1. Introduction: Boundaries and migrations in economics

The cultural history of science can be written as a succession of contests over boundaries and domains.Footnote ¹ Our understanding of boundary work has advanced greatly in recent years. Thomas Gieryn (Reference Gieryn, Jasanoff, Markle and Pinch1995; Reference Gieryn1999) has proposed a taxonomy for these practices. Emanuel Graziano (Reference Graziano1996) has shown boundary work to be a “generative and creative activity” in addition to a contest. Others have directed our attention to cartographic legacy, as enduring cultural attributions get reproduced in controversies (Kinchy and Kleinman Reference Kinchy and Kleinman2003).Footnote ² My contribution to this developing literature is to consider the interface between contested cultural topography and place. The emphasis will be on place as a marker of authority within a scientific field, as distinct from place as a fact or truth maker (Shapin Reference Shapin1988; Gieryn Reference Gieryn2006). Further, I will argue that the resolution of boundary disputes not only resets cultural attributions but also prompts migrations in geographical space.

I have elected to study a controversy in social science, namely economics. In the context of the wave of protests that hit American campuses in 1967–1972,Footnote ³ a group of young economists labeling themselves “radical political economists” rehearsed a set of scandalous indictments on the economics profession. They forced the question of where to locate politics: Was economics political? And should economics be political? Eminently, these were questions over the boundaries of the discipline.

As I will show, one of the principal sites for the design of a radical program in economics was Harvard University. In section two I will argue that propelled by faculty disputes and their siding with protesting students, a group of junior faculty took a stance of antagonism towards the mainstream in economics. In section three, I will survey the published record to reveal radicals' redrawing the boundaries of economics. In collectively taught undergraduate courses, writing textbooks, and meeting in conferences, the group converged to a shared understanding of the cultural landscape. They argued that the economist should not seek distance from politics. Instead, she should become an advocate for social revolution. For the radicals any desire to remain neutral in the context of social unrest was to perpetuate the status quo and to become an ideologue for the establishment. In section four, I argue that conventional economists were slow to respond, and most simply ignored the radicals' criticism. Those that felt engaged by the criticism responded harshly to the blurring of old time boundaries, and called for economics to preserve immunity from political and subjective passion. The context and timing of the conventional economists' response suggests that they were most worried by the public echoes of radicals' indictments.

To observe the resolution of this controversy, as is so often the case in contests of credibility, I look at patterns of hiring and firing of radical economists. Cases of alleged denial of tenure and dismissal of radical economists were widely publicized in the press in the mid-1970s. The concern was such that the American Economic Association formed a Committee on Political Discrimination to investigate some of the alleged foul-play. I report and discuss the conclusions of the committee. My story concludes with the marginalization of radical economists. Partly by design, to pursue their advocacy, partly persecuted by their opponents, radicals abandoned elite universities for less prestigious institutions. One finds a notable interlocking between cultural space and geography. The fluidity in cultural attributions and boundary work occurs against a resilient map of authority. The authority of place plays a non-negligible role in contests of credibility.

2. Harvard as place for radical critique

In September 1968 at the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan, the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) was founded by a dozen graduate students (Lee Reference Lee2004a). URPE's original prospectus of 1968 was critical of the economics profession. It called for directing economics into what radicals termed “politically relevant” research. Their adopted approach was to rewrite the questions of economists. They inquired: “How frequent are articles which deal with the economics of racism, poverty in the American economy, international imperialism, or the real economics of defense?” Interestingly, radicals endorsed the standard tools of the profession (URPE Secretariat 1969, 173). The prospectus outlined a minimum of shared ground and reflected the absence of prior debate between radicals over the content of their economics. The radicals' identity was the culture of the sixties but this offered them little in terms of economic convictions (Mata and Lee Reference Mata and Lee2007). “Radical economics” was thus, circa 1969, still to be demarcated and defined.

In its early years, URPE's office was housed at Ann Arbor, site of the University of Michigan. But Ann Arbor did not delimit the Union. Publicized in academic conferences and through New Left organizations, URPE briskly won a substantial membership.Footnote ⁴ The URPE collective that was most visible to the media and most engaged in debate with the profession's mainstream was based at Harvard University. The junior faculty and graduate students at Harvard enjoyed privileged access to the top journals of the profession and to the sessions of the annual convention of the American Economic Association.Footnote ⁵ Their academic focus contrasted with the concerns of other URPE members that ranked activism above scholarly interests.Footnote ⁶ Hence, while the Harvard group was not representative of the whole community of radical economists, it had a leadership role in that community's academic campaigns. The story of Harvard is my entry point to examine the interactions between radical economists and their conventional colleagues.

The core activity of the Harvard group was to run an undergraduate course. Starting in the spring of 1969 “Social Sciences 125 – The Capitalist System: Conflict and Power” was offered in the General Education program.Footnote ⁷ It had followed the creation of a student-run course Social Relations 148 and 149, in the fall of 1968: “Social Change in America” and “Radical Perspectives on Social Change.” An immediate success, the latter courses had 750 students enrolled.Footnote ⁸ The radical economics course was taught by twelve graduate students and young faculty: Arthur MacEwan officially as the course proprietor; Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Thomas Weisskopf sharing both the lecturing and the section meetings.Footnote ⁹ The course was a focal point to design a radical body of economic theory. A book of original and reprinted texts from Social Science 125 was one of the results of this effort (Edwards et al. Reference Edwards, Reich and Weisskopf1971).Footnote ¹⁰

