The Negative Externality of One’s Colleagues’ Politics

Much has been said recently, including by Pete here, about the newly proposed Milton Friedman Institute and the objections of some of the University of Chicago faculty, primarily from the humanities. One of the best comments was by John Cochrane, who wrote:

If you’re wondering “what’s their objection?”, “how does a MFI hurt them?” you now have the answer. Translated, “when we go to fashionable lefty cocktail parties in Venezuela, it’s embarrassing to admit who signs our paychecks.” Interestingly, the hundred people who signed this didn’t have the guts even to say “we,” referring to some nebulous “they” as the subject of the sentence.  Let’s read this literally: “We don’t really mind at all if there’s a MFI on campus, but some of our other colleagues, who are too shy to sign this letter, find it all too embarrassing to admit where they work.” If this is the reason for organizing a big protest perhaps someone has too much time on their hands.

I think Cochrane is largely right here, and I suppose if I try to put myself in the shoes of those faculty, I can understand how they feel as though there’s a huge negative externality to them because of Chicago’s free market reputation. That said, I’ll take their complaints more seriously when they spend some time in my shoes.

For example, every summer I do IHS student seminars, and they often have a large number of central and eastern European students. I’d like the Chicago humanities faculty to tell me how I’m supposed to feel when these students ask me why so many US humanities faculty, including some of my colleagues at SLU, still think Marxism and socialism have social value when those ideas were the inspiration, even if wrongly interpreted, for thugs who engaged in the killing of tens of millions of innocent people and the destruction of the economies of billions. I’d like them also to tell me how I’m supposed to feel when a Cuban refugee who risked his life to come to the US asks me why some US college students, including some at SLU, think it’s cool to wear Che Guevara t-shirts, implicitly honoring a murder and torturer.

Whatever the flaws of free market capitalism as it was applied in the real world, its sins pale in comparison to those of really-existing socialism. When the Chicago humanities faculty have to explain to these students why my colleagues and students have sympathy for the ideas that motivated the impoverishment and death of millions of their fellow citizens, then maybe I’ll some sympathy for them having to explain away sweet old Milton Friedman.

Comments

[Dain]

I tend to err on the side of caution in linking dead intellectuals, like Marx, to later generations of thugs and other illiberal a-holes. In other words, Marx is not to blame for Lenin, Stalin or Mao. Kind of like Nietzche and the Nazis, or Darwin and the Eugenics movement.

But the Che thing is spot on because he was an actual murderer with terrible plans for society, much of it realized in his lifetime, under his direction.

As for Friedman, he did not approve of Pinochet's actions and could hardly be his source of inspiration.

[Tigersharkwl]

Thank you for bringing the protest to light and for posting the link to John Cochrane's letter. I enjoyed reading both your comment and Professor Cochrane's letter. I am outraged and, frankly appalled, by the extremely irresponsible, selfish, and (for lack of a better word) STUPID petition written and signed by those non-economists at University of Chicago. More importantly, the letter seems quite malicious: It does not recognize Dr. Milton Friedman's well-known contribution in economics at all. Instead, it focuses on some arbitrary social implication of founding the Milton Friedman Institute. I cannot phrase it, so I am copying Professor Cochrane's words near the end of his letter:"...Friedman also has a legacy in economics as a first-rate researcher, which is what the MFI will do and honor. The consumption function and the monetary foundations of inflation, are as important to 20th century economics as the discovery of DNA was to biology, quantum mechanics to physics or plate tectonics to geology. But the letter-writers didn’t have anything to say about any of this, so neither will I, here."

I sincerely hope the the Milton Friedman Institute will be founded on time and the petition will not sway the minds of the president and the provost at the University of Chicago, despite the fact that both of them are not trained economists. (One in mathematics, and one in physics, to the best of my knowledge). Considering that some of the people who signed the petition are from those two disciplines, perhaps economists should write a letter backing up the rationale for founding the Milton Friedman Institute.