John Cochrane writes eloquently.
neither Krugman, nor most of the twitter mob, nor the AEA have the beginning of a leg to stand on for a charge that Harald’s tone is way out of line. Yet Harald’s are the first tweets to receive public reprimand from the sitting president of the American Economic Association.
The whole post is a must-read, in my opinion. Cochrane goes on to cite an AEA code of conduct, which reads in part
Economists have a professional obligation to conduct civil and respectful discourse in all forums.
As Cochrane points out, Paul Krugman is a persistent violator of this. I would add that Joseph Stiglitz is, also.
These are bad times in the intellectual world. In the near term, I see nothing that will stop things from getting worse.
If the events really transpired as purported in 2014, why did they not raise the issue then? If true, the statements were clearly problematic even during the racial dark ages of (wait for it)…six years ago. They surely would have been grounds for a sharp reprimand and probably worse.
My bet: the historical narrative “as corroborated by several witnesses” is missing some context.
And, what about due process? No longer applicable?
Is it a criminal proceeding?
Does it need to be? Pretty sure is answer is no…
https://reason.com/2020/06/16/matt-boermeester-usc-football-title-ix-appeals-court/
Some guy is suing? I dont get it.
Are we even sure that Paul Krugman is running his Twitter account and not his wife?
Are we even sure that Arnold is running this blog and not his wife?
(i.e. what point are you trying to make?)
Krugman’s wife had generally had far more radical politics than him, so there has been some tongue in cheek speculation from the fact that sometimes he sounds like reasonably sensible economist, but then behaves atrociously in his blog, that his wife might be writing his columns.
Tortious interference – cancel culture: calling for someone to be fired, expelled, or excluded – needs to become a criminal act with no first amendment protection for “true” claims.
That is the absolute minimum needed to avoid much worse outcomes. Unwillingness to entertain it as an option is simply surrender to the fanatics.
So…protect free speech by criminalizing it. What could possibly go wrong?
Freedom of speech can never be considered an absolute. It must be moderated by reason.
Allowing free speech in the case of calls for a person’s life to be ruined has a chilling effect on… a whole lot of speech.
It seems reasonable that just as you cannot threaten to physically harm another person, that you cannot also stir up a mob to get them fired or otherwise seriously harm their livelihood.
Why is this a bad policy?
Well Krugman and Stiglitz are Marxists so we can expect that sort of behavior from them.
Probably not true. Any evidence?
When u treat gov as an all knowing benevolent god u r a Marxist.
What’s striking isn’t all the economists who signed the cancel letter, but all the economists with prominent platforms who didn’t sign it but who aren’t saying anything at all about it. Not profiles in courage …
As progressives like to say, silence is violence.
Exactly what did Krugman write? Not how someone characterizes it. What i saw was not what Kling, et al., say.
Tempest in a tea pot.
Even if the actors mentioned are representative of the alleged intellectual world, they are all so marginal and irrelevant that it hardly matters.
If the AEA has accomplished anything meaningful it has not been anything pragmatically useful.
Krugman publishes a column in the NYT and it is hard to get more insignificant than that.
Wolfers couldn’t hack it in Australia and would be a complete unknown if he could figure out how to get a haircut. And he, of course, has his own economics textbook. At this point, one wonders if there are any academic economists left without a textbook to their name. The glaring absence of any conflict of interest rules about teachers profiting from textbook sales tells you all you need to know about the ethics of economics teachers.
What this episode really illustrates is that the USA is deeply over-invested in academics.
Cut subsidies. Eliminate tax exemptions. Introduce competition by recognizing alternative credentialing paths. And general populist indifference to the buffoonery are the best ways forward.
For what it’s worth, teachers profit from textbook sales in every academic discipline.
Textbooks are expensive but paying the people to produce the diagrams and charts and maps and graphs, and to lay them out so they complement the text and help the reader understand doesn’t come cheap.
On the other hand, a successful textbook does make a lot of money. Yet lots of hopeful authors don’t even make back their time. Textbooks are close to a winner take all market. Lots of professors write ones, and their books don’t sell. A few make the big bucks.
And on the other other hand, good texts well produced are marvelous. They give you an amazingly good and easy to understand survey of what people in the area know. If you are really interested in Understanding Earth, Grotzinger and Jordan is worth the $200 plus. Want a good overview of Earth and Life Though Time? Amazon will sell you the 4th edition of Stanley and Luczaj for $150.
I wholly agree that used textbooks are a joy to read. I have several cheap used art history and business law casebook ready to hand to dip into frequently when the mind wanders in that direction. In the military many decades ago, I used cheap used textbooks to pass a slew of the DANTES Subject Standardized Tests (DSST) subject exams, which were free back then for service members. I remember in particular one 40 day exercise during which I took an Astronomy text. Great way to pass time. Parents really should encourage their kids to take advantage of DSST exam. Cheap way to amass credits and graduate in three years. Needs to be more widely promoted.
I had never heard of DANTES (DSST) or CLEP. If Republicans were clever and smart and ruthless, they would require any college receiving federal aid to give course credit to students passing them (and would publicize the hell of it, including on the FAFSA application). I suspect that would lead to considerably less time required, and considerably smaller tuition revenue, in most four year programs.
It would actually reduce the cost of a degree, as opposed to simply getting someone else to pay for it.
Well said
This was done for career advancement. Consider this:
-There is an oversupply of PhD economists
-Very few tenured positions
-The top people aren’t retiring any time soon
-Limited research money
People are fighting for limited opportunities. Uhlig might have been a roadblock to people who wanted to get their paper published and advance their career or take his job.
No, the motivation is not career concerns. Krugman and Janet Yellen are at the tail end of very successful careers. There is no way they are motivated by career concerns. Even Wolfers, already has a successful established career, this doesn’t necessarily benefit him in that way.
Kevin Williamson explained this the best:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/re-re-re-re-the-disturbing-campaign-against-tucker-carlson/
The secondary motivation is ideological and strategic. Push people with rival ideology out of positions of power.
The primary motivation is to hurt people in a public and socially sanctioned manner.
For all Kling’s passionate coverage of the virus and the quarantine response and his recent dramatic assertion that “[the CARES Act] is the worst piece of legislation in U.S. history.”, he hasn’t acknowledged or commented on the glaring hypocrisy behind it all as expressed in this simple op-ed:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/the-party-of-science-when-they-feel-like-it
I’d stress that this is not just elected leaders but also academic science and health organizations.
I do respect Kling’s position of holding off on commenting on the heated, hot button issues, and waiting a few weeks before commenting.
The Dean of the College of Natural Sciences at UT Austin emails students expresses solidarity with the George Floyd protests and riots:
The College of Engineering made very similar statements. I’d stress that the STEM classes and textbooks are non-political and amazing. The Colleges themselves and the Administrative Staff in particular are blatantly political and partisan.
I will spare you all, and spare Kling in particular, of my thoughts on reasonable reforms 🙂
The libertarian common ground.
The one point in fifty in which everyone agrees with a basic libertarian idea. Once settled, the conservatives and progressives can resume the riots. That is the AEA, a microcosm, representative sample.
Academia continues to eat itself for the amusement of the Twitmob. And people wonder why fewer and fewer people want to get involved with academia.