While Harvard radicals experimented with pedagogy and a new syllabus, crisis visited upon the Harvard Yard. On April 9, 1969, students seized the administration building, University Hall, to protest against University encroachment into poor neighborhoods. The President and the Deans responded to the occupation with urgency. On the dawn of April 11, local police and state troopers forcefully evicted the students with some injuries and numerous arrests. The events were of national concern.Footnote ¹¹Time magazine famously carried the news to its front page and concluded: “the ‘Harvard way’ had failed. No matter how soon the present crisis is resolved, the great temple of learning on the Charles will never be quite the same” (Time, April 18, 1969).Footnote ¹²

Within Harvard an argument ensued over the administration's response to the protest. The Faculty of Economics, otherwise known for its liberal views, broke into opposing camps. Economic historian and Russian émigré Alexander Gershenkron distinguished himself as a supporter of the Administration. At a crisis meeting of the Faculty he delivered an emotive speech striking that: “Force and crime must be met by force, and I think that was done, and I think it was well done.” He had little sympathy for the students' case, adding “how preposterous, how irrelevant the issues are about which we are talking here” (Dawidoff Reference Dawidoff2002, 314–8). At the opposite corner was Wassily Leontief, also a Russian émigré. He too was critical of the occupation but the focus of his attack was on the President's conduct calling it “drastic” and noting that “the confidence of many members of the Faculty in the administration . . . is I think, undermined” (Eichel et al. Reference Eichel, Jost, Luskin and Neustadt1970, 168). Another notable economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, had in the previous year written to the Harvard Alumni Bulletin urging a restructuring of the University's governance (Parker Reference Parker2005, 474). Galbraith wanted more power entrusted to Faculty over the Corporation, and this became the banner of the liberal faction. The issue of governance was the critical one for the liberals, but a minor concern for the conservatives. Finally, one should add that the young radical faculty, some of whom had participated in the occupation, were unflinching supporters of the protest.Footnote ¹³ From then on Harvard economists were troubled by these divisions of opinion.Footnote ¹⁴

As tempers flared, senior Harvard faculty denounced radical courses as a “disgrace to scholarship” (Nossiter Reference Nossiter1969). One said of the student assault, “I felt as if I had been raped.” Many on the conservative camp were otherwise liberal minded, some European émigrés “detected more than a trace of the fascist brown or the Bolshevik red shirt in the student protests” (Keller and Keller Reference Keller and Keller2001, 311). The emotions at Harvard reflected a change in attitude toward student protest. While there was growing opposition against the war in Vietnam there was also decreasing tolerance towards students' disruptive protests (Caute Reference Caute1988). As campus turmoil continued to rise, faculty sympathy turned to disgust, while convincing radicals of the possibility of wedging change to the academy and society.

In the aftermath of the 1969 summer, radicals wanted to challenge the economics profession for its silence over the Vietnam war, adding charges of racism, sexism, and elitism in its job market. In the fall, URPE's Newsletter carried an item headed “Confronting the AEA [American Economic Association].” It began provocatively: “Should URPE demand ten million dollars in reparations from the AEA for the brainwashing its members have received at the hands of the profession?” (URPE 1969a, 1). In December at the AEA's business meeting, they staged a protest: “a group of approximately twenty-five members of ‘a group of radical economists’ filed into the meeting room. Their spokesman, Harvard's Arthur MacEwan, demanded, on behalf of the group, that he be permitted to present a statement to the meeting” (AEA 1970, 487). The statement read:

The radicals were not alone in their criticism. Galbraith, also at the 1969 AEA convention, presented a paper calling economics a “system of belief” that excluded “urgent as well as politically disturbing questions from professional economic vision.” He trusted that the young, untroubled by professional “comfort,” would transform the profession (Galbraith Reference Galbraith1971, 64, 87).

The radicals in economics were tapping into a growing sense of discomfort (if not of overt crisis) within the professoriate. The year before, and unprecedented in its history, there had been two professional meetings of economists and two job markets. The official AEA convention was held in Chicago as planned, but a runaway meeting was hosted in Philadelphia for those economists who wanted to boycott Chicago and condemn its mayor for violently handling anti-war activists in August of 1968.Footnote ¹⁵

What this record shows is radicals moving confidently from an indictment of economists' defective choice of subject matter to a condemnation of the content of economic theory. It is critical to note these developments occurring at Harvard. Radicals' residence at the elite institution for economic research empowered them to raise the stakes of their polemic, the adversarial climate at the faculty urged them on. At the 1969 AEA meetings, Harvard's Soc Sci 125 course was introduced as an outline to a new approach. Radicals dismissed the traditional curriculum, saying that: “The marginalist approach is useful only if, accepting the basic institutions of capitalism, one is primarily concerned with its administration” (Edwards and MacEwan Reference Edwards and MacEwan1970, 352). The repeated catchword that identified their alternative was a focus on “conflict.”Footnote ¹⁶

3. A map of economics and politics overlapping

To bolster its membership and create bonds between its collectives, URPE organized a score of regional conferences.Footnote ¹⁷ The most important of these meetings took place at the MIT Student Center on November 1 and 2, 1969, entitled the “New England Regional Conference.” It was jointly run by the two URPE chapters in the Boston area: one at Harvard and the other encompassing MIT and the other campuses. The main theme of the gathering was “the construction of an alternative paradigm.”Footnote ¹⁸ The main speaker was Paul M. Sweezy, who proposed that Marxism was the theoretical alternative to orthodox economics. Sweezy left an appeal to go beyond a critique of orthodox economics, that: “new theoretical research must free itself from the framework of traditional economics to construct the convincing alternative which is essential to the success of any radical movement” (URPE 1969b).Footnote ¹⁹

