Tynan's Anger

Image via WikipediaFrom John Kay of the Financial Times:

The University of Chicago is appealing for $200m to establish a Milton Friedman Institute. The plan to honour the university’s most famous economist is arousing controversy. A petition to the university’s president from a group of professors reports that “many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Economics, especially throughout most of the global south, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image”.

To see what is wrong with this statement, change it only slightly – “many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Anthropology, especially throughout most of the business community, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image”.

Kay's point is that Milton Friedman was an academic first and a political figure second; dismissing Friedman would be dismissing one of the University of Chicago's greatest, most distinguished scholars. Friedman pioneered his field in a way most academics can only dream of. Dismissing him for his politics actually does more to dismiss academic integrity of the scholars who oppose the institute's name (scholars, who, may I add, come almost exclusively from the anthropology, sociology, and English departments).

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Labels: Chicago School of Economics, Financial Times, John Kay, Milton Friedman, university of chicago