University's Plans for Milton Friedman Institute Spark Outcry

Twenty-five faculty members, researchers and alumni from the university have won the Nobel Prize in economics, many of them taught by Friedman. Three Nobel winners, Gary S. Becker, Robert E. Lucas Jr. and James J. Heckman, sit on the seven-member committee overseeing the institute.

Becker, an economics professor in the Graduate School of Business, said the institute is a way the university can "compete much more effectively against Princeton, Harvard and Stanford -- schools much better endowed than we are."

But critics see the institute as a disproportionate investment in one academic area.

Theology professor William Schweiker said that he has no problem with the economics department creating a research institute honoring Friedman, but that such large-scale investment by the university could be better utilized by spreading it among a range of disciplines.

"It's clear that not only economic forces are important in our time, but also cultural forces," he said. "The religions, for example, are exerting massive forces of good and ill around the world. We need to study them."

Becker, a former student and close friend of Friedman's, said that if the economist were alive, he would be proud of the institute and would take the controversy in stride.

"No one likes to be accused of things, but he was very single-mindedly devoted to doing the best he could to get at the truth," Becker said. "He could take controversy; he was tough."