From Assistant Professor of Theater Cliff Odle’s perspective, the artifice of theater is often the best way to expose the truth of the human condition.

In the case of the play The Luck of the Irish, which he and his students spent the first part of fall 2021 mounting, it’s also providing a history lesson in redlining, American racism, and a challenge to the audience, to ask their own questions.

“Theater works best when it is that sort of mirror, not so much to answer questions, but ask them and ask them consistently in a way that stays with people,â€� Odle said during a recent campus panel discussion about racial justice and housing inequity, inspired by the student production. “And so there’s a lot of questions here to ask.â€�

The Luck of the Irish, a 2013 play by Kirsten Greenidge, alternates between 1950s and present-day Boston, and focuses on two families and their conflict over a house. Located in a majority white upscale neighborhood, the house had been occupied by the Taylors, an upwardly mobile Black family. It’s their home, and they paid for it, but there is a dispute over its ownership.

At the time of the purchase, Boston neighborhoods were kept segregated through redlining — a practice where the federal government would refuse to insure the mortgage on a house due to perceived risk — and myriad other racist practices, so the Taylors paid the less-wealthy Donovan family to ghost-buy it for them. Decades later, the Taylors’ granddaughters can’t find the deed to the house is missing, and the Donovans insist that the house belongs to them.

“It’s a story about people dealing with these things and how these things affect these individual people,â€� Odle said. “This particular play comes out of a long tradition of plays about African Americans looking for space, looking for a place to belong.â€�

The story is also a representation of what scores of Black families have gone through historically: a system that works against their fundamental human right to house and home.

Faculty from ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Bowdoin College came together the week before the play’s Oct. 28 opening to discuss the history, legacy, and ongoing impact of racist practices such as redlining. Sponsored by the Department of Theater and Dance, the session was organized by Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater Elizabeth Phillips and Diana Zhou ’23 of Shanghai, and moderated by Phillips.

Representing a range of disciplines and interdisciplines — from philosophy, economics, and theater, to Africana studies, rhetoric, and film and screen studies —they challenged the audience and each other to ask questions about what we, as a society, could possibly do to fix the inequities.

Jessica LaVoice, an assistant professor of economics at Bowdoin, provided a brief overview of the history of redlining in the U.S. Research has shown that, among other harms, redlining effectively and systematically reduced the ability of Black Americans to gain wealth, solidifying racial wealth disparities in American cities during the Great Migration of the 1900s. 

For example, by the 1940s, t more for a home to move into a primarily white neighborhood, but once they became owners, their home value would decline by 10 percent, eroding Black wealth.

These housing injustices, LaVoice said, were of course only part of what Black families suffered. “I don’t want to oversimplify the complexities and the interactions between all these different sources of discrimination and injustices across many other aspects of American life,â€� LaVoice said.

Theater’s Role

For Odle, the theater and the arts can offer the beginning of a solution by opening eyes.

“What I do is I impersonate people that don’t exist. I tell people to be people they’re not, I write stories that don’t exist,â€� he said. “Why do I do this? Well, the artifice of course, is in order to expose the truth of the human condition: who we are, where we are, why we are.â€�

The Luck of the Irish, like the iconic 1959 Lorraine Hansberry play A Raisin in the Sun, “deals with this idea of belonging, this idea of home ownership, something that we all kind of take for granted or have taken for granted,� Odle said.

“Now we have generations that are in a situation where they’re not doing as well as their predecessors,â€� Odle continued. “I think my generation, Gen X, was one of the first to really not do as well as our fathers and mothers. I’m not — I can’t afford a house.â€�

And as his fellow panelists pointed out, the effects of housing insecurity go beyond not having a “place� to be; they also affect the social experience of the individual, and can depend on not just race or social class, but also factors like gender.

Paul Schofield, an assistant professor of philosophy, said he believes that “if you are housing insecure or if you’re experiencing homelessness, you’re excluded from society and from participating in our major social institutions in ways that are different from simply not getting your fair share of the pie.â€�

“Additionally, I think it’s significant that those who are housing insecure often are unable to afford the social bonds that you would expect people who have a stable household to form,â€� he said. 

