At the time I decided to attend GMU to earn my PhD in economics in 1984 I was newly married and choosing between four different career options. I was teaching tennis at Allaire Racquet Club in Wall, NJ and making good money, I could have stayed on doing that and gone part time to graduate school in NJ; the head teaching pro at Allaire and my friend John Joyce was the former doubles partner of the head coach at Auburn and I could have attended graduate school there and worked as an assistant coach, or I could have gone to law school as my original plan when I was getting ready to graduate from Grove City College.
My final choice was to attend George Mason University in Fairfax, VA --- and once there I had to choose between working in the economics department as a research assistant, or working for the tennis coach and teaching at the International Golf and Tennis Club.
Rosemary and I moved to Fairfax in 1984 and I took an assistantship at the Center for the Study of Market Processes.
My mother-in-law (and family in general) didn't understand why we were moving from NJ, let alone to get a PhD in economics, and at a school that nobody ever heard of. Remember at the time GMU had no final four basketball team and the student population was somewhere around ten thousand, and less than one thousand lived on campus. In the eyes of my friends and family I was giving up a good paying job to head off to a place equivalent to Montclair State to earn a PhD degree.
Why couldn't I just go to Rutgers at night and keep teaching tennis during the day like any sensible person would do? And, why would I pursue a degree nobody cared about instead of law school which promised a lucrative career?
Well I would explain as best as I could about the unique forces gathering at GMU --- Austrian economics from Rutgers Newark (Center for the Study of Market Processes) and Public choice from Virginia Polytechnic (Center for the Study of Public Choice) and how this was a new PhD program. But I think most thought I was rather silly. The neighbor of my in-laws (who actually attended GMU's Law School) told everyone at a family gathering that my plan was in fact just a waste of time and money since GMU was a no-name school and that if they cared they should talk me out of it.
But as I told everyone four years later in 1988 when I was in the job market --- I studied during my graduate work with Kenneth Boulding, Gordon Tullock and of course James M. Buchanan, who did you study with?
Sitting in Buchanan's class, I imagine, is the closest thing I experienced to sitting in on Mises's private seminar in Vienna, of Hayek's lectures at the LSE, or Knight's class at Chicago. My first paper for Buchanan (a comment on Nozick's tale of the slave) received a B++ and a warning that I had to watch out for being polemical rather than analytical, on my second paper for Buchanan (on who is the individual in economic analysis) I received an A-- and a warning not to sound too much like him but to develop my own voice! For grades on the numerous papers I wrote for his classes I lingered in the B++ and A-- range, never quite earning the A I was striving for.
We turned in our papers and within 1 week we received comments and criticisms on our efforts. Buchanan always ended class with questions rather than answers. The experience was intellectually exhilirating at the time and has stayed fresh in my mind for the 20 plus years since I sat in his classes.
During my time at GMU (1984-1988) I would take Buchanan's courses in Economics and Philosophy and Constitutional Economics, and I attended the weekly seminar at the Center for the Study of Public Choice -- and the GMU economics department during that time had lots of formal and informal gatherings for faculty and graduate students. (E.
g., each summer Buchanan would host a Liberty Fund conference and we are able to observe the discussion).
In October 1986, we all celebrated when Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize. Steve Horwitz was even quoted in the Washington Post about Buchanan's teaching pointing out that he was praising him despite earning a B. I actually heard the news from my Mom and Dad who woke me up with a phone call to tell me what was just announced on the news.
My Mother-in-Law called shortly after that --- though as she told me whenever anyone asked her what Rosemary and I were doing she told them I was in law school because at least people would understand that!
And how cool was Buchanan upon winning the Nobel.
He granted his first interview to his college newspaper at Middle Tennesse State before speaking with ABC, NBC, etc. He was as gracious as any Nobel Prize winner --- at his press conference his first remark was to thank Gordon Tullock and his colleagues in public choice for the work they did with him. And he handled the petty criticisms some raised with ease.
He was OUR PROFESSOR and he won the Nobel and he supported our efforts to study Austrian economics and classical liberal political economy, and he encouraged us to dare to be different. Though he did chuckle at us who pushed the anarcho-capitalist position and also who thought the counter-culture of the 1960s might be an inspiring movement if you could combine it with sound economics.
Well now the announcement comes that James M. Buchanan will be awarded the 2006 White House National Medal for Humanities. And those memories of 1986 come flooding back.
It is ironic because I am at the Mont Pelerin Meetings in Guatamala and on the way down here I was just thinking (because it was Prof. Buchanan along with Leonard Liggio and Israel Kirzner who sponsored my membership in MPS) --- wow, it was 20 years ago that Buchanan won the Nobel Prize, where the hell did all those years go?!
Congratulations to Professor Buchanan. He was an inspiring teacher and researcher to generation of students at UVA, VPI and at GMU.
I was lucky to be part of the cohort at GMU that had him as a professor before he won the prize and he had to puruse those obligations. He never missed our classes or the weekly seminars, and he stressed to all of us the value of a serious work-ethic in academic life. And we must never forget that at the intellectual level there is no figure in modern economics who has done more to lead to the rebirth of political economy in our discipline and to make economists aware of the need for the philosophical and political dimensions to accompany economic analysis if we hope to gain understanding of the world and useful information for public policy than James M.
Buchanan.
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