Economics, Dominated by White Men, Is Roiled by Black Lives Matter

Mr. Uhlig apologized on Tuesday evening for his Twitter posts. He said in an email interview on Tuesday night that his “flat earther” comparison “appears to have caused irritation” but disagreed with critics who say his comments “hurt and marginalize people of color and their allies in the economics profession; call into question his impartiality in assessing academic work on this and related topics; and damage the standing of the economics discipline in society.” The reference to the Klan, he said, was a case where “I chose an extreme example” to make a point about free speech.

“Discrimination and racism is wrong,” Mr. Uhlig wrote in an email. Later, he added: “I would love to have more black economists (or is it ‘Afro-American economists’?) among our undergraduate students, Ph.D. students and faculty. It is my impression that the good ones are highly sought after. We also have very few American Indians among our colleagues. We need to find good way to change these numbers.”

Some conservatives hailed Mr. Uhlig as a champion of free speech and a victim of “cancel culture” — although critics said they were not seeking his dismissal from his tenured professorship.

Critics, however, held up Mr. Uhlig as an example of the deeply embedded advantages of white economists, including nearly full control over the journals that determine, in their selections for publication, which economists receive acclaim, tenure and top jobs.

“This is a way in which potentially good ideas, potentially good contributors of ideas to the economics profession, have been thwarted because of a gatekeeper,” Lisa Cook, a Michigan State University economist and one of the profession’s few prominent black women, said in an interview.

Ms. Cook leads the American Economic Association’s Summer Training Program, a decades-old effort to recruit black and Latino students to the profession. She said students often asked her how she overcame discrimination in the field, and whether they would be welcome.

“They’re asking where does this racially hostile environment come from?” she said. “Why does this racial discrimination exist in the pinnacle of the social sciences?”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/business/economy/white-economists-black-lives-matter.html