“They’re often separated from their families and their friends and their children, and those who are Black disproportionately are separated from their children. Black women often have their children taken away from them at a much higher rate,â€� Schofield added.

All Systems Are Not Go

Charles Nero, Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies, said that the systems supporting the inequities can — and need to be — challenged.

“I think it’s important to know that white supremacy is created by and sustained by public policy. And so it is public policy that must constantly be critiqued and addressed.

“Public policy takes place at local levels, national levels. And we have to be present, or at least encourage presence at all of those levels with no guarantee of a win.â€�

Redlining and Reparations

Michael Murray, the Charles Franklin Phillips Professor of Economics, studies federal policy around low-income housing. He pointed out that the benefits of economic and social status are passed down through the generations, and so is the harm: sustained socio-economic inequity including education.

“When you look at racially segregated cities in the U.S., African American children end up with less education than in less racially segregated cities. So the housing discrimination is translating into shutting down the education channel for managing to accumulate wealth over the generations.�

But what about when a government has both created and historically maintained the policies that built those inequities?

In contemplating that painfully twisted reality, Murray had to compose himself for a moment. “There’s a legal principle that when government harms citizens, the government has an obligation to remedy those harms,â€� Murray said. “We need to be looking for suitable remedies.â€�

But how can we as a society can repair the damage done by centuries of racial segregation, economic, and social inequity, and by systems built and sustained on the exploitation of groups of people?

That’s the type of question that Susan Stark, an associate professor of philosophy who works in moral psychology and social philosophy, has pondered — specifically, what reparations for institutionalized racism might look like.

“Usually when we’re talking about reparations, we’re talking about actions that we all could take today, or our government can take today in order to repair wrongs that were done in the past,â€� Stark said.

That means taking moral responsibility for something that happened long ago.

But many people can’t wrap their heads around that. A familiar refrain heard among white Americans is that while “my ancestors may have hurt your ancestors, I didn’t hurt you today, so I don’t owe you anything.â€�

Indeed, said Stark, peoples’ ordinary thinking is “that I am only morally responsible for the things that I have control over, things that I do. If there’s an earthquake that happens far away, I’m not morally responsible for the occurrence of the harm that resulted from the earthquake. Because I didn’t cause it, I didn’t have anything to do with it.â€�

Race and Responsibility

The issue of reparations opens a whole new discussion about race, responsibility, and, not surprisingly, identity.

Looking at the many cultures and ethnic groups harmed and disenfranchised by American colonization, genocide, racial segregation, and historic social and economic inequity, the responsibility for reparations would land on white America. 

But you need to define “whiteness� to define who bears responsibility. And defining whiteness can be “slippery,� according to Nero.

“It is the very elasticity of whiteness, which is by design how whiteness defines itself. Is whiteness race? Is whiteness ethnicity? Whiteness is everywhere and nowhere, simultaneously,� Nero said.

“I wonder about how something like that figures into a discussion about who is white and who has responsibility,� Nero added. “And whether or not even the capacity to do that is an indication of just what whiteness is. It is to name whiteness, and to specify whiteness.�

The surge in popularity of DNA tests and ethnic heritage mapping has introduced another complication to the conversation, and that is who can “claim� Black or Indigenous heritage, and therefore perhaps divest themselves of the responsibility of making reparations.

“I’ve had friends who are like, ‘Oh, I’m 3 percent black,’â€� Odle said. “‘Therefore I suffer too.’ And there really does need to be a definition of what this sort of whiteness thing is, and who, and how your experience in this sort of thing sort of plays into it because it is kind of a slippery thing.â€�

But when this “slippery� whiteness has been the cultural default for creating laws, housing, and privilege for generations, defining what it is proves tricky, Nero said.

In this conversation, it’s vital that whiteness not be the focus of the conversation, according to Stark.

“I think the important thing is to figure out a way for white people to take responsibility for the wrongs of the past, without somehow centering themselves,� Stark said.

This is why it’s so important that the conversation around racial justice and housing inequity include different voices, from different backgrounds. And why a play performed on a college campus in Maine might generate that essential conversation.

