Rather than moving back to my parents’ house and getting a
job for the then-going rate of $15,000 per year, after graduating from SUNY
Albany in 1980 I decided to go straight to business school at Cornell. Then it was called theGraduate School of Business and Public Administration, now it’s called The Johnson School. Like most undergraduate students, I could
only compare the SUNY's faculty to high school teachers. I thought the faculty at Albany was pretty good. But the graduate
school faculty at Cornell, especially the finance department, was on an
entirely different level.
The finance department line-up was an all-star team: Robert Jarrow,
Hal Bierman,
Jerry Hass,
Sy
Smidt, George Oldfield,
Richard Thaler
and Andrew Rudd,
who went on to be Chairman and CEO of Barra, Inc. as well as an Alacra
investor. But as talented as I thought each
of them were, the best professor I ever had was Walter
LaFeber, who is about to retire as The Andrew H. and James S. Tisch
Distinguished University Professor at Cornell.
Last night at the Beacon Theatre Professor LaFeber gave his
farewell public lecture, “A Half-Century of Friends, Foreign Policy, and Great
Losers” before 3,000 former students and colleagues. Professor LaFeber generally taught
undergraduates in large lecture halls filled with hundreds of students. But one semester while I was at Cornell he taught
a political economy seminar and there were maybe 20 people in the class. Sitting on a desk in front of the room, he was
completely engaging for the length of every class and never once brought any
notes with him. The biography on the
back of last night’s program was precise:
“…his
courses and seminars have attracted legions of students, many of whom remark on
his lasting influence. He is known for
his warmth and ease, eschewing formal lectures, preferring an engaging
conversational style that incorporates drama and humor. He has such command of his material that he
rarely needs notes to deliver powerful analyses with ample illustrations.”
The lecture last night was just like that. Hunter Rawlings
and Andrew
Tisch made some brief introductory remarks. Then Professor LaFeber gave a 40 minute talk (without notes) that
combined remembrances of students, colleagues and events from his 47 years at
Cornell with a historical analysis, spanning over 200 years, on whether or not democracy
travels well. (Not usually.) Just like 25 years ago, his
command of the material was astonishing.
I believe the seminar I attended met once a week for a
semester; perhaps I saw Professor LaFeber a dozen times. But I remember those classes as different than
any other, so I thought I would remark on his lasting influence. Best wishes for a wonderful retirement.
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