Hypothesis to be tested: E. Roy cannot handle evidence that is inconsistent with his projected authority.

The assertions: 

E. Roy: Klein "decided to decline the [Michigan] offers in favor of a peaceful life with his family ... There was, in fact no successful "campaign" against Klein ... The entire episode [sic] a tale with no Austrian/Hayekian/Mt. Pelerin-ian connection whatsoever ... accountant William Paton [was] certainly no Austrian." 

Bruce's "fact-checked" argumentum ab auctoritate fallacy: "Roy Weintraub, who knows the Klein case well, has recently sent to the list a message that summarizes the documentary evidence concerning the Klein case, and concludes that there 'is no Austrian/Hayekian/Mt. Pelerin-ian ​connection whatsoever'."  

Why didn't Bruce mention Paton?

The documentary evidence:

1. Klein: "A large scale digital computer was installed at Michigan, and we started a project for automatic model solution - simulation, if you like - but it was not quite brought to fruition before I was to leave Ann Arbor. In the McCarthy era I left Michigan for the peace and academic freedom of Oxford ... In 1958 I returned to America and took up a professorship at Pennsylvania, where I admired the position of the president, provost and deans on the serious matter of academic freedom". 

2. After a visit to Nazi Germany, Hugh Dalton noted that “Geistige Gleichschaltung [intellectual coordination] is the Nazi ideal in education. There is something of this to in the economics department of the [London] school of economics”.
  
3. Klein: "Bill Phillips was a remarkable person. Our last encounter was in 1971. It was evident that the stroke had laid low the person that I remember from England of the mid-1950s, full of exuberance, fresh ideas, and optimism about our subject. We had good opportunities then to discuss wages, inflation, unemployment, and the many promising leads for econometric research, when he visited Oxford for a seminar at the Institute of Statistics". 

Hayek appeared to believe that "Bill Phillips" was an underground communist who operated war-time transmission stations for the Soviets.

4. 9 February 1950: McCarthy "I have in my pocket the names of ... 

1950: within weeks of arriving at the University of Chicago, Hayek began circulating names of alleged faculty subversives.  

5. The "campaign against Klein": When Michigan considered promoting Klein from part time lecturer to full professor, Patton (11 February 1955) insisted that Hayek be allowed to “respond candidly”. 

6. Patton reminded Hayek that the Jewish-born, Keynesian econometrician was “completely in the wrong camp”.  

7. The University of Michigan invited Hayek to pass judgment on Klein. 

8. "Patton was certainly no Austrian": For services to Austrian "freedom", Patton was rewarded with membership of Hayek's Mont Pelerin Society (from memory, the following year).

Why did Bruce keep you in the dark?

Klein, L. 2000. The Phillips Curve in Macroeconomics. In Leeson, R. 2000. ed. *A. W. H. Phillips: Collected Works in Contemporary Perspective*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
             
----- Original Message -----
From: "E. Roy Weintraub" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, 4 June, 2014 4:39:41 AM
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Lawrence Klein

​Leeson said:​
Some of the material about the Austrian campaign to block Klein's promotion is missing.  Did Klein leave archival papers? Any suggestions about other archival sources?

​Since Mason Gaffney asked about sources for my reply to Leeson:

The main reference is: Brazer, M. C. (1982). The Economics Department of the University of Michigan: A Centennial Retrospective. Economics and the World Around It. S. H. Hymans. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press:
133-275. The Klein material is on pages 219-228.

Brazer had access to all the department letters, and all administrative and university officer files, to write the piece -- see her footnote documentation.

See also Ellen W. Schrecker's No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (Oxford, 1986), pp 253-255.

And see also Klein's own statement in:

Investigation of Communist activities in the State of Michigan. Hearings (1954). United States Congress. House Committee on Un-American Activities. Washington DC: Part 1, pp.4991-5083.

​That testimony can be found on line by Google.

The entire episode a tale with no Austrian/Hayekian/Mt. Pelerin-ian connection whatsoever. Between Leo Scharfman and Gardner Ackley, the two Michigan chairmen at that time, the department, with one exception (accountant William Paton, 1889-1991 -- papers at the Univ of Florida and certainly no Austrian), behaved fairly and honorably. There was, in fact no successful "campaign" against Klein. Whether there was, or one can imagine, any Austrian campaign I cannot guess, but if there was, it was so ineffective that Klein was twice re-offered the Professorial position he sought, but he decided to decline the offers in favor of a peaceful life with his family.

​--
E. Roy Weintraub
Professor of Economics
Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy
<http://hope.econ.duke.edu/>
Duke University
www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html