Word: neos
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...years graduate students have been saying the Economics Department is in sorry shape. They have protested the rigidity of the program, the department's total dependence on neo-classical theory, and its failure to hire radical economists. And they have been disappointed and disgusted with a senior faculty that neither taught nor cared about graduate students and their needs...
...Economics Department is a collection of some 60 faculty members who have been hired on the basis of their research and their publications in the field of neo-classical economics. Even if the department requires them to devote more time to teaching it is questionable whether they will be capable of it. Graduate students in the department claim that there are only three or four tenured professors who can adequately teach a course...
Teaching problems aside, it is doubtful whether the Economics faculty are willing to accept curriculum reform and the faculty changes it would require. They have a vested interest in rejecting new courses and professors that will challenge the validity of their neo-classical approach and their emphasis on research. The Economics Department has consistently refused to hire radical economists, arguing that they were not academically qualified to receive tenure. But the department has made no systematic attempt to search for what it defines as "qualified" radicals, although they certainly exist and students have certainly asked for them...
...CURIOUS that Harvard's neo-classical Economics Department is guilty of such gross monopoly practices, but that only serves to underline the severity of the problem. Every member of this community should follow the Graduate Economics Club's lead and demand changes in the University to make courses more relevant to students, to increase contact with senior faculty, and to force recognition of students as equals with the right to affect the decisions that determine their academic lives...
...encompassing theory tied to the existing social order, sociologists have a tendency towards the accommodation of radical views. Senior sociologists at Harvard, like Seymour Martin Lipset and Daniel Bell, have integrated Marxist modes of analysis into their own theories. A parallel development would be impossible for any neo-classical economist. For this reason, and also because the senior Sociology faculty is somewhat to the left of Economics, an Economics-type purge of radicals seems unlikely. Taylor said last week, "In the Sociology Department, there are various sorts of Marxist sympathizers and very leftish liberals. They do not react with horror...