Malefactors Of Great Wealth Tried To Fire Paul Baran, The Only Marxist Economist In The USA With Tenure

Paul Baran (1909 - 1964) was a Marxist economist. He was tenured at Stanford from 1951 on. Baran had some pubic remarks about Cuba in 1961. He visited Moscow, Iran, and Yugoslavia in 1962, and talked about what he found afterwards. He was the only Marxist economist tenured in a economics department at a major university at that time.

Files were leaked from the Stanford administration in 1971. The Stanford Daily obtained the Baran file and reported on them. Alumni wrote letters to the president, Wallace Sterling, insisting that Baran be punished for treason and subversion. Otherwise, one would rewrite his will, which was going to give Stanford around $100 million. A former Texaco executive thought a previous gift of $10,000 enabled him to dictate personnel decisions.

Stanford tried to placate these rich effs. The administration agreed that it would be good to get rid of Baran and decried that he was protected by tenure:

"For the moment, one University official wrote of Baran, 'We must suffer him' until he proves an incompetent teacher 'or does something which would warrant termination of his employment on other grounds.' Provost Temian added in another letter: 'The evidence to prove that Professor Baran is engaged in unscholarly activities in the classroom is not sufficient for the Administration to take punitive action. This is the critical point. To press for such action on insufficient evidence would risk much greater damage.' But according to the University's alumni relations official, Donald Carlson: 'I doubt if he [Baran] enjoyed the harassment he has received because of it [his Cuba comments]. Shortly after that speech he had a serious heart attack.'" -- Lawrence Lifshultz

Stanford froze Baran's salary and increased his course load to be about twice that of others. He died of a second heart attack. I do not know what Sweezy thought of Stanford's treatment of his friend.

References

• April Third Movement: Paul Alexander Baran.
• Paul A. Baran. 1961. Reflections on the Cuban Revolution, Part I. Monthly Review 12(9)
• Paul A. Baran. 1961. Reflections on the Cuban Revolution, Part II. Monthly Review 12(10)
• John Bellamy Foster. 1992, 2000. Paul A. Baran. In: Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer (eds.) A Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists, 2nd edition. Edward Elgar.
• Lawrence S. Lifshultz. 1974. Could Karl Marx teach economics in America? Ramparts. April: 27-30, 52-59.