Postwar fears of federal university funding drove Chicago to accept Volker money

Evidence

Surely Hutchins’s liberal bent went a long way toward facilitating the logistics for the Free Market Project, as it became known, and his attenuated scruples concerning taking money with strings attached did the rest. Perhaps this was because he was coming off the experience of the Metallurgy Lab in World War II, and as he admitted in an internal memo in June 1946, “It seems likely that within the next five years the Government will become, directly and indirectly, the principal donor of the University.” Hutchins was therefore looking for some private antistatist funding to offset the looming postwar influence of the federal government on Chicago intellectual life and the University at large. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 742

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the Cold War university-funding dynamics discussed in other histories of postwar academic patronage and the rise of think tanks. — connects to: Volker Fund money paid visiting professors for Chicago’s Antitrust Project. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 837; The Volker Fund continued active oversight of Chicago work after project launch — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 856

Broader Connections

• Volker Fund money paid visiting professors for Chicago’s Antitrust Project. #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 837
• The Volker Fund continued active oversight of Chicago work after project launch #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 856