Naomi Klein could plead rational ignorance or rational hypocrisy. Her book is tripe. However there is something comforting about a multinational corporation using an anti-globalization anti-intellectual to take the money of thousands if not millions of other anti-globalization anti-intellectuals the world over. Delicious irony not withstanding, the danger, of course, is that those on the left might consider her book real scholarship, and take its assertions as facts.
This isn't limited to the visibly non-thinking enraged leftist types, anti-globalization sentiments have their place along with collectivist sentiments in the "discredited but popular among the academic left" gallery. Even, Joseph Stiglitz (who I am sad to say once attended Amherst) a Nobel laureate in economics praised Klein's position.
But for support for this book, and animosity towards a man so devoted to liberty, to come out of the University of Chicago is particularly disappointing. Where to start? There is the carelessness you would expect from a group of academics willing to uncritically accept scholarship with which they are in political agreement:
We were interested to read President Zimmer’s recent message announcing
the Milton Friedman Institute, with its 200 million dollar plus
endowment and prime real estate location on campus.
While President Zimmer's address, which they were "interested to read", reads:
The University’s financial commitment to the Institute will be in the
range of $200 million, with half of that amount establishing an
operating endowment and the remainder allocated for facilities and
other start-up costs.
Moreover, he goes on to mention the new physical space to which half of the money is allocated, may house the economics department. So, either they didn't read his address at all, or they took a page from Klein and merely put half truths together in the way that makes their point. Either way, too much junk to linger on one little self-contradiction.
The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place
in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of
Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive. Many would
argue that they have been negative for much of the world's population,
leading to the weakening of a number of struggling local economies in
the service of globalized capital, and many would question the
substitution of monetization for democratization under the banner of
“market democracy.”
Who would argue the effects have been negative for much of the world's population? Are you among the "many"? Can you site a single peer reviewed study published in a major journal? When have free market policies undermined a healthy functioning democracy? Here is the one instance in which they cite MFI founding documents (in this case to demonstrate a lack of commitment to "strong intellectual diversity"):
Following Friedman’s lead, the design and evaluation of economic policy
requires analyses that respect the incentives of individuals and the
essential role of markets in allocating goods and services. As Friedman
and others continually demonstrated, design of public policy without
regard to market alternatives has adverse social consequences.
Do thy believe economic analyses shouldn't "respect the incentives of individuals and the
essential role of markets in allocating goods and services"? Do they, for that matter, believe any analysis shouldn't "respect the incentives of individuals"? For a group largely composed of so called "social scientists" that would be pretty distressing.
Anyway, without any further ado, public shame on these so called intellectuals:
Hussein Agrama, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
Muzaffar Alam, Carl Darling Buck Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College
Yali Amit, Professor, Departments of Statistics and Computer Science
Clifford Ando, Professor of Classics
Leora Auslander, Professor, Department of History, Committee on the
History of Culture, Committee on Jewish Studies, and the College
Ralph Austen, Professor Emeritus of History
Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor, Department of English
Michael Bourdaghs, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Mark Bradley, Associate Professor of History
Bill Brown, Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor,
Departments of English and Visual Arts; Committee on the History of
Culture
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service
Professor, Departments of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and
History
Tamara Chin, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
Kyeong-Hee Choi, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Cathy J. Cohen, David and Mary Winton Green Professor of Political Science
Jennifer Cole, Associate Professor, Dept of Comparative Human Development
Jean Comaroff, Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences
John Comaroff, Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Anthropology and the College
Raúl Coronado, Assistant Professor, Department of English
Bruce Cumings, Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the College
Michael C. Dawson, John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science and the College
Hilary Parsons Dick, Postodoctoral Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Center for Latin American Studies
Michael Dietler, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Fred Donner, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Prasenjit Duara, Professor of History and East Asian Languages & Civilizations
Darby English, Associate Professor of Art History
Jacob Eyferth, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Christopher Faraone, Frank Curtis Springer and Gertrude Melcher Springer Professor of Classics
James Fernandez, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
Pedro Felzenszwalb, Department of Computer Science
Norma Field, Robert S. Ingersoll Professor of Japanese Studies
Cornell H. Fleischer, Kanuni Suleyman Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies
Richard Fox, Assistant Professor of History of Religions
Rachel Fulton, Department of History and the College
Susan Gal, Mae and Sidney G. Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics
Leela Gandhi, Professor of English
Michael Geyer, Samuel N. Harper Professor of German and European History
McGuire Gibson, Professor of Mesopotamian Archaeology, NELC, Oriental Institute
W. Clark Gilpin, Margaret E. Burton Professor of History of Christianity
Andreas Glaeser, Associate Professor of Sociology and of the Social Sciences in the College
Jan Goldstein, Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History
Robert Gooding-Williams, Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor, Department of Political Science and the College
Ramón A. Gutiérrez, The Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of History
Susan Gzesh, Lecturer in Law, Director, University of Chicago Human Rights Program
Elaine Hadley, Associate Professor, Department of English
Miriam Hansen, Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in
the Humanities, Department of English / Committee on Cinema and Media
Studies
Donald Harper, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Neil Harris, Preston and Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus, Departments of History, Art History
Elizabeth Helsinger, John Matthews Manly Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English and Art History
Thomas Holt, James Westfall Thompson Distinguished Service Professor of History
Paola Iovene, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Travis A. Jackson, Associate Professor of Music and the Humanities
Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Assistant Professor of British History
Matthew Kapstein, Numata Visiting Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and the History of Religions in the Divinity School
John Kelly, Professor, Department of Anthropology
Robert L. Kendrick, Professor of Music
James Ketelaar, Professor of History and East Asian Languages & Civilizations
Emilio Kourí, Associate Professor of History, Director, Katz Center for Mexican Studies
Loren Kruger, Professor, Departments of Comparative and English Literatures, African Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies
Laura Letinsky, Professor, Department of Visual Arts
Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of the History of Religions
John A. Lucy, Department of Comparative Human Development
Agnes Lugo-Ortiz, Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and Center for Latin American Studies
Amanda Macdonald, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English
Patchen Markell, Associate Professor, Political Science
Françoise Meltzer, Mabel Greene Myers Professor of Comparative Literature, Romance Languages, and Divinity
Janel Mueller, William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of English
Matam P. Murthy, Professor Emeritus, Department of Mathematics and the College
Joseph Masco, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
William Mazzarella, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and the College.
John P. McCormick, Professor, Department of Political Science
Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelly Professor Emeritus of Theology, History of Christianity, and Medieval Studies
Omar M. McRoberts, Associate Professor of Sociology
Jason Merchant, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics
Stuart Michaels, Associate Director, Center for Gender Studies
W.J.T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of English and Art History
Nancy D. Munn, Professor Emeritus, Anthropology
Deborah Nelson, Associate Professor, Department of English; Chair, Center for Gender Studies
David E. Orlinsky, Professor, Department of Comparative Human Development and Social Sciences Collegiate Division
Stephan Palmié, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Moishe Postone, Professor of History
Francois G. Richard, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
Seth Richardson, Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern History
Mel Rothenberg, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Math
Danilyn Rutherford, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory
Marshall Sahlins, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology Emeritus
Mario Santana, Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Julie Saville, Associate Professor of History
William Sewell, The Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and History Emeritus
Bart Schultz, Director of the Civic Knowledge Project and Senior Lecturer in the Humanities
William Schweiker, Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics
Dan Slater, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Joel Snyder, Professor of Art History, Visual Arts, and the College
Amy Dru Stanley, Associate Professor of History
Richard A. Strier, Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor
Katherine Fischer Taylor, Associate Professor of Art History
Russell H. Tuttle, Professor in Anthropology, Committee on Evolutionary
Biology, Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Biology and
Medicine, and the College
Theo van den Hout, Professor in the Oriental Institute and Dept. of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
Candace Vogler, Professor, Department of Philosophy
Kenneth W. Warren, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor, Department of English
Lisa Wedeen, Professor of Political Science
Christian Wedemeyer, Assistant Professor of History of Religions
Anthony C. Yu, Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Humanities
Tara Zahra, Assistant Professor of History
Rebecca Zorach, Associate Professor, Department of Art History
The "choice" offered in the McCain proposal is by encouraging employers to stop offering insurance to employees and make people pay for their own health care costs.
The theory is then that we could choose a plan that covered birth control. The reality, of course, is that we more likely will just choose what street to die in when we can't afford basic care.