The Controversy over the Milton Friedman Institute--Posner

Milton Friedman was one of the twentieth century's most distinguished economists, and one of the century's three economists (the other two being John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek) who had the greatest political influence--and he was the only American in the group. Friedman spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, so it is natural that the University should name a major new component of the University, devoted to economic research, after him. The Institute is essentially a joint venture of the University's economics department, graduate school of business, and law school. The use of his name will help the University raise the funds required for the new Institute. The decision, announced five months ago, has generated controversy on the University campus, sharpened by the current economic crisis that is thought in some circles to have damaged Friedman's legacy (it has certainly damaged Alan Greenspan's legacy). Some 170 faculty members have signed a petition circulated by a Committee for Open Research on Economy and Society--which opposes the decision naming the new institute after Friedman--asking that a meeting of the University Senate (which consists of some University administrators and all faculty members who have been on the faculty for more than a year) be convened to discuss the decision. The stated ground of opposition is that naming the Institute after Friedman would constitute the University's endorsement of his political views and would bias the research conducted by the Institute in favor of the free-market ideology that Friedman promoted so strongly. But the opposition is also and probably primarily powered by distaste for Friedman's political and policy views and for his willingness to provide economic advice to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Friedman's association with policies that are either liberal or politically neutral, such as the volunteer army, the earned income tax credit (the negative income tax), the legalization of the laws against marijuana and other mind-altering drugs, and even affirmative action, is overlooked. I don't think anyone would quarrel with the idea of an institute devoted to the support of academic research on economic issues, even though many of the issues that economists examine have political implications. The name is the focus of the controversy. Friedman was an advocate of politically controversial policies with which a number of University faculty do not want the University to be associated. When buildings, classrooms, institutes, schools, etc. in universities are named after someone, it is usually a donor. Especially when an institute, which is likely to be a special-purpose organization, is named after a public figure, it is natural to associate the mission of the organization with the name of that figure: the Hoover Institution of Stanford University was named after Herbert Hoover and is indeed conservative, though it is noteworthy that the Institution's conservative reputation has not extended to Stanford University as a whole, and no more would one expect the University of Chicago to be branded as conservative merely because it contains an institute named after a conservative economist. The University of Chicago is not a conservative institution, though it is not as monolithically liberal as its peer institutions. The purpose of naming the new institute after Friedman was presumably to encourage fund-raising; one economics professor at the University has been quoted as saying that Friedman's name would "resonate with the donors." So a further worry is that most of the donors will be conservatives who support Friedman's political views (that is to say, his conservative political views, as many of his views were not conservative), and that the new Institute will perhaps unconsciously bias hiring and promotion in favor of economists who support those views. The Institute might (again, whether consciously or unconsciously), it is feared, conceive its mission as being to promote the ideas of the "Chicago School of Economics," of which Friedman was perhaps the leading (though not the founding), and certainly the most influential, member. But that is unlikely. Economics is a highly competitive academic field, and piety toward distinguished predecessors is not the path to academic success. It is odd that the opponents of the Friedman naming should think that economists, of all people, would subordinate career motives to loyalty to Friedman's memory or the "Chicago School" (especially young economists for whom Friedman is just a name). If the religion professor who is leading the movement against the naming is right that "Friedman's over"--that the current economic crisis has consigned Friedman, along with Greenspan, to the dustbin of economic history--he should have no fear that the new Institute will be biased in favor of Friedman's views. If a physics institute were named after Albert Einstein, would the institute's researchers reject quantum theory? It might seem that the controversy could be easily resolved by simply changing the name of the Institute. But that would be costly to the University in several respects. First, it would doubtless offend many donors, and probably leave the Institute in worse financial shape than had it not been named after Friedman in the first place. Second, it would weaken the University administration and encourage the encroachment by faculty on administration prerogatives. There is a whiff of the 1960s in the effort by faculty (joined by a number of students) to move the University of Chicago leftward. Even if the original naming of the Institute after Friedman was a mistake, there is now too much at stake for the University administration to back down.