“I will go out on a limb and say by itself, a play, or the arts in general, isn’t going to change things,â€� Odle said. “Exposure opens up the possibility for change, and that is what we need. We need audiences that are not the same audiences, audiences that don’t normally go to see theater, audiences that know normally don’t normally go to see art. Those are the audiences that we need to come in and see this, because those are all the audiences that can become those change agents. 

“Art is not going to do it by itself. It’s not designed to do that, but it is designed to get people to think, is designed to get conversations happening. It’s designed to open up doors that people will hopefully go through.â€�

One cold Friday in November, a classroom in Pettengill Hall was a little more crowded than usual: The students in the First-Year Seminar “Truthâ€� got a visit from older ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students who, last spring, had been instrumental in creating the brand-new course.

One by one, the new ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students introduced themselves and told the visitors what they liked best about their First-Year Seminar, whether it was a reading, film, or discussion topic — materials the older students had helped choose for them.

Watching the scene unfold were the two professors, Alexandre Dauge-Roth and Michael Murray, who had dreamt up the course last year, involved students in its creation, and deployed the course as one of the rare team-taught First-Year Seminars at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

Professors Alex Dauge-Roth and Michael Murray touch base before class begins (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

A humanist, Dauge-Roth is a professor of French and francophone studies. A social scientist, Murray is the Charles Franklin Phillips Professor of Economics. Both are among the most popular ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors, each a recent winner of the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The professors listened to their students answer the “favorite material� question. One student offered Auschwitz and After, Charlotte Delbo’s memoirs of her time in a Nazi concentration camp.

Another liked comparing restorative and punitive justice. A third really enjoyed Logicomix, a graphic novel about the effort to establish logical foundations in mathematics. (Least favorite? Probably Nietzsche.)

“The main goal is not to solve the question but more to instill a higher sense of methodological awareness within students when they deal with issues of truth.�

The truth is, the new seminar is less about figuring out what “the truth� actually is and more about exploring methods of discerning and crafting truth — from philosophy to quantum mechanics to post-conflict truth and reconciliation commissions to documentary filmmaking.

Faculty and students — participants and planners — discuss the seminar. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“The value for our students is to go and explore different kinds of disciplines that all produce discourse and theories of truth,� Dauge-Roth says. “The main goal is not to solve the question but more to instill a higher sense of methodological awareness within students when they deal with issues of truth.�

The course got its start last winter as Murray mulled the idea of teaching first-year ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students something about truth.

He recalls thinking how the current climate “is one in which notions of truth are under siege in society.â€� Perhaps it would be useful, right off the bat, for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ newest students to be exposed to “a sophisticated sense of questions about truth.â€�

He felt comfortable exploring a few methodologies. As an economist, Murray clarifies reality by working with data and, he says, “looking at the relationship of trust to the economic success of societies.� He’s also studied how philosophy and the natural sciences uncover truth.

Students discuss their favorite readings from the seminar. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

One day, after a committee meeting, Murray shared his idea with Dauge-Roth. It was chance, but fortuitous. Dauge-Roth studies memory and collective trauma through literature, film, and documentaries, particularly representations of the Rwandan Genocide.

Dauge-Roth, who incorporates philosophy and sociology into his work, approaches truth in a different way from economists or physicists. He told Murray about Delbo’s Auschwitz and After. The first book of her trilogy opens with the line, “Today I am not sure that what I wrote is true. I am certain it is truthful.�

Murray and Dauge-Roth realized their experiences with economics and natural science on the one hand, and literature, film, and sociology on the other, were in this case complementary. They decided to teach the course together.

In developing the course, the two professors cast a wide net, asking people inside and outside of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community to suggest course materials. A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ physics professor brought up an article on theoretical physics by Albert Einstein. The author of a book called Lying directed Murray to a book called Truth.

Last spring, with about twice the material they could possibly pack into a semester, Murray and Dauge-Roth invited eight juniors and seniors, several of whom are double majors across academic divisions, to spend Short Term shaping the syllabus as part of the Short Term Innovative Pedagogy and Course (re)Design program.

