Word: galbraith
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Except in government, where pay is usually limited to compensation for expenses, money plays a role in the amount of consulting a professor does. John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg Professor of Economics looks cynically at those who explain their outside activities in non-monetary terms, identifying "an element of special pleading" in such an argument to "justify the type of activity they do." Professors don't like to discuss financial specifics, except to acknowledge that the pay is good enough to attract people. In economics, for example, consulting can bring in as much as $200 an hour, and one member...
...Galbraith insists that even these details should be reported and publicized because "people ought to know if the professor is speaking for himself or for the corporation." Zeckhauser says the problem with current University policy is that for being a "good citizen," one who spends a lot of time serving on committees. Instead of setting rules, he argues. Harvard should adopt a system that would reward professors for spending more time at the University and that would increase the option of half-time for those who want to spend a lot of time advising...
...wrote speeches for both Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign and served as ambassador to India under President Kennedy (a resident of Winthrop House in the 1930s, when Galbraith was a tutor there). Not surprisingly, a life of this variety yields a wealth of anecdotes and portraits told in his characteristicly elegant manner. Galbraith's insights into the characters of the famous men of the era are few, but he profiles several lesser-known individuals to delightful effect. Henry Dennison, a maverick New England business mogul of the 1930s and Leon Henderson, Galbraith's Hemmingwayesque superior at the OPA stand...
...Galbraith himself never wavered--and continues to stand firm--in his support of the liberal agenda established in the New Deal, and supported by his work on the economics. The author's many publications on economics and society--the best known are The Affluent Society (1958), The New Industrial State (1967) and Economics and the Public Purpose (1973)--understandably receive little attention in the memoirs; Galbraith does however, give valuable short summaries of the works. But, again, for all the campaign anecdotes and academic infighting, it is difficult to understand what drove this man in these admirably egalitarian crusades. That...
...Among the former he counts his suggestion to President Johnson that then-Supreme-Court-justice Arthur Goldberg be named ambassador to the United Nations; among the latter he seems proudest of his work, as ambassador, to diffuse the Indian-Chinese conflict of the early 1960s. Few, if any, of Galbraith's contemporaries, combine his proximity to the central events of the era, and his mastery of the English language; this combination alone would make A Life in Our Times a worthy endeavor. Yet Galbraith has something beyond the advantages of access and writing skill--insight into the human heart. That...