Arguing About The Milton Friedman Institute
By Matt Zeitlin - Aug 19th, 2008 at 10:51 amIt seems like it’s impossible to say anything about Milton Friedman without finding yourself facing a barrage of criticism. Libertarians insist he was the greatest economic thinker of the 20th century, while many progressives think that he and his ideology are responsible for everything from the horrors of the Villa Grimaldi to the Tiananmen Square Massacre. So, when the University of Chicago announced that they were going to found a Milton Friedman Institute in honor the deceased scholar, controversy ensued.
Most notably, some 100 faculty members signed a letter stating their opposition to the institute. They were worried that because of Friedman’s poor reputation among some in the global south, the Institute would sully the University’s reputation internationally. They also worried that due to the massive amount of private funding that the Institute would get, as well as its libertarian/conservative leaning, that its prominent presence on the U of C campus would actually be an impediment to free discussion and study of economics. Of course, all of these signatories have deep, substantive disagreements with Friedman’s ideology.
Now Marshall Sahlins, a signatory of the original letter and a renowned anthropologist, has published his own indictment of the institute in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The piece, unfortunately, is marred by Sahlins’ own attempts to score points by knocking Friedman’s economic theories.
This obscures his real point: that the influence of private, interested donors on higher education is something to be wary of:
Hence the many ironies in the promoters’ defense of the Milton Friedman Institute on the grounds of freedom — whether academic freedom, individual freedom, or free enterprise. Their brand of academic freedom is likewise a recipe for tyranny, since it would consist mainly of their ability to dominate the academy by virtue of the assets in cash and clout they command in the larger society. The Milton Friedman Institute will provide the rich and powerful with the best self-promoting ideas their money can buy. For its part, the university will be compromised by this commodification of knowledge in which a certain orthodoxy about free markets and self-serving individualism easily proves to be the highest bidder.
Of course, it becomes hard to say which private funding is bad and which is good. Yes, the Friedman Institute is likely to draw funding from those private actors and corporations who have a personal and ideological interest in promoting libertarian economics. And it’s especially worrying that “donors who contribute a million or more will thereby be qualified to participate in its academic deliberations.” But what about the numerous liberal and left-leaning organizations that support all sorts of academic research? The Ford Foundation approved 530 million dollars of grants in 2007, and while it isn’t as ideologically focused as its conservative counterparts like the John M. Olin Foundation, Sahlins can’t pretend that it’s only conservatives who are buying their place at the academic table.
But something tells me that Sahlins’ complaints about private money corrupting the academy are really a cover to get in some shots at Friedman’s legacy. If the Institute had the same set up, and wasn’t named after Friedman, would anyone care nearly as much? I doubt it.
The fact is the rich–liberal and conservative–have a huge amount of influence on academia and on what ideas get promoted and disseminated. It would seem like Sahlins’ piece is almost self-refuting; if U of C were truly a place where only the ideologies that benefit the rich were being promoted, why is Sahlins a tenured faculty member there, along with the 100 others who protested the Institute?
Ultimately, Friedman is probably the University of Chicago’s most famous faculty member. From a purely institutional perspective, he brought prestige to his department and mentored hundreds of graduate students who went on to distinguish themselves in economics. The other superstar of the department, the conservative economist Gary Becker, already has his own “Becker Center On Chicago Price Theory,” so doesn’t it make sense for Friedman to get something in his honor too?
interesting post. i’m not the biggest fan, but he’s perhaps the school’s most influential alumn so that seems like enough reason to go ahead with it.
this reminded me of a somewhat similar (and somewhat different) situation that was going down while i was in college, involving the university of california and the lawrence livermore and los alimos laboratories. ever since the UC played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb decades ago, the UC has managed these two laboratories. every seven (or so?) years, their contract would be renewed by the department of energy in a no-bid process. that changed in 2005—the first (and only) time when the contract’s renewal would take place under dubya’s administration. the outcome? the UC no longer enjoyed a no-bid monopoly on the management of the labs. other schools got to compete. after a long process, it all came down to two universities. the university of california, and…..the university of texas. surprise, surprise.
to give them an advantage over the UC in the bidding process, the university of texas modified their bid so that the labs would actually be jointly managed by the university and none other than Halliburton. for obvious reasons, this would be looked favorably upon by the bush administration. the UC was forced to do the same—they changed their bid so that the lab would be jointly managed by them and Bechtel.
the UC eventually won. when one considers just how much of the UC’s total budget is made up of funds that go towards the management of lawrence livermore and los alimos (it makes total tuition look like pocket change), it becomes apparent that what was once a completely public university is now, in all essence, a private conglomerate. and the students don’t even know. hell—many professors don’t even know.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:20 amJust worth pointing out, not all libertarians think of Friedman as the “greatest” economic mind of the 20th century. I’m a Hayek guy myself.
August 19th, 2008 at 11:53 am[...] my Pushback post on Sahlins and the Milton Friedman Institute. I’m a little surprised that Rashi “Shock [...]
August 19th, 2008 at 4:26 pmYo, Zeitlin,
Rashi “Shock Doctrine” Kesarwani is weighing in…
The Friedman Institute is not about honoring a famous faculty member. As Sahlins rightly points out, the Institute is simply a platform for the rich and powerful to package their preferred economic policies as legitimate think-tank wonkery. What you (and the academy) consider prestige would more accurately be termed infamy…. Friedman is the architect of a series of economic policies that decimated Chile’s economy. The so-called “Miracle of Chile” led to massive unemployment, obscene poverty (45% in 1987) and a transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich. Friedman’s minions would do the same here in the U.S., and the Institute is the perfect mechanism to churn out their crack-pot theories.
Whatever arguments Sahlins wants to employ against the Institute are fine with me.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:39 am