While some people think that Bowdoin is a rather left-leaning institution, compared to many schools the community here is actually extremely accepting of varied points of view.
A few times when visiting other schools, after answering, "I'm an economics and German major" to some friend-of-a-friend, I received a look as if I had revealed that I was an architect of death camps or went seal clubbing in my spare time.
At the very least, some people give me furtive glances and say, "OK, but don't tell Joe that; he's been known to picket outside the economics building from time to time."
So what is it that gives economics such a bad reputation? Sure, we majors can brush off dismissive comments: "Ah, so you like putting a price on people's lives?" as one person said to me.
But the reality is that the mass media is guilty of frowning upon the subject of economics these days.
Especially in the past few years, much of the population seems convinced that no good can come of the study of economics, and that it's just a way for a few clever people to cheat everyone else.
Few people seem to agree that the science can offer any true understanding of the world.
But if economics truly is pointless and twisted, where does that leave us? Theology and philosophy explain how we should look at the world, but these sciences are in terminal decline. (While I would love to write an article defending the significance and relevance of modern philosophy, that's perhaps too big to pull off in a few hundred words.)
If we also discount economics, the only other discipline that purports to supply knowledge of human nature is neuroscience.
While the field does have some promising results to offer, it's fundamentally technical. It tells us what biological processes may cause us to think the way we do: if it offers suggestions for improvement, they are likely to be just as technical.
Economics is the only science that that aims to give us a way to improve the world while supplying data to back up its conclusions.
Of course, many people would only take this as further evidence to support their distaste for the dismal science. Yet economics uses numbers that can help us "improve" civilization. Isn't that just putting a price on people, as I was so delightfully told? Not quite.
Take a look at modern journal articles written by economists: Many try to use data to find the most efficient possible ways to improve people's lives. Perhaps this means that economists want to manipulate the world, but if it's to better humanity, is that a bad thing?
The other major criticism people have of economics is that it doesn't work.
Since the financial crisis, economists have been blamed for failing to predict the crash. But that is simply false—many economists did, in fact, point out that the the economy was headed in an unsustainable direction.
Like any discipline, economics moves forward through debate and discourse. However, policy-makers rarely listen to economic predictions: they want to be given conclusions, not arguments and probabilities.
Additionally, while economics is treated seriously by those within the field, it can be hard to discern from the outside. The economists in the popular press are hardly data driven and objective.
While many students take introductory economics courses each year, we can hardly fault them for failing to see the nobility in supply and demand diagrams.
Most students of economics don't get exposed to the really fascinating side of the field until very high-level courses. It's sad how many of my peers seem to look at the science as merely a path to riches.
Introductory courses necessarily focus mostly on methods, and, because many students don't pay attention to tumultuous world events outside the Bowdoin bubble, they completely miss out on the extent to which economic forces determine global events.
Bowdoin, and not just the economics department, should stress how important keeping up with world news is.
Not everyone should be taking 300-level economics courses, but everyone should have some idea of what is going on in the economy.
In today's world, economics is the primary way of forecasting where the globe is heading.
At the end of the day, economics is ultimately the only form of guidance we have, unless we want to bring Nietzsche and his peers up to the forefront of political discourse.