Three cheers for the University of Chicago’s President Robert Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum, for sticking to their plans to name a new research center after the late Milton Friedman — who for many years graced the U of C economics faculty, and spent his life making the case that free markets are vital to both prosperity and liberty. (Here’s a link to his marvelous 1980 TV series, “Free to Choose”).
Individual freedom is, of course, an idea that drives some academics — actually, a lot of post-modernist, deconstructionist, uniformly diverse academics –right up the wall. So, according to the Chicago Tribune, 101 U of C professors have signed a letter to the university president protesting plans to put Milton Friedman’s name on this new institute.
Why? Because, they say, they fear this might “reinforce among the public a perception that the university’s faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity.”
That’s just fascinating. So — let’s replay that tape — the way these academics propose to ensure a perception of diversity is by scrubbing the name of a scholar who for decades made the University of Chicago stand out as a home of original thought.
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