There is a mini-controversy on the University of Chicago campus surrounding the announcement of plans to raise money for a Milton Friedman Institute here at the university. Some non-economists are concerned that the Friedman Institute will push a right-wing agenda and tarnish the reputation of the university. Some who knew Friedman well have the opposite worry: that the Institute won’t actually carry on Friedman’s vision.
David Warsh‘s latest column is about the controversy.
My own view is the following:
The Chicago economics department views the world differently than anyone else, even other economics departments. Having learned my economics at Harvard and M.I.T., I took my first teaching job at Chicago with the very explicit idea that I would spend two or three years in Chicago to get to “know the enemy.” After I figured out how they thought, I would escape back to more comfortable surroundings.
Well two things happened that I didn’t expect. First, it turned out that it wasn’t so easy to learn to think like a Chicago economist. I’ve been trying to learn for more than a decade and I still have learned only the rudiments. Every day my colleagues teach me something I should know, but don’t. Second, I decided that the Chicago approach to economics was the right one for me, even though I am not that good at it.
A diversity of views is almost always a good thing. Relative to Harvard, M.I.T., Princeton, Stanford, and other top schools, the Chicago economics department is small both in terms of size and resources. The Friedman Institute will increase the scale at which Chicago economics will operate, giving us a better chance of competing with the other top schools for faculty and students. The Friedman Institute will help us compete in the marketplace for ideas.
And what economist — Chicago or otherwise — could argue with that?
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I am ambivalent on the Friedman Institute. I am, however, 100% pro-Seminary Coop. Whenever I am back in Hyde Park, I try to make a stop at the Coop, or at least at 57th Street Books (their less academic sibling). It would be a travesty for the Coop to close, though I would understand if they moved into a less dank location.
Maybe the Oriental Institute has some dank basement space they could let out?
Also, the issue will probably be moot in, say, nine or ten years time, when the Barack Obama Presidential Library is opened next door to the Milton Friedman Institute.
“It is doing so.”
How do you figure that?
As a UC Alum, I can not understand the opposition to the Milton Friedman Institute and I am disappointed that so many of the current faculty object. Are these opponents afraid of the power of Milton Friedmans’s ideas because they are unable to offer cogent competing ideas?
Would they have led the opposition against Darwin, Galieo, or any great thinker just because they held a different view. Or would they encourage debate and let the facts lead you were they will. Are some on the faculty so insecure in their own ideas that they fear being lost in the shadow of Milton Friedman?
If the New York Times can survive the views of Paul Krugman, the University of Chicago can flourish with the Milton Friedman Institute.
Only 100 faculty (about 8%) signed the letter protesting. Much of the protesting is from people not at all qualified to judge the value of economic theories.
As far as the Co-Op, who cares? Buy your books online and let the Co-Op (which hasn’t even broken even in years) die its enevitable death.
Dr. Levitt,
Can you explain how thinking like a University of Chicago economist differs from thinking like a run-of-the-mill economist? I’m sincerely curious, although I wonder if a UC Berkeley physics prof would say that it’s hard to think like a “UC physicist”.
As a recent economics graduate I looked at my schooling as follows: isnt the idea of going to university to learn as many different ways of thinking as possible, and take these new ideas as ways to form your own opinions and conclusions. If UC doesnt want this institute it is only going to hurt their own students
Josh -
The Coop has made small profits in recent years (though not every single year). It has not paid out dividends, though, as the profits are generally razor thin.
As for why people care, it is not so much that you could not buy the books somewhere else, but that the Coop provides a value-added service: the books they put out on their tables are often terribly interesting and generally deal with subjects that one would never just decide to look up on Amazon. Also, the benefit of having shelves of scholarly books to browse is huge when you are not quite sure what it is you want.