Thursday, July 3, 2008

100 Munchkins and A Giant

Around the middle of June, I did a post about some University of Chicago faculty who signed a petition protesting the name of the $200 million dollar Milton Friedman Institute, to be located on the UofC campus. Naomi Klein brought it to the world's attention in an article for The Guardian.

Milton Friedman is probably the most vindicated economist of the 20th century. Is there anyone whose fundamental worldview has been proven more accurate? When you get a chance, check out Free To Choose and Capitalism And Freedom. In that order.

Perhaps the faculty would've been happier with "The Nostradamus Institute"? Or "The Prophet Habbakuk Institute?" How about "The Karl Marx Institute And Shelter For Political Theorists Who've Never Really Worked, And Let Their Families Go Hungry And Got Their Housekeepers Pregnant"?

Anyway, for the longest time I couldn't find any references online to the faculty petition that weren't based on the Naomi Klein/Guardian article. I wondered if the petition even existed. Then I wondered "Can anyone let me know which members of the French, Mythology, Womyn's Studies, Physical Education and Anthropology Departments signed this thing?"

Thanks to my new friend Chris, I have the list of petitioners. It's as bad as I thought.

Phys Ed is poorly represented, but music and religion show up.

I don't believe you have to have a doctorate in a particular field to be knowledgeable of that field. But couldn't they talk anyone from the Economics department into signing up? Anyone from the business school? Anyone who teaches about life in the untenured wasteland? (Every one of the teachers listed below probably does a few classes that I would love to take, BTW.)

To get to the point: The faculty members who signed the petition are almost all from the disciplines that I predicted, fields that are developing reputations for stifling P.C. orthodoxy. Here's the list:

Hussein Agrama, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
Muzaffar Alam, Carl Darling Buck Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College
Yali Amit, Professor, Departments of Statistics and Computer ScienceClifford Ando, Professor of Classics
Leora Auslander, Professor, Department of History, Committee on the History of Culture, Committee on Jewish Studies, and the College
Ralph Austen, Professor Emeritus of History Lauren Berlant,
George M. Pullman Professor, Department of English
Michael Bourdaghs, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Mark Bradley, Associate Professor of History
Bill Brown, Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English and Visual Arts; Committee on the History of Culture
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and History
Tamara Chin, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
Kyeong-Hee Choi, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Cathy J. Cohen, David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science
Jennifer Cole, Associate Professor, Dept of Comparative Human Development
Jean Comaroff, Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences
John Comaroff, Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Anthropology and the College
Ral Coronado, Assistant Professor, Department of English
Bruce Cumings, Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College Michael C. Dawson, John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science and the College
Hilary Parsons Dick, Postodoctoral Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Center for Latin American Studies Michael Dietler, Associate Professor of Anthropology Fred Donner, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Prasenjit Duara, Professor of History and East Asian Languages & Civilizations Darby English, Associate Professor of Art History Jacob Eyferth, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Christopher Faraone, Frank Curtis Springer and Gertrude Melcher Springer Professor of Classics James Fernandez, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
Pedro Felzenszwalb, Department of Computer Science Norma Field,
Robert S. Ingersoll Professor of Japanese Studies Cornell H. Fleischer,
Kanuni Suleyman Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies
Richard Fox, Assistant Professor of History of Religions
Rachel Fulton, Department of History and the College Susan Gal, Mae and Sidney G. Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics
Leela Gandhi, Professor of English
Michael Geyer, Samuel N. Harper Professor of German and European HistoryMcGuire Gibson, Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology, NELC, Oriental Institute
W. Clark Gilpin, Margaret E. Burton Professor of History of Christianity
Andreas Glaeser, Associate Professor of Sociology and of the Social Sciences in the College
Jan Goldstein, Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History
Robert Gooding-Williams, Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor, Department of Political Science and the College
Ramn A. Gutirrez, The Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of History
Susan Gzesh, Lecturer in Law, Director, University of Chicago Human Rights Program
Elaine Hadley, Associate Professor, Department of English
Miriam Hansen, Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities, Department of English / Committee on Cinema and Media Studies
Donald Harper, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Neil Harris, Preston and Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus, Departments of History, Art History
Elizabeth Helsinger, John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English and Art History
Thomas Holt, James Westfall Thompson Distinguished Service Professor of History
Paola Iovene, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Travis A. Jackson, Associate Professor of Music and the Humanities
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Assistant Professor of British History
Matthew Kapstein, Numata Visiting Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and the History of Religions in the Divinity School
John Kelly, Professor, Department of Anthropology
Robert L. Kendrick, Professor of Music James Ketelaar, Professor of History and East Asian Languages & Civilizations
Emilio Kour, Associate Professor of History, Director, Katz Center for Mexican Studies
Loren Kruger, Professor, Departments of Comparative and English Literatures, African Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies
Laura Letinsky, Professor, Department of Visual Arts
Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of the History of Religions
John A. Lucy, Department of Comparative Human Development
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and Center for Latin American Studies
Amanda Macdonald, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English
Patchen Markell, Associate Professor, Political Science Franoise Meltzer,
Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Comparative Literature, Romance Languages, and Divinity Janel Mueller,
William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of English
Matam P. Murthy, Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematics and the College Joseph Masco, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
William Mazzarella, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and the College.
John P. McCormick, Professor, Department of Political Science
Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelly Professor Emeritus of Theology, History of Christianity, and Medieval Studies
Omar M. McRoberts, Associate Professor of Sociology Jason Merchant, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics
Stuart Michaels, Associate Director, Center for Gender StudiesW.J.T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English and Art History
Nancy D. Munn, Professor Emeritus, Anthropology
Deborah Nelson, Associate Professor, Department of English; Chair, Center for Gender Studies
David E. Orlinsky, Professor, Department of Comparative Human Development and Social Sciences Collegiate Division
Stephan Palmi, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Moishe Postone, Professor of History
Francois G. Richard, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
Seth Richardson, Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History
Mel Rothenberg, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Math
Danilyn Rutherford, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory
Marshall Sahlins, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology Emeritus
Mario Santana, Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Julie Saville, Associate Professor of History
William Sewell, The Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and History Emeritus
Bart Schultz, Director of the Civic Knowledge Project and Senior Lecturer in the Humanities
William Schweiker, Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics
Dan Slater, Associate Professor, Department of Political ScienceJoel Snyder, Professor of Art History, Visual Arts, and the College
Amy Dru Stanley, Associate Professor of History
Richard A. Strier, Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor Katherine Fischer Taylor, Associate Professor of Art History
Russell H. Tuttle, Professor in Anthropology, Committee on Evolutionary Biology, Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Biology and Medicine, and the College
Theo van den Hout, Professor in the Oriental Institute and Dept. of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
Candace Vogler, Professor, Department of Philosophy
Kenneth W. Warren, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor, Department of English
Lisa Wedeen, Professor of Political Science
Christian Wedemeyer, Assistant Professor of History of Religions
Anthony C. Yu, Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Humanities
Tara Zahra, Assistant Professor of History
Rebecca Zorach, Associate Professor, Department of Art History

