June 11, 2020

"A growing chorus of economists is seeking to dislodge the editor of a top academic publication, the University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig, after he criticized the Black Lives Matter organization on Twitter..."

"... and equated its members with 'flat earthers' over their embrace of calls to defund police departments.... Mr. Uhlig’s Twitter posts criticized demonstrators.... 'Look: I understand, that some out there still wish to go and protest and say #defundpolice and all kinds of stuff, while you are still young and responsibility does not matter,' Mr. Uhlig wrote. 'Enjoy! Express yourself! Just don’t break anything, ok? And be back by 8 pm.'... Mr. Uhlig, a 59-year-old German citizen, also faced scrutiny over past writings on his blog.... Those included a 2017 post in which he asked supporters of National Football League players kneeling to protest police brutality, 'Would you defend football players waving the confederate flag and dressing in Ku Klux Klan garb during the playing of the national anthem?' Mr. Uhlig also wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times in 2016, complaining about calls for greater diversity in the motion picture industry at the Academy Awards. 'This whole "diversity = more American blacks in Hollywood movies" thing?' he wrote. 'So so strange. Really.' Janet L. Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chair, said in an email on Wednesday that 'the tweets and blog posts by Harald Uhlig are extremely troubling' and that 'it would be appropriate for the University of Chicago, which is the publisher of the Journal of Political Economy, to review Uhlig’s performance and suitability to continue as editor.'"

From "Economics, Dominated by White Men, Is Roiled by Black Lives Matter/The editor of a top academic journal faces calls to resign after criticizing protesters as 'flat earthers' for wanting to defund the police" (NYT).

ADDED: "Would you defend football players waving the confederate flag and dressing in Ku Klux Klan garb during the playing of the national anthem?" That's a perfectly phrased Socratic question, so let's raise a glass for Professor Uhlig.

83 comments:

MayBee said...

We are in a purge.

rhhardin said...

He's trying to apply common sense to stuff, pointing out unintended consequences that people tend to miss when they go all emotional.

It doesn't sound like he's afraid to be cancelled. That's just the price. It's what you pay for common sense.

mandrewa said...

So our modern Nazis want another scalp?

Go to hell academia. Go to hell you fascist pieces of shit.

TreeJoe said...

"We must not engage in the marketplace of ideas. We must silence those who disagree with us or challenge our beliefs and we must do so by not preventing them from speaking AND by making the consequences of speaking against us so immediate and personal that the price to pay is too high." - People who do not align with American ideals

RichAndSceptical said...

Speech bigots may be the biggest threat we are facing.

rhhardin said...

U Chicago had Wayne Booth as a dean, who was not shy about mocking student protesters.

Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent

Dave Begley said...

Of course this guy will get fired. That’s the new normal.

Mr. D said...

Yelled is right. Review his work and then tell the thought police to do something that is anatomically unlikely.

tim maguire said...

Let's hope he has the courage of his convictions and refuses to resign with a groveling apology.

gilbar said...

'Would you defend football players waving the confederate flag and dressing in Ku Klux Klan garb during the playing of the national anthem?'

well? WOULD YOU?
would you allow protests over the severity of lockdowns?
would you allow the KKK to take over downtown Seattle ? {hat tip to Dan the Man}

All viewpoints are equal; but Some, are more equal than others

wendybar said...

YOU MUST THINK ALIKE....YOU MUST THINK ALIKE.....YOU MUST THINK ALIKE.....

Rick said...

Of course this guy will get fired.

He'll be ousted from this journal, but he's safe at the University of Chicago.

Kevin said...

Leftists Unite!

You have nothing to lose but your already disavowed civil liberties!

zipity said...


We are witnessing our own version of the Cultural Revolution that happened in China in 1966.

The rejection of Western Civilization, and the forced renunciation of it.

God help us.

Fernandinande said...

"Economics journals are still filled with papers that emphasize differences in education, upbringing or even IQ rather than discrimination or structural barriers."

Oh teh horror.

zipity said...


I must admit to a enjoying a bit of schadenfreude now that the mob of Leftists academe created has now turned on them.

carrie said...

Obama's presidency made this all possible. You were considered a racist if you criticized anything he did and that has now become the norm when dealing with anything pertaining to African Americans in America.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Why do Progressives always take it so far and bully others to go along like that? Why must these wokescolds rage across the land? Did we let the education system get so fucked up that we are plagued by a generation of crybullies demanding attention like babies with a full diaper load?

Free speech is under attack. Bad ideas generated by idiots dominate a moderated society. These fascists “cancelling” people because their own psyches are so fragile that they literally can not tolerate other ideas are going to crash and burn long before they convince normal Americans to go along with their madness. Anarchy just gets you more Trump, idiots!

