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BY JULIE BAKER

In print | December 2, 2004

Beloved Swarthmore professor Bernard Saffran passed away Monday morning due to a heart attack while visiting family in Montreal. He was 68 years old. Saffran is survived by his daughter, Jenny Saffran, and two grandchildren.

The Franklin and Betty Barr Professor of Economics, Saffran was the longest-serving member of the Swarthmore economics department, having taught for 37 years. Saffran lead a long and distinguished career as both a professor and an economist, with accolades ranging from undergraduate distinctions to national fellowships.

Born May 13, 1936 to Eastern European immigrants, Saffran grew up in Brooklyn with his father, who worked as a union carpenter, and his mother and his two brothers. As a child he spoke Yiddish at home and later learned Hebrew. At the age of 20, Saffran graduated with honors from the City College of New York and attended graduate school at Johns Hopkins University. Finding himself stifled by the social environment, he left for the University of Minnesota. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1963, he spent four years teaching economics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award. He came to Swarthmore in 1967 where he spent the remainder of his career, serving as chair of the economics department from 1977 – 1983 and receiving the Franklin and Betty Barr Professorship of Economics.

During his time at Swarthmore, Saffran played an integral role in shaping the economics department. For years he taught a required honors seminar in economic theory that was the capstone in many students’ education. “He was involved in the hiring of everyone who came after he did. Bernie’s opinion carried far more weight than any one person in the department,” economics professor John Caskey said.

Caskey recalled his own experience as a prospective Swarthmore professor. “When I came to interview, he had a bad back and was not able to sit in on the regular interview. I went to meet with him separately in Parrish Hall. I was told in advance that this was the most important meeting in the department,” he said.

Economics professor Mark Kuperberg remembered a similar experience. “Nowadays we take all our candidates to nice restaurant. At the time I was hired, my dinner was that Bernie took me down and talked with me at Sharples while I ate my spaghetti. This was my first real knowledge of Bernie … he was the only one who wanted to eat with me,” he recalled.

Saffran’s influence in the department extended well beyond hiring and promotional issues. His advice was sought on all matters, from personal finance to career decisions. “Bernie was a source of wisdom in our department. Whenever someone had tough issues to decide, people would always go talk to Bernie. It was almost a joke in the department, ‘What did Bernie say about this?’ It was even a joke in my house,” said Caskey.

“My daughters had to clear everything with Bernie. My older daughter brought her future husband down to meet him; we couldn’t go ahead with it until Bernie approved,” Professor Rob Hollister, whose children grew up with Saffran’s, said.

Saffran’s colleagues were particularly touched by Saffran’s desire to connect with both students and fellow faculty members on a personal level. “He really was a contradiction; he would teach all this economics stuff, but he would act at a human level that had nothing to do with economics. He would teach self-interest in his classes, but his personal life was not about that. He knew all his students’ boyfriends and girlfriends. He would worry about their personal lives, and the same thing with the professors,” Kuperberg recounted.

Saffran’s renown extended well beyond the Swarthmore community. A regular contributor to the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Saffran gained international respect for his column, “Recommendations for Further Reading.”

“He’s probably the most famous member of our department; everybody knew him. Whenever you would visit another school, people would ask after him. He was admired as almost a guru in the discipline and was a mentor for a whole generation of Swarthmore students who went on to become distinguished economists,” economics professor Stephen Golub said. Saffran also served as a senior staff economist on President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisors from 1971-1972.

Alumni from years ago remember Saffran fondly, many of them staying in touch for years after taking his class. “Bernie’s mentorship was not limited to one’s years at Swarthmore. I continued to call him up for advice on the most important job decisions in my life — not just in the years after finishing my education, but more than 25 years after graduation,” Jeffery Frankel ’74, professor of economics at the Kennedy School of Public Policy at Harvard, said in an e-mail.

Many students were struck by Saffran’s complete lack of intellectual arrogance. Martin Putnam ‘71 recalled a public debate that was hosted at Swarthmore between a prominent Marxist economist and Saffran, who was to be representing the views of market economists. The Marxist had delivered a deeply theoretical and obscure speech, to which Saffran gave a meandering response. "Afterward, Bernie came up to me and said, ’I didn’t understand a word he said, did you?’ The thing that struck me about it was that it was very typical of him; he was not trying to win an argument. He was frustrated because he was not able to engage in the debate," said Putnam.

Putnam’s son, Daniel Putnam ’08, has shared similarly enlightening experiences. “A self-aware irony seemed to run deep in his character. He joked that he chose his wife because dating her minimized transportation costs. Whenever we were talking about a consumer good, it was always mango ice cream. He seemed like the kind of guy who was very playful; a lot of his bantering with students was at its heart a playful thing to do,” he said.

Saffran is the second faculty member to pass away while actively teaching at Swarthmore. This semester, he had two sections of introductory economics which will now be managed by other members of the economics department. Details regarding a memorial service will be provided as they become available.

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