In a September 4 post entitled “The Isolated Milton Friedman” I quoted two paragraphs from Michael Hirsh: Capitalism: How America’s Wise Men Entrusted America’s Future to Wall Street. I will not quote the entire passage again.
Here’s a passage that seemed strange to me, given what a warm and hospitable person Milton was:
For most of those Cold War years, he remained the leader of a wayward insurgency, isolated and condemned, even on the Chicago campus, as the counterculture of the 1960s grew. There were times when no one wanted to eat with him in the faculty dining hall. (Italics added.)
My comment was about something else, but I should have noticed that this passage seemed strange to me.
An old friend, Christopher Jehn (we’ve been friends since we met at Richard Thaler’s in 1977), sent me the following email and gave me permission to quote him:
Finally, I read your September 4 post about Friedman’s “isolation.” Your post and especially Hirsh’s quote were incorrect. Indeed, Hirsh (and his references) sounds almost delusional. Remember, I was a graduate student in Chicago from 1965 to 1970. I don’t recall any discussion, none, among graduate students or between us and faculty consistent with this story. Foreign.
It is foreign. I wonder where Hirsh got his information.