Comments

[a Duoist]

That partisan hate for a Nobel winner thrives at Chicago says much more about the university than it does about Dr. Friedman. Let them change the name; Friedman's name and his writings will endure for centuries among the more open-minded.

[Sylvester]

"Economics is a highly competitive field." Dear Judge, please name one that isn't highly competitive. Even in the disciplines which pay their PhDs much less than economics PhD's, there is a ferocious competition for any decent tenure track position.
Would anyone like to play devil's advocate for the Judge, who, I might assume, has a few cases to adjudicate?

[Andrew]

Thank you for raising my awareness to this shameful disrespect towards Friedman. What a short-sighted view those faculty members must have.

[neilehat]

"What's in a Name"? I've never been a big fan of putting people's names on things and organizations. I much prefer a more descriptive title. Like, "The UofC Institute for Economic Research & Development". But what do I know? There are hundreds if not thousands of Institutes named after people (not too mention streets and parks). Such as, Max Planck, Salk, Fermi, Pillsbury, Venter, Lerner, Cato?, Howard Hughes, Getty, Nestle, even including trees, Aspen, and tree seeds, Buckeye.

So what's in a Name? "Friedman" is just as good as anything. Especially, if it helps to raise funds for the organization's operating budget.

[Jake]

Judge Posner, that is at best a lukewarm defense of the University of Chicago's gesture in honor of a great man. If you do not wish to take a firm stand on the matter, why post the comment?

[Jim]

I would hope that these 150 self-rightous prfessors would turn down a Nobel Peace Prize because Alfred Nobel was famous for inventing a weapon of war. I am sure that they would-----NOT.

[robert]

We live in a time in which certain groups move to erase names because they offend the politically correct zeitgeist, such as attempts to do away with things named after slaveholders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. However, what's missing is context. Today's hero could be, in a generation or two, not worthy of the honor (or vica versa). The current controversy concerning Friedman is anything but contextual: opponents have seized upon recent Wall Street financial problems as a pretext for their 60's militancy, without regard for the position Friedman played in both academia and American life. As such, their opposition is suspect and not worthy of consideration by the university.

[Dan]

I guess we're done with that silly global recession business. Thank goodness. Now we can move on to something really substantive and far-reaching, like faculty politics at Chicago.

[Thomason]

What person's name would not generate some sort of controversy? All over academia, there is expressed distaste when it is proposed to name an endowed chair after someone who is distasteful to others. It is as if University faculty are unaware that fundraising is the IV that sustains the lifeblood of their college.
That being said, I recall my first courses in Economics and the coursebooks authored by Prof. Friedman. I thought 'who is this guy' and why is he trying to confuse me? Give him a plaque or a lintel or classroom complex with his name, but an entire Institute?

[Patrick Murphy]

For someone outside the academy this furor is hard to understand. Friedman's ideas will be reevaluated by succeeding generations of economists who have the benefit of history including the current crisis. If his ideas do not stand the test of history he remains one of the most influential individuals ever associated with the UC. Robert E. Lee was wrong at Gettysburg and on the question of succession but his name is engraved on too many monuments and buildings to catalogue. The faculty would do well to stay out of this matter but it is a curious spectacle and a reminder of why serious people might want to avoid the faculty experience.

[Jim]

It is said that Academic politics is so intense because there is so little at stake.

[Dan]

Jim: I think it was Kissinger who said that.

Speaking of the devil, is there a Henry Kissinger School of Foreign Policy yet? Didn't he win the Nobel Prize...

[Jim]

Thanks Dan,

There is such a double standard in all of this. It makes me think that hypocrisy is a more pervasive social illness than imagined.

[Jim's Daddy]

"It makes me think that hypocrisy is a more pervasive social illness than imagined." And there are more fools (and quacks) than I imagined. But I'm glad you were able to take a moral shit on this one, Jim.

[Edward G. Nilges]

Posner frameworks the discussion in a way that although *au fait* in America, is bizarre globally.

