Just a quick thought. I would argue that the main drawback to history of economic thought as traditionally taught is the dominance of a Whig theory of the history of ideas. Thus, I think it is important to convey to students that the history of economic thought is vitally important for today's debates. For my PhD course, for example, I teach the course as a series of debates since 1870s and in fact attempt to show that the way these debates were often resolved was questionable from a certain perspective -- thus the debate is still very much alive. Or to use Kenneth Boulding's wonderful phrase, the debates are part of our extended present. I start the class with a heavy dose of contraWhig: Boulding's great HOPE paper "After Samuelson, Who Needs Adam Smith?", Jacob Viner's graduation address to Brown, "A Modest Plea for a Return to Scholarship in Graduate Education", Mitchell's introduction to Types of Economic Theory, and Karen Vaughn's recent HES presidential address. This is to contrast with George Stigler's position or even the position of Mark Blaug (the rational reconstructivist position). If history of economic thought is viewed as _directly_ relevant to today's theoretical disputes, then it takes on an entirely new meaning to students. On the undergraduate level, I try to mix history of thought with economic history to show how economists were responding to social issues in various ways. The book by Todd Bucholz, _New Ideas from Dead Economists_ is a nice supplement, and of course Heilbronner's book is great in this regard as well. I have also found that the Breit and Ransom book, _The Academic Scribblers_ works quite well with the students. NYU just abolished History of Economic Thought as a requirement for the PhD. We have quite a number of faculty who teach in the area or related areas ... Bruno Stein, James Becker, Israel Kirzner, Mario Rizzo and myself. Nevertheless, NYU was one of the last remaining PhD programs to retain the history of thought requirement ... now it is gone. The main argument offered were: (1) the opportunity cost of studying the history of doctrine is too high and (2) all the good ideas from the past are incorporated already in the present. Thus, history of thought is a hobby, but not a worthy vocation. That is our problem I would conjecture professionally -- as this is the common idea. Why not present the history of thought as it is dealt with in political science departments? History of Economic Thought _is_ Economic Theory, just as the history of political thought is commonly refered to as Political Theory. It seems to me that the European Journal of History of Economic Thought has moved in the right direction by taking a very strong contra-Whig position.