The MIT economics department’s dominance was fading just as I entered grad school there. David Warsh, himself a long-time chronicler of the department, reviews a book edited by E. Roy Weintraub on the golden age of economics at the Institute.
A sixth factor, advanced by Weintraub in the Transformation volume, argues that the rise of MIT stemmed from its willingness to appoint Jewish economists to senior positions, starting with Samuelson himself. Anti-Semitism was common in American universities on the eve of World War II, and while most of the best universities had one Jew or even two on their faculties of arts and sciences, to demonstrate that they were free of prejudice, none showed any willingness to appoint significant numbers until the flood of European émigrés after World War I began to open their doors. MIT was able to recruit its charter faculty – Maurice Adelmam, Max Millikan, Walt Rostow, Paul Rosenstein-Rodin, Solow, Evsey Domar and Franco Modigliani were Jews – “not only because of Samuelson’s growing renown,” writes Weintraub, “…but because the department and university were remarkably open to the hiring of Jewish faculty at a time when such hiring was just beginning to be possible at Ivy League Universities,”
Pointer from Mark Thoma. My Swarthmore College professor Bernie Saffran emphasized the anti-Semitism factor also. Bernie’s version was that Harvard’s anti-semitism made Samuelson feel that he would be better off at MIT, and once he went to MIT he went about using Jews to build a superior department to pointedly punish Harvard. It took almost three decades (roughly from the end of World War II to the late 1970s) for Harvard to come back.
Economists generally view prejudice by a firm as unsustainable, because that firm will lose out to competitors. The lesson I take from the Harvard-MIT story is that in academia prejudice can persist for a while, with long-term detrimental effects. Consider that as you read stories about prejudice against conservatives.
Read Warsh’s entire article, which covers much more ground.
UPDATE: For more on the economics of discrimination, check out the links on David Henderson’s post.
In an Uncommon Knowledge interview of Joseph Epstein and Andrew Ferguson, Joseph Epstein observed that
“The problem with universities is they operate so slowly. At the university they say, “You’re fired. I want you out of her by 2017″”
Assuming tenure remains intact, to change prejudice at a university takes a generation or more. Well, assuming those with the anachronistic views don’t control faculty hiring and seek likeminded thinkers.
“I want you out of her by 2017”
Seriously. Enough with the campus rape hysteria.
(As an aside, I once found a binder with sex al harassment findings against a professor and your example/my joke are surprisingly accurate. Of course, like a priest he just went to a chaired post at another university)
Tenure is what economists call a compensating differential–indeed a tenure track contract allows the university to pay a lower salary. It’s mutually advantageous. Universities that do not offer tenure (ever) pay higher salaries. Not clear it’s better for universities to do that.
I’d like to see a middle ground: 10-year contracts with reappointments subject to meeting some criteria. This would be a good balance of job safety (so professors accept lower salaries) and protection against deadwood (those profs who hardly do anything–rare, but not unknown).
The pendulum has swung the other way a bit: departments are anxious to pile on the ethnic and other diversity. If a trans-gendered Nepalese with one leg showed up on an application, I think the Dean would wet his pants.