Foster Free Ideas, Please

Grow up liberals. University of Chicago doctrinaire liberal professors want to tarnish the reputation of a great school by objecting to its honoring one of the great and influential intellectuals associated with the university, Milton Friedman:

Friedman won the Nobel Prize in 1976, a year before he retired from the U. of C. after 30 years of teaching. He died in 2006.

"For many people who travel around the word, the university has had a pretty bad reputation that is tied to the Chicago School and economic principles that Milton Friedman advocated," said Yali Amit, a U. of C. statistics and computer science professor. "We don't think it's a great idea to strengthen this reputation."

Economics professor Lars Peter Hansen, chair of the committee that proposed the institute, said the opponents are confusing Friedman's economic scholarship with his social and political views. He said the center will not have any "particular political slant."

John Cochrane, a business school professor who served on the Friedman Institute committee, also emphasized that the center will be nonpartisan.

"There will be no ties to any party," he said. "It will not be a home for administration officials while Republicans wait out the [ Barack] Obama administration."

Columbia University economics professor Jagdish Bhagwati laughed when he heard about the latest debate at the Hyde Park campus.

"It is nonsensical to object. . . . Chicago should be proud it has someone like Milton on its rolls," he said. "Anybody who can claim that Milton was not one of the major thinkers of his time is crazy."

Can't take the competition in the world of ideas, liberals? Please. The academy should foster the free exchange of ideas, not stifle them and reduce them by political hackery.