Samuel Bowles interviewed by Joshua Cohen
HOW DO WE TALK about economics? Robert Manduca’s essay “Selling Keynesianism” notes a striking connection between the concerns about public education that led Chester Bowles to write Tomorrow Without Fear in 1946 and those that led his son Samuel Bowles to develop the Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics (CORE) Project, an innovative economics curriculum for undergraduates. Bowles is a distinguished economist and longtime Boston Review contributor. In this discussion with Boston Review editor Joshua Cohen, Bowles reflects on his father’s work, the connections with his own efforts, and the need for new ways to communicate economics today.
JOSHUA COHEN: I want to talk with you today about economics— both the discipline and efforts to communicate and educate about the discipline. And I want to start with your father, Chester Bowles. He was born in 1901, graduated from Yale in 1924, and started the advertising firm of Benton and Bowles, which was incredibly successful even during the Great Depression. Then during World War II, he ran the Office of Price Administration, working on price and rent controls. After the war, he was governor of Connecticut, ambassador to India (on two different occasions), and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1958.