 1976. “Radical Teachers Find New Climate on Campuses.” Washington Post. October 25: A1, A6.Google Scholar
Etzkowitz, Henry. 1988. “The Contradictions of Radical Sociology” Critical Sociology 15 (2):95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flacks, Dick. 1988. “The Sociology Liberation Movement: Some Legacies and Lessons.” Critical Sociology 15 (2):9–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, Raymond S. and Tabb, William K.. 1974. “The Challenge of Radical Political Economics.” Journal of Economic Issues 8 (1):127–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furner, Mary O. 1975. Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science, 1865–1905. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Gabrielsky, Robert. 1988. “Construction and Protest: The Emergence of a Radical Community at the University of Massachusetts, 1960–1975.” Unpublished paper. University History Project. Amherst.Google Scholar
Gaffney, Paul. 2005. “Northampton, Mass.” In The Encyclopedia of New England. Edited by Feintuch, Burt and Watters, David H., 239–240. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Galbraith, John K. 1971. Economics, Peace and Laughter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Galbraith, John K. 1973. “Power and the Useful Economist.” American Economic Review 63 (1):1–11.Google Scholar
Galbraith, John K. 1981. A Life In Our Times – Memoirs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Gieryn, Thomas F. 1995. “Boundaries of Science.” In Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by Jasanoff, Sheila, Markle, Gerald E., and Pinch, T., 393–443. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Gieryn, Thomas F. 1999. Cultural Boundaries of Science – Credibility on the Line. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Gieryn, Thomas F. 2006. “City as Truth-spot: Laboratories and Field Studies in Urban Studies.” Social Studies of Science 36 (1):5–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gintis, Herbert. 1971. “Education, Technology, and the Characteristics of Worker Productivity.” American Economic Review 61 (2):266–279.Google Scholar
Gintis, Herbert. 1972. “A Radical Analysis of Welfare Economics and Individual Development.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 86 (4):572–599.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gintis, Herbert. 1975. “Welfare Economics and Individual Development: A Reply to Talcott Parsons.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 89 (2):291–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golden, Soma. 1975a. “Harvard Economics Teaching Criticized.” New York Times February 9: B1.Google Scholar
Golden, Soma. 1975b. “Radical Economists under Fire.” New York Times February 2: F1.Google Scholar
Graziano, Emanuel. 1996. “Ecological Metaphors as Scientific Boundary Work: Innovation and Authority in Interwar Sociology and Biology.” American Journal of Sociology 101 (4):874–907.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gurley, J. G. 1971. “The State of Political Economics.” American Economic Review 61 (2):53–62.Google Scholar
Harbron, J. 1972. “Dissident Voices Heard at Economic Conference.” New York Times 29 December: 39.Google Scholar
Heilbroner, Robert L. 1970. “On the Limited ‘Relevance’ of Economics.” Public Interest n.21: 80–93.Google Scholar
Heilbroner, Robert L. 1971. “Discussion.” American Economic Review 61 (2): 65–67.Google Scholar
Heilbroner, Robert L. 1972. “Radical Economics: A Review Essay.” American Political Science Review 66 (3):1017–1020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isserman, Maurice and Kazin, Michael. 2004. America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s. Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, W. H. 1972. “Things Changing in U.S. Economic Establishment.” Washington Post 31 December: D10.Google Scholar
Keller, Morton and Keller, Phyllis. 2001. Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America's University. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinchy, Abby J. and Kleinman, Daniel Lee. 2003. “Organizing Credibility: Discursive and Organizational Orthodoxy on the Borders of Ecology and Politics.” Social Studies of Science 33 (6):869–896.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klamer, Arjo. 1983. Conversations with Economists: New Classical Economists and Opponents Speak Out on the Current Controversy in Macroeconomics. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld.Google Scholar
Lamont, M. and Molnar, V.. 2002. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 28:167–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Frederic S. 2004a. “History and Identity: The Case of Radical Economics and Radical Economists, 1945–1970.” Review of Radical Political Economics 26 (2):177–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Frederic S. 2004b. “To be a Heterodox Economist: The Contested Landscape of American Economics, 1960s and 70s.” Journal of Economic Issues 38 (3):747–763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lifschultz, L. S. 1974. “Could Karl Marx Teach Economics in America?” Ramparts 12:27–30, 52–59.Google Scholar
Lindbeck, A. 1971. The Political Economy of the New Left: An Outsider's View. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1975. “Political Controversies at Harvard, 1636 to 1974.” In Education and Politics at Harvard, edited by Lipset, Seymor Martin and Reisman, David. Berkeley: Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.Google Scholar
McCloskey, D. N. 1990. “Their Blackboard, Right or Wrong: A Comment on Contested Exchange.” Politics and Society 18:223–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mata, Tiago. 2005. “Dissent in Economics: Making Radical Political Economics and Post Keynesian Economics, 1960–1980.” Ph.D. thesis. London School of Economics and Political Science.Google Scholar
