Decisions

News of the Harvard economists' disagreement over Samuelson reached MIT President Karl Compton, who on November 12 wrote to Wilson that he had heard that this had caused a disturbance: “I heard by the grapevine route...

Heads of departments at Harvard have very limited authority. They are really only chairmen and are according to the rules limited to a three year term although the rules are very often not followed in prac­tice. Thus when your professor Freeman checked relative to Samuelson with Professor Chamberlin, Chamberlin could only represent his own attitude except as he called a special meeting of the department and took a vote on the matter. When some members of the department heard that Samuelson was likely to go to MIT they made a serious attempt to get the department to take some action which would keep

g. In the same letter, Wilson argued that because studying economics makes one conservative, it is appropriate to appoint liberals to junior positions. He also assumed that there might come a time when the appointment of Jews would be less of an emotional issue, and chances of success would be greater, concluding that it would have been better to focus on the appointment of women to the faculty (implying that this would have been less of an emotionally charged issue. Further evidence of Wilson's being complicit in anti-Semitism is contained in the letter, discussed in chapter 10 this volume, in which he had written, “My own personal contacts with him leads me to believe that he is not objectionably Semitic.” This could be read either as implying that Wilson found some Jews objectionable or that though Samuelson might be a Jew, and even though he might be descended from Eastern European immigrants, he did not have those characteristics that caused other people to discriminate against Jews.

Samuelson at Harvard.... The discussion was entirely friendly to MIT and to Samuelson.^36,h

Wilson then explained how this decision was consistent with Harvard's own teaching needs:

Of course Professor Chamberlin would never have encouraged Professor Freeman to make an offer to Samuelson if it weren't for the fact that we are overloaded, so overloaded with high-grade people in economic theory that there really isn't much prospect that we can make a per­manent position for a young fellow for a good many years especially as we are under-staffed in agricultural economies, in labor, and in social security and for that matter in economic history.

Wilson genuinely believed that Samuelson's profile did not fit Harvard's teaching needs, for several months later he wrote to Chamberlin saying that there was a need to bring on young people in applied fields: “there is no use of over-building theory and under-building agriculture, history and other items.”³⁷

The lack of fit with Harvard's teaching needs reinforced Wilson's con­viction that MIT was the right place for Samuelson. In a letter that dealt mostly with other matters, Wilson added a paragraph that began by reassur­ing Compton that he had made the right decision in recruiting Samuelson: “I note with great satisfaction that you have taken on Samuelson in economics. He is one of the ablest young fellows I have ever met. I am sure he will have a distinguished career whether he stays with you or goes elsewhere.”³⁸ Echoing what he had said to Samuelson three weeks earlier, he held out a vision of what could happen to economics at MIT if provided with adequate support from Compton:

It seems to me that it is particularly appropriate for MIT to have in its department of economics persons who understand science and math­ematics. Your students come to their economics with two years of mathematics, two years of physics, a year of chemistry and are simul­taneously taking for the most part either physical chemistry or ther­modynamics.

h. Despite the three-year rule, Burbank had been chair for many years, and was to become chair again after Chamberlin's term expired.

students in one year a broader and deeper course of economics than can be given to ordinary economic students in two years.

Significantly, Wilson then explained that this was not just his own view, for he had discussed this with at least one of his Harvard colleagues:

In this opinion Leonard Crum agrees. Neither of us would mean that such a course should be in mathematical economics as such. My great trouble in teaching advanced economics at Harvard is to get the young economists to realize the importance of definitions, of consistency, and of logic. Even those who know considerable mathematics don't seem to know how to use it for scientific purposes.

Wilson was laying before Compton a vision of how MIT might develop its economics in a way calculated to make sense to MIT's physicist president.

In coming to the conclusion that Samuelson's profile was not a good fit with Harvard's teaching needs, it is important to realize the extent to which he was then regarded as a very narrow specialist. Hard as this is to imagine today, when academic economics is dominated by the use of math­ematics, “mathematical economics” was then considered a specific field of economics—one specialization among many and, moreover, one the impor­tance of which had not yet been established. In 1940, 70 percent of arti­cles on economic theory in the American Economic Review, the journal of the American Economic Association, used no mathematics at all.³⁹ Immediately after Samuelson defended his thesis, Wilson, one of the examiners, wrote to him urging that he should revise the text so as to as to make it acces­sible to “good economic theorists who are not primarily mathematical economists,” an end that required considerable rewriting and expansion of the text.

At this time, as Schumpeter explained, many applied fields were defined in relation to policy problems: agriculture, labor, transportation, public util­ities, control of industry, and public finance.⁴¹ To teach such fields it was necessary, to an extent perhaps not true today when theory has spread much further, to venture into facts and institutions. This was an area in which Samuelson was still considered weak, even by Wilson, who supported him so strongly. The remark, quoted earlier, that Wilson made to Burbank that “Perhaps he doesn't know much concrete economics” might be seen as quali­fied (perhaps because he was trying to persuade Burbank that Samuelson should be allowed to teach economics), but he was more explicit when he wrote to Henderson, with whom he could presumably be more frank, recom­mending Metzler for the Society of Fellows.

