(The organizing committee regrets to announce that Professor Montgomery had to cancel his talk unexpectedly for personal reasons. He is profoundly disappointed that he is unable to attend.)
Do Liberal Arts Colleges Suffer from “Economic Correctness”?
Biography
Mark Montgomery is Donald L. Wilson Professor of Enterprise and Leadership, and Professor of Economics, at Grinnell College. He and his wife, Tinker Powell, also in the Economics Department, came to Grinnell in 1989. Mark teaches Mathematical Economics, the Economics of Education, and Environmental Economics. His Ph.D. is from the University of Wisconsin — Madison. His research has appeared in The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Industrial and Labor Relations Review, The Review of Economic Dynamics and Control, Land Economics, The Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, The Economics of Education Review, The Journal of Urban Economics, and others. His essays have been published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Des Moines Register, The Dallas Morning News, The Cedar Rapids Gazette, The Mystery Readers Journal, The American (online), and The Imperfect Parent (online), and in various edited volumes. His commentary has been heard on Public Radio International’s To the Best of Our Knowledge. He is coauthor (with Tinker Powell) of a mystery novel, Theoretically Dead (New Victoria Publishers, 2001).
Presentation
Like so much of the Academy, Liberal arts colleges are famously . . well, . . . liberal. We care about the poor and the oppressed and are strongly committed to social justice. But do our soft hearts get in the way of our having hard heads? In other words, does our compassion for the unfortunate lead us away from the kinds of policies that might better help them?