SHUNNING IN THE ACADEMIC WORLD: Jim Lindgren looks at a sad episode:

In the 1960s, just AFTER Ronald Coase had done his Nobel Prize winning work in law & economics and AFTER James Buchanan had done his Nobel Prize winning work in public choice, a concerted effort was made by members of their department and the administration at the University of Virginia to drive them out of Virginia. The story has been often told and some reports say that some of the letters and memos showing that this was a conscious effort on Virginia’s part survived to be seen by more open-minded members of the department in later years. A run-in with the Ford Foundation helped to crytallize university opposition to the best scholars that the department ever had and among the best ever to teach in any department at Virginia. One view was that they were on the wrong side of history. . . .

That this was done a few years after Coase and Buchanan had done their best work is just stunning. Virginia began the 1960s as the most innovative and creative among the world’s great economics departments and ended the 1960s as just another pretty good department, no better or worse than a couple dozen other departments in the country.

Had it kept them, it might remain in a dominant position today. I’m happy to report that I’m not being shunned — in fact the number of colleagues who came by to welcome me back from leave last week was quite gratifying. On the other hand, unlike Coase and Buchanan, I’m not a “right-wing extremist . . .”

UPDATE: Of course, academia isn’t what it used to be, either.