A Peepshow of the Economics Department

MEETINGS OF THE Harvard Economics Department are like an X-rated movie. Only those tenured faculty members admitted to the Department's closed senior faculty meetings are aware of the "dirt." And members of the Harvard community who are not, catch glimpses of what goes on through suggestive evidence or seepage leaked by a rebellious insider.

While the evidence may not be sufficient to implicate the Department in scandal, it strongly suggests that policy decisions made by faculty members during the past year leave something to be desired -- like a sneak preview of X-rated performances.

The first hint of screened information was suggested by the discrepancy between the Department's official explanations for denying tenure to radical economist Samuel S. Bowles and the minutes of the Department's closed meeting at which the decision was made.

Officially, Bowles was denied tenure because his academic work was simply not up to snuff. Not up to the snuff required by the three faculty members who do consulting work for Data Resources, Inc., a consulting firm; not up to the snuff required by Richard E. Caves, Stone Professor of International Trade, who has often declined to comment publicly on Department decisions; and not up to the snuff required by Richard A. Musgrave, Burbank Professor of Political Economy, who believes academic decisions are sacrosanct and should not be subject to the democratic processes of student review.

UNOFFICIALLY, THE major input that resulted in the Department's decision not to rehire Bowles, was faculty members' fears that Bowles would upset the apple cart of administrative policy.

One faculty member, however, had the foresight to worry that radical economics might catch fire elsewhere, and Harvard would be late in "jumping on the bandwagon."

Recent events at the University of Massachusetts have proven him a valuable prophet. The decision at UMass last week to hire Bowles, Herbert M. Gintis and two other radical economists, leaves Harvard with only one lonely radical economist, who is skeptical of what one pioneer can do on a deserted frontier.

While Stephen A. Marglin '59, the only radical on the Department's faculty, is mourning his isolation, the four economists hired at UMass are rejoicing at the potential they will have there to develop a coherent and academically sound teaching and research program.

Because all four of the appointees will teach graduate and undergraduate courses, UMass will most likely be able to offer its students more than the weak ideological verbiage which characterizes Harvard's one undergraduate course this semester in the field. The problems with Economics 1681, "The Production of the Labor Force," are not the fault of its three graduate-student instructors. Limited by a manpower shortage, they are forced to examine every sociological institution--including the family, the schools and the market--and every sociological problem related to economics -- including racism, inequality and poverty -- in one semester. No one of these questions could be covered soundly in 12 weeks, let alone the whole bundle of them. Therefore, Economics 1681 is a course which provides a very insufficient introduction to a very important field.

THE ECONOMICS Department at Harvard has more to learn from its western neighbor. UMass, in addition to offering an alternative to the radical approach, last week passed a resolution assuring students that their recommendations and evaluations will be taken seriously by administrators in determining policy and hiring decisions.

UMass did not specify whether students will be given part of the final say in these decisions. But the administration's effort to lean in this direction is worthy of notice by Harvard's prestigious faculty. At an ostensibly "off the record," public meeting last month, President Bok doubted whether students could beneficially contribute to Harvard's hiring policies. "Students might vote for some handsome, charismatic young teacher who may turn out to be a poor teacher and a poor academic by the time he is 50," the young, handsome, etc. Bok noted.

President Bok might well look into the nitty gritty of hiring decisions in the Economics Department and elsewhere to see whether senior faculty members are not guilty of a similar prejudice. While good looks may not be a criterion in some departments, "inside connections" certainly seem to be. In the Sociology Department, for example, Phyllis M. Teitelbaum, a graduate student in Sociology, was up for consideration as the Department's head tutor. Her work was highly regarded and she had the support of many of her former students and graduate colleagues in the Department. Her chance for appointment seemed pretty good until a senior faculty member received a word from a former student, asking if there was a position for his in the Department's faculty. Openly acknowledging that graduate student consultation would not affect his decision, Harrison C. White, Professor of Sociology, steered his choice through maintaining that his man was the best for the job.

MANY PROFESSORS in the Economics Department, embittered over their relations with students during the Harvard strikes, relegate student opinion in hiring decisions to the dustbin. They regard academic policy as a cloistered affair, only privy to those who have proven their credentials strong enough to deal with X-rated matters. If education and decisions concerning education are no matter for public speculation, then it would seem that Harvard faculty members would regard their own work in this same light. This attitude would logically keep professors from mixing business with academic research and would relegate consulting work to the dustbin, where it evidently is not.

Had John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg Professor of Economics not "leaked" this privy information to the public, at least one faculty member in the Department, Otto Eckstein, professor of Economics, would still be on full time status at the University while spending much of his time at Data Resources, Inc., a more lucrative venture, no doubt..

Before educators are too certain of who is able to cope with dirty movies, they might examine some of the awkward positions they have been caught in during the past year.