Schliesser wrote: "Let me note, first, that most of Roy's comments are appeals to authority. These should have a more limited place in a reasonable discussion then he appears fond of." In American English, we have the phrase "tin ear" to describe in pejorative terms an individual who "mishears" as in "appears insensitive to nuance". The reference to Porter's views were, to historians on this list, a reference to a subject that has appeared here many times, and indeed was involved in the very first HES-List Editorial. Porter wrote those words of course in the important response to Margaret Schabas's paper "Breaking Away" in HOPE, which symposium has helped shape debates on this list a number of times. Not then "authority", but an HES community shared reference. "Even though I am very familiar with the intellectual pedigree of Porter's writings, it seems to me baffling that Porter (or Roy) would think that the notion of a precursor could not find a home in the study of the intellectual efforts of various societies." The issue is not as trivial as Dr. Schliesser suggests (e.g. see my "Is 'Is a Precursor of' a Transitive Relation?" in the South Atlantic Quarterly, reprinted as well in several places). While what constitutes historical studies in economics may be seen, from a philosophy department's perspective, to be a matter of taste, matters for us historians are more pressing. In departments of economics, historians of economics are disappearing. There are precisely three places in North America where there are actual resources in place to sustain the subdiscipline beyond the usual faculty person. The New School sometimes appears to be one. George Mason has soft money for this purpose, and Duke has a variety of commitments in place. That is all there is. Whether any of these sites will remain viable ten years from now is uncertain. Having just been at a roundtable in Milan last week on "The Future of the History of Economics: Lessons from the Italian Experience", I submit that matters are not so dire here (I write from Rome), but are still problematic. For instance, the recent elimination of all journals in the history of economics from the international citation indices will certainly damage our subdiscipline in the Netherlands, England, and Italy. Dr. Schliesser suggests that intellectual history in the manner of Koyre or Berlin is important. Probably no one on this list would disagree, but the marginalization of intellectual history in North American departments of history would appear to suggest otherwise institutionally =96 historians themselves are providing little support for that kind of work. When individuals in the history of economics, in economics departments, are evaluated by their colleagues, the general presumption is that "they aren't really economists" and what they do is something any undergraduate with a word processor could do. The Notre Dame conflagration cannot but give us all pause. These days when some of us are called on to provide external evaluations of candidates in our field, the request letters require us to address issues of standards of quality in "our" field (which often means defending against a presumption that we have none) and how the field is connected, if at all, to larger intellectual concerns of both the department and the institution. A letter stating that "I enjoy reading his/her stuff" is singularly unhelpful to candidates under review. "Moreover, why should economics belong to the history of science and not, say, the history of political thought or philosophy?" If this argument is to be persuasive, then the alternative to the history of economics finding an institutional home in departments of history is for it to find a home in political science or philosophy. The former though requires connection to the older and less dynamic tradition in that field, namely political theory. And economists there will be substituted against in hiring and resource decisions: the split between the two kinds of political science is still causing institutional trouble. The philosophy option puts those with an interest in history among philosophers, individuals who are quite generally contemptuous of claims that economics is "scientific". The consequence is likely to be that mainstream economists will dismiss such philosophical-historians of economics as "heterodox critics", and shun them accordingly. Does anyone believe that access to archival materials that mainstream economists might deposit for future historians will be unaffected by mainstream economists' beliefs that historians of economics are idiots? "This diversity enriches us all. Come on, Roy, relax and enjoy it, too." The ironic foil-thrust of Professor Shah, to the "Sambo" list remark, is a model response. I am less accepting of such stuff, for were I or my colleagues to utter Schliesser's sentence in a coeducational class, we would face harassment accusations. Or was this another "tin ear" contribution to the thread? E. Roy Weintraub