a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public policy maker, and Harvard intellectual. His impact on American history is extraordinary and the consequences of his actions in the late 1960s alone are still being felt around the world today. In September 1934, Galbraith would initially join the faculty at Harvard University as an instructor with a salary of $2,400 per year. In 1935, he would be appointed a tutor at John Winthrop House (commonly known as Winthrop House) which is one of twelve undergraduate residential houses at Harvard University. In that same year, one of his first students would be Joseph P. Kennedy Jr, with John F. Kennedy arriving two years later, in 1937. Soon after, the Canadian Galbraith would become naturalized as a US citizen on 14 September 1937. Three days later, he would marry his partner, Catherine Merriam Atwater, a woman who, a few years before, had been studying at the University of Munich. There, she had lived in the same rooming house-dormitory as Unity Mitford, whose boyfriend was Adolf Hitler. After marrying, Galbraith would travel extensively in Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Italy, France, but also Germany. Galbraith had been due to spend a year as a research fellow at the University of Cambridge under famed economist John Maynard Keynes, but Keynes’ sudden heart attack would see Galbraith’s new wife persuade him to study in Germany instead. During the summer of 1938, Galbraith would study German land policies under Hitler’s government.
The following year, Galbraith found himself involved in what was termed at the time, “the Walsh-Sweezy affair” – a US national scandal involving two radical instructors who had been terminated from Harvard. Galbraith’s connections with the affair would result in his appointment at Harvard not being renewed.
Galbraith would take a demotion to work at Princeton, where he would soon after accept an invitation from the National Resource Planning Board to be part of a review panel into New Deal spending and employment programs. It is this project which would see him first meet Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1940, as France fell to Nazi forces, Galbraith would join the staff of the National Defense Advisory Committee, at the request of FDR’s economic advisor, Lauchlin Curry. Although that committee would be swiftly dissolved, Galbraith soon found himself appointed to the Office of Price Administration (OPA), heading up the division tasked with price control. He would be dismissed from the OPA on 31 May 1943. Fortune Magazine had already been trying to headhunt Galbraith since as early as 1941, and would soon scoop him up to join their staff as a writer.
The biggest shift in focus for Galbraith happened in 1945, the day after the death of Roosevelt. Galbraith would leave New York for Washington, where he would be duly sent to London to assume a division directorship of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, tasked with evaluating the overall economic effects of the wartime bombing. By the time he had arrived at Flensburg, Germany had already formally surrendered to the Allied forces and Galbraith’s initial task would change. He would accompany George Ball and be part of the interrogation of Albert Speer. In this one move, Galbraith had gone from being a policy advisor dealing with statistics and projections concerned with pricing, to the co-interrogator of a high-ranking Nazi war criminal. Speer had been in various important positions during the war, including as the Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production, one of the key men behind the organization, maintenance and arming of every part of the Nazi Wermacht.
Soon after, Galbraith would be sent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to evaluate the effects of the bombing. In January 1946, John Kenneth Galbraith was involved in one of the defining moments of American economic history. He would take part in the American Economic Association meetings in Cleveland, where, alongside Edward Chamberlin of Harvard and Clarence Ayres of Texas, he would debate Frank Knight and other leading proponents of classical economics. This event marked the coming-out of Keynesian economics, which would come to dominate post-war America.
In February 1946, Galbraith would return to Washington, where he would be appointed director of the Office of Economic Security Policy. It is here, in September of 1946, where Galbraith was tasked with drafting a speech for the Secretary of State, William Byrnes, outlining American policy towards German reconstruction, democratization, and eventual admission into the United Nations. Galbraith, who opposed the group of politicians at the time referred to as “the Cold Warriors”, would resign from his position in October of 1946, returning to Fortune Magazine. He would also be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom that same year. In 1947, Galbraith would co-found the organization, Americans for Democratic Action, alongside others including Eleanor Roosevelt, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and Ronald Reagan. In 1948, Galbraith would return to Harvard as a lecturer in Agricultural Forestry and Land-Use Policy. Soon after, he would be installed as a Professor at Harvard.
By 1957, Galbraith was beginning to form a closer relationship with his former student John F. Kennedy, who was by then junior senator for Massachusetts. The following year, JFK would publicly declare Galbraith as the “Phileas Fogg of the academic world” after receiving a copy of Galbraith’s book, A Journey to Poland and Yugoslavia, where he examined socialist planning up close. It is also in 1958 where Galbraith published “The Affluent Society” to critical acclaim, where he coined terms such as “conventional wisdom” and the “dependence effect”. It is around this time when Galbraith became the Paul M. Warburg Chair in economics at Harvard. This is the same position he would hold when he would first be introduced to a young Klaus Schwab.
By 1960, John Kenneth Galbraith had become an economic advisor to the Kennedy campaign. After Kennedy was elected President, Galbraith began staffing the new administration, famously being the man who recommended Robert S. McNamara for Secretary of Defense. In 1961, Kennedy would name Galbraith as ambassador to India and, later in the year, Galbraith would travel to Vietnam, at the behest of the President, to give a second opinion on the Taylor-Rostow report. On Galbraith’s advice, Kennedy would begin to withdraw troops from Vietnam.
In 1963, Galbraith would return to the United States, refusing an offer from Kennedy to take up an ambassadorship in Moscow, so as to return to Harvard. On the day Kennedy was assassinated, Galbraith was in New York with the publisher of the Washington Post, Katharine Graham. Galbraith would go straight to Washington and would be the man who drafted the original version of the new President’s speech to the joint session of congress. The year following JFK’s assassination, Galbraith would return to Harvard to develop a famous and highly popular course in Social Science that he would go on to teach for the following decade. He would still retain his position as an advisor to President Johnson, but would spend the rest of the year writing his final academic journals exclusively in economics.
By 1965, Galbraith had become increasingly louder in his opposition to the war in Vietnam, writing speeches and letters to the President. This rift would persist between Galbraith and Johnson, with Galbraith finally assuming the presidency of Americans for Democratic Action and going on to launch a national campaign against the Vietnam War entitled, “Negotiations Now!” In 1967, the rift between Galbraith and Johnson would only become wider when Senator Eugene McCarthy was persuaded by Galbraith to run against Johnson in the coming primary elections. Robert F. Kennedy was also hoping to recruit Galbraith to his own campaign but, although Galbraith had formed a close bond with the late JFK, he had not been so keen on Robert F. Kennedy’s distinctive style.
By the late 1960s, John K. Galbraith and Henry A. Kissinger were both considered to be two of the foremost lecturers, authors and educators in America. They were also both grandees at Harvard, Galbraith as the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics, and Kissinger as a Professor of Government, and the two men were focused on the creation of foreign policy for both America and the emerging new Europe. It was announced on 20 March 1968 that Kissinger and Galbraith would be the first speakers of the spring session of what was referred to as the “Mandeville Lectures series”, due to take place at the University of California, San Diego. Galbraith’s speech would be entitled, “Foreign Policy: The Cool Dissent”, whilst Kissinger’s speech was called “America and Europe: A New Relationship”.
Kissinger would introduce Klaus Schwab to John Kenneth Galbraith at Harvard and, as the 1960’s came to a close, Galbraith would help Schwab make the World Economic Forum a reality. Galbraith would fly over to Europe, along with Herman Kahn, to help Schwab convince the European elite to back the project. At the first European Management Symposium/Forum (the original name/s of the WEF), John Kenneth Galbraith would be the keynote speaker.
