A Tenured Professor

A Tenured Professor (1990) is a satirical novel by Canadian-American economist and Harvard professor emeritus John Kenneth Galbraith about a liberal university teacher who sets out to change American society by making money and then using it for the public good. Set at Harvard mainly during the Reagan administration, the plot and all the characters that appear in the story are entirely fictitious.

Plot summary

The book chronicles the rise to fame of one Montgomery Marvin, a

They decide to spend their money wisely, according to their liberal agenda. Intent on strictly observing the code of business ethics, they start to make use of the "positive power of wealth" and embark on a life of philanthropy. They fund a number of chairs in peace studies to be established at, of all places, military academies. They also secure legislation by which companies are required to label their products according to the percentage of female executives employed by them. After they have launched several of their projects, their operations are increasingly considered un-American and officially put under surveillance. But whatever will happen - Marvin knows that he will be able to nourish his family, as he has been accorded tenure.

A Tenured Professor was republished as

A New York Times reviewer commented: "Watching Mr. Galbraith's Tenured Professor and his wife shake up Harvard and cut up the corporate world makes for a lively satire".^[3]

Footnotes

References

• "Emeritus Professor John Kenneth Galbraith". Harvard Economics Bios. Spring 1999. Archived from the original on 2007-12-19. Retrieved 2007-10-25.