Blackbeard said...

The Cultural Revolution comes to America.

rehajm said...

We are in a purge

Chicago School was one of the few academic places left with a vigorous free debate between left and right. It's over now...

Fernandinande said...

rhhardin, congrats on correcting Lileks's grammar! (Did I possessivize "Lileks" the write way?)

Gusty Winds said...

I saw faux economist Paul Krugman has joined the chorus.

ga6 said...

Rumor has it the Krugman wants his job..

sunsong said...

racism needs to be illegal

Saint Croix said...

Maybe he wants to test Chicago's commitment to free speech.

You know, the nice thing about free speech is that you learn what people are thinking, and we communicate, and societies advance. Bad speech is corrected with better speech.

When you punish people for speaking, and they are afraid to speak, societies get worse. Bad ideas remain unexpressed, and uncorrected. It's a poison that stays within you.

You'd think universities would understand this very basic idea. And yet universities are the worst offenders.

Notice too how the list of thought crimes gets bigger and bigger, and there are more and more things you're not allowed to say. I think at some point universities will stop teaching Huck Finn. And there will be calls to fire people for reading that book out loud.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

The rot is so deep it will never be stopped. I would have expected someone of high status like Yellen not to be behaving like a rabid partisan. I mean she was only the Chair of the fed reserve.

Let's not forget the NY fed governor who said the fed should intentionally cause economic problems to get Trump ousted.

None of these people ever get cancelled.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

The rot is so deep it will never be stopped. I would have expected someone of high status like Yellen not to be behaving like a rabid partisan. I mean she was only the Chair of the fed reserve.

Let's not forget the NY fed governor who said the fed should intentionally cause economic problems to get Trump ousted.

None of these people ever get cancelled.

Jupiter said...

Ammo is getting really expensive!

JAORE said...

We have evolved from SHUT UP to SHUT UP, LOSE YOUR JOB. How soon until it's Die, Nazi, die?

Not there yet? Well except for the cops already dying from BLM.

JAORE said...

"Damon Jones, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, says the lack of diversity in economics affects what is studied and how. “We study things that are related to race and racism all the time, but we are inclined to figure out what other explanations may be at play,” he said."

Here there be dragons.

rhhardin said...

You'll want to order your economics books as hard copy now, before Amazon cancels mansplaining.

MD Greene said...

The hegemony of "Everyone knows that XXXXX(your shibboleth here) is true"

RMc said...

"Economics, Dominated by White Men Who Want to Keep Their Cushy Positions and Not Have to Go Out and Get Real Jobs, Is Roiled by Black Lives Matter

Fixed.

Sebastian said...

The Gleichschaltung continues, as always for the best of reasons.

Temujin said...

From "Economics, Dominated by White Men, Is Roiled by Black Lives Matter/The editor of a top academic journal faces calls to resign after criticizing protesters as 'flat earthers' for wanting to defund the police"

That is easily changed. Just requires some black men and women to, you know, take economics. I'm sure Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams would agree.

You don't get more diversity in economics departments by just declaring you must hire someone/anyone with skin color. That makes as much sense as saying the NBA needs more Hasidim to promote diversity.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Hey Sunsong - and if your side, the leftists, define everything AS racist, everything can be illegal!

win!

Not Sure said...

The University of Chicago had to upgrade its "campus security" operation to a full-bore police department in the 1960s because of the violent crime rate in the neighborhood. The situation was so bad that there were plans to move the entire university to somewhere in Colorado.

So yes, to a faculty member there with any knowledge of the history of the place defunding the cops is exactly as stupid an idea as that the earth is flat.

I note that Uhlig's antagonists do not make anything remotely close to a counterargument.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Mind-crime thought-crime leftwing democratic speech-bigots will destroy everything.

chickelit said...

MayBee said...We are in a purge.

An ethnic catharsis.

Not Sure said...

Economics, Dominated by White Men

If it is, that's not for want of special help to minorities. The American Economic Association runs three different programs to offer special training and mentoring to minority (and in some cases, female) students.

What's necessary to overcome the odorless, colorless tasteless gas of "structural racism?" I guess the case of that prof at UCLA who got axed for not setting separate-and-unequal standards for blacks offers a clue.

CJinPA said...

The Normals have been defeated. I don't see how this can viewed any other way. There will be no counter-offensive.

Nichevo said...

ADDED: "Would you defend football players waving the confederate flag and dressing in Ku Klux Klan garb during the playing of the national anthem?" That's a perfectly phrased Socratic question, so let's raise a glass for Professor Uhlig.