It is simply untrue that universities are "monolithically liberal" unless it is possible to base a university on pre-enlightenment world-views.

Even the Catholic Church was incapable of this stunt, for its leading educational order, the Jesuits, had to make its peace with the enlightenment in order to do its job.

The University of Chicago gets its somewhat less than "monolithically" liberal reputation only because some of its faculty, and some of its bitter, twisted, and prematurely aged graduate students, will say paradoxical things which call into question the basic values of the Enlightenment such as fairness, decency, and an expanding as opposed to a contracting culture.

For example, a U of C math professor told Saul Bellow, who could for some strange reason never get a real job at the U of C despite winning a Nobel or two, that he didn't use the university library because he didn't read outside his field.

Comes now the Judge, Posner, who is also apt to say strikingly narrow and nasty things, either because he's engaged in high class trolling (which is bad) or actually believes them (which is worse).

[ABS]

Would the same professors object to naming an economic research institution the John Meynard Keynes Institute? If so, I would perhaps be sympathetic, but I just do not believe that would be the case.

Edward G. Nilges, that post was absolutely incoherent.

[SorinPLATON]

Some remarks in romanian/european language for US-UE citizens from Romania, a percent of

your readers & taxpayers by the way...

Standard & Poor 'scade calificative nationale, ca minoritaru' lautar, ...dupa ureche

http://sorinplaton.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/standard-poors-s-tales/

Cele bune sa se adune,

1= [rezistenta antigloAbalizanta din muntzi :) ]

[SorinPLATON]

Some remarks in romanian/european language for US-UE citizens from Romania, a percent of

your readers & taxpayers by the way...

Standard & Poor 'scade calificative nationale, ca minoritaru' lautar, ...dupa ureche

http://sorinplaton.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/standard-poors-s-tales/

Cele bune sa se adune,

1= [rezistenta antigloAbalizanta din muntzi :) ]

[St. Darwin Assisi's cat]

Yo Judge Posner...thank you for blog...interesting, informative. Comments were interesting too...touched some nerves with this post. Glad I don't have to sit in on THOSE faculty meetings. Talk about turf wars...does this discussion affect young Professor Posner?

[Rumple Stiltskin]

Good riddance to the evil dwarf.

Why name anything after him. He lived his life in a island of fantasy as do his followers.

He missed his chance in life when he didn't get a part in a once popular TV show.

How I would have loved to see him "Boss!... The plane! The plane!"

[Jim]

Not let's see. 150 faculty at The U of C, 80 faculty at Duke. Does anyone see a similarity?

I will wager that a public hanging in Durham or Hyde Park would draw a sizeable crowd.

[Jon]

This is a response to the comments by Sylvester:

It's not the competition for labor positions that is the issue here, but the competition of ideas. I do work related to public health where in that field there is no competition for ideas. In economics, there is healthy debate on issues of all types -- methodology, empirical outcomes, and policy. When I look at the public health area, i see that everyone agrees, especially on the policy implications (and so many people are really unnecessary). Milton Friedman would be the first person to support competition in the market place for ideas.

[Tony Blah]

Milton Friedman would be the last person to support competition in the market place for ideas.

[DaveinHackensack]

"The stated ground of opposition is that naming the Institute after Friedman would constitute the University's endorsement of his political views..."

Milton Friedman's alma mater, Rutgers University, has named more than one building, if memory serves, after Paul Robeson. I don't recall anyone protesting that this might constitute the university's endorsement of some of Robeson's more controversial political views (e.g. his support of Stalin). I wonder if the Rutgers community would protest if the university proposed naming something after Friedman.

[DaveinHackensack]

"The stated ground of opposition is that naming the Institute after Friedman would constitute the University's endorsement of his political views..."

Milton Friedman's alma mater, Rutgers University, has named more than one building, if memory serves, after Paul Robeson. I don't recall anyone protesting that this might constitute the university's endorsement of some of Robeson's more controversial political views (e.g. his support of Stalin). I wonder if the Rutgers community would protest if the university proposed naming something after Friedman.