On 2/17/06, Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I wonder when neoclassicism became so entrenched. Was this > the way that economics was taught in the 1930s and 40s? > Were Marxists fired in the 1950s.
Harry Magdoff discussed what he felt the situation at Harvard was like after World War II in an interview: http://www.glovesoff.org/history_files/sweezy/sweezy_tonak.html TONAK: You wrote somewhere that after the Second World War you were "duly ushered out of Harvard." It is also known that, despite student demands, you were never granted a stable position at other American universities. Would you say a few words on the Harvard experience and other similar incidents? SWEEZY: Well there is a certain misconception, fairly widespread I think, that I was fired by Harvard. That is not true. When I left Harvard in 1942, I went into the army and the OSS (I was taken from the army into the intelligence apparatus, that's the predecessor of the CIA, of course). I spent most of the war years in Europe--England, France, and Germany. The fact was that I was on military leave from Harvard at the time. I was an Assistant Professor, and had a five-year contract when I left; and when I returned to the United States in 1945, the fall of 1945, I had two years more on the contract, two and a half years I think, but I decided not to go back to academic teaching. I talked with my friends at Harvard and discovered that there was no possibility of the department agreeing on my being retained with tenure, so I didn't wait. I didn't want to go back for just a couple of years at that time, and I just resigned. So it's not true that I was ever fired, though it certainly is true that I wouldn't have been given tenure if I had stayed. SAVRAN: Was it made obvious that, well at least did you know that their reasons were political? SWEEZY: Yeah, ideological. SAVRAN: Yes, that's what I mean. SWEEZY: The department was sharply divided. Not between radicals and conservatives, but between those who were adamantly opposed to having any radicals in the department and those, like Schumpeter for example, who were very friendly. In fact during the war, there was an opening that came up, a permanent tenure position came up in the economics department, and they had to appoint somebody immediately. And I was one of the two candidates who were considered for the job. The other was John Dunlop, who subsequently became a very well known labor economist. Schumpeter was a very strong supporter of my candidacy. I was told about that later, I was away at the time in England. But partly because they needed somebody who was there and could teach during the war, Dunlop was given the job. After that, there was never any chance that they would take a Marxist.
