Is U-Chi Free to Choose?

When word surfaced at the U. of Chicago that a new institute would be named in honor of Dr. Milton Friedman, it sparked some controversial opinions, particularly from left-wing faculty members who made no secret of their distaste for any vehicle that would promote Friedman’s free market principles to students instead of fostering “an open environment that would also include competing academic theories.”

They posed numerous questions: Would the new institute have to follow the wishes of its donors to the letter? Would it become known far and wide as the Midwest version of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution?

The major complaint boiled down to the fact that the name, “The Milton Friedman Institute,” was not acceptable to faculty dissidents who were annoyed at the Nobel-prize winning economist getting his name in lights.

Finally, it was agreed that the new entity would be named “the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics,” which according to university provost Thomas Rosenbaum, makes it clear that it is “solely an economics research institute.”

Although U. of Chicago News director Steve Kloehn noted that the institute was never meant to be a “partisan or ideological organization,” he was pleased with the outcome.

Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.

Deborah Lambert