Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman

by Jeremy Adelman

  Moving to the Institute for Advanced Study may have been a dream come true, but for a man whose circuitous career was bereft of the normal professional rungs, it was not just another step. Rather, it was a setting for conversations with the ancients in the search for intellectual pathways, conversations he kept until then only in the precincts of his own mind. In the mid-1960s, the board of trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study began to consider its future when the long-time director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, came down with cancer in 1965. Since its creation in 1930, this shelter for European scholars, especially in the natural sciences and mathematics, had become famous for its string of Nobel Prizes. The goal was to spare great minds the tedium of real-world constraints, to let them mingle with one another, and thus propagate more great minds—and their ideas. So it was that the IAS rested on the precept that some minds teach best by not teaching at all. But thirty years later, it was coming under fire for being altogether too removed from the real world; some lampooned it as a pampered haven for pointy-headed academics freed from the grimy world of undergraduates. Felix Frankfurter, very much a man in the world, had warned the institute’s founder, Abraham Flexner, that a “paradise for scholars” need not imply they were angels; “we are dealing with humans.”8 The Supreme Court jurist had a point, and it was one that echoed in the minds of the institute’s trustees. The board worried that what it needed was a new “School” alongside the Schools of Historical Studies, Mathematics, and Natural Sciences (Physics). This would be in the social sciences, so that the activities of the institute would be more engaged with the problems of the world. To this end, they recruited Carl Kaysen, the chair of Harvard’s economics department and senior foreign affairs advisor to President Kennedy in 1966 to take over from the dying Oppenheimer and to undertake the modernization of the organization nestled in the woods of Princeton. This major departure was not altogether welcome by many permanent members of the other schools. They grumbled but did not get in the way.

  Not long after Kaysen moved to Princeton, he began conversations with several of the United States’ leading social scientists, including former economics colleagues from Harvard and sociologists such as Robert Merton at Columbia and Edward Shils at Chicago. Merton and Shils urged Kaysen to reach out to the University of Chicago anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, a star in the field of symbolic anthropology, who laid stress on the construction of the social meaning of everyday rituals and symbols to move away from the rather wooly and excessive use of cultural “attitudes.” Noted for his pioneering field work in Indonesia, he had just published a study of Islam in Morocco when he got Kaysen’s call. Geertz took up the challenge and moved to Princeton in 1970. Geertz and Kaysen became the founders of the new, modest Program in Social Change, established with the notion that it would not seek to replicate university departments. It needed to have its own orientation to contemporary history and current affairs and skirt theoretical and analytic preoccupations of the academy.

  Hirschman arrived in the second year of the Kaysen-Geertz experiment, vacating his Harvard office to Amartya Sen, who was spending the year in Cambridge—and who luxuriated in Albert’s assortment of literature and history on the bookshelves. Hirschman’s first go-around in 1972–73 at the institute was a mixed experience. If he thought he was escaping the turmoil at Harvard, he found himself in the midst of worse in Princeton. There were some upsides. The other visiting fellows, such as David Apter, who had been Geertz’s colleague at the Committee for the Comparative Study of New Nations at Chicago, and the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, became lasting acquaintances. Hirschman became especially close to Geertz. The project also evolved. As he reported to Kaysen at the end of his visit, the reading and discussion with colleagues has “led me to expand considerably my original project.” In fact, he was a little misleading; the original project had long since fallen by the wayside. The real problem was a furor that had exploded over his head. The atmosphere, he wrote to Kaysen, “has been too antagonistic.”9

