The University of Chicago is appealing for $200m to establish a Milton Friedman Institute. The plan to honour the university’s most famous economist is arousing controversy. A petition to the university’s president from a group of professors reports that “many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Economics, especially throughout most of the global south, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image”.

To see what is wrong with this statement, change it only slightly – “many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Anthropology, especially throughout most of the business community, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image”.