CREATING THE “VIRGINIA SCHOOL”: CHARLOTTESVILLE AS AN ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT IN THE 1960s

Migrations and Boundary Work: Harvard, Radical Economists, and the Committee on Political Discrimination

“…The site for their dissent was a far-removed campus in Charlottesville, Virginia (Buchanan 1988;Breit 1987). In the late sixties, due to conflicts with the administration, the group moved 140 miles south into the mountains of Virginia.…”

“…James Buchanan and Warren Nutter did not organize their political economy group at the prestigious University of Chicago from where they had graduated and with which they held a deep intellectual bond. The site for their dissent was a far-removed campus in Charlottesville, Virginia (Buchanan 1988; Breit 1987). In the late sixties, due to conflicts with the administration, the group moved 140 miles south into the mountains of Virginia.…”

Rent‐seeking: Valuing Tullock's Rejects

“…His career has been characterised by provocative challenges to the conventional wisdom in areas not traditionally considered the province of economics. Breit (1986) referred to Tullock as 'a rare bird, a generalist with the tools of a specialist' and 'one of the first economic imperialists . .…”

Gordon Tullock: Entrepreneur of public choice

“…Steadfast in this judgment and firm in his resolve, Buchanan later was to gamble his own career, together with the future of the Virginia School of Political Economy, in a 1968 "exodus from Charlottesville" as the left-leaning, ideologically activist bureaucracy of Thomas Jefferson's academy thrice denied Tullock a well-earned promotion to full professor (Breit, 1986). Buchanan's judgment was sound, and the Virginia School reemerged unscathed and fortified, as Buchanan and his proteg6 regrouped in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains to carry the baton of the Virginia public choice research * The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.…”