THE POLITICS OF TENURE
SAM BOWLES and Herb Gintis will be leaving Harvard next year, and that will be Harvard's loss. The two, widely acknowledged to be among the most prominent practitioners of the radical approach to economics, will be going to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Unlike Harvard, UMass has decided to recognize the importance of this new approach by offering tenure to four of its adherents, including Bowles and Gintis.
The Economics Department's December decision not to grant Bowles tenure is no reflection on his capabilities, but only demonstrates the unwillingness of senior Faculty members to accept a new approach which questions classical assumptions.
In fact, this decision casts doubts on the validity of the Department's judgments on the academic merits of the tenure decisions concerning Arthur MacEwan, Thomas Weisskopf and Herbert Gintis, all of whom have previously been denied appointments. The Department offered Gintis a new non-tenured appointment this year, but that hardly represents an adequate commitment to this field.
Underlying the Department's decisions is a belief that radical economics is not sufficiently scientific. Although senior Faculty members admit that radicals ask important questions about the capitalist system, they argue that these questions are unanswerable and outside the scope of conventional economics. Some, but not all, argue that any questions about the socio-political context in which economic activity takes place should be left entirely to sociologists and political scientists.
Excluding an approach merely because it has not yet answered the important questions it has asked is absurd at best. At worst, it smacks of ideological bias to ignore an approach which shakes deeply held beliefs.
Harvard should learn a lesson from UMass and open itself to approaches to economics which differ from its own.
COMMITTEE INACTION
THE PERFORMANCE of student-Faculty committees this year has offered little hope that they can provide an effective, democratic alternative to the dismal student government they were designed to replace.
By decisively defeating the Paul proposals this Spring on reforming the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities, the Faculty continued to demonstrate its lack of interest in the equal participation of students in disciplining members of the University community who have violated the rights of others. No student has served on the committee for the past two-and-one-half years, and students' continued refusal to endorse the CRR underscores its role as a mechanism for arbitrary Faculty decision-making. Conservative hyperbole about the threat of student influence to Faculty rights is ludicrous; it is privilege, not legitimate authority that the Faculty seeks to defend.
The greatest disappointment was the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, in structure the most democratic of the regular University committees. Though University employees without Corporation appointments have no representation on the ACSR, the attempt to bring alumni, faculty, students, and the Corporation together had created a slim hope of influencing Harvard's investment policy toward increased social responsibility.
In fact, the narrow definition of the ACSR's role and President Bok's reluctance to meet with concerned students on investment issues after the ACSR's inception confirm original student suspicions: The committee was intended chiefly as a means of defusing protest without effectively bringing outside input to bear on Harvard's investment rationale. The ACSR's abstention on a proxy resolution concerning Exxon's proposed role in Angola especially demonstrated its ineffectiveness for thoroughly considering the moral and political questions surrounding socially responsible investment.
Unless the CRR and the Commission of Inquiry which are charged with protecting the rights of students and Faculty give equal responsibility for decision-making to both parties and define their roles clearly, they will be ineffective. Until the ACSR has an unobstructed voice on the full range of political issues surrounding responsible investment, it cannot function effectively as the moral voice of the University. The Bok Administration must take steps next year toward these reforms if it is ever to begin to secure the full confidence of students in Harvard's fairness and good faith.