http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5aae33bc-069b-11e1-8a16-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1d1nl5qVh
By Shannon Bond in New York
Greg Mankiw had noticed for some years that the students taking his economics class at Harvard University seemed overly concerned about preparing for their careers. This week, things appeared to change.
On Wednesday, about 70 students walked out of Economics 10, the introductory class Professor Mankiw teaches, to protest at what they called a bias towards a destructive brand of free-market economics.
Prof Mankiw, who served as chairman of George W. Bush’s council of economic advisers and is an adviser to Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential contender, acknowledged that his résumé probably contributed to the decision to target his class, which at 700 students has the highest enrolment of any undergraduate course.“We found a course that espouses a specific – and limited – view of economics that we believe perpetuates problematic and inefficient systems of economic inequality in our society today,” they said in an open letter to him. “There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory.”
The course, commonly knows as Ec 10, is a requirement for several undergraduate majors and carries a pedigree that is influential even by Harvard standards. Mr Mankiw’s predecessor was Martin Feldstein, who served as chief economic adviser to Ronald Reagan. Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and economics adviser to President Barack Obama, acted as a teaching fellow for the course in the 1970s.
The student protesters emphasised the course’s influence, writing: “Harvard graduates play major roles in the financial institutions and in shaping public policy around the world”.
Prof Mankiw told the Financial Times that while he disagreed with the protesters, he had “significant respect” for their activism. He said: “Over recent years, I’ve seen Harvard students becoming increasingly pre-professional. That they are sitting back and thinking broadly about social issues ... those are good questions for students to be asking, and to the extent that Occupy Wall Street sparks debate, that’s good.”
He joins a list of establishment figures targeted or caught in the crossfire around the Occupy Wall Street movement. Two clerics at St Paul’s Cathedral in London have resigned amid debate on evicting protesters from church land, while Jean Quan, the mayor of Oakland, California, is facing demands for a recall election over her handling of a local protest in which police have repeatedly used tear gas and rubber bullets against activists.
Prof Mankiw has written two widely used economics textbooks. In one, he called the idea that tax cuts pay for themselves “fad economics”, a position that raised eyebrows when he joined the Bush administration.
He said he taught “a mainstream economics course” without any political agenda. “I think most students appreciate that.”
By coincidence, the topic of Wednesday’s lecture was income inequality – one of the main complaints of the wide-ranging Occupy protest movement.
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