So sorry to hear of Stepehen Resnick's passing. I only knew him through his books. I regret never having sat through one of his classess. A sad day for us all.
Jason
On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 9:08 PM, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
>
>
> Stephen Resnick, professor of economics at UMass-Amherst, dies at age 74
> By Greg Saulmon, The Republican
> on January 03, 2013 at 8:00 PM, updated January 03, 2013 at 8:13 PM Print
>
>
> http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/01/stephen_resnick_professor_
> of_e.html
>
>
> AMHERST - Stephen A. Resnick, a professor emeritus of economics at the
> University of Massachusetts who won the school's distinguished teaching
> award and is best known for his piercing critiques of capitalism, died
> Wednesday after a bout with leukemia. He was 74.
>
> Resnick, of Newton Centre, taught at the university for nearly 4 decades,
> arriving at the Amherst campus in 1973 after beginning his teaching
> career at Yale University. He earned a B.S. in economics from the
> University of Pennsylvania in 1960 and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts
> Institute of Technology in 1964. During his time as a graduate student he
> held Woodrow Wilson and Brookings Institute fellowships, according to his
> online University of Massachusetts biography.
>
> Stephen A. Resnick
>
> "His classes were always oversubscribed," said friend and long-time
> collaborator Richard D. Wolff, of Manhattan. "There was a magic to the
> way he brought this stuff alive and made it exciting."
>
> Wolff, who retired from UMass in 2008 and now teaches at the The New
> School in Manhattan, said he met Resnick as a graduate student at Yale.
> When Wolff took a teaching position at the City College of New York,
> Resnick -- a believer in the school's controversial open admissions
> policy -- followed.
>
> UMass eventually recruited the pair, Wolff recalled, as the university
> sought to build a "cutting edge and innovative" economics department in
> the early 1970s. "Nothing would fit that better than to bring a bunch of
> different kinds of economists together in their department," Wolff said,
> adding that Resnick was an anchor of the new team of faculty members
> attempting to "create program that would make students aware of the
> entire range of economic theory."
>
> "It made UMass the place for students who wanted to study both
> traditional and alternate theories," Wolff said.
>
> In Thompson Hall, Wolff said, he and Resnick merged offices in order to
> free up space to create a student lounge in the economics department. "It
> was a place for students to talk to one another, and to meet with us,"
> Wolff said, adding that the academic journal "Rethinking Marxism" "was
> born and developed at UMass, in that lounge." Resnick helped launch the
> publication, now published by Routledge, and remained on its editorial
> board until 1994.
>
> In addition to teaching advanced courses in Marxian theory, Resnick's
> course load included introductory lectures such as the department's
> prerequisite class in macroeconomic theory.
>
> But while Resnick's research and writing offered vigorous criticisms of
> what he saw as a fundamental instability underlying the American economic
> system -- an instability that surfaced, in his view, in the form of a
> business cycle that periodically left large swaths of the workforce
> unemployed and businesses facing bankruptcy -- Wolff said his former
> colleague brought a sense of balance to his teaching. It was an approach,
> Wolff said, that won the respect of students whose own beliefs spanned
> the spectrums of political and economic theory.
>
> "Steve won every teaching prize that UMass has -- and that was very
> unusual for an economics professor," Wolff said. In addition to the
> teaching award, Resnick's accolades include an outstanding teacher award
> in the social and behavioral sciences for the 1997 to 1998 academic year.
>
> Wolff said Resnick remained committed to teaching the concept of the
> business cycle even as that approach - which had been central to the
> curriculum of many economics departments in the wake of the Great
> Depression - fell out of favor. "Marxists have developed powerful
> insights into the causes and social costs of business cycles in
> capitalism," Wolff said, adding later: "Your ability to make sense of the
> current economic crisis would be enhanced by studying under Steve,
> whether you agree with Marxian thought or not."
>
> With Wolff, Resnick co-authored a number of essays, articles and books,
> including "Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy"
> and "Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian."
> Wolff said the latter text, published in August 2012 by the MIT Press,
> exemplifies Resnick's belief in a comparative approach to teaching the
> subject that exposed students to a wide range of economic thinking. "This
> is what he always did," Wolff said. "He brought a balanced approach, with
> an emphasis on Marxism."
>
> In the fall of 2011 Resnick began a three-year term as the university's
> second Helen Sheridan Memorial Scholar, according to the school's
> website. He had planned to complete two research projects during that
> tenure, with one examining social security, private pensions, and medical
> insurance in the context of Marxian theory and the other involving an
> analysis of Marxian, neoclassical and Keynesian approaches to questions
> about international trade and capital flows.
>
> He leaves a wife, Charlotte, and three children.
>
> Editor's note: Greg Saulmon majored in English and economics at the
> University of Massachusetts, and took several of Resnick's classes.
>
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