Robbins deliberately imported Hayek as an intellectual counterweight to Keynes

Evidence

Shortly before engaging in these public disputes with Keynes, Robbins had arranged for Hayek to present a series of lectures at the LSE in January 1931.44 The fortuitous timing led some to conclude that Robbins was drawing on Austria for intellectual reinforcements. “While the controversy about public works was developing,” the Cambridge economist Joan Robinson recalled, “Professor Robbins sent to Vienna for a member of the Austrian school to provide a counterattraction to Keynes.” — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 65

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to later MPS/neoliberal network-building scholarship — the pattern of deliberate intellectual counter-mobilization recurs throughout. — connects to: Robbins recruited Hayek to the LSE as an ally against interventionist economics — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 68; Hayek’s LSE critiques made him Keynes’s leading rival by 1932 — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 70; Robbins used foreign scholarly networks to challenge the consensus of Keynes’s committee — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 64 (+4 more)
• SEED: Angle: how academic “importing” of contrarian thinkers (Robbins fetching Hayek, Friedman at Chicago) works as institutional strategy.

Broader Connections

• Hayek functioned as the intellectual bridge linking ordoliberalism to the wider neoliberal network #expands (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 616
• Hayek rejected all Third Way positions, setting him apart from Keynes and Stiglitz #corroborates (0.70) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1917