Yet Sweezy's Marxism did not set the terms of the radicals' debate.Footnote ²⁰ URPE's institutional base was at the University of Michigan, and the radical conversation was punctuated by the views of two Michigan graduates: Michael Zweig and John Weeks. In Zweig's influential article, “New Left Critique of Economics,” the starting point to a critique of economics was a critique of contemporary American society as racist and imperialist (Zweig [1969] Reference Zweig1971a, 67).Footnote ²¹ He established a correspondence between the apparatus of economic theorizing and its political content. Zweig argued that:

Zweig denied the profession's claim to neutrality, stating that “standard economics violates neutrality by militating against asking and answering certain radical questions. Economics is not, and cannot reasonably be expected to be, neutral” (ibid., 73). In Zweig's critique, which is akin to the one voiced by the Harvard group, the faults of economics began at its theoretical foundation.

The significance of Zweig's “New Left Critique of Economics” can be gauged by having motivated the opening article of the Review of Radical Political Economics, URPE's scholarly journal. John Weeks began: “It is not because marginal analysis is reactionary that economics supports the status quo, it is because economists are reactionary and choose and use their questions, tools, and governments accordingly” (Weeks [1969] Reference Weeks1971, 75; emphasis in original). Weeks argued that the profession gained from the existing social and economic order, since “the practitioners of standard economics are part of an economic and social elite, and therefore can no more be expected to develop and encourage radical analysis than businessmen as a group can be expected to advocate workers' control of production”; “they draw their wealth and influence from these social institutions” (ibid., 75–76) and thus had a vested interest in their perpetuation.

What is novel and noteworthy in this exchange is the deliberate attempt to discriminate between radical and mainstream economists by locating them in society and culture. This effort at boundary work was meant to place radicals with the social movements calling for revolution in America and to portray the mainstream allied to the status quo. Weeks and Zweig were posing the same question: to explain what they perceived as the economics profession's unwillingness to denounce the advent of war, imperialism, and poverty. Their answers differed; one indicated the constraining character of economics' tool-kit, and the other pointed to economists' status as intellectual elite leading them to protect the status quo. Radicals' critique of economics was thus, in 1969, not consensually established.

In the July 1971 issue of the Review of Radical Political Economics, in an article entitled “On Radical Paradigms in Economics,” the design of an alternative approach was redressed as the design of a paradigm. The introductory paper of the volume by Gerald E. Peabody surveyed Thomas S. Kuhn's work on the history and philosophy of science. The goal of the special issue was to “call for such a revolution in the paradigm that provides the world view for current economic thought” (Peabody Reference Peabody1971, 1). Kuhn had offered a structure to account for the past of science, but radicals wanted it to illuminate the future. Kuhn was thus read as a guide to displace the professional mainstream.Footnote ²²

The special issue of the Review explored the definition of an alternative (radical) paradigm for economics. The main premises of the debate were economics' input to progressive change in America and the interplay between power (in society, in the profession) and ideas. Radical economics was defined as knowledge with the purpose “of being destructive, non conservative of the existing social order,” of assisting revolution (Behr et al. Reference Behr, Garlin, Morris and Roehl1971, 30; Zweig Reference Zweig1971c, 84).

The radical paradigm was dubbed by Michael Zweig a “paradigm of conflict.” It asserted that “for each conflict there is a grouping of the members of society into a small number of classes. . . . A society is characterized by the conflicts it contains, and consequently by the class structures associated with these conflicts” (Zweig Reference Zweig1971b, 48–49). Zweig portrayed standard economics as an ideology, which disciplined people's views of the world and precluded revolutionary action. Reprising his earlier argument, he wrote: “To bourgeois economists, such non-marginal, systemic attacks are irrational and incomprehensible in economic terms. They have no intellectual or formal analytic tools to deal with such behavior” (ibid., 45).Footnote ²³

The interplay of “knowledge” and “life” was a major concern for the radicals. They argued that:

Radicals wanted to collapse boundaries. They argued that society should be experienced subjectively if it was to be experienced at all. This connected to a critique of objectivity, which they associated with the objectification of subjects, creating and maintaining a “machinelike” social system. To recover subjectivity, to join “life” and “knowledge,” the radical was prescribed to abandon the confines of academe. The radical was mandated to participate in political organizations.

In the context of growing campus unrest, and while developing radical courses and literature, “Radical Political Economics” was presented in 1971 as a paradigm, and consequently as an alternative to the prevailing economic theory. Radicals believed that the public positions of the profession were structurally bound with its paradigm. They were one and the same, scientific framework and politics overlapping. Even those who earlier held a dissociation between the politics of economics (the theory) and the politics of economists (the profession), came to the view that conventional theory should be discarded for a radical alternative. John Weeks in 1972 recanted his earlier views:

Along with Weeks others were convinced. Radicals held out a blueprint to a new economics and proudly announced it in the professional venues (see also Franklin and Tabb Reference Franklin and Tabb1974).

