Remembering Jeffrey G. Williamson (1935–29 August 2026), and what he taught me about humility, honesty and showing up for students

The News

I was teaching economics to a class of final-year high school students and spoke about Jeffrey Williamsons work in economic history, when one of them found that Jeffrey Williamson had died a few weeks earlier.

I stopped for a moment. Most people would call Jeffrey a famous economic historian: a Harvard professor and the author of dozens of books. To me he was something rarer. He was one of the few teachers who really changed me, even though he never taught me a single class.

We only met properly in 1994, in the final year of my PhD, when he sat on my thesis committee. We met once more in 1999. By then he was chair of Harvard's economics department, and I was a professor of environmental economics and policy in Costa Rica. That's two encounters in thirty years. Yet when I count the teachers who shaped me, I need only one hand, and Jeffrey is on it.

This is the story of why. My answer is simple: the truly great are humble, and they always find time for their students.

Two Very Different Roads to Florence

In 1994 Jeffrey spent a year at the European University Institute in Fiesole, in the hills above Florence. He was finishing research on migration and globalisation that became two landmark books: The Age of Mass Migration (1998, with Timothy Hatton) and Globalization and History (1999, with Kevin O'Rourke). At the time the EUI was, after Harvard and the London School of Economics, one of the main centres of economic history. Scholars passed through all the time to give seminars. One was David Landes, whose The Unbound Prometheus was practically the textbook on Europe's industrial revolution.

I had noticed Jeffrey long before I met him because of an early article he published in Economic Development and Cultural Change on regional inequality, which included Italy's regions. I loved it because it made its case with simple tables and descriptive statistics instead of sophisticated, impenetrable econometric models. He wanted to be understood, not just admired. That shaped my own work, and I believe it helped me get the invitation to publish my thesis with Cambridge University Press. That turned out to be such a prestigious channel that it closed every door for me at European universities, but that's another story.

Jeffrey and I came to Fiesole by very different roads. As a Dutch citizen, I had no reason to study abroad for my Master's. I received an excellent education without the crushing debt I would have built up in the UK or the US. For thirteen years, from age 17 to 30, the state paid me a small merit-based stipend of $500 to $1,000 a month and charged tuition of between nothing and $1,000 a year. I then won one of only two Dutch doctoral scholarships to do a PhD in history at the EUI.

To Jeffrey, a fully funded student was almost unimaginable. I still believe every country should fund higher education this way, so that access to it depends on merit and not on wealth.

I was lucky in another way too. Both my parents were teachers and academics, and our dinner-table conversations were always lively and well-informed. We were comfortably middle class and never worried about money. My parents believed deeply in higher education, especially my father, the first in his family to attend university. For him it had been the key to a fulfilling and comfortable life.

The Professor Who Answered in Two Minutes

Maybe because of my parents' high standards, and my own stubborn independence, I seldom asked my teachers for help, and as a result very few teachers left a deep mark on me. Universities had already become mass institutions. Even graduate students rarely got personal, relevant guidance or feedback. Looking back, I wish more of my professors had demanded more of me and taken the time to give real, detailed feedback. I would have learned more and made better choices.

Jeffrey was different, and everyone at the EUI noticed. Occasionally, we laughted at his defense. With two other students, we tried to convince him that renting a car in Naples and driving around there with his wife might not be a good idea, given the ultra-chaotic nature of traffic there. Upon his return he had to admit we had been right.

He was humble, and he enjoyed people. He talked to everybody. With a mischievous grin he'd say, "My wife doesn't allow me to talk to students for more than thirty minutes," and then, whenever a student needed it, he talked for longer.

He was responsive. He answered emails within two minutes. Many European professors took weeks.

He was honest. When he read my thesis draft, after three years of work, he barely said anything. He just laughed and said how different it would have been if he'd been involved from the start. I said, "I understand. You're right." It stung, but it was the most useful feedback I'd had in years. By contrast, my own supervisor kept changing his mind, and each of his students ended up writing at least three different theses. Because I already had a contract with Cambridge UP to publish the thesis, I made sure the book would be more coherent than my doctoral thesis.

"Why Don't You Research That Yourself?"

The moment I remember best came at my thesis defence. It was also immortalized in a cartoon a friend drew, and I lost.

Jeffrey asked me about a topic in economic history that I knew he was thinking of researching himself. I smiled and said, "Why don't you research that yourself?"

The room went still. The Italian and Spanish academics in the audience weren't used to such direct exchanges between a student and a senior professor. My supervisor nearly jumped out of his chair, sure the great Harvard professor would be offended.

Jeffrey just smiled and said something like, "Fair enough."

That was the whole lesson. A lesser scholar might have needed to win the exchange. Jeffrey didn't need to protect his status. He treated me as a colleague, and that small response told me more about real authority than any lecture could.

That evening my parents held a dinner for the professors. My supervisor came, and so did Jeffrey. He got on wonderfully with my parents, and especially with my mother, who was also a passionte teacher and professor of Italian literature. She spoke Italian, Dutch and French but no English, and he spoke none of her languages. Somehow they understood each other perfectly.

Showing Up, Again and Again

The defence wasn't the end of it.

Years later, when I was in Costa Rica, Jeffrey was the only member of my committee who tried to help me build a career as an economic historian. His proposal needed resources I didn't have, and it probably wouldn't have worked in Central America. But he tried, and nobody else did.

Then in 2014 I found myself effectively in exile in Australia, kept out of Papua New Guinea by people close to its government. I asked Jeffrey whether he would email the Prime Minister. He did. He wrote something like: "I know Albert has a PhD, because I was there when he earned it."

Twenty years after my defence, and despite never having been my official supervisor, he vouched for me without hesitating.

After he died, I learned that the awards he was proudest of were not for his research. They were for teaching and mentoring, including one his PhD students gave him, the "Energizer Bunny Award." That didn't surprise me. He was there for all his students, even those of us who technically weren't his. None of my European professors came even close.

What Jeffrey Taught Me

Jeffrey never gave me a lecture or a grade. What he gave me was an example. Here is what I try to carry forward in my own teaching:

Answer people quickly. A fast reply tells someone they matter. You don't need two minutes, but don't make them wait weeks.
Be honest and kind at the same time. Real feedback, given warmly, is a gift. Vague reassurance isn't.
Don't defend your status. When a student challenges you, say "fair enough" and mean it.
Make yourself understood. A clear argument helps more people than an impressive one.
Keep supporting people over time. Mentoring doesn't end at graduation. A two-line email twenty years later can change someone's life.
Make time for "unofficial" students. Some of the people you influence most will never appear on your list of advisees.

Your Turn

I'd love to hear your stories. Please share them in the comments:

Who is your "Jeffrey"? Who shaped you without being officially responsible for you?
When did someone's humility teach you more than their brilliance?
If you teach, lead or mentor: who is waiting for an email from you right now, and what would a two-minute reply mean to them?
How did your country's education system shape the chances you had, and the ones others didn't?

If this story reminded you of someone, consider writing to them today, while you still can. And if you've lost your own Jeffrey, tell us about them below. Remembering them together is a way of passing on what they gave us.

Life is a Journey of Learning

03/10/2026

In Memoriam Jeffrey Williamson: The Greatest Teacher I Never Had