Simons engineered a Chicago project specifically to recruit Aaron Director.

Evidence

To facilitate and direct the collaboration, Simons wasted no time in drawing up an ambitious plan to recast the Chicago landscape. … I have contrived a project largely for what one might call ulterior purposes: (1) to get Aaron Director back here and into a kind of work for which he has, as you know, real enthusiasms and superlative talents… . Moreover, I have deliberately formulated the kind of project for which this University would be the natural location and for which Aaron would be the natural choice as head … I am sorry to have organized Lutz out of the picture—and hope he might be “organized in” again from time to time or permanently. He is probably the best choice for your kind of project; but Aaron seems a better choice for mine, if only by the nature off his own preferences and interests—although Lutz, in turn, would be a better choice for my project if it were located at Princeton. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 727

Categorization

• XREF: The deliberate placement of specific people to build the Chicago School parallels the earlier chapters’ accounts of Hayek and the LSE network’s strategic institution-building.
• SHARE: Aaron Director’s hiring was engineered as a vehicle with ulterior purposes — a detail a colleague obsessed with Chicago School institutional history would enjoy.