“It is ridiculous...they voted it down without student voices being heard,” said Marglin’s daughter, Jessica M. Marglin ’06, a leader of SHARE.

DiMaggio added that the rejection came as a shock.

“I’m surprised because I thought we had made progress,” DiMaggio said. “This course desperately needs an alternative. Currently, we are getting one particular type of economics, economics at expense of the poor for the rich...It channels people to think in a certain way, and since a lot of people only take Ec 10, that is their only exposure to economic classes.”

But while many students support the proposal and said that Feldstein is too biased in his presentation of the course, University President Lawrence H. Summers has said he feels that Feldstein actually takes a more objective stance in his work than Marglin.

“I think it’s probably the case that Professor Feldstein’s views are closer to the center than certainly Professor Marglin’s,” Summers told a group of students at a Quincy House Study Break in February.

“That is probably true,” said Marglin—a tenured professor in the department since 1968—in response to Summers’ comment. “But you’re looking at a very conservative spectrum and a department that has become increasingly more conservative and less diverse over the years.”

Although it looks like the alternative course will not be approved as a replacement for the fall semester of Ec 10, it could still be approved as an additional course for Core credit.

But Marglin and students said they are not satisfied—because Ec 10 remains a curriculum staple.

“The version that the Committee is suggesting I teach is not what the proposal called for at all,” Marglin said. “Most people taking Ec 10 do not pursue economics to a higher level, and offering such a course at any other level will not make sense.”

Marglin said it would be difficult to structure the course as a single-semester class, but that he plans to work with the Core office no matter what the outcome with economics department.

“There’s just too much to get in there, with the micro and macro and critiques—now it’s all back to the drawing board,” he said.

—Staff writer Lauren A.E. Schuker can be reached at schuker@fas.harvard.edu.