Ec Graduate Students Demand New Hiring, Marx on Generals

Graduate students in Economics yesterday demanded that their department hire new radical economists and allow students to take part of their general examination in Marxist theory.

The demands will be presented to the Economics Department and to its visiting committee, which will hold its first meeting in two years next Tuesday.

The action came at a meeting of the Graduate Economic Club (GEC), an officially recognized group to which all graduate students in the department belong. There were about 50 in attendance at the session.

Members of the Union of Radical Political Economists (URPE) presented the demands as part of a long position paper. The meeting approved the two demands acted upon by almost unanimous votes--36 to 2 for the hiring demand and 33 to 1 for the new examination demand.

Third Year in a Row

Yesterday's meeting marks the third time in as many years that the GEC has approved a resolution or demand calling for the hiring of Marxist economists.

There are presently three assistant professors in Economics who call themselves radical--Arthur MacEwan, Samuel S. Bowles and Herbert M. Gintis--all of whom are leaving at the end of this academic year. Steven A. Marglin '59, professor of Economics, is the only tenured member of the department who is of radical persuasion, although he earned tenure on the basis of his qualifications in neo-classical economics.

The text of the demand calls for the department to "hire at least four radical economists at all levels to insure the teaching of Marxist theory and roughly to replace Professors MacEwan, Bowles, Weisskopf, and Gintis."

The second demand approved by the meeting calls upon the department to put questions relating to Marxist theory in the optional section of its general examination, which has both required and optional questions. This would allow a student whose main interest is Marxist economics to use his interest in up to 50 per cent of the test.

Gintis, a member of URPE, said yesterday he "wasn't surprised at all" by the action of the grad students, who, he said, were "voting for diversity, not for Marxism."

The grad students will present their demands to the visiting committee at an open meeting next Tuesday. Philip Aronow, second year graduate student and co-chairman of GEC, said yesterday, "we hope they will listen. Last year some students felt they didn't even do that.