At the Edge of Camelot: Debating Economics in Turbulent Times

This book tells the story of an academic department that underwent rapid, wrenching changes at a time and in a place that one would not have expected them to have occurred. The time was the late 1960s through the 1970s and the place was a public university heavily dependent on state funding. The Cold War was raging, the US public was fearful of communism and the Soviet Union, and politicians were speaking to these fears for political ends. The economics department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was in turmoil. In this environment a significant proportion of the department's visible faculty of traditional economists was rapidly created and in spite of the anti-Marxist political climate and the dependence of the university on state politicians for funding, was quickly replaced by a significant visible group of Marxian economists. This book covers the particulars of the background for these events relating to the University of Massachusetts, the political activism of the period, and the state of the economics profession. It describes the events themselves in considerable detail, the multi-year turmoil within the economics department associated with them, the eventual resolution of that turmoil into an intellectually exciting and friendly atmosphere, the significance of the events in terms of academic endeavor, and their legacy for the economics profession.

Table of Contents:
Preface 1. Introduction 2. A Short History of the University of Massachusetts 3. The Civil Rights and Vietnam-War-Protest Movements 4. The American Economics Profession 5. The Kindahl Era 6. The Transition to Radical Political Economics 7. The First Three Years of Radical Presence 8. Learning to Live Together 9. Epilogue Appendix A: Time Line Appendix B: Heterodox Economics at Three Other Universities

About the Author :
Donald W. Katzner is Professor of Economics and former Chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received his B.A in Mathematics from Oberlin College, and his M.A. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota. He has previously taught at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Waterloo (Ontario), and California (San Diego).

Review :
"Quite honorable...an honest, candid account of the golden age of the UMass economics department.... Given the richness of its detail and insightfulness of its author, Katzner's book will serve for years to come as a principal source of how the UMass economics department was fundamentally transformed--in many ways, against all odds--into the premier program of radical political economy in the United States."--EH.net "Professor Katzner has written a fascinating and astonishingly balanced and fair account of one of the most exciting, controversial, successful educational experiments I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing and, as an outside colleague, participating in. It is no accident that this happened at a State University and not at one of the Ivy League institutions. I recommend this book to anyone interested in seeing what intelligence, courage, and good will can create in the Academy. Oh yes--I took Don Katzner's graduate Microeconomics course in the Spring of 1978. It was smokin'."--Robert Paul Wolff, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst "While many economists have strong attachments to particular economics departments, those work sites of economists appear to have no history. Professor Katzner has recognized that the circumstances associated with the creation of the modern University of Massachusetts Economics Department in the late 1960s says a great deal about the responses of the economics profession in the US to the political and intellectual turmoil of those years. The story is engaging and since Katzner was an important on-site witness, the tale's authenticity makes for a compelling read. All economists who are interested in how respectful cooperation grew out of a protracted institutional conflict, and thus how the most important non-standard economics program in the US came into being, will need to read this book."--E. Roy Weintraub, Duke University "Very interesting and informative...Katzner has written a wonderful book about a very important economics department. This is how department histories should be written."--OEconomia "At the Edge of CamelotIR is a thoughtful and at times touching addition to the history of higher education in the United States. It summarizes the earlier years of the university, with a brief reference to student strikes in the late 1860s (one against a manual labor requirement and one against a forced march to Amherst College's chapel on a hot day), and it includes a refresher chapter on U.S. social and political life in the 1960s. Anyone who does not remember what the Gulf of Tonkin incident was, or when Eugene McCarthy ran for president, can get a quick catch-up here."--Amherst Bulletin