Fwd: [cores-ucfaculty] Message from Marshall Sahlins

[rneedham at uwaterloo.ca]

----- Forwarded message from yaliamit at uchicago.edu -----
     Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 16:52:13 -0500
     From: yaliamit at uchicago.edu
Reply-To: cores-ucfaculty at lists.uchicago.edu
  Subject: [cores-ucfaculty] Message from Marshall Sahlins
       To: cores-ucfaculty at lists.uchicago.edu

Dear All: On aug 30, Lindsay Waters, Executive Editor for Humanities  
at Harvard
UP and member of the HD Visiting Committee, emailed Martha Roth about the MFI.
Waters gave me permission to post the email, which runs as follows (see below
for the reply he received):


*Subject:* RE: visiting committee humanities division

To Marth Roth, Dean, Humanities Dvision, U of Chicago

Dear Martha,

A Milton Friedman Institute—what a step backwards for the U of Chicago!! I am
so sorry to hear about this. I know it is not your fault, but could you please
try to do anything you can to stop it. The reason –I believe—the U of C was
such a hospitable place for Friedman and many other thinkers was that it never
endorsed any ideology. The founding of this institute is the clear endorsement
of one ideology. This is a terrible falling away from the great U of C
tradition which let a hundred ideologies flourish because it endorsed  
none. The
U of C will rue the day.

Can the decision be reversed? I hope so. Someone asleep at the wheel ? Or too
greedy? Or do some chief administrators think it OK now to link the U of C
permanently to one political ideology? Sad. I worry that the lively free play
of ideas that the U of C has always been home to will be harmed by the
installation of the so-called “Free Market” ideology on a throne at the top
of the school. “Ideas have consequences” as ultra-conservative U of C
English prof Richard Weaver wrote in a book published by the U of C Press in
the 1950s. Weaver was mistaken, I think, about many things, but not about what
that sentence says. To live up to the ideal of the university means to remain
open to all ideas but not to privilege one.

I am hoping to see you at the Visiting Committee for the Division meeting this
fall.

Best

Lindsay

Roth replied Sept 2:


Martha Roth wrote to say:

“The MFI, for better or worse, is a reality and can’t be stopped. But we
have been able to get wording changed on the published statements about the
mission. I am confident that – in spite of the name – the MFI will be open
to whatever avenues of investigation the faculty members propose to undertake.
“ Lindsay



Comment (MS)

Beside the new evidence that power corrupts (Martha Roth), the reply is a good
indication of the administration's current position, i.e., its feckless
insistence that this is an open institute. This largely on grounds that it has
changed the mission statement, though on fact neither the mission nor the
administration of the Institute, let alone the name, have been touched.



-- 
______________________
Marshall Sahlins
Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology Emeritus
Department of Anthropology
University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

phone: (773) 702-7703
fax: (773) 702-4503
home: (773) 241-5459
fax (h): (773) 241-7016


----- End forwarded message -----


W.-Robert Needham
Professor Emeritus
Department of Economics
University of Waterloo
Home Tel: 519-578-4143
http://economics.uwaterloo.ca/fac-needham.html