A group of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ seniors who helped design the First-Year Seminar â€�Truthâ€� listen as the new students taking the seminar tell them what they did and didn’t like about the course. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College) (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The students and their professors read through the material in five weeks, trying to balance the wealth of books and films with other First-Year Seminar needs, such as showing new students how to write academic papers and use the library and other campus resources. The Short Term students “helped us bring down to a manageable level the amount of reading and define an order that is intellectually stimulating,� Dauge-Roth says.

As seminar instructors, Murray and Dauge-Roth teach together, each taking on aspects of the course in which they have expertise. Then, as academic advisers, they help the students identify the aspects of the course that interest them and let their interests guide their academic paths at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

“We bring in the physical sciences at a level I feel comfortable talking about, and then say to students who got excited about those ideas, ‘You should take some physics courses,’� Murray says.

In the last weeks of the course, having surveyed the philosophical, scientific, and literary underpinnings of various conceptions of truth, the class finally got to fake news. They read an whether President Donald Trump was a liar or simply a postmodern president, and they watched a 2009 TED Talk in which Nigerian author warns against defining people by a single story.

Murray responds to a student during class discussion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The talk, Murray says, reminded one student of a particular aspect of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which cave dwellers who have been shown the outside world initially wish to return to the cave, where they are more comfortable but unable to perceive other aspects of reality.

It was a gratifying moment in a course meant to teach the youngest ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students to make connections across centuries, borders, and fields of study, something they’re encouraged to do throughout their academic careers.

“That’s very rewarding, when they are able to make those connections that were absolutely impossible or unthinkable at the beginning of the semester,� Dauge-Roth says.

With Theodore Walther’s appointment to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ economics faculty in 1958, the department exploded in size — from two professors to three.

For Walther, a professor emeritus of economics who died on June 2 at age 88, that was the beginning of vast changes in the college during his 43 years on the faculty. He traversed his long tenure with a New Yorker’s wry bemusement, leavened with a Navy sailor’s equanimity and undergirded by great devotion to teaching and his students.

A native of Atlantic City, N.J., Ted grew up in New York City and served in the U.S. Navy from 1948 to 1952, primarily aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kula Gulf. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Mexico City College in 1955, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research.

In 1998, 40 years after his appointment to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty, Walther retired. Even in retirement, he taught ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ courses until 2002. His textbook on international economics, The World Economy (Wiley), was published in 1996.

Professor Emeritus of Economics Theodore Walther, who died June 2 at age 88, served on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty from 1958 to 1998. In retirement, he taught a course each fall until 2001.

When Walther arrived, the college was half its current size, 875 students. Male and female students ate separately, in Rand Hall and Memorial Commons, and followed different social rules — the men’s more lax than the women’s. Teaching four courses each semester, twice the current standard, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professors tended to be, and were expected to be, generalists with little time for research.

Indeed, the in loco parentis model was firmly in place at schools of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ ilk, and the faculty were expected to be highly attentive parentes. “I think there were a lot of people who were attempting to tell the young people what to do,â€� he recalled for the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Oral History Project in 1998. On move-in day, for example, professors would greet arriving freshmen at their residences and help carry in their belongings.

Ted Walther’s arrival in 1958 expanded the economics faculty from two to three. From left, David Williams, Walther, and Ralph Chances pose in 1964. (The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mirror)

In his oral history interview, he said that his initial ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ courses 40 years earlier, including principles of economics and comparative economic systems, were “bombs. I was teaching a lot of courses, and they were pretty sad.â€� He and all the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ faculty would get much better.

Late in the 1960s, younger faculty were growing in number and beginning to find their voice. In 1967, Ted joined a handful of faculty members, including Carl Straub and John Cole, in signing an open letter of protest against the Vietnam War, which they called “immoral, illegal, and ultimately futile.�

Under Hedley Reynolds, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ president from 1967 to 1989, faculty expansion really got going, as did growth in student enrollment. The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professoriate became “sharper,â€� said Ted in 1998, in the sense that “they [could] now concentrate on certain areas in economics rather than covering a broad spectrum. This is very good.â€�

Likely watching a football game, Ted Walther watches from the Garcelon Field grandstands circa 1968. (The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mirror)

With Title IX regulations coming into full force in the 1970s, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ moved toward greater equity in athletics, and in 1980 Ted became the first chair of the faculty’s newly constituted Committee on Athletics. Though he abhorred the bureaucracy of faculty committee work, he was proud of what the Athletics committee accomplished.

