Re: some questions

[Clifford Poirot <cpoirot@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ric,

You are right as far as I know. Edminster was the one who called me on the
phone one cold spring morning and offered me a fellowship (i have thus
cursed and praised him every day since), but I never really knew Bob
personally as he pretty much retired that year (85/86). Nabers also retired
that year (if my memory is correct) in part in response to an upheaval among
the graduate students in 1984. Ernie was still teaching Economic History and
regaling me with his Kondratieff theory of world history (I had had to have
my to be wife promise to call me after 7 hours when I went to his house to
discuss preparation for comps with a story about how I had forgotten her on
the other side of town).

I never heard of Koontz ironically. Someone else was teaching U.S. Economic
History (Bill ? the name escapes me right now). It was a fairly well
organized and well taught seminar at that point in time.

European Economic History was taught by Sima Lieberman (RIP). Lieberman was
extremely sympathetic to Schumpeter and Girschenkron and old narrative
economic history.

The Marxists were ruthless in dealing with Marxists with opposing views.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ric Holt [mailto:rholt@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 5:04 PM
To: pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Ric Holt
Subject: some questions


The University of Utah's economic department is an interesting story.
What I heard was that in the 1950s a group of  radicals from Berkeley
heard that the University of Utah did not require its faculty to  take
an oath denouncing communism, as was required in the state of
California. Robert Edminister, Laurence Nabers and Ernst Randa and
probably the most radical of them all Sydney Coontz left Berkeley to go
to Utah and started an interesting
heterodox graduate program that took Marx seriously. E.K. Hunt was a
student there and later came back to teach. In response to the Communist
scare, Utah did require its students to take a class about the
democratic values of the United States. One of the classes that a
student could take to fulfill this requirement was economic history of
the United States. The person that taught the class was Sydney Coontz,
who was sympathic I heard to Stalinism. I wonder how the class went?
Probably the person to get in touch with about the program is E.K.
Hunt.
-Ric Holt