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My name is Loic Charles, I am a French assistant professor in economics specialized in
thick history of economics (18th French economics).
 
I have just one comment on the discussion which has been going on for a few days now and
two queries to American historian of economics with an interest in thick history.
First, I think that the idea that heterodox economists are more open minded and less anti-
intellectual than orthodox economists is simply non-sense, at least in France. When it
comes to the history of economics, or economic thought as they prefer to call it, they
hold the same kind of excluding
policy against historians of economics doing "thick history" than orthodox economist do
against them in the economic discipline. My personal case (and that of few others who had
less luck than I, and have now left the academic world) is exemplary. It took me four
years to secure a position at the university and the position I finally got is in a
department that had not developped an interest in the history of economics in whatever
form: They
recruited me as a "normal economist" with a specialisation in the subdiscipline of the
history of economics and they count on me to publish in good academic journals. At the
same time, none of the three universities that had announced that they they needed an
historian of economic thought was interested in my application, simply because they were
interested and wanted to recruit an heterodox type of historian of economic thought
without regards for the intellectual quality of the discourses and writings of the
candidates in presence. I don't blame them: they simply follow the policy that suits their
best interests, just as orthodox economists do when they exclude heterodox economists from
the discipline as Roy has explained it, but they are no more open-minded and
intellectually-inclined than the others.
 
Now the questions: 
1. American and English historians have developed during the last few years a rapidly
growing interest in the the history of 18th century French and Scottish economics. Several
articles, most of them very interesting and
challenging, were published in leading Historical Journals such as the "Historical
Journal", "Journal of modern history", "French history", "French Historical Studies" and
even the "Economic History Review". Is there a possibility in the Anglo-saxon system to
develop institutionally (I mean
positions, Ph. D., etc.) the parallel interest that scolars in different departments
(History, History of Science and Economics) are developing for HE?
and 2. Why there are so few conferences (and more generally collaborations) that
associates Intellectual Historians (save historians of science) and economists in the USA?
 
Loïc Charles 
Université Paris II 
 
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