{"id":885,"date":"2007-03-04T18:51:22","date_gmt":"2007-03-04T22:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=885"},"modified":"2007-03-04T18:51:22","modified_gmt":"2007-03-04T22:51:22","slug":"freakonomics-author-fails-history-of-econ-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=885","title":{"rendered":"Freakonomics author fails history of econ 101"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steven D. Levitt gets an &#8220;F&#8221; for understanding the history of his own discipline in his blog entry <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freakonomics.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/03\/lets-just-get-rid-of-tenure\/\">Let&#8217;s just get rid of tenure (including mine)<\/a>.&nbsp; He writes,<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The idea that tenure protects scholars who are doing politically unpopular work strikes me as ludicrous. While I can imagine a situation where this issue might rarely arise, I am hard pressed to think of actual cases where it has been relevant.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Apparently Levitt never heard of the 1940s pressure of dairy interests to force the withdrawal of Iowa State College&#8217;s pamphlet on the economic benefits of margarine in a wartime economy, <a href=\"http:\/\/books.nap.edu\/openbook.php?record_id=9681&amp;page=302\">Ted Schultz<\/a>&#8216;s defense of the pamphlet, and Schultz&#8217;s leaving Iowa State in disgust afterwards. I had assumed that was common lore among economists, given Schultz&#8217;s status in the field, but maybe I&#8217;m wrong.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update<\/em>: Kevin Carey <a href=\"http:\/\/www.quickanded.com\/2007\/03\/tenure-wars.html\">disputes the significance of my remarks<\/a>. I will acknowledge that in the rush of yesterday evening I went for the credibility issue that struck me, suggesting that Levitt was shooting from the hip rather than thinking about his own discipline.&nbsp;(There are <em>still<\/em> vested interests in economics.)&nbsp;I&#8217;ll stick with that judgment and let others go for the main issue of whether academic freedom requires tenure. &#8230; for now. It&#8217;s the week before spring break, and too many things to do to give a full response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steven D. Levitt gets an &#8220;F&#8221; for understanding the history of his own discipline in his blog entry Let&#8217;s just get rid of tenure (including mine).&nbsp; He writes, The idea that tenure protects scholars who are doing politically unpopular work strikes me as ludicrous. While I can imagine a situation where this issue might rarely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-freedom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-eh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}