CORES: Committee for Open Research on Economy & Society

16 September 2008

Letters to the Editor
The Chronicle of Higher Education
1255 23rd Street, N.W., Suite 700
Washington, D.C. 20037

We were disappointed to read the reply of four University of Chicago administrators to Marshall Sahlins’ critique of the proposed Milton Friedman Institute (“A New Economics Institute at the U. of Chicago,” ) and we would have welcomed a more probative discussion. Let us detail three ways our colleagues fudge the issues.

In the first instance, they note that Friedman’s political views provoke strongly polarized responses, then maintain these have no relevance. The Friedman Institute, they insist, “will pursue the best ideas in economics without preconception, wherever they may lead.” Yet key sentences in the Institute’s founding documents and public pronouncements by some of the letter writers belie this pose of neutrality, reaffirming that Friedman’s ideas were surely the best, including his relentless championing of the market and complementary dismissal of attempts to regulate its forces. The $200 million Institute now taking shape is committed, not just to a narrowly economistic world view (as Hansen, et al. grant), but to a narrow, rigid, and increasingly embattled orthodoxy within the discipline of economics.

Second, they maintain the Institute will honor only Friedman’s economic research, and not his ideology. Yet it is hard to maintain this distinction. For better and worse, economic research affects decision making in the real economy, with profound political consequences. In Friedman’s case, connections between the two were particularly strong, given his central assertion that limiting government’s coercive power and maximizing the role of the market are the twin pillars of democratic freedom and wealth creation. While some of his reputation rests on research into topics like the permanent income theory of consumption and monetarism, much of it also rests on his simplistic equation of free markets with freedom, his ridiculing of government intervention (except for the defense industry), his role as advisor to Ronald Reagan and Augusto Pinochet, and the outsized role he embraced as the acerbic champion of laissez-faire capitalism. In Friedman’s case, it is quite impossible to separate the political legacy from the scientific one and it is disingenuous for the University to claim it will do so, when it is quite obviously converting his public persona into a brand name designed to attract fat contributions (or are these investments?) from wealthy and corporate donors.

Messrs. Hansen, Reny, Rosenbaum, and Snyder close with a hollow, if bombastic proclamation of academic integrity: “While philanthropic support is critical… the university does not and will not allow donors to dictate the content and direction of scholarly research.” Did anyone think this the danger? What of the more subtle, insidious, and realistic threat that large donors will gain privileged access, undue influence, and inside information in an institution well-positioned to affect economic policies? This appears to be the purpose of the “Milton Friedman Society,” an insiders’ club the University is establishing, where those who write checks of $1 million and up become life members and “provide the institute’s scholars with connections to leaders in business and government” (see http://mfi.uchicago.edu/society.shtml). The arrangement invites cronyism, corruption, and creeping corporate takeover, but rest assured no outsider will “dictate” research, for the University will not allow it.

Plans for the Milton Friedman Institute have produced widespread alarm. Faced with a rebellion by large numbers of their faculty, Chicago’s top administrators seem content to repeat superficial talking points that provide no real reassurance. Still, a struggle is underway with potential consequences that reach far beyond Chicago. Fuller information can be found at http://www.stat.uchicago.edu/~amit/MFI/, where visitors who share our concerns are also invited to sign a petition. More than six hundred have already done so.

Yali Amit Bruce Lincoln
Departments of Statistics & Computer Science Caroline E. Haskell Professor of History of Religions
University of Chicago University of Chicago
on behalf of the Committee for Open Research on Economics & Society (CORES)