When students dubbed him “Terrible Ted,â€� it really meant that “he wasn’t.â€�

“We made a serious effort to make sure that the number of intercollegiate [sports] offered for women were equal to the number offered for men,” he said. “For a while, with the NESCAC, I think that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was the only school that had more intercollegiate [sports] open for women than it did for men.â€�

What did not change during Walther’s time, nor thereafter, is how college students rely on irony to communicate affection, so that when students dubbed him “Terrible Ted,â€� it really meant that “he wasn’t,â€� says his colleague Michael Murray, Charles Phillips Professor of Economics. A second-floor classroom in Pettengill Hall is dedicated to Walther, and the plaque’s few words testify to the fondness and respect accorded him: “in honor of a professor and a friend.â€�

Self-effacing and with a dry wit made spicy from years in the Navy, Ted was “not a show-off, and was always incredibly polite and thankful for small favors,� says his colleague Anne Williams, professor emerita of economics.

A Pettengill Hall classroom is named for Ted Walther. The plaque reads, “Gift of a student in honor of a friend and a professor.” (Jay Burns/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The dry wit shows throughout his oral history interview. Asked if living on Frye Street bothered him, his home being near many student residences and concommitant noise, he said, “Let me put it this way: I’m used to it. And I think a few years from now I’m going to have all the silence I’m going to need.�

The spiciness was evident when, in one of his classes in 1983, he called then-Sen. Ted Kennedy “the Massachusetts Marathon Swimmer,â€� a reference to the Chappaquiddick incident. A ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Student columnist objected to the jab, then two of Walther’s students responded with a letter to the editor, saying professors should be allowed — through humor or not — “to challenge our perspectives and prejudices.â€�

In 1992, Ted Walther (standing, right) poses with his economics colleagues. From left, Cynthia Browning, Carl Schwinn, Anne Williams, the late David Aschauer, Walther, Maryke Dessing, and Michael Murray. (The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Mirror)

An international economist, Walther said that his favorite course was “The World Economy,� which he continued to teach each fall for three years after retiring (by which time, the economics faculty numbered a dozen members). “For many years, Ted gave students their only exposure to international trade and international finance,� says Murray.

When asked how he regarded a fellow swimmer, age 92, who seemed to defy Father Time, Walther smiled and said, “With jealousy.�

“Ted always claimed he chose to go Mexico City for his B.A. degree because the favorable exchange rate would stretch his GI Bill dollars,� Williams says. “I suspect this was an early signal that he would develop into an international economist.� He also taught statistics, international macroeconomics, and monetary policy, and served as department chair. “He had an inimitable form of written expression,� she adds. “His administrative memos were never dull.�

He was an avid swimmer who worked out at Tarbell Pool. Asked in 2009 how he regarded a fellow swimmer, age 92, who seemed to defy Father Time, Walther smiled and said, “With jealousy.�

Friends and colleagues remark on his attentiveness and interest. “He always, always, asked about your family,� said Paul Menice, assistant director of security and campus safety.

When Lynne Lewis, now the Elmer Campbell Professor of Economics, arrived at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Walther was teaching just his one course “but he always stopped by my office when he was here,â€� she recalls.

Having learned that Lewis earned a doctorate at the University of Colorado, Walther wanted to know about Ralphie the Buffalo — the live mascot that runs into the stadium ahead of the team at football games. “He was especially fond of Ralphie and very surprised to hear that Ralphie was actually a female.�

Walther’s survivors include daughters Pamela Walther Felber and Susan Walther; six grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; sister Gretchen Walther Dumler and brother Chris Walther; and a niece and nephew. He was predeceased in 2013 by his wife, Joan Mirandon Walther, who worked as a registered nurse in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Health Center from 1974 to 1993. Almost always when he spoke of her, Ted Walther referred to her as “my bride.”

