In which oversized children at Harvard demand that they be mistaught economics. I love the comment from “Karl Marx.”
[Update a few minutes later]
The Crimson‘s response is brutal:
…the students’ attempt to connect their classroom protestations to the Occupy movement illustrates the disjointed and often unfocused nature of the movement. Indeed, it seems ironic that students in an introductory economics course at Harvard feel that by walking out of their completely optional lecture taught by a famous economist on the theme of income inequality feel that their actions ought to be considered a sign of solidarity with the Occupy movement. Such protests don’t show solidarity, they show ignorance and a lack of self-awareness.
There’s a lot of that going around at #OWS.
It’s all I can do to keep from stealing an hour from my employer right now to write a parody of this for physics.
No sweat – I got this: Hey, today I heard that the cancer patients at UCLA medical center also walked out, protesting that they were healthier than the doctors! Thank you, I’ll be here all week – remember to tip your waiter…
What’s disturbing is that so many of the Harvard defenders of the walkout dismiss capitalism in their comments, advocating “alternate” economic theories, including Marxism. Yet another generation of “elites” thinks they should be in charge of a new Marxist US economy, and are yet to stupid to run a taco stand.
Yeah, it’s kind of disturbing to read the responses to the Crimson editorial and the number of folks there who rationalize the protest by claiming that Mankiw’s teaching economics at Harvard amounts to propaganda. Of course, most of the commenters just assert that; a few make an attempt to reference other professors who disagree with Mankiw, apparently unaware that the appeal to authority is yet another form of logical fallacy often favored by propagandists.
I wonder what percentage of those Harvard students who walked out comes from “1%” families and whether their support for the Occupy movement is less about “fairness” and more about “daddy issues.”
This (and Obama) doesn’t exactly make me want to hire a Harvard grad anytime soon.
Such protests don’t show solidarity, they show ignorance and a lack of self-awareness.
Embrace the healing power of “and”.
I left a comment at the Crimson, but I’m not sure if it will stay since I did slam the elites a bit much. In case it disappears, I said:
I hope it leaves a mark.
Beautiful, George!
Like you, I doubt your comment will survive long in its original location. Can’t hurt their widdle feewings. 🙁
Odd, this. Reading through the comments, and recalling the discussion on the Volokh Conspiracy about a recent survey of economic understanding, it seems that there is an obstinate minority that rejects even the standard paradigm of supply and demand. Several of the commenters linked a fellow named Steve Keen, author of “Debunking Economics”. Here is Keen’s post about the Ec 10 walkout.
Now, I’ve never heard of Keen before today, so maybe I’m off-base here, but this reminds me of nothing as much as the babble generated by Creationists when they try to “debunk” Darwinism…. They are fond of pulling quotes out of context to support their worldview. They mock standard paradigms that have great explanatory value without providing credible substitutes. And they gather like-minded dissenters around them and repeat the same tropes over and over….
Wow. A commenter on that Keen dude’s site left the following… I don’t know what to call it:
Man… I’m getting a second-hand marijuana buzz just from reading that. Also, did I just here the Tardis revving up in the background? Seriously, I thought all these people OD’s on Quaaludes and coke back in the 70s.
Naturally, I had to visit this person’s website. Spirits of Ancient Egypt! I’ll bet he thinks Wings is still touring.
I must say, though, that I like the sign. It makes me hope Obama’s hopes for re-election are toast. I mean, if you’ve lost the braindead old stoners, you’ve lost the movement. (Note: I think the guy is actually an Australian. Still…)
The idiot probably thinks his ramblings are profound. I can’t tell from here if his impairment is chemically induced or of other origin.
If his education were any good he might have heard that “Homo sapiens sapiens” is the accepted name of the modern human subspecies.
Aww, that’s some fine weed, no doubt.
It sounds like Nietzsche. The perfection of man attained through the equalization of results.
“Wow. A commenter on that Keen dude’s site left the following…”
Maybe you would be better off actually tackling what Keen has to say instead of quoting some random bod who commented on his site.
On the issue of the walkout; if I was doing an econ course I would certainly like to be exposed to the conflicting schools of thought that exist – everything from Austrianism to Post-Keynesianism. But it seems that Mankiw uses no primary sources whatsoever, and teaches in a way that assumes there is complete agreement amongst economists. There isn’t.
The comparison to people who want creationism taught is unfair. Evolution can be indirectly corroborated through hard science such as DNA. Economics does not hold this same status as a hard science, and as such should make explicit that this is the case.
