On Laurence Moss: Unafraid to Say theEmperor Has No Clothesajes_698 135..138

By MARK TOMASS*

On a Thursday evening in late 1990, a man carrying what looked likea giant book walked in the room reserved for the Kress Seminar at theEconomics Department of Harvard University and made his way to thepodium. He placed his heavy load on the table, opened the giantbook, took out from it many regular-looking books, and said, “I havevisual footnotes for you.” Then every time he cited an author, heraised one of the books, showed us the cover, told us something aboutit, and then quoted from it. That was the first time I saw LaurenceMoss and, as I came to know him, I got used to expecting the colorfulgestures with which Larry placed his signature on whatever he did.This first encounter with Larry was years before I knew that he tookshowmanship seriously enough to make use of it in his classrooms aspart of his strategy to expel boredom.

My following notes on Larry are not intended to express my senseof loss, especially when it cannot be compared with the grief that hismother, his wife Widdy, and his son Joshua must feel. Larry was giftedwith a high level of energy. His absence naturally strikes moreseverely those to whom he was closest. Yet, since Widdy notified meof Larry’s passing, I have found it difficult to pull my thoughts of himaway from his personality and think about his scholarship. I willtherefore leave that task to Larry’s esteemed colleagues at Babson,who are more familiar with the chronology of his broad intellectualinterests and contributions to our understanding of economic ideas.

*Mark Tomass is a Research Fellow at Harvard University, Center for Middle Eastern

Studies, where he is working on a multidisciplinary project to explain mechanisms by

which the nation-states of the Fertile Crescent would disintegrate. His past research

work focused on examining rival economic methodologies to gain insights into mon-

etary and financial crises, the working of economic systems, organized crime, and civil

conflict. He translated and evaluated the medieval historian A-Maqrizi’s thesis on the

causes of monetary crisis in Egypt of 1404–1406 and its subsequent depression.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 69, No. 1 (January, 2010).© 2010 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

Instead, I would like to share my impressions of his personality, notbecause I know his personal side better than his professional, butbecause his personality was rare.

Someone who did not know Larry personally and observed himexpress his views in public gatherings might have formed a wrongopinion of who he really was. Larry was the kind who would boldlydemonstrate great disapproval of you in your face, but say great thingsabout you behind your back. Despite the battles that were raging in1993–1994 at Babson’s faculty senate, which prompted Larry to referto Babson as looking more like “Beirut rather than a community,” Inever heard him say one negative remark about a colleague or groupof colleagues with whom he had publicly engaged in a non-mild-mannered discourse. On the contrary, he only had words of praise forthem in their absence. Larry felt that Babson had made him a tenuredprofessor to enable him to speak his mind. So he did. “Why elsewould they tenure me,” he told me once after a row he had at a facultysenate meeting. He believed it was his duty to have honest discussionsabout contentious matters, discussions that reveal true positions, notconcealed ones. He believed that it is immoral to flatter someone orbe silent in his presence and later cut his throat in his absence. Icannot be the judge of how well this moral principle served him in hislife on campus. Yet, at crucial moments his colleagues acknowledgedhis contributions to the college. In 1993, the faculty senate gave hima prolonged standing ovation when US News and World Report pub-lished a special article on his classroom performance in its collegeranking issue, when Babson was ranked number one among under-graduate business programs. Larry’s feelings were mutual. He told meafter that meeting: “That was one of the greatest moments in my life.”Not only was Larry proud to have spent most of his professional lifeat Babson, but also there is no doubt in my mind that Larry had greatrespect and appreciation for many of his colleagues. “Each one of ushas found some way to apply our talents to business education,” heonce said in reference to one with an extraordinary intellectualbackground that seemed to be remotely related to business.

It may seem paradoxical that while Larry practiced magic, he wasoutraged by deceit, whether in the form of self-deception or deceptionof others. When Larry was around, you would know that the emperor

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would not walk without clothes for long. He would not let muchintellectual mumbo jumbo pass by unquestioned. Indeed, his pres-ence at formal presentations was an externality from which manybenefited, but for which Larry paid a price.

Larry’s straightforwardness and striving for transparency alsoshowed itself in the substance of his work. Based on Larry’s numerouswritten commentaries on the discipline of economics and based onmy occasional discussions with him about the way in which econom-ics is practiced, he urged modesty from economists’ claims to truth,especially from those who had invested considerable time in produc-ing formal systems that treated individuals anonymously. Theeconomy is produced by human action, thus he was persuaded thatexplaining the economy should be based on individual causal pro-cesses with specific motives, preferences, gains, and losses accruing todifferent individuals and depending on the time in which they actedduring those causal processes. Thus, approximating the economy withformal systems that presented consumers with utility functions pro-duces averaged results that conceal the specific outcomes that indi-viduals experience as a result of time-specific action. As Mark Twainonce said, if I put one foot in a bucket of boiling water and the otherfoot in a bucket of freezing water, on average, I must feel fine.

Larry had an uninhibited curiosity and love for learning, which mayexplain why he bought so many books. Sometime in the mid-1990s,Larry told me that Widdy had banned him from buying more booksand bringing them to their apartment. Although I have never been toLarry’s apartment, judging from the state of his office, I could sym-pathize with that ban. Larry could hardly move in his office at MustardHall. He had more books on the floor and in boxes than on theover-stacked bookshelves. Having heard about the 8th-century Meso-potamian scholar Al Jahez, who died of fatal injuries sustained whenhis books fell over him, I quickly urged Larry to work out a dealaccording to which he would donate his books to Babson and thelatter in turn would display them in a Moss Reading Room. AlthoughI never told him the reason for my suggestion, I thought that thissolution would (a) eliminate an imminent physical danger to him, tohis wife, and probably to the office cleaner (I was not too muchworried about his students because there wasn’t enough space for

Tomass on Moss 137

them to enter the office and therefore they were in relative safety), (b)give him regular access to his books, and (c) give the Babsoncommunity regular access to them as well and for a long time to cometo remember him for such gift. I believe that he did not take myrecommendation seriously. This was before Larry became the editor ofthe American Journal of Economics and Sociology, which makes mesuspect that he could not have abided by the ban and must haveaccumulated more books in the 16 years that followed.

I had not seen Larry for over 10 years since I left the United Statesand was shocked to hear about his passing. I thought that he had beencured and was looking forward to seeing him in the fall upon myreturn to Boston. Alas, Boston will not be the same for me.

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