The real-world power of economist Michael Murray’s teaching is on display everywhere his former students go.

Take, for example, Analysis Group in Boston, which has had an active alumni connection since its co-founding by trustee emeritus Bruce Stangle ’70 in 1981.

Jim Hughes, one of Murray’s ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ colleagues, does consulting at Analysis Group. More than once, a former Murray student now working at Analysis has given Hughes “a lecture on the econometric techniques needed for a project that I’m working on. It blows me away.â€�

“Michael just makes econometrics click for them in a way that other people don’t.�

Making things click for generations of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students is why Murray, the Phillips Professor of Economics and a member of the faculty since 1986, has won the 2017 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, the college’s top teaching honor carrying a $5,000 prize.

As Hughes’ anecdote indicates, one of Murray’s courses (he’s taught 16 different ones at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½) is econometrics, a notoriously difficult course at any college because it asks students to use math and statistics to grasp the workings of economic systems.

Students don’t just rave about Murray’s ability to communicate econometrics. They say he even makes it fun. “He made complex concepts enjoyable and interesting to learn,� says Sarah Centanni ’17 of Hingham, Mass.

To his students, Michael Murray is “passionate, intelligent, funny, caring, and personable,â€� says a former student. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Murray has written the book on understanding econometrics, literally. His textbook, Econometrics: A Modern Introduction, was published in 2005. “It’s quite different from other textbooks,� he says. “In that sense, I teach the subject in a very different manner.�

It’s a manner that studiously avoids what he calls “black boxes,� which symbolize memorizing. In his book and in his classroom, Murray instead tries to give his students an understanding of econometric theory, rather than simple proficiency in using the various tools of the field, including econometric software.

With that approach, he’s passing on a maxim from his own school days.

An amateur actor who’s been in many ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ theater productions, Murray adopts the character of a beloved high school math teacher who spoke with a nasal twang and would draw out certain words. Time and again, the teacher would tell Murray and his classmates, “Don’t memorize. Understaaaannnd.â€�

And his students do. “Professor Murray lays out the base of the material in class and he pushes you, the student, to find the answers on your own,� says Dan Willsey ’18 of Glastonbury, Conn. “He holds his students to an incredibly high standard.�

“When I did not understand some material during the course, he talked with me for over an hour until I got it,� recalls Shelby Rader ’17 of Duxbury, Mass.

Here are some scenes of Murray in the classroom as he talks about teaching ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students:

In courses like econometrics or statistics, an array of software — STATA, Eviews, R, or SPSS — can crunch right through problems that Murray is trying to get his students to understand.

Leaning on those tools, “it’s easy to decide that you want to get your students to learn the mechanics of an analysis,� says Murray. “I figure our students are bright enough to figure out the mechanics. They’ll benefit most from the stuff they couldn’t learn for themselves. And that’s understanding.�

Hughes, the college’s Sowell Professor of Economics and Murray’s colleague since 1992, says the stakes are high when it comes to teaching topics like econometrics or statistics, which he teaches.

It’s a “dangerous thing,� he says, for teachers to succumb to the “temptation to teach econometrics and stats by saying, ‘Let the computer do it.’ Or just teaching students that ‘when faced with this, do that,’ figuring, ‘Who cares? You’re just going to be a research assistant.’�

Students can get by on that kind of teaching, he says, “but Michael’s talent is to get his students to want to go deeper.�

Understanding doesn’t come cheaply, in terms of Murray’s time investment. Students repeatedly mention long office hours, three-hour study sessions before exams, and the time he drove to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ from Portland after returning on an evening flight in order to hold a 10:30 p.m. study session.

Students and his colleagues also routinely praise Murray’s enthusiasm in the classroom. Actor that he is, he nevertheless disagrees that he’s playing a part — an econ version of Dead Poets Society — as he enthuses about this or that econometric model in a Pettengill Hall classroom.