Followed by an old oil of Socrates about to drink the hemlock. A classy and subtle threat.

mezzrow said...

We are living in extraordinarily dangerous times, reminiscent of the Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution, in which professors guilty of wrongthink were publicy denounced and fired at the behest of students who insist on absolute ideological orthodoxy. It’s a way of instilling terror in other students, faculty, staff, and society, so that others shut up and don’t voice dissenting views. We are seeing monuments destroyed in Taliban-fashion because they represent an uncomfortable history, movies and TV shows cancelled, and individuals disappeared from employment due to even the slightest deviation from the prevailing political culture.

This is not going to end well unless people of good concience, who support black lives but not the Black Lives Movement as it was founded and currently operates, to speak up and refuse to cower in fear.


https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/06/theres-an-effort-to-get-me-fired-at-cornell-for-criticizing-the-black-lives-matter-movement/

Anonymous said...

A real Mensch!

Gahrie said...

If all Black Lives Mattered, we wouldn't be aborting 900 Black babies every day.

Birkel said...

I would defend them. People can communicate in the ways they prefer so long as no harm is caused to another. Psychic harm is excepted, of course. Words do not cause violence including the speech of symbols. The Court got it right Skokie.

Liberals believe that. Leftist Collectivists do not.

Also, I would counsel people to avoid the people who choose to express themselves in such ways. I would counsel the people who hold such views to rethink their positions. But I would defend their expressions all the same.

Michael K said...

At least Economics is not bridge building or airplane design.

When we get to "Diverse" airplane design, let me know.

We already had diverse bridge building in the that Florida bridge.

Not Sure said...

When we get to "Diverse" airplane design, let me know.

How about STEM in general?

Michael K said...

Whoops ! Here we go. STEM is racist and must be disbanded.

Professors, researchers, and students in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics field from around the country are taking part Wednesday in the #ShutDownSTEM movement to combat what they say is systemic racism in academia. They argue that the STEM field itself creates technology that is “weaponized against black people.”

One scholar and self-proclaimed “leading expert on wokeness,” James Lindsay, who is best known for his participation in a project that exposed the faulty review process of academic journals by submitting hoax papers that were ultimately published by such publications, tweeted, that "one point of #ShutDownSTEM is to find out who doesn't do it (maybe they're working on a Covid-19 vaccine?) and to use that against them later, just like happened at Evergreen State College with its Day of Absence."


Ox carts, here we come !

GRW3 said...

Considering the amount of violence and death in the African American community that occurs in Chicago, without a comment from BLM, it's easy to see why a co-located academic would think they are not serious.

I Callahan said...

Did we let the education system get so fucked up that we are plagued by a generation of crybullies demanding attention like babies with a full diaper load?

In a nutshell? Yes. This is the entire reason. The intersectionality / post-modernism philosophy is what’s been indoctrinated into young minds, especially over the last 30 years or so. It goes entirely against reason and logic, and is designed to do just that. It makes people feel instead of think, and allows leaders to control people because of that.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

I wonder what Thomas Sowell thinks.

CWJ said...

Althouse, interesting choice of illustration. Will Professor Uhlig now also be offered a cup of hemlock?

CWJ said...

"Ox carts, here we come !"

I prefer tunbrils. As a word, it's almost as evocative as the guillotine itself.

CWJ said...

Tumbrils. I should at least spell it correctly.

Gahrie said...

It makes people feel instead of think,

I know of at least one former Constitutional law professor who supports this.

Jeff said...

Economics, Dominated by White Men

There's a reason for that. Graduate work in Economics is very heavy on math. Admission to almost every PhD program in Econ requires high scores on the Mathematics part of the GRE. Asians and white men do better on these tests than other groups. Affirmative action programs often end up admitting minority students with lower test scores to rigorous programs that they then drop out of. This phenomena is not unique to economics, nor to graduate school.

The idea that the profession is biased against blacks is laughable. Econ departments and government agencies that hire PhD economists salivate over the small number of blacks who finish graduate school every year. Few of them are found in the more mathematical fields like Econometrics and Finance. A few years ago, at least, many female and minority Econ graduate students specialized in Labor Economics, but nowadays even that is becoming more mathematical, as has happened to just about every subfield. The exception might be History of Economic Thought, but there's never been much demand for that.