Radicals' definition of an alternative economics circa 1971 was an instance of boundary work. In radicals' cultural map, we can discern two critical coordinates: the overlap of knowledge and politics and the opposition between objectivity and subjectivity. In radicals' cultural cartography the domains of science and politics were indistinct and nested the “scientific paradigms.” They located their paradigm linked to the “revolutionary movement” in America, as a science for the emancipation of the downtrodden. They placed the professional mainstream as implicated with “conservative” social interests, as part of the ideology of the status quo. With neutrality held as inadmissible, paradigms and political positions were irrevocably in antagonism, distanced in the social map. With counter-cultural overtones radicals also drew attention to demarcating subjectivity from objectivity. For them objectivity was objectification and alienation. The traditional economics paradigm was said to train students to become “machine-like.” In contrast, radicals located themselves in subjectivity. Their scientific approach would allow the scientist to be close to the ills of society and hence revolt against injustice. Its goal was to teach people how to live engaged in social change. This was a stark reconfiguration of the cultural landscape of economics, designed to engage social forces beyond the university.

4. A route to objectivity

The protests at the campuses and at the 1969 AEA meetings drew attention to the radical group and its economics. In less than a year the AEA's Journal of Economic Literature published a survey on radical economics.Footnote ²⁴ The text authored by Martin Bronfenbrenner, was competent in its depiction of radicals' research and identity.Footnote ²⁵ The survey was shy of a wholesale critique and instead commented on particular authors and literature. At times, Bronfenbrenner was complimentary, as in: “Like too few of the rest of us, radical economists take their teaching seriously.” The survey's main conclusions in 1970 were akin to later reactions to radical economics. Firstly, that it “should be recognized as a legitimate field of concentration in the study and practice of economics.” Secondly, that the profession should “require, and should continue to require, exposure of radical economists to orthodoxy.” The author expected that “the rise (or revival) of radical economics in America has far to go before it recedes” and argued that this growth should occur within the profession and without antagonisms (Bronfenbrenner Reference Bronfenbrenner1970, 758, 755, 763–5, 757).

Through most of the 1970s, radicals were eager polemicists at the AEA conventions. Worthy of special mention is their participation in the 1971 meetings.Footnote ²⁶ The President-elect of the AEA in 1971 was J. K. Galbraith. Using his presidential prerogative, Galbraith outlined a program of sessions that showcased radicals' work, with headings such as: the “Military-Industrial Complex,” “Some contradictions of Capitalism,” papers on “taxation of the rich,” radical education, and the political economy of women. The plenary lecture was delivered by the critic of American economics, Joan Violet Robinson, and Galbraith hosted a special luncheon in honor of Gunnar Myrdal, author renown for his analysis of race relations in America and the role of ideology in economic theory.Footnote ²⁷ In Galbraith's Presidential Address, delivered in 1972, he sponsored the radical criticism, saying that “the main problem with orthodox economic ideas – which Galbraith asserted were under attack from a “new and notably articulate generation of economists” – is the separation of power from its subject” (Galbraith Reference Galbraith1973; also see Jones Reference Jones1972). As it happened with many of the events involving radicals, the press was prompt to record. Business Week concluded that Galbraith used “the “establishment” convention to focus attention on nonestablishment subjects.”Footnote ²⁸ The New York Times reported that Galbraith: “encouraged so-called non-establishment economists to ‘get their ideas met by making their demands painful’” (Harbron Reference Harbron1972).

Galbraith was sympathetic to the radical cause. At Harvard, he was an ally in departmental disputes. However, he should not be taken as representative of the profession. His presidential nomination by an electoral college of the Association drew criticism, some alleging it owed more to his antiwar Democratic positions than to his economic theorizing (Parker Reference Parker2005, 480).Footnote ²⁹ Senior AEA members were angered by his handling of the 1971 convention. One colleague bolted: “It was the worst thing I ever saw”; another said: “He ran it like a jerk” (Collier Reference Collier1973). For my purposes, the significance of the 1971 meeting was that Galbraith offered the radicals a platform that ensured the remainder of the profession would hear their challenge, take it seriously, and respond.

Interestingly, the most deliberate and detailed response to the economics of the radical left was penned by a visiting Swedish economist. In his 1969–70 trip to the USA, Assar Lindbeck had been impressed by the arguments of the New Left students. In a book entitled The Political Economy of the New Left: An Outsider's View, he proposed to outline the content of New Left's economics and show its shortcomings from the neutral position of a non-American.Footnote ³⁰ Lindbeck thus based his ideological neutrality on geographical distance.

Lindbeck zoomed in on the radicals' critique of marginalism and neglect for the “interaction between economic and political factors.” Contradicting radicals' claims, he argued that conventional economists had insights to offer about current concerns, and that poor translation to the non-expert was the true source of public distrust. For Lindbeck, the radicals were victims to a double misunderstanding of professional distinctions. Firstly, they failed to recognize that “economists are economists only and not also at the same time sociologists, political scientists, psychologists, philosophers, and so on (or social reformers or even revolutionaries)” (Lindbeck Reference Lindbeck1971, 17, 22, 23, 25). Secondly, he stated that radicals misrepresented the old-time distinction between positive and normative economics. Lindbeck illustrated:

According to Lindbeck, within the boundaries of positive economics, away from normative demands and the other social sciences, economists could produce objective, apolitical science.

It is striking how reactions by subsequent authors were similar to Lindbeck's argument. The setting for these reflections was often the AEA convention where the radical voice was heard. One occasion that I wish to single out was the conference session, “The state of economics: the behavioral and social sciences survey,” devoted to a report planning funding needs for economics' research and teaching.Footnote ³¹ The debate over the report is worthy of mention because it directly addressed radical economics as an alternative approach to conventional economics.

