Paul Solman '66, a Business and Economics correspondent for the PBS NewsHour and an Emmy-award-winning television reporter, will teach an Economics course in fall 2011 as the Richman Distinguished Visiting Professor, wrote Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe in an April 3 e-mail to to the student body.According to Jaffe's e-mail, the course is titled "Economic Grand Strategies: from chimps to champs? Or chumps?"

The course will focus on the dynamic tension between the conflicting human impulses to cooperate and compete, and it will explore this theme all the way from our primate past to the present, according to Solman in an interview with the Justice.

The course will be a weekly three-hour seminar and will be capped at 35 students. Solman attributed the class size to his desire for students to participate in class. "I'm going to coerce students to be actively involved. . I don't want to be standing up there and lecturing for 3 hours," he said.

Solman plans to focus each week's lecture on a different time period, beginning with the economics of the Stone Age. According to Solman, each class meeting will allot roughly the first 2 hours to historical and cultural elements of the period, and the last third of the class will be a time for "students [to] actively debate a contemporary topic that mirrors the particular [economic] theme for that week's class."

Solman hopes the course will provide students with a "fundamental understanding of the important concepts of economics, as opposed to an overemphasis on the math and graphs of economics." He said he wants to show students how "deep economic theme[s] play . out throughout history."

Additional plans for the course include involving other Brandeis faculty, according to Solman. Although he said he has not yet chosen whom, he would like "experts from the different periods [to] be involved." Solman also added that students will be required to participate in an online discussion each week leading up to that week's class.

Enrollment for the course is by waitlist only, Jaffe wrote in his e-mail, and "students must submit a one-page essay of no more than two paragraphs on his/her favorite or least favorite concept in economics or in the history of economic thought."

Solman said, "I want really motivated students, and I figured this was one way of determining who would want to be in the course so much that they would bother writing an essay."

Solman will be debuting the full course at Brandeis next semester, but he has already taught some of the classes from the course this past year during his time as a professor at Yale University as a Brady-Johnson distinguished practitioner in grand strategy.

An alum of Brandeis, this will not be Solman's first time on campus. A member of the class of 1966, Solman was an Art History major during his time at Brandeis and was heavily involved in journalism, serving as a co-editor in chief of the Justice.

Solman began his career as an economic journalist in 1976 when he was exposed to a story about how cities in Boston and Cambridge raised money through bonds. Solman realized he knew virtually nothing on the matter and he decided to "learn [economics] from the ground up."

Solman has been a business and economics correspondent for the PBS NewsHour since 1985, according to his biography on PBS' website.

"Mr. Solman brings more than 30 years of business and economics journalistic experience to the course," Jaffe wrote in his e-mail, adding that he is "delighted" that Solman will be coming to campus.

Solman echoed these positive sentiments and said that he intends for the course to be "extremely enjoyable for [himself] and the students.