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Letters to the Editor
Volume 37 Number 6
July/August 2010
Editor and publisher
Alex Sachare ’71
Managing Editor
Lisa Palladino
associate editor
Ethan Rouen ’04J
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forum editor
Rose Kernochan ’82 Barnard
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Shira Boss-Bicak ’93, ’97J, ’98 SIPA
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Freefall
University Professor Joseph Stiglitz’s arti
cle in the May/June CCT [Columbia Forum]
is right on the money, and I look
forward to reading his book. However, he
leaves out (at least in your excerpt) another
important factor in the ongoing decline
and fall of our economy, one that has a seriously
inflating effect on the GDP.
For decades, the late Columbia professor
Seymour Melman ’49 GSAS criticized
the effects of Pentagon capitalism and the
military/war economy on the nation’s
overall economic situation. Military production
and the maintenance of the war
economy contribute significantly to GDP
numbers but they provide nothing to either
the general well-being of the population
or to the real productivity of the
economy.
Since the end of WWII, the Pentagon
has monopolized an ever-greater portion
of an ever-growing federal budget (total
yearly defense-related expenditures,
including servicing the military fraction
of the national debt, is now around a trillion
dollars), which has made it the single
greatest economic entity in the American
economy. Professor Melman pointed out
that as military production dominated
an ever-greater proportion of industrial
research and development and precision
manufacturing, the United States lost the
ability to compete in essential areas of civilian
manufacturing to overseas competitors.
When New York City modernizes its
subway system or California begins building
a high-speed rail system, the only bids
for equipment or technical expertise come
from foreign corporations. When half of
the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge is
replaced, the fabricated steel components
are shipped across the Pacific from China.
But we can take solace in making the best
(and most expensive) damn rockets, tanks
and warplanes in the world — and it sure
helps the GDP look good.
Dave Ritchie ’73
Berkeley, Ca l i f.
Socrates, Not Sophocles
With great interest I read of this year’s
John Jay Awards Dinner in the May/June
CCT, where Julia Stiles ’05 was quoted as
quoting this famous paradoxical phrase
from Greek antiquity: “All I know is I
know nothing.” Regrettably, this golden
line was attributed to Sophocles, where
actually it was Socrates who made this famous
utterance in the Apology of Plato, a
Contemporary Civilization mainstay.
Brian Overland ’04
Sa n Fr a n c i s c o
[Editor’s note: The error was made not by Stiles
but by the editor, who heard it incorrectly and
did not catch the mistake in print.]
Harriss Remembered
I am a three-degree Columbian, starting
with the College. As a student, I was fortunate
to take several courses with C. Lowell
Harriss ’40 GSAS, and as a professor and
dean, to have worked with him on curricula
and other academic projects.
What a truly fine man! A scholar, he
cared more for what you learned than
how learned you found him to be.
After completing a Ph.D., I joined the
faculty of the Graduate School of Business
and had the opportunity to work with
Lowell on a number of University committees.
When the Business School dean
resigned in a dispute with the Provost
over a tenure case, it was Lowell who convinced
me to accept the job of acting dean.
“I know that you would rather teach than
dean,” he said, “and you can return to
teaching when the President’s Committee
finds a new dean. Right now, the school
needs you to hold things together and provide
a sense of calm and continuity. It may
not be fun, Kirby, but it is necessary!”
Lowell always put the “necessary” first.
I admired him greatly.
E.K. (Kirby) Warren ’56, ’57 Business,
’61 GSAS
Tu x e d o, N.Y.
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july/august 2010
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