The radical commentator was John G. Gurley,Footnote ³² who objected to the report for ignoring the radicals' proposals. Gurley claimed that the report reproduced the mainstream's distorted conception of reality, “short on social relevance, precisely because its ruling paradigm – its conceptions of the world – excludes power, conflict, and disruptive change.” For Gurley the political economist “studies economic problems within the historical context of ruler-subject relations, . . . he actively takes the side of the poor and the powerless, and he generally sees the system of capitalism as their oppressor.” Gurley's argument was in step with the “paradigm of conflict” onto which radical economists converged in 1971 (Gurley Reference Gurley1971, 54–55, 62).

One of Gurley's discussants, Robert L. Heilbroner was sympathetic to what he interpreted as the radicals' motives: “to widen and deepen the range of what is called economic analysis.” Yet, Heilbroner argued that defining the goals of economics was not a task for economists: “here, fortunately, the professional competence of the economist comes to an end, and he can do no more than take his place within the polity, to urge whatever goals – equality, freedom, growth, ecological balance and whatever – he seeks for society.” For Heilbroner, an economist abandoned the field of professional competence once he joined advocacy. Like Lindbeck, the damning charge was that radicals were stepping over the boundary.

The author that most clearly depicted the inner landscape of economics was another of Gurley's discussants and a co-author of the report, Robert M. Solow.Footnote ³³ In Solow's view radical economics did not deserve mention in the report, since this body of work was neither “large” nor “important.” He added: “I think that radical economics as it is practiced contains more cant, not less cant; more role-playing, not less role-playing; less facing of the facts, not more facing of the facts, than conventional economics” (Solow Reference Solow1971, 63). The author took issue with the radicals' claim that they had an alternative paradigm: “the function of a scientific paradigm is to provide a framework for ‘normal science.’ But there is little evidence that radical political economics is capable of generating a line of normal science, or even that it wants to” (ibid., 64).Footnote ³⁴ For Solow, scholarship was the interplay of “knowledge of technique and acquaintance with data” (ibid., 65) which he found absent in radicals' practice.

In another article entitled “Science and Ideology in Economics,” Solow responded to the claim that economics was ideological.Footnote ³⁵ He agreed that new and urgent subjects had emerged in the late 1960s, but made the case for patience: “It takes time for middle-aged men to change their research interests and their teaching, and it may take even longer for them to drum up any interesting and useful things to say” (Solow Reference Solow1970, 94–6). Solow also accepted that economists avoided the “dangerous” questions, whose answers may challenge the status quo. But he offered two good reasons to justify the disregard: most such subjects were outside economists' competence, and some questions were prohibitively difficult to answer. He explained that:

Solow argued for the avoidance of polemical issues as a virtue. The demanding standards of economics could not accept such “vague and unanswerable” explorations.

The choice of questions was further shown by Solow to be a device to contain the influence of ideology. He noted that:

Further, it was possible “to make social science as nearly value-free as it is possible to be” by promoting scholarly criticism. Radicals were consequently invited to participate in the professional forums, and follow its rules: “standards of rigor, precision, and reliance on systematic observation interpreted by theory” (ibid., 101).

In the cultural defense of “conventional theory” there was a clear demarcation between objectivity and the subjectivity of the researcher, but a difficult boundary between science and politics. Defenders of the mainstream argued that politics and economics should remain separate. They acknowledged that there was no escape to some measure of influence from society and ideology. But, in this cartography, politics entered economics unsystematically, through individuals as part of “personal tastes,” at the starting point of any scientific voyage. Hence, it did not invalidate the enterprise of economic science.

In defense of conventional economics, these authors drew a road map of how to move away from the influence of personal tastes and closer to the ideal of “objective,” “neutral” scientific knowledge. The social scientist was told to pose sensible, quantifiable questions and then open his findings to professional criticism to separate his work from personal idiosyncrasies. This route made up of increasing “knowledge of technique and acquaintance with data” was part of a single paradigm of economics, the mainstream denying radicals' claim that they offered a new paradigm. The radicals were seen as departing from the pursuit of science to engage politics, what Solow called “cant and role-playing.” In the mainstream's map, the radicals, with their claims of joining politics and economics, were located at the margins of science.Footnote ³⁶

5. Political discrimination as contested space

The record to examine the resolution of this controversy, as is so often the case in boundary work, is the hiring and firing of scholars. As young radicals began to be considered for tenure most saw it refused, others were even denied renewal of contracts. Harvard as the site of the most notable group of radicals was stage to one of the most visible clashes over hiring between radicals and mainstream.

Samuel Bowles was considered for tenure at Harvard in 1972–73.Footnote ³⁷ He received the sponsorship of three of the most prominent members of the department: Wassily Leontief, Kenneth J. Arrow, and Galbraith. Yet despite such impressive backing, Bowles's promotion was turned down by a five to nineteen faculty vote. The head of the Harvard department, James Duesenberry, accepted that the decision was tantamount to an assessment of radical economics: “We have people here who are claiming to have a substantial set of new developments. I simply have to say that, in my opinion, the amount of evidence they have put on the table has just not been that significant” (Lifschultz Reference Lifschultz1974, 28). Duesenberry echoed the standard assessment among conventional economists. Radical economics was seen as “negligible,” not to be rejected, but to be “neglected” (Solow Reference Solow1971, 63). Bowles was not the only radical at Harvard who was refused a reappointment with tenure. Soon after, the decision was made not to reappoint Arthur MacEwan. The press noted the double denial of tenure (Weintraub Reference Weintraub1973) and recorded that similar decisions had been made in the past for Herbert Gintis and Thomas Weisskopf.Footnote ³⁸ Student pressure and the media attention succeeded in reversing the decision over the employment of Gintis who was offered a new three-year contract (Lifschultz Reference Lifschultz1974, 28–29).

