[Marxism] Proposed Milton Friedman Institute roils U. of Chicago campus

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, July 12, 2008
On Chicago Campus, Milton Friedman's Legacy of Controversy Continues
By PATRICIA COHEN

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman generated storms of 
controversy when he was alive, and he is managing to do the same now, 
more than a year after his death. A plan by members of the economics, 
business and law faculties at the University of Chicago to honor 
Friedman, itsmost famous alumnus, by naming a new research institute 
after him has run into opposition from dozens of their colleagues who 
are unhappy that the honor could be interpreted as a wholesale 
endorsement of Friedman's free-market ideology.

Some opponents have been so disturbed by the proposal that they have 
recently asked the university president, Robert J. Zimmer, and its 
provost, Thomas Rosenbaum, to take the unusual step of convening the 
entire faculty to debate the issue.

"This is a way to force a discussion," said Bruce Lincoln, a 
professor at the university's divinity school. "We don't want to 
accept this as a fait accompli." The last time the entire faculty 
met, Mr. Lincoln said, was in 1986 to discuss whether the university 
should divest its holdings in South Africa.

Mr. Lincoln was one of the professors who helped organize a faculty 
petition that gathered 101 signatures against the new Milton Friedman 
Institute and who met with the president and the provost in June to 
discuss their grievances.

Mr. Rosenbaum noted that the idea for the institute initially came 
from members of the economics and business departments, adding that 
the council of the faculty senate, which represents the professors at 
Chicago, was also brought into the process. "There's been a large 
amount of faculty input at every stage," he said.

Although the university is "moving forward with the Friedman 
Institute," Mr. Rosenbaum said, he encouraged opponents to come up 
with their own proposals for research into economics and society. "We 
take very seriously the notion that for enterprises to be robust, 
they have to bubble up from the faculty."

Faculty supporters of the Friedman Institute are somewhat baffled by 
the outcry.

"It's hard to say what it's all about," said John H. Cochrane, a 
professor at Chicago's Graduate School of Business, who served on the 
institute's founding committee, referring to the petition as "drivel."

"Milton Friedman was probably the greatest economist of the 20th 
century," he said, adding that the proposal describes the center 
"pretty explicitly as an economic research institute without a 
particular ideology."

More than 100 professors signed the petition, declaring that they 
were "disturbed by the ideological and disciplinary preference 
implied by the university's massive support for the economic and 
political doctrines that have extended from Friedman's work," and the 
implication that Chicago's faculty "lacks intellectual and 
ideological diversity."

Lars Peter Hansen, an economics professor who was chairman of the 
institute's founding committee, said: "I was a little bit surprised, 
because we had taken it to the faculty senate and aired it 
thoroughly." Mr. Hansen said that he was aware that some people might 
worry that the institute would be seen as a right-wing research 
group, which is why the committee took the time to bring it up.

Opponents have pointed to a passage in the proposal that states: 
"Following Friedman's lead, the design and evaluation of economic 
policy requires analyses that respect the incentives of individuals 
and the essential role of markets in allocating goods and services. 
As Friedman and others continually demonstrated, design of public 
policy without regard to market alternatives has adverse social consequences."

Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976, said he 
fervently believed the government should stay out of the economy as 
much as possible; the group of economists who followed his lead was 
called the Chicago School. (The university continues to employ more 
than its share of Nobel winners in economics, including Gary S. 
Becker, James J. Heckman and Roger B. Myerson.)

But to critics, Friedman's prescriptions, which were enthusiastically 
embraced by the Reagan administration as well as by the International 
Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the 1980s and '90s, caused severe 
hardships throughout the developing world. Friedman was also reviled 
in some quarters for his association with dictatorial regimes like 
that of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile. As an article in The Chicago 
Tribune noted, the institute "renews a split on campus about Friedman himself."

Mr. Hansen said that the primary connection between Friedman's 
approach and the institute's is the idea that research ought to be 
empirically grounded or based in real-world experiments. "We want the 
best research out there," no matter what someone's personal views are, he said.

He made a point of differentiating the new institute, scheduled to 
open this fall, from other university-based centers with an 
ideological bent, like the conservative Hoover Institute at Stanford 
University. "This is a very different model," Mr. Hansen said.

Mr. Lincoln acknowledged that faculty representatives had been told 
about the institute in February but said that the proposal was not 
debated or brought up for a vote.

As an opponent of the entire institute, rather than simply its name, 
Mr. Lincoln characterized himself on the extreme end of the 
opposition. He said he would like to see a research center "much more 
committed to free inquiry and a larger debate, and not just grinding 
the same ax sharper and sharper."

The university has set a goal of $200 million for the institute's 
endowment, contributing $500,000 in seed money, with the rest coming 
through donations from alumni and business leaders.


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