  What Hirschman was referring to was an upheaval over the expansion of the Program in Social Change. No sooner was Hirschman installed than Kaysen and Geertz submitted the nomination to the institute faculty for a third permanent social scientist: Robert Bellah, a prominent sociologist from Berkeley. Working on religion in the United States and Japan, and well-known for having coined the term “American civil religion” in an essay about the country’s moral values, Bellah had been educated at Harvard, along with Geertz, under the mentorship of Talcott Parsons; his coming to the institute would have represented a kind of rebirth of Harvard’s interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations, amalgamating sociology, anthropology, and psychology and thus stepping outside the prevailing trend in universities toward disciplinary and departmental structures. Geertz and Bellah did not aspire to transcend the chasm between positivist and hermeneutic traditions, as Parsons had, with a model of their own; they had seen firsthand how Parsons’ ambitions led to ornate schemes whose increasingly incomprehensible features were the price he paid for trying to integrate these two large traditions. Still, they shared misgivings about the drift of mainstream social science and agreed that the institute might provide an outpost for an alternative.

  The Bellah Affaire escalated into the most serious crisis to hit the IAS and threatened to—indeed was partly intended to—halt the social science enterprise in its tracks. Mathematicians considered it soft; the historians thought it all speculative. And Bellah’s nominations appeared to confirm their prejudices. André Weill, a member of the School of Mathematics, decried Bellah’s work as “worthless,” while the philosopher Morton White circulated a critical analysis of Bellah’s work among colleagues, calling it “pedestrian and pretentious.” In spite of the mounting opposition, Kaysen, who was not blessed with the gift of tact, decided to proceed with the case and recommended it to the trustees, who approved it. This only escalated the tensions as a coalition of outraged historians and mathematicians began to plot Kaysen’s fall—John W. Milnor drafted an open letter demanding the director’s resignation and replacement by George Kennan. Then, as the trustees felt they had to back their director, some faculty members went after them. Weill, in a rage, confirmed the suspicions of many that the pampered academic elite considered itself above accountability when he declared it absurd that those “absolutely incompetent in the fields of science and scholarship always have the final word.” By then the controversy had hit the pages of the New York Times and Time and Newsweek magazines, and the institute cafeteria was filled with a thick cloud of hostility. Weill declared openly to Geertz, who took the blows personally, that he refused to have any further personal relations with him. The unflappable Kaysen, who “never went out of his way to avoid making enemies,” took the heat.10 Hirschman joked among colleagues up the road at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School that his sojourn at the institute removed him from “direct contact with development problems,” but “not from the passions and rigid ideological positions that often characterize the atmosphere in development.” Privately, he wrote that the “uproar … was far too complicated and boring to tell … but it fills all the small talk at parties.”11

  In the end, Bellah withdrew his candidacy, citing the sudden death of his eldest daughter. But the damage was done. It would take Geertz many years to recover—if indeed he ever did. In retrospect, he had some choice words for Bellah’s critics and charged them with treating him “with a cruelty of particular excuisiteness.”12 And Kaysen was aware that his own days as director would have to wind down for the IAS to return to normal. Rumors flew that Geertz was packing his bags. A visitor arrived in the fall of 1974 to find Kaysen and Geertz both “pretty bruised” and “depressed.” One day Kaysen entered the office of the newly arrived historian of Spain, John Elliott, to ask his personal opinion of the situation; squirming with discomfort, Elliott was honest—he thought that Kaysen’s career at the institute could not go on. But Kaysen did not want to withdraw without making sure t
hat his cause would survive. With Geertz nursing his wounds, he had to find a new nominee who could help heal the rifts. This time Kaysen created a search committee composed of bridge-builders from the different schools, including Elliott. Kaysen also telephoned his old friend Shura Gerschenkron, who was not known for his fence-mending skills but knew how damaging the institute’s failure in the social sciences would be, for counsel. Shura told him that their friend Albert Hirschman was unhappy returning to Harvard and suggested him as a candidate who might be acceptable to all sides. In his recommendation letter, Shura told the story that only a few friends would have known, of Hirschman’s rifle assignment in the French army in 1939. When his officer handed him a pre-1914 gun, Hirschman took this as an omen. It committed him “to the invention and introduction of new analytic tools” to fend off the demons of obsolescence. “Nothing is more characteristic of Hirschman’s writings than the originality of his mind and the wealth of ideas in which qualities he has few equals in the social sciences in our days.” This would thus make it the third time that Shura played Fortuna and altered the course of Albert’s life behind his back. Geertz, meanwhile, had grown fond of Albert and felt it wise to consider an economist with heavy credentials as a safe nomination.13