Harvard was home to one of the largest groups of radical graduate students and faculty. Although some students remained in the graduate program, the tenure decisions effectively dissolved the group. A couple of years later, a report on Harvard's teaching castigated it for being too narrowly focused, and that same year Wassily Leontief, a Nobel laureate, resigned from the department disillusioned and critical (Golden Reference Golden1975a). The pressure led to the hire of a radical graduate student, William Lazonick, to cater a continued demand for radical subjects.

Following the very public case of Bowles and MacEwan, a string of non-renewal of contracts occurred in 1974: four from San Jose State University, one from Lehman College (CUNY) and one from the University of Massachusetts – Boston, again seizing the media's attention (Golden Reference Golden1975b, F1). The events at San Jose were particularly disturbing, since it culled what had been a center for radical scholarship in the West Coast. The dismissals were made by administrative decision, contravening a previous departmental vote (Rowe Reference Rowe1974, D6). The URPE steering committee branded the firings as politically motivated: “an attempt to get at those teachers who have good and close connections with students – at those who point the finger at capitalism” (cited in Golden Reference Golden1975b, F1).

Reacting to the growing threat placed on their employment, URPE protested the AEA meetings in San Francisco, in December 1974. “About 60 radical economists, representing the Union of Radical Political Economists [sic], picketed the economic association presidential address late Sunday to protest the firings chanting such slogans as ‘they say cutback, we say fight back’” (Rowe Reference Rowe1974, D6).Footnote ³⁹ With no stated endorsement from URPE, William H. Behn and Henry M. Levin presented to the meeting four proposals on the subject of hiring. In a resolution that made direct reference to the events at San Jose State University and Lehman College,Footnote ⁴⁰ they called for the AEA to “establish a standing committee, the Committee on Political Discrimination, whose members shall be appointed each year by the President of the Association to collect information on issues of fact in cases involving termination of employment for alleged political reasons” (AEA 1975, 444).Footnote ⁴¹ Although opposed by some who felt the committee would replace the mandate of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the motion was voted and approved by the majority.

The appointed chairman to the committee was Kenneth J. Arrow. It is significant that Arrow, then in the Harvard faculty, was chosen for the task. Arrow had been supportive of his fellow radical colleagues. He was beyond suspicion of being aligned with either conservative or radical politics. Harvard's public image had been tainted by the non-tenure decisions on the radicals, and it was desirable that one of its faculty be the maker of peace.Footnote ⁴²

The AEA Committee on Political Discrimination concluded three reports in 1976. The first concerned a dismissal at the University of Massachusetts at Boston Harbor. The junior professor had her contract suspended with the promise that once she submitted her PhD thesis she would be reinstated. However, after approval of her Harvard thesis with a high grade, she was denied a new contract on the grounds that her work was lacking in quality. After interviews with members of the department, the Committee found:

But in a comment accompanying the report, the committee qualified its judgment:

Concerning the case at Lehman College, the Committee found that: “the Department appears intolerant of new ways of teaching and research, in particular, giving little or no credit to teaching and publication in Spanish. On the other hand, it found no definite evidence that the discrimination, which certainly appears real, is based on political motives.” There was a sense that “normal procedures had been bypassed” but no condemnation was issued.Footnote ⁴⁴

The Committee produced a joint and lengthy report for the San Jose cases. The conflict seemed to have originated over the election of a department chairman, an appointment made by the administration against the majority of the faculty vote. The AEA committee was unequivocal in denouncing violations of procedural rules both in the nomination of the chairman and in bypassing the personnel committee for employment decisions. But even as the report came out condemning the University administration as violating academic freedom, it deemed such issues out of its jurisdiction. The report concluded that “such that intra-university politics, per se, are to be distinguished from the ‘political reasons’ alluded to therein such that they do not belong to the Committee's jurisdiction.”Footnote ⁴⁵

The Committee's ineffectiveness was blatant and acknowledged by its members. They reported to the AEA Executive Committee that their “original mandate will rarely, if ever, be feasible to execute.” They were searching for “direct factual evidence” of political discrimination. In compliance with the conventional cultural map where science and politics stood separate, it was necessary to observe the foreign interference of political discourse into the evaluation of a radical's work. The Committee members recognized this was a very demanding burden of proof: “it must be candidly said that if political factors did enter, say in evaluation of research or of teaching, it would require only the slightest skill on the part of administrators or departments to conceal the fact. Indeed it might require no skill at all because the factors may well be operating at an unconscious level.”Footnote ⁴⁶ The Committee on Political Discrimination was constitutionally designed to impose the cartography of conventional economics even as its members protested that it was not a good description of the social landscape.

For radicals political discrimination was inherent in any evaluation of scholarly work, even if it appeared couched in technical language. Bowles made the interpretative difference explicit when he wrote to the AEA's Secretary, “In the last analysis, the evaluation of all scholarly work is and must be informed, at least in part, by considerations which extend far beyond the boundaries of the science, necessarily reaching into realms which would generally be considered political” and he added “failing to locate a ‘smoking gun,’ as you put it, the committee is generally reduced to a finding of no political discrimination, even in situations which bear a very strong ideological and even petty political odor.” Bowles declined the invitation to be a member of the committee.Footnote ⁴⁷

In 1976 the Committee had a total of eight cases under investigation. To the national media, Arrow explained that there was great difficulty in determining whether dismissals resulted from political beliefs, the quality of a professor's work, or the recession, which had forced some colleges to lay off faculty (Epstein Reference Epstein1976, A29).Footnote ⁴⁸ A feeling of frustration led the Committee to propose that it “receive complaints and indeed encourage them. However, it should turn over the complaints to the AAUP and offer its cooperation.”Footnote ⁴⁹ By 1977 the Committee on Political Discrimination was no longer accepting new cases and was forwarding all complaints to the AAUP (AEA 1978, 450).Footnote ⁵⁰ Later in the decade according to Jordan Kurland, the acting general secretary of the AAUP, the number of cases of dismissal began to fall (Epstein Reference Epstein1976, A29), the then Committee chairman Carl Stevens agreed (AEA 1979, 384).

