CORES: Committee for Open Research on Economy & Society

In your position, I would not object to naming the institute after Milton Friedman. Friedman was a controversial historical figure but since the University and the profession did not repudiate him while living the case for repudiating him now cannot be effectively advanced.

I would concentrate all my fire on the (plainly ridiculous) idea that the University should fund an institute to advance a preformed ideological message of any kind. It be hard to argue against a “Friedman Institute For Economic Research.” But what you are being offered, as your letter points out, is roughly, a “Milton Friedman Institute for the Advancement of a Right-Wing Theoretical and Policy Agenda.”

That is not something that belongs in a university dedicated to free inquiry. The remedy I suppose is to purge the mission statement of its plain-as-day ideological bias, and to assure that Friedman’s disciples do not dominate the governance of the institution, its hiring and funds. You are much better placed than I am to formulate an appropriate strategy for the second point.

Those are my thoughts, for what they may be worth.

James Galbraith