There has never been an Austrian School economist on the faculty of an Ivy League university. There have been two ex-Austrians.
Three decades ago, Fritz Machlup taught at Princeton, but he had long since abandoned his Austrian views. He had been a follower of Mises until the 1940s. Mises saved his life by persuading him to get out of Europe before the Nazis took over.
Gottfried Habeerler taught at Harvard. He was famous for his book on depressions. It abandoned Mises’ theory of the business cycle. He left Harvard in 1971.
There is a pattern here. The Ivy League does not consider Austrian School economics to be economics. This is fine with me. Mises did not consider Keynesianism to be economics.
There are no witch hunts in Ivy League schools. Witches never get hired, so they need not be hunted.
But the mythology of academic freedom survives in Ivy League schools.
Faculty screening is analogous to editorial screening in the New York City-dominated book world, 1935-2000. There was no book burning in America. That was because conservative books rarely got into print. Throughout my youth, there were only three publishers of conservative books and non-interventionist books on American foreign policy that showed that FDR had maneuvered the Japanese to attack: Regnery (small), Devin-Adair (smaller), and Caxton (smallest). None was in New York City. Caxton was in Caldwell, Idaho. (Where?)
Recently, the younger brother of a Columbia University undergraduate in film studies asked an economics department advisor if the school had courses on Austrian economics. The professor gave him a surprised look and, trying to be helpful, responded: “We offer international economics.” She then turned to her colleague who responded tersely: “Not at Columbia.”
The first professor is simply uneducated. He is on the faculty, but he is like most economics professors: shielded from intellectual history. The other one was representative of the brighter ones who wield power: systematic in his hostility.
I have this theory of economics. If you want an education, don’t spend $250,000 of your parents’ money to attend an Ivy League school. Get your accredited degree in two or three years for anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 at an online school. The degree will not be worth as much as a degree from an Ivy League school, but since a B.A. degree these days from anywhere is worth practically nothing anyway, you save money (or your parents d0) by doing it my way.
From Tea Party Economist, here.