Teaching libertarian principles at universities is often considered heterodox by those who shape mainstream academic discourse. Of course, many important ideas from the Austrian school of economics have been incorporated into curricula, among them the subjective theory of value, boom and bust cycles, and diminishing marginal utility. But liberty-oriented economic ideas, those that promote economic liberty over government intervention, are generally overlooked.
In their paper “Groupthink in Academia: Majoritarian Departmental Politics and the Professional Pyramid,” Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern discuss how classical liberal viewpoints among professors in the humanities and social sciences are relatively absent, while social democratic ideas prevail. They suggest that academics inclined toward social democratic worldviews project images of their critics, oversimplified stereotypes that broadly label them as “right-wing” or “conservative”—and therefore problematic.
In my coursework at Yale (in the ethics, politics, and economics major, which is comparable to a social sciences program), I find it undeniably true that social democratic ideas are emphasized more than classical liberal ones. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t read “The Wealth of Nations” in my classes.
However, I have never been exposed to readings by Friedrich Hayek, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, in my economics and political philosophy courses. This seems worth questioning. “The Use of Knowledge in Society” has more than 20,000 citations. “The Road to Serfdom,” which warns of the dangers of central economic planning, is a foundational text of modern political thought. It has been referenced throughout history by key figures such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who cited it as an intellectual justification for rolling back the welfare state. So it seems strange that Hayek’s contributions would be excluded from the political economy curriculum at a university.
Perhaps this is because economics as a discipline has transitioned its emphasis from economic history to abstract economic concepts (such as rational choice and equilibrium) alongside quantitative modeling and data analysis. Or perhaps there are other institutional factors at play as well.
Sowell discusses how academic Marxists are unaffected by the blatant failures of socialism in the real world, claiming that professors can produce whatever content they want as long as the topic is ideologically fashionable enough. He concludes that leftists concentrate in places where it doesn’t matter whether or not their ideas “stand the test of performance,” leading many of them to be drawn to academia.
Echoing this sentiment, lawyer and former university professor Allen Mendenhall told me that most of “our people” (referring to those who are committed to the cause of promoting liberty and free markets around the world) are more often concentrated in public policy think tanks than in universities. It may be because professors, at least at public universities, are government employees and are more likely to favor Keynesianism over libertarian economics.
Or it may be that there is something to be said about the relationship between the university and activism. Although I disagree with the broad sentiment that the academy creates socialists, it seems possible that it encourages the idea that activism is more noble than enterprise, and that state intervention is more virtuous than free market solutions.
Klein and Stern suggest that there are certain claims that, despite being plausible and testable, would lead academics to fail on the job market. I think that this is particularly true of the first two claims they discuss: that “social justice” is an incoherent idea and that it functions as a moral atavism (as argued by Hayek). In the academy, moral seriousness is assumed to reside on the side of redistribution or state action, casting skepticism toward market-oriented approaches as complicit in “injustice”—however loosely the term might be defined.
Whatever the cause, the marginalization of libertarian ideas has consequences. Christian Houghton, a fellow intern at FEE, gave a presentation on school choice at an academic conference while pursuing a master’s in education policy at Suffolk University.
“I was shut down by a professor who claimed that the idea of school choice is racist and bigoted,” he said. “Most other professors I encountered would probably have agreed with that one.” Houghton claimed that the university should be a place that encourages freedom in intellectual beliefs, and that academics are often unwilling to be challenged.
I’ve learned from speaking with people in the liberty movement that many of them became passionate about economic liberty after seeking out information outside of the classroom. This is why organizations such as FEE play such a crucial role. Without being exposed to free market ideas, how can young people decide if they’re worth listening to?
