Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 10:55:14 -0700 (MST)
From: Paula England <england@U.Arizona.EDU>
To: gimenez <gimenez_m@bronze.Colorado.EDU>
Subject: sad news (fwd)
>
> David M. Gordon (1944-1996)
>
> David Gordon, a leading economist of the left, died Saturday
> at the age of fifty-two; he succumbed to congestive heart failure
> while awaiting a heart transplant at Columbia Presbyterian
> Hospital in New York. At the time of his death he was Director of
> the Center for Economic Policy Analysis and Professor of
> Economics at the New School for Social Research.
>
> Gordon came from a family of economists. His father, the
> late Robert Aaron Gordon, was President of the American Economic
> Association while his mother, the late Margaret S. Gordon, was
> well known for her contributions to the economics of employment
> and social welfare policy. His brother Robert J. Gordon is a
> prominent macroeconomist and Professor of Economics at
> Northwestern University. David Gordon and his family have been
> referred to as the "Flying Wallendas of Economics."
>
> David Gordon is best known for his contributions to the
> theory of discrimination and labor market segmentation, his
> analysis of the institutions shaping long-term economic growth,
> and his trenchant criticisms of conservative economic policy. His
> contributions to labor economics, developed jointly with Richard
> Edwards and Michael Reich, challenged the conventional assumption
> of a single labor market and argued instead for the recognition
> of deep divisions along racial, gender, and class lines. His
> macroeconomic research involved theoretical, econometric, and
> historical analysis of the impact of political and social as well
> as economic institutions on long-term investment and growth. He
> coined the term "social structure of accumulation" and is
> credited with founding the school of economic thought bearing
> that name.
>
> Gordon's Fat and Mean: The Myth of Managerial "Downsizing"
> and the Corporate Squeeze of Working Americans, to be published
> next month by Martin Kessler Books at The Free Press, has won
> lavish pre-publication praise. A review to appear in The Atlantic
> suggests that it will be one of the most influential public-
> policy books of the decade. The book documents the long term
> decline in the pay and living standards of American workers, and
> what Gordon has termed the increasingly top-heavy bureaucratic
> structure of American corporations.
>
> As a student, Gordon wrote for the Harvard Crimson, and
> following graduation from Harvard in 1965 he helped found The
> Southern Courier, a civil rights newspaper based in Atlanta.**
> Throughout his life he maintained his interest in journalism,
> contributing an economics column to the Los Angeles Times, as
> well as articles to The Nation, as well as making frequent
> appearances on television and radio commentary programs.
>
> Gordon received his doctoral degree in Economics from
> Harvard University in 1971, taught briefly at Yale, and since
> 1973 has been a professor of economics at the New School for
> Social Research. Pointedly eschewing the career paths of the
> economics mainstream, he was a founder and active member of the
> Union for Radical Political Economics, a professional
> organization of leftist economists, as well as the Center for
> Democratic Alternatives, and most recently, the Center for
> Economic Policy Analysis. Gordon was particularly beloved by his
> many doctoral students at the New School where he was known for
> his tireless attention to their research.
>
> His major publications include Theories of Poverty and
> Underemployment (1972), Segmented Work, Divided Workers (with
> Richard Edwards and Michael Reich, 1982) and After the Waste
> Land: A Democratic Economics for the year 2000 (with Samuel
> Bowles and Thomas Weisskopf, 1991). He regarded Fat and Mean as
> his legacy, working intensely on it over the past year as his
> heart weakened, and delivering it to his publisher on the day of
> the medical setback that led to his final hospitalization.
>
> Asked four years ago to reflect on his professional life to
> that point, Gordon responded: "I feel pleased with the choices I
> have made and the work that my collaborators and I have produced;
> frustrated by the condescending complacency of mainstream
> economists; angered by the greed and irrationality which dominate
> the U.S. political economy; and still hopeful for the prospects
> of a significant progressive mobilization towards a more just and
> humane society as we turn towards the 21st century."
>
> A memorial service will be held at the New School for Social
> Research on *** at ***. There will be no funeral; contributions
> are welcome to the David M. Gordon Memorial Fund for graduate
> fellowships at the Center for Economic Policy Analysis. ***
>
> He is survived by his wife of 29 years, Diana Gordon,
> Professor and Chair of Political Science at the City University
> of New York, his brother Robert, and his extended family members
> Timothy Stokes and Ann Lewis and Liam Stokes and Elizabeth Rosen.!
Prof. Chris Chase-Dunn
Department of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA
tel 410 516 7633 fax 410 516 7590 email chriscd@jhu.edu