The Committee did not report to the Executive Committee from 1978 to 1981 when it concluded its investigation on the case of Peter Bohmer at U.C.-San Diego from 1972. The committee had taken four years to appoint a team to investigate the case and two more years to write a report. It concluded by majority that there had been political discrimination. The conclusion was facilitated by evidence that the FBI had funded the harassment of several radicals, Bohmer included (AEA 1981). This was an instance of foreign interference of politics.Footnote ⁵¹

The response by the AEA, elusive in its conclusions and unwilling to be drawn into faculty disputes, only gave credence to the radicals' suspicion towards the profession. To preserve their jobs, the formerly outspoken dissenters were attempting to go unnoticed, as the New York Times revealed:

The Committee enacted the conventional economists' map of culture, denying any intimate overlap between science and politics. The radicals dismissed were tagged as doing less relevant and low quality work, a “negligible” scholarship that was beyond the pale.

6. Migration from Harvard to University of Massachusetts at Amherst

The emergence of radical economics comprised an instance of boundary work in social science. Radicals redrew the cultural map of economics to force a realignment of interests and language that would engage the social ferment of the 1960s and 1970s. They aimed to enlist the support of the radical students. To an extent they succeeded. At Harvard, it was thanks to student pressure that Herbert Gintis' contract was renewed. At Yale University, similar protests by graduate students led to the hiring of David Levine, also a graduate student, to teach courses in the history of economics and Marxian economics (Lifshultz Reference Lifschultz1974, 53). As radical faculty faced threats from senior faculty and administrators, student pressure was effective in reversing dismissal decisions even if never securing them tenure. Conventional economists responded to the radical challenge by enlisting the traditional audiences of economics. Their boundary work reaffirmed the possibility for objective judgment in isolation from the partisan debates that were troubling American society. They stated that the economist need not, should not take sides, and their proposal was a retreat from public exposure.

In the contest between cultural cartographies there was a victor. Mainstream economists were correct to predict that campus unrest and the surge in the left-wing would soon abate. By 1972, the campuses were quieting and a conservative mood began to take hold. Once without allies, one might have expected a removal of radicals from academia. This was not the case, radicals were marginalized but not expelled.

Denied tenured posts at the elite institutions where they had obtained their PhDs, notably Harvard and Yale,Footnote ⁵² many radicals found employment in less prestigious universities or in liberal arts colleges that gave them limited opportunity for research. The majority dispersed throughout the country. A few managed to cluster in departments where radical graduate programs could be designed and research along academic lines could be pursued. Their most significant achievement was at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which remains today the principal center for radical research. Amherst lies 90 miles west of Boston. Traditionally rural, Amherst and neighboring Northampton have long been a hub of higher learning, currently site of the Five Colleges (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst). Founded in 1867, the Massachusetts Agricultural College became the University of Massachusetts in 1947, with a department of economics since 1935 (Cary 1963, 156, 183). The University underwent a dramatic expansion during the postwar period, tripling enrollments and staff on two occasions: from 1947 to 1954 and from 1962 to 1972. The administration envisioned University of Massachusetts at Amherst modeled on the great public universities at Berkeley and Ann Arbor, reaching a student population of twenty thousand (Story Reference Story and Story1992, 52, 69). Despite the expansion the rural surroundings were never fully erased. In 1973, to radicals' eyes Amherst was still “a cow town” with cattle grazing the fields encircling the campus.Footnote ⁵³ But also at this time, a community of left-leaning artists and academics converged on the area (Gabrielsky Reference Gabrielsky1988).Footnote ⁵⁴ This community made the rural seclusion more tolerable.

The origins of a radical center at Amherst are tied to the dismissal of Samuel Bowles from Harvard. Since 1967 the University of Massachusetts at Amherst economics department had been in a state of troubled transformation. It received poor assessments by two external committees (in 1967 and again in 1971) despite an investment in hiring “high flyers,” mainly “mathematical economists, . . . to the avoidance of such traditional fields as macroeconomics, public policy, monetary theory, and economic history” (Lifschultz Reference Lifschultz1974, 30). In 1971–72, alongside the disputes over hiring that split the faculty, another conflict was added over the dismissal of a radical and popular teacher, Mike Best. The University administration had sidestepped the department and decided to renew Best's contract. The head of the department saw the interference as undermining the department's authority and his own, and resigned. In a move to heal the divisions in the economics department, the Dean of the faculty was nominated its acting head. Concerned by a fall in the number of undergraduates in economics, Dean Alfange came to agree with the criticism that hiring had been too narrowly focused (ibid., 52).