You may want me to compare him a little with Samuelson. As I see it he is nothing like the mathematician that Samuelson is though he has an adequate command of mathematics for an economist. As I see it he knows his economic phenomena and institutions a good deal better than Samuelson did when you took him on and is a better statistician.⁴²

Though the comparison is with Samuelson as he had been in 1937, it remains an unfavorable judgment of his knowledge of concrete phenomena, reinforced by comments about the narrowness of Samuelson's work: “I doubt whether he [Metzler] has a so highly specialized technique or is working or would be willing to work in so narrow a field as that of mathematical econom­ics.” Wilson even expressed the view that Metzler might end up being more influential than Samuelson because “although he understands mathematical economics he can express himself, and prefers to express himself so far as pos­sible in English.”

Arguments about teaching needs could be used to cover not only anti­Semitism but also hostility to Keynes.

A further problem arose from Harvard's reliance on a large number of instructors on fixed-term contracts, not all of whom could proceed to tenured contracts. This had come to a head in 1936—37, when the department rec­ommended that two instructors, John Walsh and Alan Sweezy, have their contracts renewed for an additional three years, with prospect of renewal; but Conant's administration, in its bid to raise academic standards, would offer no more than a nonrenewable two-year extension.⁴⁴ Walsh and Sweezy were popular teachers, but Conant thought they had not published enough. Though Conant insisted that the reason was their poor publication records, he was accused of discrimination against economists who held radical politi­cal views.⁴⁵ On the advice of Walter Lippmann, then chair of the depart­ment's visiting committee, and in response to a petition from 131 faculty members, Conant set up a committee of senior professors, the “Committee of Eight” to look into the matter.⁴⁶

The committee found that there had been no political bias, but that Walsh and Sweezy had not had a fair review and should be given a three- year extension as the department had recommended.

The undesirability of making an exception to the new rules was the reason why John Black opposed making an improved offer to Samuelson. He forgot to attend the executive committee meeting at which Samuelson's case was discussed, and the next day wrote apologetically to Chamberlin, saying:

My vote is against this [giving Samuelson a five-year appointment]. I think this is a fairly typical case of a young man whose services can be spared here for the next five years or so while he is getting expe­rience and developing stature somewhere else. I always believed in this phase of the new program. My objection was to the precipitable way the change was introduced. Now that we are over the precipice, I see no reason for taking an action which is in variance with the policy.⁴⁷

Wilson, too, thought Samuelson should be treated like anyone else and should wait his turn for promotion. He wrote to him:

The question has been raised of course as to whether the depart­ment of economics would at this time recommend you for a 5 year instructorship. I think you are pretty safe in counting on your getting a recommendation next spring for such an appointment if you don't get it now. For myself I agree in the main with Mr. Lowell's policy, as I understand it, which was the policy at Yale in the days when I was there, that able young people had to take their chances of getting what they wanted at the proper times and that a call to another institution shouldn't lead the university to make any future promises in advance of the regular time. I believe that as you advance in the academic world as you surely will you may yourself come to the conclusion that this is on the whole a sound policy no matter whether in your particu­lar instance at the moment the university commits itself to a 5 year appointment for you or does not.⁴⁸

It was not even clear that Samuelson was necessarily the strongest candidate for any permanent position that became vacant. He might be an exceptional candidate, but mathematical economics was widely considered a narrow specialization in which Harvard already had ample expertise. Harvard had to teach large numbers of undergraduates, most of whom lacked both the ability and the training to study mathematical economics.⁴⁹ Burbank's resis­tance to letting Samuelson teach introductory economics meant that he had been unable to demonstrate his ability to teach general economics, and even Wilson harbored doubts about whether Samuelson could communicate with economists outside the very small number who were trained in mathematics.

On Samuelson's side, there seems no reason to doubt his claim that he moved because he received a better offer. He was offered a higher salary, access to research grants, and better facilities than he could hope for at Harvard (including a telephone and a secretary). Not only that, but Wilson, who would have been well aware that MIT was being transformed from an essentially undergraduate engineering school into a full-fledged research uni­versity, had provided a clear vision of what could be achieved at MIT should Samuelson move there. However, in 1940, this was no more than a hope for the future. Samuelson faced a difficult decision and he agonized over it. While he was considering the offer, Rupert Maclaurin, who, as head of the Industrial Relations Section, was active in trying to build up MIT's econom­ics department, phoned Samuelson daily, dangling before him the prospect of research funds.⁵⁰ Samuelson also claimed that Harold Freeman talked him into taking the job.

However, it is more likely the decisive push came not from Wilson, Maclaurin, or Harold Freeman but from Marion. Coming from a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant family and being an insider to Harvard—a Radcliffe graduate who spent two years as an assistant to Harris—she could see the institution’s anti-Semitism and the barriers that would likely be in his way at Harvard more clearly than Paul could see them.⁵¹ It was she who persuaded him to take the plunge and accept the MIT offer. While Wilson’s vision of what Samuelson could achieve at MIT was to prove correct, his career was to develop in ways that neither he nor Wilson could foresee.