No More Marxists

UMass Amherst Magazibe ^ | 1/07 | Cadorette, Price

[pabianice]

UMass hires Marxist Mwangi wa Githinji as a professor of economics (“Economist for the Proletariat,” page 8, Fall 2006). Didn’t anybody in the Department of Economics get the memo that Marxism as an economic principle has been discredited everywhere it has been used? The only places Marxism is relevant is in the rarefied air of academia and dictatorships where human rights don’t matter.

Hiring a Marxist to be an economics professor is like hiring a gardener to work at a parking garage. What he knows won’t be of much use to anybody and it certainly wouldn’t appear to be money well spent. wa Githinji’s students will have to waste time in his class, learning concepts and ideas that have no relevance in the real world. Taxpayers foot the bill for an employee who teaches something akin to Trivial Pursuit™ and their hard-earned tax dollars are wasted yet again. UMass continues to cast its reputation as the far-left bastion in western Massachusetts that causes my friends who graduated from other colleges to snicker at how loony the place can really be.

I understand that exposure to different ideas and beliefs is part of what makes college fun and interesting. But Marxism has proved itself to be harmful, some would argue disastrous, to those it has been imposed upon. Students, taxpayers, and UMass Amherst would all be better served if Marxist textbooks were collecting dust in some storeroom and Marxist professors were getting hired somewhere else. Neal Cadorette ’90 Somerset

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It’s not surprising that the economics department has hired yet another Marxist. The leftist tilt in that department, and throughout much of academia, is well known. But still, one would have thought that the dramatic failure of Marxism as an economic system, as well as the accumulating evidence that Marxists murdered more than 100 million people while spreading their tyranny during the 20th century, would be cause for some circumspection before continuing to push that failed ideology on another generation of students. Your article at least reminds me why I do not and will not designate any part of my yearly donations to the University to support its academic programs. Instead I designate my gifts for things like campus beautification, which the university needs much more than another Marxist professor. R. Edward Price ’91 Rochester, New York

[pabianice]

Companion to this

[Sherman Logan]

Taxpayers foot the bill for an employee who teaches something akin to Trivial Pursuit™

I object.

Trivial Pursuit teaches a great many actual facts that might have something resembling usefulness in the real world.

[pabianice]

Economist for the Proletariat

Incoming economics professor Mwangi wa Githinji took for the name of his first book a phrase from a speech Kenyan freedom fighter turned parliamentarian J. M. Kariuki gave shortly before he was assassinated. He warned that his country was headed in the direction of having “10 millionaires and 10 million beggars.”

According to Mwangi, a Kenyan who describes himself as a Marxist with an interest in development and the environment, his country went that route and now suffers from some of the worst inequality on the globe.

Mwangi is currently working on several projects. One is in Kenya, looking at ways in which the benefits of economic growth can be distributed more equitably by making sure growth is accompanied by job creation.

He is also launching an endeavor in Jamaica, studying the interactions between humans and land crabs in the resort area of Negril. The issue there is that the crustaceans spend much of their lives out of the water but they need to return to the ocean to spawn. They also play an important role as food for other ocean species. As a Marxist, Mwangi is especially interested in examining how the class interests of the stakeholders (such as farmers, hotel owners, and people who fish) play into how this part of the wildlife is managed.

Mwangi notes that the kind of analysis he does challenges the orthodoxy of neoclassical economists who dominate the discipline, adding that mainstream economics doesn’t do a very good job of explaining the problems facing most of the people in the world.

Mwangi wa Githinji, Economics, and his partner, Renae Brodie, a biology professor at Mount Holyoke College

[gipper81]

I had a friend in graduate school a long time ago who attended UMass (undergrad) and was told by him that there was only 1 non-Marxist in the economics department at that time. Isn’t it reassuring to know that UMass has remained steadfast in the face of globalization, economic realities, academic pressures and the truth???

[3AngelaD]

Where all these little well trained marxists finding job? Congress?

[newguy357]

Where all these little well trained marxists finding job? Congress?

Eventually. I know one who got her undergrad. degree in econ from this school... now in law school. I suppose congress after that, as it is the logical step.

[Quick or Dead]

Instead I designate my gifts for things like campus beautification, which the university needs much more than another Marxist professor.

UMass Amhurst needs more Marxists like it needs an outbreak of bubonic plague.

[The Worthless Miracle]

Wonder how he negotiated his salary?

[rollo tomasi]

Used to be a lot of Universities were for searching “truth”.

Now it’s a playground for spreading the ideology of dead German/Easter European self-hating Jews and that dead dude born in Prussia from the loins of a Lutheran minister.

Go against this ideology you get a bad grade.

Made a mistake one time in class. Professor on the first day of class, preaching from the works of a dead German self-hating Jew, proudly proclaimed “There are no absolutes”. I responded by asking him “Are you absolutely sure”.

Needless to say I was demonized for the rest of the semester.

[WallStsk8r]

They both look like they need to hit the gym. Too much 1st world food.

[TexanToTheCore]

Why don’t they hire a professor to teach the subjects of bloodletting for Healing, or perhaps a course of the use of leeches. Just about as relevant.

[Rummyfan]

Mwangi notes that the kind of analysis he does challenges the orthodoxy of neoclassical economists who dominate the discipline, adding that mainstream economics doesn’t do a very good job of explaining the problems facing most of the people in the world.

The man sounds like an idiot, albeit a well-educated one. Yet he still sees marxism as a viable economic system... the twentieth-century must have escaped his study.

[massgopguy]

IT WAS THE MOOPS!

[Argus]

Hiring a Marxist to be an economics professor is like hiring a gardener to work at a parking garage

Actually it's more like hiring a child molester to babysit your kids.

[popdonnelly]

“As a Marxist, Mwangi is especially interested in examining how the class interests of the stakeholders (such as farmers, hotel owners, and people who fish) play into how this part of the wildlife is managed.”

Let’s not neglect the class interests of the crabs.

[popdonnelly]

The land crabs wouldn’t be safe from those two.

[Clock King]

Soft in the head and a Soft Scientist. Both are paid too much money to do nothing of any use to anybody. Hope I never get into discussions with folks like this, because I can no longer hold my tongue on these matters.

[M. Mobius]

Two points: 1. It is important to recognize that the term “Marxian theory” is usually distinguished from the term “Marxist.” The former is a theoretical framework with a long lineage and one that has many branches and has influenced other theoretical frameworks, including neoclassical economic theory. Many conservative economists have been influenced by concepts and arguments that had their origins within Marxian theory, including Joseph Schumpeter and many members of the Austrian School. The latter is usually a political moniker, although it masks far more than it discloses. It is not necessary to be a political leftist to make use of Marxian theoretical concepts.

The second point is that we need to listen to Horowitz’s argument about opening up the theoretical field in academic, rather than promoting censorship. If we censor someone on the basis of their their choice of theoretical concepts, then we implicitly support the exclusion of conservative theorists who do not fit some rigid “mainstream” just as much as we exclude “Marxists” or others who are similarly “outsiders.”

The real goal should be more diversity in theoretical frameworks, whatever the explicit or implicit political leanings of the thinker. The more ideas students are exposed to, the greater the probability they will find ways to be innovative and contribute useful knowledge to society.