Carl Kaysen

Carl Kaysen
Born	(1920-03-05) March 5, 1920 Philadelphia
Died	February 8, 2010(2010-02-08) (aged 89) Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Children	Susanna Kaysen Jesse Kaysen

Carl Kaysen (March 5, 1920 - February 8, 2010) was an economist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Committee on International Security Studies. He is the father of Girl, Interrupted author Susanna Kaysen. He was married for 50 years to Annette Neutra until her death in 1990. In 1994, he married Ruth Butler.

Carl Kaysen worked for President John F. Kennedy as Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs|Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, and was directly under National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. Kaysen took over the position from Walt Rostow in 1961 and concentrated on the key issues of the Kennedy presidency such as foreign trade, economic policy, and the potential use of nuclear weapons.

Educational background

Dr. Kaysen received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940 where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa and was a member of the Philomathean Society. He received both his M.S. in 1947, and Ph.D. in 1954 from Harvard University in Economics. He did graduate study at Columbia University from 1940 to 1946.

Work and research

Dr. Kaysen's scholarly work was in the areas where economics, sociology, politics and law come together. At the end of his career, his research focused on arms control and international politics.

He co-authored Peace Operations by the United Nations: The Case for a Volunteer Military Force (1996) and co-edited The United States and the Fundamental Criminal Court: National Security and Fundamental Law (2000).

He edited and contributed to a volume of essays, The American Corporation Today (1996).

Career

Between 1940 and 1942 he was on the staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research. From 1942 to 1943 he was an Economist for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, and from 1943 to 1945 he was in Intelligence for the U.S. Army Air Forces, rising from private to captain.

After receiving his M.A. from Harvard University in 1947, he was an Assistant professor there from 1950 to 1955, and was a clerk to Judge E. E. Wyzanski, U.S. District Court from 1950 to 1952, providing economic analysis for United States v. United Shoe Corporation, a major antitrust case.

In 1954 he received his Ph.D. from Harvard and did Military and Wartime Service. In 1955, he became an Associate Professor at Harvard, and in 1957, a full Professor of Economics. He served as Associate Dean, Graduate School of Public Administration, Harvard University from 1960 to 1966.

From 1961 to 1963, he was Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to President John F. Kennedy, a position in which he concentrated on foreign trade, economic policy, and the potential use of nuclear weapons. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he became known as the "Vice President in charge of the rest of the world."

He was named Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy, at Harvard University from 1964 to 1966.

He served as Director of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1966 to 1976, taking over the position from J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Dr. Kaysen joined the MIT faculty in 1976 and in 1977 named as David W. Skinner Professor of Political Economy.

From 1978 to 1980, he was Vice Chairman and Director of Research for the Sloan Commission on Higher Education, an initiative that explored the increasingly complex relationship between government and institutions of higher education.

Since 1981, he has been the Director, Program in Science, Technology and Society, at MIT.

Kaysen died on February 8, 2010 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His health had failed after a bad fall in October and a decade of battling spinal stenosis.

He had been a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University and a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

Selected publications

• “United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corporation”: An Economic Analysis of an Anti-Trust Case, 1956
• The American Business Creed (with Francis X. Sutton, Seymour E. Harris, and James. Tobin), 1956
• Anti-Trust Policy: An Economic and Legal Analysis (with Donald F. Turner), 1959
• The Demand for Electricity in the United States (with Franklin M. Fisher), 1962
• The Higher Learning: The Universities and the Public, 1969
• Content and Context: Essays on College Education (editor), 1973
• A Debate on “A Time to Choose” (with William Tavoulareas), 1977
• Program for Renewed Partnership: A Report, 1980.
• Nuclear Weapons After the Cold War (Foreign Affairs), 1991
• War with Iraq: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives (American Academy of Arts and Sciences), 2002

External links

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences' Committee on International Security Studies
• CIS Scholar Spotlight on Carl Kaysen
• Dr. Carl Kaysen's faculty web page at MIT
• JFK Library file
• Carl Kaysen at IMDb