The classroom has finally been “occupied.”Last Wednesday, 70 Harvard undergraduates staged a “walk out” of their introductory economics class, Economics 10, to protest a purported bias that “detrimentally affects students, the University and our greater society.” In an open letter to their professor, N. Gregory Mankiw, the students claimed that his course teaches biased economics that are to blame for the financial meltdown, growing income inequality and “economic injustice.” Unsurprisingly, these students failed to provide a single example of how such a bias manifests itself in the course, let alone how the course or purported bias therein “symbolizes the increasing economic inequality in America.”
In fact, the protesters’ unsubstantiated claims even led one self-described liberal student and alumnus of the course to pen a defense of Mankiw’s class. In it, the alumnus puts to rest the accusations of bias and explains how, among other things, Mankiw’s course draws on both Adam Smith’s economic theories as well as Keynesian thought.