Avoid this class if you care about your sanity & your GPA. Too many readings and papers. Expectations to succeed on lengthy research papers were unclear, lectures were unorganized (yet mandatory), grading was tougher than other Econ electives, & the amount of reading is absolutely absurd. 50% of your grade is attendance but only counts against you.

Professor Ebenstein is very disorganized and openly admits to being right-leaning in his lectures, going on tangents about things that have nothing to do with the subject matter. He makes it difficult to discern what will get you a good grade, and he stresses attendance despite his lectures detailing nothing actually relevant to the class. ew.

He assigns 70 pages of reading before each lecture and then assigns an in class quiz on the reading. I usually dont have a problem with reading but when its 70 pages for every lecture i think it starts to get out of hand. Its also a little annoying that you have no way to meet with TA who grades your papers. Besides these problems the prof is nice.

Took this class in Fall '24. Lanny is super nice and wants his class to learn and think about topics. Attendance mandatory. Go to office hours and make an effort. Feel like it was hard to get a solid A, but A- is attainable if you work hard on your essays. Final essay was long but I enjoyed his lectures, he's got a lot of knowledge and good insight

- mandatory attendance at end of class with roll sheet - random quizzes in the beginning of class to ensure you don't just show up for the roll sheet - quiz material published 23 hrs prior to quiz (he believes getting ahead is bad for the student) - lack of grading transparency - rambles and when isn't rambling, repeats readings verbatim. - liar

He wants you to cite lecture, his rambles that don't have pertinent information on anything about economic history. When he is talking about stuff that's useful it's just exactly what the reading was so why even attend lecture ? Because he makes attendance mandatory. Also, he provides no feedback/reasons on grades, so you can get a C without reason

Lectures are difficult to follow and Paper grading is confusing. Make sure you discuss immediately after class if you have any issue, for he might not email back if after a follow-up. This is a philosophy course instead of an economics-related. Kinda disappointed after taking this course after seeing other comments.

He is mostly interested in historical style essays more than analytical. Attendance was 50% of your grade

All his classes follow the same structure There are 4 aspects to grading 1 Attendance 2 Quizzes are random & sometimes announced - they are 4 questions MC and T/F always based on the daily read 3 Write-Ups based on the lecture material 4 Research papers 2500-3000 words 7 sources. Go to class, take notes and read. Amazing Prof and easy A if you try.

Ebensteins classes all follow a very specific and predictable pattern and getting an A in one is as easy as memorizing the following: do the readings and go to class. Doing those 2 things will give you ALL the information you need to do every write up (3 in the whole course) and give you so many paper topic ideas (2 in the course.). Great professor

Professor Ebenstein is a gem in the Econ department! Unique, lecture-based class. If you have an interest in the topics discussed, then the class is fairly engaging and refreshing. You get out what you put in. Decent amount of assigned reading and writing. If you have the opportunity, would recommend taking at least one of his courses!

This guy is the goat.