[cores-ucfaculty] Message from Marshall Sahlins

[Sati Bandyopadhyay]

This is U of Chicago's internal affair, what they do with their own  
money is their own business . Why should we care?

Sati



On 4-Sep-08, at 11:43 AM, rneedham at uwaterloo.ca wrote:

>
>
> ----- 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 Chica 
> go!! 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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