Economics professor Michael Murray works with students in his econometrics course on April 3 during the final week of classes. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Murray recalls teaching at the University of Virginia in the 1970s, where he had two sections of an economics course, each with 600 students. There, “the skills I use in theater are very valuable. I can project my voice. I can project my presence. I can move in ways that will hold people’s attention.� In those settings, “there’s a point at which teaching has become performance,� he says.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, classes are much, much smaller. “I can be myself,â€� he says. For students, Murray being Murray means experiencing someone who’s “passionate, intelligent, funny, caring, and personable,â€� says Cosmin Bardan ’16. That authentic love of his work resonates with his students. Murray’s “pure love of the field,â€� Centanni adds, made her “more invested in my work.â€�

Still, Murray is an entertaining figure in class, which does serve the purpose, he says, of “infusing energy into the room.�

“Economics — love it though I do — is a subject that can easily put people to sleep and make them tune out,â€� Hughes says. “Whether you call it performance or you call it agitation, what Michael does is convey his excitement and his belief in the importance of what he is putting across in a way that makes students sit up and say, ‘I really need to know this.’â€�

“The way Michael’s mind works, he’s thinking, ‘Wow, so you didn’t understand it that way? OK, I just thought of another three ways, and if you still don’t get it, I’ll come up with six more ways to teach it, until I finally see the light bulb come on over your head.�

And the bulb usually blinks bright. “I have never had a professor who cared so much about making sure students understand,� says Alexander Stekler ’17 of Avon, Conn., while Centanni talks about the feeling of “joy and satisfaction when a complex problem finally clicked.� (And yes, we’re still talking about economics.)

In the end, Murray says his classroom style is all about “establishing relationships with the individual students.�

And that, he says, “is what makes it really pleasurable to teach at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.â€�

The mace bearer is an attention-grabber at Commencement, so when the mace gets a new bearer, as happened this year, it’s like getting a new James Bond.

With the retirement of Professor of Sociology Sawyer Sylvester — the Sean Connery of mace bearers, some said — the mace went to Phillips Professor of Economics Michael Murray, and he interpreted the role in his own way.

Written by economist Howard Bodenhorn of Lafayette College, the 2001 study, Economic Scholarship at Elite Liberal Arts Colleges: Are Other Economists Paying Attention? measured the influence of 439 economists at liberal arts colleges. Bodenhorn concluded, “Although prominent economists at elite research universities produce the most influential scholarship, economists at the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges make significant contributions to the literature.” Ranking the publication record not by the number or books and articles, but by the frequency with which others cite their work, the study seeks to measure the quality and influence of the department’s scholarly output, rather than its quantity.

David A. Aschauer, the Elmer W. Campbell Professor of Economics at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, was the top-ranked full professor among liberal arts colleges. A former Federal Reserve senior economist, Aschauer has taught at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ since 1989. His teaching and research interests center on macroeconomics, financial markets and public finance.

Aschauer’s scholarship represents only a part of his department’s publication record. Michael Murray, the Charles Franklin Phillips Professor of Economics; Margaret Maurer-Fazio, associate professor of economics; and James Hughes, associate professor of economics, all have substantial numbers of citations.

Murray’s work concerns public economics, urban economics, econometrics and urban development. Maurer-Fazio’s research focuses on labor-market issues in China. Hughes specializes in labor economics and health care economics. “We were quite pleased with the results of the study,” said Hughes, who is also the department chair. “People have been working hard to complete and publish their work. It is nice to see that other economists have been paying attention.”

Hughes also noted that the rankings did not include the publications of the department’s newest member, Associate Professor Lynne Lewis, a well-respected and highly productive environmental economist. “If you include Lynne’s work, our ranking would be higher still,” said Hughes.

According to Bodenhorn’s findings, the 10 most productive liberal arts economics departments in the 1990s were Wellesley, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Wesleyan, Colby, Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Smith, Lafayette and Swarthmore.

Bodenhorn’s study cites 1999 research by James Baughman and Robert Goldman published in Change, a journal of higher education, that shows a high correlation between faculty publication records and college rankings. Prestigious baccalaureate liberal arts colleges have faculty publication records comparable to some research and doctoral granting institutions, Baughman and Goldman concluded.