Lindsay Waters’ Letter
From: Waters, Lindsay
Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2008 11:35 AM
To: ‘Martha Roth’
Subject: RE: visiting committee humanities division
To Martha Roth, Dean, Humanities Division, U of Chicago
Dear Martha,
A Milton Friedman Institute-what a step backwards for the U of Chicago!! I am so sorry to hear about this. I know it is not your fault, but could you please try to do anything you can to stop it. The reason -I believe-the U of C was such a hospitable place for Friedman and many other thinkers was that it never endorsed any ideology. The founding of this institute is the clear endorsement of one ideology. This is a terrible falling away from the great U of C tradition which let a hundred ideologies flourish because it endorsed none. The U of C will rue the day.
Can the decision be reversed? I hope so. Someone asleep at the wheel ? Or too greedy? Or do some chief administrators think it OK now to link the U of C permanently to one political ideology? Sad. I worry that the lively free play of ideas that the U of C has always been home to will be harmed by the installation of the so-called “Free Market” ideology on a throne at the top of the school. “Ideas have consequences” as ultra-conservative U of C English prof Richard Weaver wrote in a book published by the U of C Press in the 1950s. Weaver was mistaken, I think, about many things, but not about what that sentence says. To live up to the ideal of the university means to remain open to all ideas but not to privilege one.
I am hoping to see you at the Visiting Committee for the Division meeting this fall.
Best
Lindsay