A proposal to create a Milton Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago appears to have created some controversy, as reported here and here. 101 professors at the University signed a letter raising concerns about the new center. In particular, they raised concerns that it would be a "right-wing think tank" and would reinforce popular perceptions that the University of Chicago lacks ideological diversity.
Daniel Drezner has looked into the complaints about the proposed Center, and suggests an alternative explanation for the opposition: "The Milton Friedman Institute will distribute the bulk of its benefits to the department of economics, the law school, and the business school." I suspect Friedman would appreciate Drezner's take, particularly insofar as it applies a Friedman-esque analysis to the Friedman Institute's opposition.
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If you want any other perspective on economics you can go to...? U of Chicago, George Mason... is that it?
rest assured that you will learn your Friedman in pretty much any econ department in the US. Certainly at Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford. You seem to confuse the existence of (neo-) Keynesians with the absence of neoclassical economists. Neoclassical economics, even though not as dominant as 10 years ago, continues to be the leading school of economic thought in this country.
Will you find Marx in the Economics department? My impression is that Marx is more likely to turn up in Political Science and Sociology. How many places teach Marxist economics?
Take a second to think about that. They don't want right-wingers over diversity concerns. What a joke. As I saw in college and law school, diversity means liberals of all stripes, and nothing else.
So I can see why the opprofs would be concerned with Diversity if there was a portion of campus not know for being neo-Marxian...
I would disagree with that assessment. There are plenty of strong economic interventionists among liberal economists. Marxism is ignored by many modern economists largely because the almost all economists of all political stripes have come to reject the labor theory of value. Without the labor theory of value, Marxist economics does not make a great deal of sense.
Lincoln lets the cat out of the bag when he uses the term, "right-wing" to describe the possible tilt of the centers politics. Something tells me that the good professors Lincoln and Kendrick would be delighted if they changed the name to Che's Place. I also wonder what departments the other 98 co-signers came from? Many from that bastion of conservatism, Social Work, no doubt.
It appears that the reason for the opposition is hidden. And of course, Drezner does not actually need any evidence for this point. All he needs is theory that we have no reason to think is applicable in this particular circumstance as a determinative force in the motivations for the opposition.
Give me a break.
A final point, I do not believe Milton Friedman would approve of this shody analysis. To the extent that he would agree with the following statement: "for an approach that insists on the empirical testing of theoretical generalizations and that rejects alike facts without theory and theory without facts"
Here, we have Dan Drezner's theory. And it is a derogatory one at that. But we do not have any empirical testing or support for it. Not even a little bit.
What is it about Drezner that makes him think it is okay to attack the motives of others without even one iota of evidence?
I suspect most of us non-U of C'ers would be hard pressed to name one U of C professor of anywhere near the standing of Milton Friedman. Why even the current Junior Senator from Illinois doesn't qualify for that distinction yet.
Yup.
It appears that the reason for the opposition is hidden. And of course, Drezner does not actually need any evidence for this point. All he needs is theory that we have no reason to think is applicable in this particular circumstance as a determinative force in the motivations for the opposition.
Drezner refers to himself in the third person?
Another asked to see the full list of signatories and fields. The list is here:
link .
Fields are dominated by anthropology, political science, and the literary humanities (not philosophy).
Try the department of Economics in Brazilian universities. The Econ Department of the University of São Paulo, for example...
Even better: "Che Stadium"?
I took introductory micro from David Ruccio, a self proclaimed Marxian at Notre Dame. It actually wasn't a bad class.
Paraphrasing him: I have to know mainstream theories better than their proponents if I want to criticize them.
Not surpisingly, ranking trumps ideology at ND: The Marxist orientation of a large percentage of the faculty has resulted in the department's ranking sliding down to (a few years ago) the bottom quintile nationally.
So, the dean split the department into TWO econ departments. 'Econ and Policy' ("Post-Keynsian"/radical) and 'Econ and Econometrics' (quantoids). Only the latter gets to hire new faculty, and the former will die out with the retirement of the Boomers.
/sarc off
And actually, that's unfair to Freidman. Chomskey is everything Freidman is not, meaning, his ramblings have their own internal logic, they aren't, however, exportable in any real sense to the real world.
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