A Friedmanite theory of opposition to the Milton Friedman center

Apparently there's some controversy at my former place of employ about the creation of a Milton Friedman Institute on the campus.  The Chicago Tribune's Jodi Cohen reported on this last month, which means, yes, the New York Times' Patricia Cohen has just caught up with East Coast reportage (academic stories from flyover country usually take at least a month to hit the paper of record).  Cohen (the one from the Tribune; the one from the Times is less sympathetic to the petitioning professors) reports on the objections:  In a letter to U. of C. President Robert Zimmer, 101 professors—about 8 percent of the university's full-time faculty—said they feared that having a center named after the conservative, free-market economist could "reinforce among the public a perception that the university's faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity." About a half-dozen faculty members aired their concerns Tuesday in a meeting with Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum, who remain committed to the project. Rosenbaum said the university plans to put about $500,000 toward launching the center next year, but it hopes the expected $200 million endowment for the center will come mostly from private funds from alumni and business leaders. "It is a right-wing think tank being put in place," said Bruce Lincoln, a professor of the history of religions and one of the faculty members who met with the administration Tuesday. "The long-term consequences will be very severe. This will be a flagship entity and it will attract a lot of money and a lot of attention, and I think work at the university and the university's reputation will take a serious rightward turn to the detriment of all." The controversy highlights tensions between the university's historically conservative economics department and law school and the generally liberal humanities and social sciences.... Rosenbaum said the center will not push any particular point of view. "We are honoring a great scholar, and that is the intent here," Rosenbaum said. "We are supportive of a wide range of ideas across the spectrum of ideologies, and it's not intended to promote any ideology." But faculty critics are concerned that it will be one-sided, attracting scholars and donors who share a point of view. They point to sentences in the institute proposal noting that its focus would "typify some of Milton Friedman's most interesting academic work," including his critical analysis of monetary policy and advocacy of market-driven forces over government planning of the economy. I took a look at the proposal, and here is the relevant Friedman excerpt: In discussions of economic science, ‘Chicago’ stands for an approach that takes seriously the use of economic theory as a tool for analyzing a startlingly wide range of concrete problems…for an approach that insists on the empirical testing of theoretical generalizations and that rejects alike facts without theory and theory without facts. … There are really three aspects of the Chicago school. First, it is distinguished by its scientific approach, its attitude toward economics as a discipline, a science. In the second place, it has a distinctive approach to economic policy in general. And third, and more recently, it has had a special meaning in the field of monetary analysis and monetary policy… The most important aspect, in my opinion, is the scientific. The key to the influence of The University of Chicago on economics throughout the world is that ever since its founding in 1892, the Economics Department of The University of Chicago has regarded economics as a serious subject that has something to do with the real world. It has considered economics a positive science, a method of analysis which has broad applications to many topics. That's not exactly a statement screaming ideological orthodoxy and/or rigidity.  As FIRE's Adam Kissel observes: If this is enough to establish that a program mandates an orthodoxy, I fear for the Center for Gender Studies, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, the Core curriculum courses on "Colonizations"—and even the History Department, which explicitly advertises an unequal commitment to "interdisciplinary and comparative history" versus other kinds of history. I am even more fearful for the entire School of Social Service Administration, which declares in its mission statement that "In most cases, alleviating distress requires an emphasis on helping individuals and families acquire the resources, skills, and authority to secure adequate solutions to their own problems." A witch-hunt for orthodoxy-like statements only leads to a lot of drownings of false witches. When we get to the full text of the petition and its list of signatories, however, another possible explanation for the objection comes to mind -- one that would have no doubt bemused Milton Friedman.  From the petition:  Many of us are also perturbed that other units of the University that routinely engage the issues that the Friedman Institute is designed to address were not included in the planning, nor included in the ongoing core scholarly endeavors of the Institute.... Still others believe that, given the influx of private contributions to the MFI, the University now has the opportunity to provide roughly equivalent resources for critical scholarly work that seeks out alternatives to recent economic, social, and political developments. Ah, now we get to the nub of things.  The proposal makes it pretty clear that the Milton Friedman Institute will distribute the bulk of its benefits to the department of economics, the law school, and the business school.  The modal department affiliations of the petitioners are Anthropology, East Asian Languages, English, History, and Political Science.  My theory is that the opposition is grounded less on ideology and more on an effort to ensure these departments get a bigger slice of the pie.  This raises an interesting hypothetical question:  if Friedman were alive, would he recommend persuasion, bribery, or institutional prerogative to deal with this situation?  WWMFD?   Suggestions welcome.  UPDATE:  There's one other possible explanation that should be pursued.  If this FAQ page is correct, then it looks like the Friedman Center could eventually displace the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore and force it to relocate.  In which case, I say, "hell no, the bookstore can't go!!"  ANOTHER UPDATE:  See these old posts by David Warsh and Steven Levitt for more.  And I've changed the post title in recognition of Jonathan Adler's observation.