Mata, Tiago and Lee, Frederic S.. 2007. “The Role of Oral History in the Historiography of Heterodox Economics.” History of Political Economy 39 (annual supplement):154–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meier, August and Rudwick, Elliot. 1986. Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915–1980. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Mermelstein, David. 1970. Economics: Mainstream Readings and Radical Critiques. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Moore, Kelly. 2008. Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945–1975. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, Edward P. 1991. The 60s Experience. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Myrdal, Gunnar. 1969. Objectivity in Social Research. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
New School Collective. 1971. “Political Economy at the New School.” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 3:14–16.Google Scholar
Nossiter, B. D. 1969. “Radicalism Course splits Harvard.” Washington Post. 29 May: A8.Google Scholar
Novick, Peter. 1988. That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, Richard. 2005. John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott. 1975. “Commentary on Herbert Gintis: A Radical Analysis of Welfare Economics and Individual Development.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 89 (2):280–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peabody, G. E. 1971. “Scientific Paradigms and Economics: An Introduction.” Review of Radical Political Economics 3:1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riecken, H. W. 1971. “Discussion.” American Economic Review 61:67–68.Google Scholar
Rowe, J. 1974. “Economic Association to Investigate Dismissals of 7 Radical Professors.” Washington Post 31 December: D6.Google Scholar
Sale, Kirkpatrick. 1974. SDS. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Samuelson, P. A. 1971. “Preface.” In The Political Economy of the New Left: An Outsider's View, edited by Lindbeck, Assar. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Schrecker, E. W. 1986. No Ivory Tower: MacCarthyism and the Universities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schulman, Bruce J. 2001. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Shapin, Steven. 1988. “The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England.” Isis 79:373–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solow, Robert M. 1970. “Science and Ideology in Economics.” Public Interest 21:94–107.Google Scholar
Solow, Robert M. 1971. “Discussion.” American Economic Review 61 (2):63–65.Google Scholar
Spencer, David A. 2000. “The Demise of Radical Political Economics? An Essay on the Evolution of a Theory of Capitalist Production.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 24:543–564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Star, Susan L. and James, R. Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39.” Social Studies of Science 19:387–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Story, Ronald. 1992. “The Ordeal of the Public Sector: The University of Massachusetts.” In Five Colleges: Five Histories, edited by Story, Ronald. Amherst, MA: Five Colleges.Google Scholar
Trombley, W. 1975. “Rise in Radical Economists Creating Rifts on Campuses.” Los Angeles Times 27 December.Google Scholar
Union for Radical Political Economics. 1969a. “Confronting the AEA.” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 1 (3):1–2.Google Scholar
Union for Radical Political Economics. 1969b. “New England Regional Conference.” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 1 (3):3–7.Google Scholar
Union for Radical Political Economics. 1970a. “Economics at Stanford.” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 7 (6):34.Google Scholar
Union for Radical Political Economics. 1970b. “Political Economy for the University of Michigan.” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 2 (4):12–16.Google Scholar
Union for Radical Political Economics. 1970c. “Political firings!” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 6 (6):5–8.Google Scholar
Union for Radical Political Economics. 1975. “Whither URPE?” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 7 (4).Google Scholar
Union for Radical Political Economics. 1976. “Historical Profile of URPE?.” Newsletter of the Union for Radical Political Economics 8 (4–5):44–46.Google Scholar
URPE Secretariat. 1969. “The Union for Radical Political Economics: A Prospectus.” In The Conference Papers of the Union for Radical Political Economics, Philadelphia, December 1968, 173–4, Ann Arbor, MI: Union for Radical Political Economics.Google Scholar
Walsh, J. 1978. “Radicals and the Universities: ‘Critical Mass’ at U.Mass.” Science 199 (4324) January 6:34–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weeks, John. 1971. “Political Economy and the Politics of Economists.” Review of Radical Political Economics 3 (2):75–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weeks, John. 1972. “A Note on Political Economy and the Politics of Economists.” Review of Radical Political Economics 4:121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weintraub, R. 1973. “Harvard Economics Teaching Criticized.” Washington Post 3 January: A8.Google Scholar
Wiener, Jonathan M. 1989. “Radical Historians and the Crisis in American History, 1959–1980.” Journal of American History 76 (2):399–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zweig, Michael. 1971a. “Bourgeois and Radical Paradigms in Economics.” Review of Radical Political Economics 3 (2):43–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zweig, Michael. 1971b. “New Left Critique of Economics.” Review of Radical Political Economics 3 (2):67–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zweig, Michael. 1971c. “On Economics and the Politics of Economists (a response to John Weeks).” Review of Radical Political Economics 3 (2):84–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zweig, Michael. 1972. “Teaching Radical Political Economics in the Introductory Course.” American Economic Review 62:434–438.Google Scholar