Goodbye to Galbraith

As members of Harvard's economics department gathered last week at a party for professors who were retiring or departing, someone read a telegram from one of the guests of honor. The only clue it contained to the whereabouts of the missing professor, John Kenneth Galbraith, was the postscript: DICTATED IN BERLIN.

Despite his almost legendary absences from the campus, Galbraith, 66, is one of Harvard's best-known professors, and probably one of the world's most famous economists. He also emerged as a jet-set superstar who is as likely to be skiing in Gstaad, speech-making in Washington or writing in New Delhi as he is to be lecturing in Cambridge. Active in liberal politics, he introduced J.F.K. to Harvard intellectuals (and became J.F.K.'s Ambassador to India). In addition, Galbraith wrote bestsellers in which he chided capitalism and the American compulsion to produce ever more (The Affluent Society in 1958, The New Industrial State in 1967, and Public Purpose in 1973). He spent the past year finishing a new book on the history of money, while traveling round the world filming a series on the history of economics for BBC-TV.

When Galbraith was on campus recently, his colleagues gave him a portable electric typewriter as a retirement present. Last week he received another tribute from the Harvard and Radcliffe senior classes, which chose him as their Class Day faculty speaker. Said Class Marshal Harden Wiedemann: "He is respected because of his scholastic endeavor, but more than that, though he is not often available to students, when he is, he is totally devoted to them." In his Class Day speech Galbraith himself chose to "reflect on the 41 years that I have been at Harvard, or, as some of my colleagues would prefer, the 41 years that I have been frequently not at Harvard."

Not one to hide his feelings, Galbraith has often put off the administration and some of his colleagues. In 1969 he was a leader of the liberal wing of the faculty in denouncing the administration after a student strike and a police bust. Galbraith's fans, like Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief, say that "as economic theory has gotten narrower he has provided a bridge to the real world." Others demur. Says Harvard Business School Lecturer Daniel Fenn: "I think his field has not primarily been Harvard. He has used it mainly as a base of operations. My feeling is that he has dropped in from time to time."

Mixed Reviews. Galbraith has not taught a course at Harvard since the fall semester, 1973. When he had classes, he earned mixed reviews from his students. In describing Galbraith's Social Sciences 134 course, the students' confidential guide noted in 1968: "The long ambassador, as he was known affectionately in India, has failed in all of his past courses to demonstrate either economic rigor or an interest in undergraduates." A year later, however, the guide praised the same course: "People accustomed to the usual outline form lecture say they find him hard to listen to. But they should get their minds together again; Galbraith is brilliant."

For his part, Galbraith thinks that students' efforts at educational reform usually result in a lowering of standards. But he believes that the quality of the student body is improving. The greatest change he has seen at Harvard has been "the conversion of its undergraduates from slightly ludicrous aristocracy to a somewhat serious meritocracy."

Over the years Galbraith has been generous to Harvard. Independently wealthy, he has turned over royalties from The Affluent Society and much of his grants to the economics department. His money replaced libraries in the offices of colleagues after a fire; he underwrote a cost of living raise for graduate students on scholarships and has donated his outstanding collection of Indian art to Harvard's Fogg Museum. In a parting gesture he told the seniors he would give a prize of $10,000 a year for the next five years to the economics professor rated highest by second-year graduate students. The award would encourage good teaching, he said, because "all economists believe in competition and pecuniary incentives."

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