From Daniyal Khan, The New School, Alumnus (Economics 2022); Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan
Dissenters at elite economics departments are indeed important in challenging the incestuous high priesthood of economics as your leader makes clear (“Is economics in need of trustbusting?”, FT View, FT Weekend, August 31).
But if elite capture and the resulting torpor in economics have not been total and complete, it is because there are economics departments in a handful of US universities which have put up an active and spirited resistance for years, with The New School in New York, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Missouri Kansas City perhaps being pre-eminent in this long battle of economic ideas. These and other economics departments are at the centre of a lively intellectual community (often referred to as “heterodox economics” by many of its own), many of whose members are also associated with the Union of Radical Political Economics (URPE).
The work of students, young scholars and more experienced leaders of this community continues to ensure that economic orthodoxy remains in check. Diverse approaches to economics continue to thrive here, including — but not limited to — Keynesian, Marxian, institutionalist and feminist perspectives.
There is a real sense of hope among us that an alternative economics is not just possible but necessary, that there are real alternatives to the dread and despair of capitalism.
Your readership should know that there is an entire living, breathing, refreshing world of economics beyond what Robert Heilbroner referred to as the rigor mortis of economic orthodoxy.
The future of economics will be shaped far more by our heresies than the inane litanies of the high priests. Onwards.