Ec Department Will Vote Whether to Hire Marxist

The Economics Department will reconsider the case of Herbert M. Gintis, lecturer on Education and a "radical" economist who was denied an appointment to the Economics, faculty three years ago.

James S. Duesenberry, chairman of the Department, will recommend at an executive committee meeting this afternoon that Gintis be made an associate professor, John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg Professor of Economics, said yesterday.

Gintis said yesterday that he felt he had only a slight chance of being hired.

The faculty to being forced to reconsider Gintis's case because of a strong protest concerning the Department's alleged political discrimination in hiring practices, Arthur MacEwan, assistant professor of Economics, said yesterday.

The Department last month refused to rehire both MacEwan and Samuel S. Bowles associate professor of Economics. Both men are "radical" economists--economists who draw heavily on Mark, emphasizing the role of social institutions and class, structure on economic behavior.

Duesenberry denied yesterday that he was responding to public pressure to hire a radical economist. I don't feel that I am doing anything that I own want to do, he said. He refused to consistent further on today's meeting.

Gintis, whose work concerns the effects of the social relations of production on the class structure, was a lecturer on Economics in 1969-1970. The Department voted not to appoint him to an assistant professorship, making him the first of four radical economists in the Department who have been denied promotion in the past four years.

Gintis said that he expects about four out of the 25 senior faculty, members to support him.

Galbraith said that he would support Gintis's appointment as he had supported the promotion of Bowles and Mackwan.

"Gintis is outstanding both for his teaching and his publications," Galbraith said. "I consider his interests very much like my own."

Stephen A. Marglin '59, professor of Economics and the only tenured "radical" economist on the Department, and yesterday that he would also support Gintis's appointment.

Several other senior faculty members refused to comment on Gintis's case, objecting to the widespread publicity the Economics Department has attracted lately.

The Department's decision not to rehire Bowles and MacEwan received attention from national television and news publications. Last Tuesday's Boston Globe reported that the Harvard Economics Department was "embroiled in charges of political influence in hiring practices and repression of an approach to the study of economics."

Stories concerning the Department's decision also appeared in The Wall Street Journal and on a national television news broadcast last week.

At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Toronto last month, William Lazonick, a third-year graduate student in Economics, introduced a resolution condemning political discrimination against radical economics in hiring practices.

Lazonick said yesterday that he thought the Department's move to reconsider Gintis's case was for appearances' sake and that he did not think the Department would note to appoint Gintis.

Gintis has been a lecturer and a research associate of the Center for Educational Policy at the school of Education since 1970