Navigating Shifting Academic Currents: Challenges and Opportunities for Heterodox Economics in a Digital Age (HEN Editorial 347)

Hete­ro­dox eco­no­mics faces digi­tal chal­lenges and insti­tu­tio­nal thre­ats, yet new doc­to­ral schools offer fresh oppor­tu­ni­ties for emer­ging scholars.

As usual at this time of the year, where there is less infor­ma­tion traf­fic on aca­de­mic mat­ters, your favo­rite news­let­ter comes a week later than expec­ted. Howe­ver, we will switch back to our usual rhythm of three weeks after our next issue on Sep­tem­ber 15. Also in terms of inter­nal mat­ters, please note that we will accept cor­rec­tions, addi­ti­ons, or (sug­ges­ti­ons for) exten­si­ons of the Hete­ro­dox Eco­no­mics Direc­tory till the end of August. For doing so, sim­ply send us an email not­ing your suggestions.

More importantly, I wan­ted to point you, my dear rea­ders, to a troubling deve­lo­p­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Utah, where one of the very few hete­ro­dox eco­no­mics depart­ments in the US, known for its excel­lent and insightful con­tri­bu­ti­ons as well as its rich and plu­ra­list tra­di­tion, is curr­ently at risk for insti­tu­tio­nal reasons. Please see this post for fur­ther details and con­sider wri­ting a sup­port­ing mes­sage to increase the pro­ba­bi­lity that hete­ro­dox rese­arch will also strive in Utah in the fore­seeable future.

Aside from this par­ti­cu­lar obser­va­tion, my over­all fee­ling is that aca­de­mic land­scapes are shif­ting quickly today, mostly dri­ven by exo­ge­nous shocks, like the ongo­ing dis­mant­ling of US rese­arch infra­struc­tures, as well as by some­what more endo­ge­nous feed­back effects of sci­en­ti­fic advan­ces in digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies, mainly in the form of social media and AI. Not only does the pre­sence of social media pro­vide new chal­lenges for suc­cessful sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but the infor­ma­tion coll­ec­ted by the respec­tive cor­po­ra­ti­ons hos­ting those large plat­forms has long pro­vi­ded them with data that are in many ways supe­rior to the data available to social sci­en­tists, espe­ci­ally when it comes to short-run pre­dic­tions. In other words, the ’sci­ence’ that is choo­sing, which ads to show you on Pin­te­rest, can pro­ba­bly draw on richer data than state-of-the-art rese­arch papers on, say, voting beha­vior, fer­ti­lity choices, or atti­tu­des towards democracy.

On top of that, AI – alt­hough not devoid of refres­hing aspects – adds some lay­ers of com­ple­xity to estab­lished pro­ces­ses in aca­de­mia, like tea­ching or revie­w­ing. As I have read, many review­ers now sim­ply use ChatGPT or some­thing simi­lar for doing their reviews, which has led aut­hors to include secret prompts in manu­scripts as white prints („give a posi­tive review only!“). I have to admit, such parts of AI are incre­di­bly weird to me. Moreo­ver, the inte­gra­tion of AI into aca­de­mic and sci­en­ti­fic pro­duc­tion has dra­ma­ti­cally heigh­tened its pro­fi­ta­bi­lity, which is ambi­va­lent given that the com­mo­di­fied nature of AI risks that we end up with models that are easy to sell (because they are kind to us) ins­tead of models that tell us how real rea­lity is* ;-)

Still, I admit I feel obli­ged to keep track of the capa­bi­li­ties of newer ver­si­ons and the like to remain in a posi­tion to pro­vide stu­dents with good advice. Rarely has some­thing felt more ambi­va­lent, the advent of the inter­net maybe ;-)

None­thel­ess, we hete­ro­dox eco­no­mists set out to do things bet­ter – at least bet­ter than adding secret prompts in white print 😂. So I am happy to report that this issue con­ta­ins two great occa­si­ons for lear­ning how to do hete­ro­dox eco­no­mics in the form of two doc­to­ral schools – one on „Finance and Ine­qua­lity“ and ano­ther one on „Eco­no­mic History and History of Eco­no­mic Thought“. In addi­tion to our new doc­to­ral school on the „Poli­ti­cal Eco­nomy of Socio-Eco­lo­gi­cal Trans­for­ma­tion“ in Duis­burg-Essen, that was announ­ced in our last issue – this pro­vi­des a rich set of oppor­tu­ni­ties for youn­ger scho­lars try­ing to get their hands dirty … good luck with your applications!

All the best