Bowles had taken a year off from Harvard in 1972–73 and was at University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Labor Center. Predicting the problems he would face with the upcoming “tenure or out” decision, Bowles showed interest in joining the University (Walsh Reference Walsh1978, 34). His bargaining power was patent in that he did not ask for a job but rather for a center of radical research, he “pointed out that one of the greatest obstacles to the development of radical scholarship in economics was that academics interested in its development were scattered and isolated from fellow colleagues” (Lifschultz Reference Lifschultz1974, 52). Bowles thus bargained that alongside his hiring with tenure, the department should also employ Herbert Gintis, Richard Edwards, Stephen Resnick, and Richard Wolff, the first two from Harvard, the others teaching at City College New York but originally from Yale. Alfange had been convinced by the references from Harvard senior faculty, Nobel laureates, and a former editor of the American Economic Review, and by Galbraith's presidential commentary on the profession.Footnote ⁵⁵ In 1976 the department of twenty-five members had ten who would accept the label of radical. Hence, graduate students with strong credentials were attracted to the department, which pleased some of their conventional colleagues in the department and the University's administration (Walsh Reference Walsh1978, 34–35).

Although University of Massachusetts at Amherst hosted the most influential group of radical economists, it was not the only place where radicals were able to maintain radical courses and a graduate program. Other departments that merit mention were at American University in Washington D.C. and at the New School for Social Research in New York City. On the West Coast there were also groups of radicals at Stanford UniversityFootnote ⁵⁶ and at the University of California at Riverside,Footnote ⁵⁷ but these were embattled and undermined in influence.

By 1976 radical economics was thus no longer a feature of Harvard, MIT, or Yale but a major voice coming out of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the New School. The departments mentioned were “radical departments” insofar as they supported radical research and despite radicals being always a minority. As a result of their relocation away from the elite campuses the threat of dismissal and the quieting of campuses in the mid-1970s, radical economists retreated from full confrontation with the profession. Within the halls of academia theirs was a critical voice, but no longer scandalous or disruptive. Radical economics had been marginalized.

7. Conclusion: the authority of place

I have approached the emergence of the “radical economics paradigm” in the context of academic debates between radicals and the mainstream of the economics profession. I have endorsed the notion of boundary work as an interpretative frame to represent the different cultural outlooks of radicals and mainstream, ultimately expressed in the discussions and judgments of the AEA's Committee on Political Discrimination. It was the difference between these two outlooks upon society and academic practice that fuelled conflict.

The insight that comes from the story of radical economists' challenge is that place is an asset in boundary work. Radicals' redrawn outlook on American society aligned their efforts with the interests of left-leaning students. However, the support radicals deserved from some distinguished colleagues and the coverage they got from the media cannot be explained in the same terms. Enhancing radicals' credibility was the authority of place.Footnote ⁵⁸ It was radicals' credentials as Harvard faculty that opened access to professional forums, notably the sessions of the AEA conventions and its published Papers and Proceedings. Place granted radicals authority and once they challenged the mainstream in a contest of credibility it was a change of place that expressed resolution. Notably, Harvard radicals' migration to Amherst, from city to countryside, from a private institution to a public one, was a marker of their marginal status in the academy.

The fortune of radical economics contrasts with that of sister movements in history and sociology. Before Samuel Bowles in economics, there was Staughton Lynd in history and Marlene Dixon in sociology. Denied tenure at Yale in 1968, Lynd was recommended for five universities in the Chicago area, but in all of them the administrations vetoed the appointment. He finally abandoned history and became a lawyer. Lynd was expelled from the historical profession. Bowles was not expelled from his, neither were the other radical economists. But as Jonathan Wiener explains “The firing and blacklisting of Staughton Lynd marked a key moment in the formation of radical history and contributed to the adversary relationship between radicals and the mainstream of the profession” (Weiner Reference Wiener1989, 417). In the aftershock of the blacklisting of one of its prominent members, radical historians organized in great numbers to elect representatives to the American Historical Association. By the late 1970s, they had redrawn the boundaries of legitimate scholarship to include new methods and concepts (Weiner Reference Wiener1989; Novick Reference Novick1988; Meier and Rudwick Reference Meier and Rudwick1986).

While the case of history is one of radical success, what happened in sociology is closer to the case of economics. The watershed event for sociology was the denied renewal of contract of Marlene Dixon at the University of Chicago. The protest that followed set radicals and students against the faculty and after enduring intimidation the radicals left (Flacks Reference Flacks1988). In other elite campuses, such as Columbia University, the members of the Sociology Liberation Movement were also not welcomed. They finally clustered in three departments at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Rutgers University, and Washington University in Saint Louis. The latter was the largest but also the most short-lived of the centers. By 1972, after infighting among radicals the department collapsed (Etzkowitz Reference Etzkowitz1988).Footnote ⁵⁹ Radical sociology like radical economics, was marginalized.

The process is also noticeable in the early history of right-wing economics. James Buchanan and Warren Nutter did not organize their political economy group at the prestigious University of Chicago from where they had graduated and with which they held a deep intellectual bond. The site for their dissent was a far-removed campus in Charlottesville, Virginia (Buchanan Reference Buchanan1988; Breit Reference Breit1987). In the late sixties, due to conflicts with the administration, the group moved 140 miles south into the mountains of Virginia. Blacksburg was the site for the continuation of dissent and the stage for a theoretical reappraisal, headed by Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, from Virginia School of Political Economy to Constitutional Economics (Buchanan Reference Buchanan2007).

The sixties and seventies were a period of major turmoil for the social sciences, with the boundaries parsing academia and society subject to question. The majority of these contests resulted in a reasserting of the traditional rules of objectivity and a condemnation of partisanship. The marginalization of dissent was expressed in the removal of radicals from the authoritative places of their profession. Their migration in geography was a migration in cultural space.