Looks like the student protest was doing the human microphone thing. I can see wy it’d be needed at times, but it does seem a bit freaky in cases when technology solutions such as megaphones and such are available. There’s an NPR interview with Mankiw that has an audio clip of that in action.
“He said the sheriff is near!”
Whoa! That is proper creepy. What an odd bunch.
human microphone
It was funny in the Life of Brian. In large groups of leftists it’s just plain creepy.
Ah yes, our intellectual superiors. These brilliant minds that mere mortals cannot hope to comprehend, much less instruct.
It’s nice to know that after I’ve worked fairly intensely for another 5 years to obtain a fundamental understanding of physics, math, and astronautical engineering (and yes, economics), so that I can help improve the state of the art, I will be dismissed as another product of a narrow education at “that north avenue trade school” while people who go to Harvard and Yale assume their natural place in the world presiding over the rest of us.
How the hell do people like this keep ending up on top of the social hierarchy? It seems absent some frontier, society again and again ends up worshiping and slaving away for their most useless members.
By creating a corporate state, a bureaucracy. Statism, which is leftism, is the theocracy. You rise depending upon how well you recite the liturgy, whom you know, what schools you go graduate from, etc. Merit is secondary since members of the state/left can always be out-flanked by those to the left of them, and so it becomes a black hole of ideology and incompetence. Job-holder Obama, the Affirmative Action candidate, is their crowning achievement.
“By creating a corporate state, a bureaucracy. Statism, which is leftism…”
Yet Mankiw is from the right of the spectrum, so your little conspiracy theory doen’t quite add up does it?
Actually, Mankiw seems to be more to the left, just not as left as someone like Krugman, and allows hard data to bear weight. The class the students skipped was on fair ways to redistribute wealth, or some such thing, which many anti-protesters considered quite ironic.
The students were upset that he was lecturing about Adam Smith instead of Keynes (and probably Marx), which is like biology students protesting that Darwin gets a mention. Without Smith you’d have to go back to Islamic thinkers, which would be interesting because they’d be exposed to the Laffer Curve far earlier in the course. ^_^
Well Mankiw and Krugman are certainly not ‘left’ from a European perspective (at least as european politics used to be during the post-war settlement). He is a ‘New Keynesian’ which incorporates elements of classical econ. ‘New Keynesianism’ can be considered part of a wider neoclassical synthesis; that is, the synthsis of neoclassical economics with keynesian elements. All of this is besides the point of course. The opinions of the lecturer should not inform the teaching of a subject that claims to be objective.
On the issue of teaching Smith. Of course Smith should be taught – along with Keynes, Friedman, Sraffa, Mises, Marx, Ricardo etc etc. I would add to this list the requirement to cover in depth issues of Econcomic Methodology and the History of economic thought. Give students the tools to think critically and then they can form their own opinions.
Of course Smith should be taught – along with Keynes, Friedman, Sraffa, Mises, Marx, Ricardo etc etc.
My understanding of Ec 10 from the several commentaries I’ve read is that it is an intro to econ course — which is to say, the purpose of the course is to teach students how economies work: first term micro, second term macro. It is not a “great thinkers in economics” course. So there is no point in “teaching Ricardo” — one teaches instead the principle of comparative advantage, which is a valid result no matter whose name is attached to it. As such, there is no place for Marx in the course, as he would be the last thinker you should consult if you want to know how economies work.
The subtext of the walkout students’ letter was that there are multiple inequivalent but equally valid ways of discussing economic theory, and implicitly some more “just” than others. What the students are apparently yet too ignorant to know is that this inclusive view is fallacious — some theories of economics are just plain incorrect, like the labor theory of value. Just as in a chemistry course you might mention phlogiston as a paradigmatic pre-scientific idea about chemistry, spending more than a few seconds on Marxism in an intro to econ class is a waste of time.
I would add to this list the requirement to cover in depth issues of Econcomic Methodology and the History of economic thought. Give students the tools to think critically and then they can form their own opinions.
Maybe after they learn how economies work. The idea that you can “give students the tools to think critically” and then sit back and watch them independently rediscover hundreds of years of thought is foolish. It doesn’t work in the physical sciences and it sure wouldn’t work in economics.
Titus said “Merit is secondary”, not “Merit counts for nothing”.
I used to be a college professor, at a small engineering-oriented university. Since the university was run by an order of Catholic brothers (the Christian Brothers), it was pretty far right by the standards of the modern academy — which meant that the faculty was about 50/50 liberal/conservative. But most of the rest of the universities with which I’m familiar are closer to 90/10. Which is to say, you can find conservatives, but they are exceptional.