4 comments:

Dr Ralph said...

WS -- I confess to being totally out of my element in matters concerning economics. What was the primary beef the signers of this petition had with Milton Friedman?

I did some quick research (Wikipedia -- always easy, though always slightly suspect) and saw that Friedman was an advisor to Augusto Pinochet after he overthrew the Allende government in Chile. Was this the issue or was it something more subtle?

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Nah. He believed in Free Markets with limited interference from govt trolls, hobbits, munchkins, etc. Therefore, he was widely reviled.

He went to Chile at the invitation of some think tank. He did meet with Pinochet. If you looked at Wikipedia, you saw that he also did a similar dog and pony show in China. Similar speeches, both places. When Friedman returned from China, there was no uproar, no protests, no nothing.

However, totalitarian governments with socialist trappings are perceived as more wholesome and virtuous than those than other totalitarian governments. (I've yet to read a left-wing criticism of his trip to China.) And can you imagine this bunch of Chicago schoolmarms getting worked up over a brief Friedman visit with Fidel Castro?

As a percentage of population, who has been worse, Castro or Pinochet? http://blogforcuba.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/fidel-castros-v.html

Granted, Pinochet didn't stay in power as long. Both are horrible people. Both would be going to hell, if there was one.

Friedman often stated that economic freedom was the best way to achieve political freedom.

China and Chile have headed toward political freedom, possibly because of brief visits from the Free Market evangelist Milton Friedman. The Gospel was not spread in Cuba, however, and it remains lost to the kingdom.

Dr Ralph said...

Thanks for the background.

I didn't feel competent to comment on something I knew nothing about. That never happens around here, does it?

BTW, based on the amount of activity around here lately, there must be several of us with Spousal Companions out of town.

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Yeah, I've already done 10 posts in just one week, and it's just now Saturday morning. I have a wild and crazy lifestyle, don't I?