…This op-ed in the Chronicle of Higher education shows us just how nutty. Marshall Sahlins’ hateful screed against Nobel Prize winning economist Dr. Milton Friedman, whose work is a staple of economic study, compares Friedman to Louis Farrakhan, and blames Friedman for the tyrannical excesses of Pinochet.
This screed contains such ideological silliness that anyone with access to a search engine and a couple of hours to spend could deconstruct it and rightly call it out as the neo-Marxist propaganda that it is. [What I am saying here is that his argument is so silly that it hardly merits serious refutation – however a reader asked me to tackle some of the arguments in detail so be sure to read the comments section below.]
What I find most interesting is that Marshall Sahlins believes that this will be the “extra-academic, partisan interests” that will be passed for Academics. Sahlins, who hails from the school of social work science, (some online sources said Sahlins was in social work but after firing up the peer reviewed material and examining one of his books its clear that he is in social science) big shocker there isn’t it, should take a close look at this field where many students are forced into partisan activity often against their will (and this link is one example of many).
Most parents would find it unacceptable that radicalized, out of touch, neo-Marxist propagandists like Sahlins were/are able to get in front of a classroom filled with their children in the first place. Most parents are not aware that a large number of liberal arts academics hold similar view and gobble up nonsense such as this and work every day to convince our children of it.
Sahlins treats words such as “capitalist” and “free market” as if they are terms of sheer horror. To a Marxist [and many assorted leftists] they are. Such academics tremble at the thought that American prosperity and exceptionalism came not from the government ran by his elitist friends, but rather the common man, who holds Marxist views in contempt, whose genius and creativity was unleashed in greater amounts by the American system than any other that had come before it.
Here is how the article starts off. Follow the link for more:
Institute Will Give the U. of Chicago a Bad Name
By MARSHALL SAHLINS
The University of Chicago has announced the establishment of a multimillion-dollar Milton Friedman Institute for the study of economy and society on prime real estate it has acquired for that purpose adjacent to the central campus. The projected cost of the institute is $140- to $200-million, to be financed largely and directly by private donations – indeed, donors who contribute a million or more will thereby be qualified to participate in its academic deliberations. Why not also a Louis Farrakhan Center for Religious Studies? Or a Friedrich Engels Institute for Political Science?
Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who died in 2006 after a long career at the university, was known for his radical laissez-faire approach to society and the economy. Of course, to many observers at home and abroad, the establishment of a monumental institute named after Friedman and directly subsidized by private funds, will brand the University of Chicago as an academic instrument of a certain ideology. It will make the university party to an extremist version of liberal capitalism that has proven to serve the welfare of the ruling elite in a number of countries at the cost of whom it may concern – notably the society in general and the poor in particular.
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=jRcgpygvwgXggWGSbcgwNm4MyPw3ghqP
When I have the financial resources, provided that Marxist academics are not allowed to invade it for the purpose of destroying it (remember the Hamilton Center), I intend to make a large donation to the Milton Friedman Center for the Study of Economics at the University of Chicago, in Marshall Sahlins’ name.
