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Interview with Jerry Lassen

Recent Teaching History

Contemporary America, Spring 2001
Property, Spring 2000
Modern American Capitalism, Fall-Winter 1999-2000
Making Modern America, Fall-Winter-Spring 1998-1999

Recent and Current Areas of Interest

Jerry Lassen loves working here: with the students that are here, the faculty, and on this campus. Jerry is an economist whose work is "connecting up political economy with history from the early part of the 19th Century to the present time." He looks for "explanations of economic events through historical and political forces as opposed to methodical reasons." His work has become more interesting and fun as time goes by. He enjoyed teaching Political Economy three times, and particularly looks forward to teaching the Making of America again with David Hitchens. Their interests and complimentary skills and temperaments are perfectly suited: David the storyteller and Jerry the analyst. They are changing their design from a chronological approach to one directly integrating past and present historical and economic events.

Changing the model is a familiar activity for Jerry, although it may seem somewhat ironic that the model that Jerry the analyst has been striving to change is the 220 year old model of "The Rational Man" (whose decisions are presumed to drive the economy). But who, if not an analyst, could?

It all begins with the 20 year old Jerry browsing in a bookstore in Austin, Texas.. He's a junior in college studying math because that's what he is good at and has developed an interest in philosophy. "I see this book called, The Worldly Philosophers. I had no idea what that was but I was interested in Philosophy and I picked it up and read it. And it turned out to be about the famous economists. As I was going through the stories about these men and the amount of analysis that went into each of their theories--it just seemed like an ideal fit. I saw another book called The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith. He talks about the status of the economy in the country, about the affluence of the society, the public versus the private sector--and it suddenly occurred to me that here was a discipline that included mathematics and philosophy and made a difference." He took an economics class in the next semester. He graduated with a math degree, but he applied to graduate schools in economics and so went to the University of Wisconsin. "And graduate school was fun in one way, but it really wasn't the philosophical adventure that I thought it might be."

It was to be some time before Jerry could devote his thoughts entirely to his greatest interest. Jerry first taught for five years at the University of Victoria, where he enjoyed the collegiality of serious conversation with faculty in other fields, but where there was no team teaching. He next taught at The University of Puget Sound for a year and then went to work in the state government, as an economic forecaster, and ended up here in 1980 teaching in the MPA program. After four or five years at that , Jerry "finally got into what I consider really legitimate team-teaching--where the program is planned in a very interdisciplinary way. The connections are made in the classroom."

The contents of the 1953 edition of The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers [by Robert L. Heilbroner] are listed on the library card as:

The economic revolution.--The wonderful world of Adam Smith.--The gloomy world of Parson Malthus and David Ricardo.--The beautiful world of the Utopian socialists.--The inexorable world of Karl Marx.--The Victorian world and the underworld of economics.--The savage world of Thorstein Veblen.--The sick world of John Maynard Keynes.--The modern world.--Beyond the economic revolution.

When asked what authors he characteristically introduced to his students, guess who Jerry lists--plus one other influential author: Donald N. McClosky, author of the collection Second Thoughts: Myth and Morals of U.S. Economic History; If You're So Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise, Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics and a half dozen other books suggesting that the real models of economics are good stories.

Jerry reports that sometimes his thoughts get muddled in mid-stride, as he is telling the story of our economic life, so he asks students to stop him with a question when that happens. Students report in their evaluations that Jerry is supportive of them and their work and that they appreciate his combination of demanding but supportive in his relationships to them.

Interview by Pete Sinclair

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Last Updated: March 15, 2007