Celebrating 200 Years of Bowdoin Economics

Celebrating 200 Years of Bowdoin Economics

By Tom Porter

The economics department celebrated an important birthday over Homecoming Weekend 2024: It's two hundred years since Bowdoin dedicated faculty efforts specifically to economics-one of the first colleges in the country to do so!

Faculty past and present were joined by alumni, students, and other members of the Bowdoin community over the weekend to celebrate this milestone.

"The economics department has been central to the prestige and reputation of Bowdoin College for the past two hundred years," said William D. Shipman Professor of Economics Zorina Khan in her lunchtime keynote lecture on Saturday, September 28. Her talk was titled "1824 and All That: How Bowdoin Economics Made History."

Khan introduced the audience to Samuel Phillips Newman, a Harvard graduate originally hired to teach classics at Bowdoin but who, in 1824, was appointed the nation's first professor of political economy, a post he held until 1839. From these beginnings, she said, Bowdoin affiliates helped shape the US economy and were at the forefront of the American take-off in industrial and technological advances.

Under Newman's tenure, she explained, Bowdoin became a prominent place of political-economic thinking. "Even Karl Marx was paying attention," Khan observed. "In Das Kapital he scathingly derided the 'childish arguments of modern economists,' citing Newman's Elements of Political Economy to prove his point."

Students of Newman, noted Khan, included Henry Varnum Poor (Class of 1835), financial analyst and founder of what would go on to become Standard and Poor's Rating Agency, and John Appleton (Class of 1834), a famous lawyer and diplomat who was also a strong supporter of free trade and denouncer of protectionism.

"The success of Bowdoin economics," concluded Khan, "has always been due to the caliber of our students, who are part of a long tradition of excellence in economic thinking."

Associate Professor of Economics Stephen Meardon, who co-organized the weekend's events, said: "The bicentennial of economics at Bowdoin is an occasion for econ students and faculty to look to the past for inspiration in our coursework and scholarship."

Meardon went on to honor the many inspirational Bowdoin economists who followed in the footsteps of Newman. "When he took Bowdoin's helm in the early 1870s, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain saw the college as 'behind the times,' so he paved the way for curricular options and specializations befitting the 'age of science.'"

Notable economists who went on to grace the corridors of the College include Henry C. Emery, Class of 1892, the first alumnus to hold an economics professorship. Emery would go on to ply his trade at Yale and in the Taft administration, said Meardon.

"By the turn of the twentieth century, econ was well planted at Bowdoin as a field of elective study, with expanding course options reflecting the economic problems of the times and students applying their knowledge to find solutions.

"Paul Douglas, Class of 1913, studied econ, excelled in debate, then became a prominent professor at the University of Chicago, president of the American Economic Association, and US Senator from Illinois." Then there was Albert Abrahamson, Class of 1926, H'71, who served the department as a professor well into the 1970s. Abrahamson also worked for the federal government on labor issues and Jewish resettlement during the 1930s and 40s.

"The distinguished list goes on and on," added Meardon. "Our late colleague A. Myrick Freeman taught generations of Bowdoin students from 1965 until his retirement in 2000, all the while pioneering the emerging field of environmental economics."

A Guest Speaker
Economic historian Thomas (Tim) Leonard of Princeton University also featured over the weekend, providing some perspective on the economists of the progressive era of the early twentieth century.

Leonard delivered the F. Thomas O'Halloran '77, P'13 Family Lecture, titled "The Wise Minority in the Saddle: When American Economists Became Experts."

The early years of the twentieth century saw an explosion in economic growth, as immigration, urbanization, and industrialization transformed the nation. These years also saw a sizeable increase in the number of economists, said Leonard, and the emergence of economics as a distinct, technocratic discipline-something that helped the US grow into a modern regulatory state, complete with federal agencies and a central bank.

Although many of the economists of this era, several of whom would have been part of the Bowdoin community, may have been the progressives of their day, said Leonard, their ideas on subjects like immigration and eugenics would be unpalatable to most people now. Echoing the words of George Orwell, Leonard reminded us that "we all write as partisans," meaning that it's impossible for people to escape their own perspectives and values. "The lesson for scholars, historians, economists, and the rest, is 'proceed with deep intellectual humility.'"

Leonard is author of Illiberal Reformers:Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era (Princeton University Press, 2016).

Students Showcased
The subject of illiberal reformers was no doubt very much on the mind of Sammy Dereje '25 when he compiled his project on Henry Pratt Fairchild, who was professor of economics and sociology at Bowdoin in the early twentieth century.

Dereje was among the handful of students showcasing some of their research in poster presentations over the weekend. His was called "The Paradox of Henry Pratt Fairchild"-the paradox being that, on one hand, Fairchild was a progressive economist with advanced views on how to improve society and promote free intellectual inquiry, while on the other he was, like many white thinkers of the time, a committed eugenicist who expressed concerns about the impact that immigrants could have on the American working population.

For his presentation, Jason Lach '25 chose to profile the afore-mentioned Albert Abrahamson, the long-serving Bowdoin professor who also did valuable government work.

"Abrahamson served as a staff economist in the FDR administration, he was an administrator for Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, and he was head of the National Refugee Service, where he helped Jewish refugees displaced during the war," said Lach. "His long career was marked less by his economic research than by his dedication to public service." Lach said Abrahamson was a great example of those economists from the 1930s to 1970s who were known for their role in public service and government.

Austria Morehouse '25 elected to highlight a more recent chapter in the story of the department: the role of women economists at Bowdoin. "As an interdisciplinary econ and visual arts/art history double major, I absolutely loved exploring the differing participation of female scholars in both areas."

This chapter got underway at the mid-1970s with the appointment of Matilda White Riley as Bowdoin's first female full professor of economics. Another important figure is Bion R. Cram Professor of Economics Rachel Connelly, who has been on the faculty since 1985, becoming the first tenured woman economics professor in 1992.

Professor Meardon also praised Connelly-an internationally known economist in the fields of labor economics, economic demography, and applied econometrics-as a key figure in the ongoing story of excellence among Bowdoin economists. "She has expanded the department's reach to new subjects and students."

No doubt there are future additions to Bowdoin's record of distinction preparing their minds and works right now, added Meardon. "Expect their announcement at the semiquincentennial!"

Published October 01, 2024