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David Colander's point is generally correct, but there are some 
institutional subtleties that shape his argument, and which can be 
developed by considering some "historical" material.  
 
In American Ph.D programs in Economics, it was not the Economics 
Departments that had the language requirements, but rather the graduate 
schools themselves that had the requirements. It is for example the Duke 
Graduate School, or the U of Penn Graduate School, that awards degrees and 
in fact sets degree requirements. In the "old days"  of fifty years ago, 
most US graduate schools had the requirement that for graduation (Ph.D), 
one needed reading fluency in two languages. In Mathematics at Penn in the 
1960s that was certainly the case. Over time that eroded, and by 1970 or so 
"programming" became a substitute for one language in that matheamtics 
department.  
 
Economics by 1970 had one language with math replacing the grad school's 
"second language" requirement. Over time all science departments, and then 
social science departments, petitioned the Graduate Faculties around the US 
for modification of the "two language" rule. I had to appear before the 
august Executive Committee of the Graduate Faculty sometime in the 1970s as 
Graduate Director in Economics to make our request for the waiver of the 
rule in our case. The vote in their group was favorable to our request, but 
was actually close, with a classicist leading the opposition. After a 
hiatus of a decade or so, the petitions began coming in to replace the 
single language with computer facility, and by the end of the 1980s, the 
Graduate School had gone out of the language requirement business, leaving 
it up to departments. Many humanities departments retained the two language 
requirement, while some dropped to one plus something; it has been said 
that the reason for the huge numerical imbalance in the American Historical 
Association between American historians and other kinds of historians is 
the need for the others to read German! 
 
Thus David's point about the rise in the use of English in economics is in 
fact a small part of a larger picture, since English use is hardly confined 
to economics, but is shared by mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, 
computer science, engineering, and various social sciences as well. And the 
graduate students in those areas of the sciences too are mostly non-native 
English speakers. 
 
E. Roy Weintraub 
Duke University 
 
 
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