  After the standoff over Bellah, the Hirschman nomination was, almost deliberately, uneventful and swift. Kaysen called Hirschman in mid-February and asked him if he would be willing to stand as a candidate—a decision that could not have been easy given the firestorm he had witnessed six months before. But he knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to free himself from teaching, whose stomach-churning effects had not worn off. He could also plunge more completely into writing. Moreover, he must have sensed that his candidacy was bound to be less controversial. Not only was he one of the world’s most renowned social scientists, but, as Kaysen put it retrospectively, his command of “Old World” languages and his “cultural affiliations” made him an appealing colleague for the Europeans on the faculty. There was a whiff of European superiority about the ways in which some had described Bellah’s scholarship that could not be directed at Hirschman. He “was the type of scholar that appealed to them.” The appointment of Hirschman was a unanimous affair—he was “so outstanding,” recalled Elliott, who was the first to speak at the faculty meeting. He got up and explained that Hirschman was not only good for the school, he would bring distinction to the institute; at fifty-eight years old, his work was becoming more original, more creative, and he was becoming more productive. The classicists remained quiet, while the modern historians like Felix Gilbert and George Kennan were enthusiastic. The vote was 14 to 0, for Hirschman.14

  Within days, Hirschman had an offer in hand. He accepted almost immediately. By then, his friend Henry Rosovsky, the Harvard dean, knew that the case was settled. Everyone knew his mind was made up the day the offer came through: “No one came to beat down the door to worry about retaining him,” remembered his last dean. His friend and colleague, Kenneth Arrow, also knew this was a done deal: “Frankly, there was a recognition that he had no interest in teaching.… The Institute fit his self-image.”15 The chief resistance came from Sarah herself, who had abundant friends in Cambridge. What is more, she had recently ventured into a public housing project to read a short story by Gabriel García Márquez, “La siesta del martes,” among a group of Puerto Rican women living there. Inspired by a seminar conducted by the Brazilian pioneer of adult literacy, Paolo Freire, she was on her way to creating an innovative network to bring the world of reading and discussing fiction to basic readers and nonreaders. The prospect of moving to the sleepy college town of Princeton was less than thrilling. But she knew full well Albert’s aversion to teaching and lack of interest in Harvard affairs, as well as his stockpile of writing aspirations. On May 22, 1974, Hirschman administered the final examination of his career to his Harvard students in “Economic Development in Latin America.”16 With his grades submitted, he and Sarah packed their house and, with no formal farewell parties or sendoffs, began their move to Princeton.

  To Albert, the biggest decision was whether to toss out his field notes from Journeys and Development Projects Observed while still persecuted “to read and comment on 2.5 dissertations, deciding which was the best graduate seminar paper deserving of some silly prize.”17 To Sarah, it was a much harder process, but she kept her unhappiness for the most part under wraps. Still, Albert knew of her sadness. As they were unpacking their belongings in Princeton, Albert happened upon a personal advertisement in the New York Review of Books that ran LANGUISHING IN NEW JERSEY. “Grist for Sarah’s mill,” he thought, “although I don’t think she was the one who put it in.”18 There were a few in Cambridge who were also crestfallen, such as Stanley and Inge Hoffmann. Harvard was getting busier, more crowded with jet-setting faculty (of which, it must be said, Hirschman was unambiguously one). But Hoffmann was losing the closest colleague he would ever have. “I missed them terribly when they left,” he later recalled.19

