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During World War I, a number of faculty members at different 
institutions were fired for pacifist or otherwise "anti-American" views. 
Charles Beard, the political scientist/historian who pretty much defined 
the [incorrect] concept in American history of "economic interpretation" 
(and whose emphasis on Madison's Federalist X as the key to the 
Constitution is still used by NON-historians) quit Columbia University 
to spend the rest of his life on a farm, making his living by writing 
textbooks, because a colleague was fired for political reasons.  I don't 
know if his colleague was an economist or not.   
 
Also, through most of the 20th century, nativism, anti-Catholicism, and 
anti-Semitism could be disguised easily as opposition to America's 
political enemies, and the anti-American ideologies that could creep in 
from abroad.  Thus it might be difficult to separate censorship of 
ideological belief from discrimination against non-WASPs in the Academy. 
 
However, I would suspect that in the United States, at least, the 
censorship was more often polite and indirect rather than direct:  what 
was an appropriate topic, vs. what was not  -- the STRONG 
political/cultural viewpoint on a dichotomy between "socialistic" and 
"free," which made certain economic views simply not discussable because 
they were "unAmerican", shows up (I believe) in the narrowing of 
discussion of economic policy to what could be classified as 
"macroeconomics," and the further evisciating of formal theories of 
economic policy to Buchanan's narrow "everything is self-interest" 
formula.   
 
The result of the narrowing in America -- topics which "could not be 
discussed" -- was that many topics which really are economics "fled", so 
to speak, to anthropology and sociology and political science -- and  
history.  The result is some very disjointed and confused thinking in 
the academy as a whole when it comes to these topics. 
 
But also -- throughout the social sciences in the post-World War II era, 
there was a desire to emphasize, discover, explain what was "American" 
-- Europe had clearly self-destructed -- what "saved" us?  Hence, for 
example, the search for The Causes of Economic Growth -- if we could 
find the secret to Our Happiness and Prosperity, we could share it with 
the "underdeveloped" world.   
 
Whereas the focus in the social sciences before World War II had been 
adjusting to and benefiting from the rise in great institutions, the 
focus after World War II was on creating an ideology of the American 
economy that could not be called an ideology.  The ideology of what was 
"natural". 
 
Sorry about all the run-on sentences ... rather out of it today and not 
at all sure about what I wrote, but what the heck -- throwing it in for 
the sake of discussion (rather goes with the common sense thread too, 
yes?) 
 
Mary Schweitzer, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of History, Villanova University 
(on medical leave since January 1995 with CFIDS) 
mailto:[log in to unmask] 
http://pw1.netcom.com/~schweit2/history.html 
The CFIDS/M.E. Information Page: http://www.cfids-me.org/ 
 
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