Frank Knight is misattributed as Chicago School founder, obscuring Hayek’s role

Evidence

We indeed strenuously dispute this notion, on the basis of the information provided in the first section of this chapter. But beyond the factual error of mistaking Knight for the actual progenitors (Simons and Director and, most of all, Hayek), it is necessary to insist that identification of the founder of the Chicago School makes a profound difference to our understanding of the rise of neoliberal economics in the postwar period. We have our own personal doubts as to whether Knight could have successfully organized and orchestrated a weekend picnic, much less a major transnational intellectual movement; but luckily that question need not be settled here. Rather, the misattribution of founder status to Knight has had two pernicious consequences: it has diverted attention away from the fact that the inauguration and establishment of the Chicago School constituted just one component of a much more elaborate transnational institutional project to reinvent a liberalism that had some prospect of challenging the socialist doctrines ascendant in the immediate postwar period. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 764

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how intellectual movements get founding figures retrospectively assigned — parallels with other historiography of schools of thought. — connects to: Frank Knight’s lectures converted socialists into libertarians, founding the Chicago School — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 92; Chicago’s graduate economics rigor came largely from Viner, not Knight — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 98; The Chicago School was founded by Simons and Hayek with Volker Fund money — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 155 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Frank Knight’s personal influence was central to creating the Chicago libertarian tradition #qualifies (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 857
• Hayek personally founded both the Chicago School and the Mont Pèlerin Society #contradicts (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 765