  While the summer of 1974 brought the political storm over President Nixon’s impeachment to a climax as Hirschman was packing his boxes, it also took him back to Berlin—his first return to his native city and country in over forty years. Why it took him this long is not easy to explain. His sisters had returned and sometimes complained to him that he’d lost the affection they had in particular for the old house, the Tiergarten, and memories of their childhood. In May, as he was preparing to meet up with Ursula, he confessed to Katia that “I do look forward (with some trepidation, si capisce) to the Berlin excursion with Ursula.” What he took away from this first return trip remains a mystery; it did not, for the moment, kindle much interest in German affairs. And if it did, the physical Berlin of his childhood was wiped out, to be replaced by Weimar memories and values which, it is true, began to streak his writings.20

  Sarah and Albert bought a house on Newlin Road, a short walk from the grounds of the IAS. They made it their own, unpacking their books, hanging their art—including the Roda portrait of Lisa and Sarah—and placing the antiques Sarah had picked up in little shops in La Candelaria in Bogotá. “It’s really a ‘livable’ house,” Albert concluded, “not a thing of beauty or insinuating charm” as the house on Holden Street had been in Cambridge. But it had space for visitors, a magnificent cherry tree in the backyard, and a pair of rabbits who reliably appeared around dinner time as Albert and Sarah would sit down to eat.21 Newlin Road quickly became an active hub for the social life they would create for the many visitors flowing through the institute. Albert, and especially Sarah, gave the institute a European air of sociability. The icy tension at the institute began to thaw and thereby ease the strain that Geertz was under with his colleagues. With frequent dinner parties and an infinite supply of well-dressed gentility and “small kindnesses,” as Susan James recalled, a kind of international intellectual civility bordering on courtliness prevailed over the formative years of social science at the IAS. Albert enjoyed sliding back and forth between foreign languages among guests and visitors and showing the Hirschmans’ art. Always ready to share his admiration for the work’s formalities, he was equally ready with a story. But visitors were always aware of the invisible line should the conversation drift to more personal territory; it was no-man’s-land.22

  The early days of Social Science saw a congenial and increasingly intimate partnership between Hirschman and Geertz, with polite and respectful faculty meetings at the institute. There was a Plutarchian neatness to the pair. Geertz was a historic pessimist, his partner an “incorrigible optimist.” The Marseilles nickname, Beamish, Geertz found perfectly fitting. A gravelly source of outbursts, Geertz was a picture of contrast to Hirschman’s smooth, cool, if aloof, mien. “They seemed so different in the way they comported themselves,” recalled Robert Darnton, who spent years in the Social Science seminars. According to Darnton, Geertz was a scholar “for whom very few people could command respect.” Hirschman was the exception that proved the general rule. Geertz admire
d him deeply. There was a sense in the combination that Hirschman brought a missing dimension to Geertz’s own life, like Kant’s Practical Reason, a vast experience in the world and an ability to resolve, through reflection, the questions of what to do, a capacity to think in the service of action. This contrasted with Geertz’s own inclination to Theoretical Reason. In this sense, poking fun at the “Beamish” nickname was a cover for veneration, and as the years unfolded, for an ever deeper fondness. On the matter of what kind of social science should be supported at the IAS, there was a kindredness of spirit that is undeniable. Indeed, when the speaker series for the year 1972–73 was arranged, Hirschman was asked to kick it off with his essay about inequality and the tunnel effect (a prospect that made him “a little bit scared once again”).23 He needn’t have worried. Geertz loved the paper. It represented precisely the kind of social science the world needed. Along the way, Geertz did add a few little digs at what was going on in universities around them. He found the new trend for laboratory experiments in psychology wanting. “It’s dangerously artificial, in ways that render most inferences from laboratory to real life illicit. Hence, I always hanker after some actual social event as my test bed; and in this case the one that nags at me is the one nearest home: the well-heeled student radical. There’s something stubborn about that creature that won’t fit into what I believe is a most pervasive model. He’s relative deprivation personified—but I can’t for the life of me see why! The moral, probably, is that he should be ignored.”24