Henry W. Broude

Philip G. Bartlett Professor of Economics and Economic History 

Henry Broude, A.B. Antioch College, A.M., Ph.D. Harvard University, faculty member at Yale since 1954: your field is American and Economic History and your knowledge of this subject matter, including in your book Steel and the National Interest, has made you the voice of Economic History in Yale’s distinguished department. From the outset an inspirational and charismatic teacher, your students praised you in every year of your teaching career, from their chorus of respect and affection in the Classbooks of your earliest teaching decade, to their peons of praise in recent Course Critiques. Gifted with an ability to link Economics to the grand sweep of history and to the labors of workers as well as the peccadilloes of kings, you showed your students that your discipline was more than tables of input-output coefficients, but a way of illuminating the sweat, toil and triumph of the human condition. In turn, they praised your mastery of your subject (and many other subjects), your marvelous gift of teaching through story-telling, and your kind way of making each and every student feel a special bond with you, a talent which has led your wife to suggest that in another life you might have been either a shrink or a rabbi. 

But this has been only a part of your story. Asked in 1964 by Kingman Brewster to become a part of the Yale administration, your career in this arena is legendary. Close confidante of four Yale presidents, who have trusted and relied on you, and valued adviser to scores of Yale faculty, senior administrators, colleagues, and students, there is perhaps no one person living (or dead) in this century who has had such a detailed knowledge of this institution’s inner workings or has had more influence on those who have determined its history. Famously discrete and self-effacing, it is a cinch you will not be in your old seat in the ranks of the faculty to hear these words. Nevertheless, in tribute to your remarkable and unique career, the members of this faculty doff their caps in tribute and bow gratefully as you retire.