Found Out Something Possibly Concerning About a Letter-Writer

[iamelben]

So, let's talk about my primary letter-writer. We'll call him Dr. T. Dr. T is a great mentor and friend, a hell of a scholar, and one of the smartest guys I know. He's well-published in economic history and education journals, and is an expert on an industry particular to my region with multi-disciplinary citations on his work in that industry from government organizations, think tanks, and other economists. Here's the problem. I googled him just to get an idea of what adcoms might find if they looked into him a little, and the very first pages of google isn't populated with his economic history and teaching research, or even the industry research for which he is best-known, but with three pages of his work with the von Mises institute and publications in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.

 

I asked him about this and he just sort of laughed it off. His exact words were "well, I used to be a little eccentric before I had kids."

 

Does this heterodox background (he was VERY prolific with the von Mises people) hurt him as a letter-writer? Keep in mind, that I adore this man. He's one of the main reasons I want to study economics, and of all our faculty, he has the best idea of my capacity for success in graduate school.

[Food4Thought]

Being affiliated with the Austrian school does not disqualify him from being a well-respected economic historian. His publication record, if it's as strong as you say, speaks to this. I would not worry.

[chateauheart]

I don't see how this would be an issue. If a faculty member on an adcom thinks certain writings somehow take away the value of other, well-regarded publications, you probably don't want to enroll in those programs in the first place. People believe in different things in academia, and are later proven factually incorrect all the time; so long as they are not clearly ethically disgusting (e.g. French intellectuals' support of Mao in the 60s), there is room for it.

 

Also, very good work can be done in certain heterodox topics/subfields, even by people who are otherwise mainstream economists. Jeffrey Miron is a good example, although his career trajectory is the opposite of your letter-writer's. Deirdre McCloskey is another example - a great economic historian who is still very well-regarded, but who chose to work mostly on heterodox topics nowadays.

[Zubrus]

Doesn't matter at all. I know a friend who got into good PhD programs that had letters from several heterodox professors. The schools that he got into were mainstream.