Gavin Wright : An Oral History
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In this 2016 oral history, Gavin Wright, Stanford University’s William Robertson Coe Professor in American Economic History, Emeritus, discusses his family background, his political organizing activities during the 1960s and 1970s, and his research interests, especially in the economy of the American South. Wright provides an eyewitness account of the development of Cliometrics, or the New Economic History, and describes his experiences as a faculty member and chair in the Department of Economics at Stanford. Briefly describing his suburban childhood in a Quaker family, Wright says he brought an interest in history to Swarthmore College, where he discovered economics. He speaks about his engagement with civil rights issues during this period and highlights two summer projects in which he participated. The first was a 1963 voting registration project in North Carolina, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. Wright explains that it raised questions that eventually culminated in Sharing the Prize (2013), his award-winning analysis of the economics of the civil rights movement in the South. In 1964, a Swarthmore project to inform an integrated group of local teenagers about opportunities for college education introduced him to his future wife, Cathe. He shares a vivid memory of one instructor in the program, Fred Hargadon, who later became a legendary dean of admissions at Stanford. Turning to his doctoral studies at Yale University, Wright discusses his opposition to the Vietnam War, his support for the presidential candidate, Eugene McCarthy, and his involvement in local New Haven politics, especially the effort to elect Hank Parker as mayor. He attributes his choice of economic history as a career field to Yaleprofessor William Nelson Parker, whose research project in North Carolina provided data for Wright’s dissertation project. Characterizing the key players in the emerging field of Cliometrics, he describes how his research involved him in debates over the emerging methods of quantitative analysis and controversies surrounding the economics of slavery and Fogel and Engerman’s book, Time on the Cross. Wright describes the first decade of his career at the University of Michigan, where he continued to investigate the economic history of the South and where his family enjoyed a “golden age” of sorts, given the presence of other faculty families with young children there. He talks about his rationale for moving to the Stanford faculty in 1982, commenting especially on the strength of the graduate students here. He explains his involvement with the publication of the Historical Statistics of the United States and research with Paul A. David that attributed the technological leadership of the United States not so much to having natural resources as to knowing how to exploit them. Focusing on the Department of Economics, Wright discusses its culture, his two terms as department chair, fund-raising and physical plant issues, and the visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to campus. Wright also reflects on his teaching strategies, the popularity of the economics major, and the unequal representation of women in economics. Recalling work on campus committees, he gives special attention to changes in student evaluation processes, the East Asian Library, the growth of the Summer Institute for High School Economics Teachers, and his role in averting the closure of Gunn High School.
Description
| Type of resource | mixed material |
|---|---|
| Date created | August 8, 2016 - August 12, 2016 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Wright, Gavin | |
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| Contributing author | Marine-Street, Natalie | |
| Publisher | Stanford Historical Society |
Subjects
| Subject | Gavin Wright |
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| Subject | Stanford Historical Society |
| Subject | oral histories |
| Subject | interviews |
| Subject | higher education |
| Subject | professors |
| Subject | Cliometrics |
| Subject | economic history |
| Subject | economics > study and teaching |
| Subject | Stanford University > Department of Economics |
Bibliographic information
| Related item |
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| Transcript |
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| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/qs921cz3921 |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- The materials are open for research use and may be used freely for non-commercial purposes with an attribution. For commercial permission requests, please contact the Stanford University Archives (universityarchives@stanford.edu).
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved.
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Wright, Gavin. (2016). Oral History. Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program Interviews (SC0932). Department of Special Collections & University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/qs921cz3921
Collection
Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program interviews, 1999-2022
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