How URPE Helped This “Tenured Radical” Thrive in a Non-radical Economics Department

Abstract

I joined URPE when it was first formed in 1968 and found a strong support group in the Springfield-Northampton-Amherst area of Western Massachusetts when I got my first teaching job. I was at a teaching institution where the Economics program mostly serviced students from the School of Business. Having a support group of like-minded radicals in the early 1970s gave me the confidence and support to develop my own approach to teaching that combined presenting mainstream analysis and making all students aware of the existence and substance of radical alternatives. Those early years of URPE were a heady time—we were involved in struggles to make sure radicals were not purged by hostile departments. We attended conferences and wrote articles and participated in local struggles. Most importantly, unlike, for example, Paul Baran at Stanford University who lamented in a letter to Paul Sweezy that he had “no one to talk to,” we had each other—we had the Review of Radical Political Economics ( RRPE)—and we had visions of changing not just economics but the world. We still need that hope and enthusiasm today.