Economics professor brings international world within classroom walls
Janel Shoun |
He has spent more than 30 years studying, analyzing and personally experiencing the maelstrom that lies at the nexus of economics and politics. In January, he brought his experience weathering the storm to Lipscomb’s classrooms when he joined the faculty as professor of finance and economics.
So far, Grant’s teaching career has taken him to South Africa, England, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakstan. Along the way he also ran for Parliament in his native Canada; lobbied for mining companies and wrote a column on economic policy for the Financial Mail in South Africa; and developed a master’s program in Papua New Guinea.
“The more one learns about how people of all nationalities interact in life, the more it broadens your perspective and helps strengthen your understanding of who you are,” said Grant.
It was during his undergraduate studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute that Grant met Dr. James Buchanan, the Murfreesboro native who won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for his work with public choice theory. Buchanan led a group of professors at the Center for the Study of Public Choice. When the center re-located to George Mason University, where it remains today, Grant was invited to transfer as well and remain a research assistant at the center.
Grant earned his doctorate from George Mason in 1987 with a dissertation on public choice theory, the application of economic tools to problems of constitutional democracy.
Grant taught in the U.S. for several years after graduation until a chance meeting with Duncan Reekie, a well-known Scottish economist living in South Africa, took him to the University of the Witwatersrand, where he taught for several years and did consultant work for the South African stock exchange.
Over the years, Grant has had a knack for being in newsworthy places at newsworthy times, and that was certainly true of his time in South Africa from 1987-1992. He lived and worked during a violent time in South Africa’s struggle with racial discrimination, when the National Party’s apartheid laws were breaking down for good.
He collected first-hand experience living life under international economic sanctions; witnessing the change in power to FW de Klerk; and seeing the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, later meeting the world-famous activist before he became president in 1994. All of which gave the economics expert a unique insight into world events on the political stage in later years.
In 1988 and 1989, Grant was able to comment directly on how the rapidly changing government policies were affecting the local economy as a columnist for the Financial Mail, a weekly business magazine.
Looking back on his time there, Grant finds one of the most interesting things to be the difference between American media coverage of the South African conflict and the reality of life in the nation.
“America received a very black and white version of the events in South Africa: all Whites are bad and all Blacks are good,” Grant said. “But it was much more complex than that. The Cold War was really fought on the ground there, and the politics were very complicated.”
In fact, Grant credits the falling of the Berlin Wall as the real factor opening the way for the death of apartheid. When the wall fell, the world’s super powers lost interest in carrying on the Cold War and Soviet-funded organizations, such as revolutionary groups in South Africa, soon began to dissolve, he said.
In 1992-93 Grant put his economic and policy expertise to work by running for the nomination for national Parliament in his home province in Canada. Although he did not win, he describes that six-month period as “one of the most exhilarating things I have ever done.” His honest, thoughtful campaign experienced a level of success that surprised many in the local political establishment, he said.
And there is nothing like a political campaign to re-emphasize the real-life applications of economic theory, he noted. “Everything has a policy aspect to it,” he said. “It is not just about money and equations; it’s all about life and actions. How do humans act when they make conscious choices?”
After several years working in England, Morocco and again in South Africa, Grant accepted an opportunity to teach in the United Arab Emirates in 1999, where he was living at the time of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Teaching at Zayed University after 9/11 was not a scary experience, he said. Most Arab citizens were too polite to say what they really thought of the attacks and they generally respected the Western expatriates as long as the Westerners respected their cultural customs, Grant said.
Grant left the United Arab Emirates in 2002 and his most recent homes include Kazakhstan and Papua New Guinea, where he taught as the Bank of Papua New Guinea Chair of Finance at the University of Technology. Due to that country’s extremely high incidence of malaria, Grant began looking for a new opportunity, and Lipscomb University came to his attention.
In the fall of 2007, Grant will be teaching a course in international economics and finance, the perfect opportunity to bring the lessons he has learned through his varied and exciting life experiences to the students at Lipscomb.