Brazilian Underdevelopment and the Case of the Missing American Jewish Economist

In the late 1960s, the economic historian Nathaniel Leff began publishing articles explaining why, since the 19th century, Brazil had exhibited slow economic growth and wide discrepancies between rich and poor. His explanations upended what was then, and largely remains, the widely held consensus of Brazilian economists. A devout Orthodox Jew who spent most of his career as a professor at Columbia University, Leff abruptly disappeared from view in the 1990s. Rafael Cariello explains the significance of Leff’s work, recounts his biography, and describes his own personal quest to discover the economist’s fate:

In his scholarly writings, Leff argues that the key to understanding why Brazil became a relatively poor country, with per-capita income far below the levels reached by Europe and the United States, was to be found in the 19th century—no earlier, no later. [By contrast], traditional historiography, which had produced the (still-dominant) narrative about the reasons for the country’s “backwardness,” tended to identify the colonial period [which ended in 1822] and the relationships between Portuguese America and the capitals of Europe as the source of the country’s sluggish pace toward industrialization and development. . . .

For Leff, the causes of Brazil’s underdevelopment also lay in the difficulty that the domestic market faced in articulating itself and growing more quickly, thus creating a complex economy. But instead of pointing the finger at commercial relationships with Europe, he blamed the Brazilian economy’s lack of internal integration—and the high cost of transportation in the country. . . .

As for Leff’s personal story, it tells much about the integration of Jews into American universities. Leff entered Harvard in the 1950s, when Ivy League schools were not entirely comfortable places for Jews. By the time he retired from Columbia, much had changed, as Cariello writes:

[One former colleague recalled Leff] coming to the campus and walking through the gardens and neoclassical buildings at Columbia in a dark hat and coat, with a full white beard. . . . [But in] the small photograph on the diplomatic document authorizing his entry into [Brazil, where he went to conduct research in 1963], Leff shows none of the features commonly associated with religious Jews. Not a hint of a beard, and no kippah. I put this to [his son] Avraham.

“Yes, it makes sense,” he said. “A while ago I was looking at my father’s reunion picture and a picture of him at Harvard. Had I not been told that was my father, I wouldn’t have known. He was totally clean-shaven, no hat, no nothing. This was America in the 1950s, where you didn’t rock the boat if you didn’t have to.” According to his son, Leff let his beard grow out only after he got tenure.

Read more at Piauí

More about: Academia, Brazil, Economics, Harvard, History & Ideas

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023