In 1972, the economics department at Harvard denied tenure to the leftist professor Samuel Bowles. Responding to the decision in the Harvard Crimson, Bowles asserted that he had been passed over because he believed in democratizing the department, reducing the power of senior professors, giving students a greater voice in shaping the curriculum, and addressing problems — from poverty and inequality to the increasing power of corporations and financial institutions — too often neglected by the conventional economists who had come to predominate at the university. Bowles made a pointed distinction between the proper practice of economics as he understood it…