Advancment in academic economics depends more on your publication record in peer-reviewed journals than anything else. It is usually the case that the reviewers are anonymous, but not the authors. Even if a journal strips off the author's name and affiliation before sending a paper to a reviewer, most papers have been previously circulated as working papers in an effort to get feedback that will improve the paper. And reviewers, chosen for their familiarity with the topic discussed in the paper, can usually figure out who the author is. "Double-blinded" reviewing rarely is. So there's room for bias to creep in there, but given the ideological predilections of the profession, it probably works to favor minority authors.

Not Sure said...

One of Uhlig's critics is Prof. Lisa Cook of Michigan State. According to the NYT:

Ms. Cook leads the American Economic Association’s Summer Training Program, a decades-old effort to recruit black and Latino students to the profession. (emphasis added)

So here we have a long-standing program offering basically remedial training to minorities that has apparently failed because of the systemic racism of the very profession that established it. Clearly, Lisa Cook must be made an editor of a top journal stat.

Sam L. said...

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Double, no, TRIPLE Plus Ungood!!!!1

PM said...

1. Once, opponents might've called him a kook. At worst.
2. I hope this is the same University of Chicago whose manifesto of a few years ago was a pointed rejection of intellectual lynching.

n.n said...

Abortion culture: people deemed unworthy of life, people deemed unworthy of career, people deemed unworthy of civil rights...

Jupiter said...

"A growing chorus", hey? Arising, perchance, from the mish?

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Althouse, interesting choice of illustration. Will Professor Uhlig now also be offered a cup of hemlock?

hstad said...

"Janet Yellen" another so-called 'Expert' giving into the "Mob" by trying to shut down competing narratives. Pure bunk - 'hey we don't want the "Mob" at our house'. But you idiots they will be at your house because their demands are insatiable and never-ending. These are fine examples of our so-called 'Leaders'.

Michael said...

Good God, if he stays in place JPE might someday publish something Progressives don't like! Quelle horreur.

hombre said...

My son lives in Uganda near the refugee camp of Bidi Bidi - the second largest in the world. He works there from time to time. He recently was involved in a project that fed 25,500 people in his hometown who were out of food because of a massive Covid lockdown.

As a result of his work we have had an opportunity to note the people and the economic conditions in the areas where he has worked and lived for more than six years, including, Kenya, South Sudan, Rwanda and others. Africans endure incredible hardship in much of those areas. African Americans are blessed by comparison, but for the plague of liberal Democrats and black criminals who prey upon them.

We have lived and worked in the US for most of our lives and have had ample opportunity to note African-Americans and their economic conditions. The lot of blacks in America has improved consistently during our lifetimes: many, many black millionaires, affirmative action, ample welfare, employment opportunities, particularly in the entertainment industry and gang activities, no bore holes, no pit latrines, no open cookfires, no locusts, no malaria and the opportunity for interminable whining, civil disorder and not infrequent looting without government retaliation.

There will alway be a few racists among whites, just as there are racists among blacks. What is characterized as systemic racism among whites and their affiliated tribes, including police officers and Black Republicans, is actually mistrust of and justified fear of black criminals who are legion.

Black Lives Matter is a Marxist inspired ploy to enlist useful idiots to destabilize the government by destabilizing law enforcement. “Defund the Police” will allow the aforementioned black criminals to run even more roughshod over the black community. Its proponents are worse than “flat earthers.”

JaimeRoberto said...

A glass of what?

n.n said...

It goes entirely against reason and logic, and is designed to do just that. It makes people feel instead of think, and allows leaders to control people because of that.

"For the first time ever, the weather getting nicer is *not* correlating with more men demanding that I smile, so that’s something. Thanks face mask!"
Tweeted Steph Herold, "an activist and researcher in Queens

"Steph Herold...conducts qualitative research on the portrayal of abortion on television and in film and partners with ANSIRH researchers to leverage their work for various audiences beyond academia."

Also

Transgender[/neo-women] are women

Transgender/homosexual women are physically women, but mentally deviate from the feminine sexual orientation. Normalization, tolerance, rejection. Does it matter?

#BabyLivesMatter

Richard Dolan said...

"A growing chorus," says the NYT, which very much wants to be the conductor.

Michael K said...

Hombre pretty much nailed it. I know Nigerians who laugh at American blacks and consider them the descendants of losers in tribal wars.

Sebastian said...

"That's a perfectly phrased Socratic question"

And as Socrates showed, sort of, asking such questions can get you killed.

Ann Althouse said...

“ Althouse, interesting choice of illustration. Will Professor Uhlig now also be offered a cup of hemlock?”

That’s how it looks. That was my intended point. He’s Socratic... and they killed Socrates.

Sebastian said...

"STEM is racist and must be disbanded."

How long before talented Americans sick of this show start a brain drain to China?

Jupiter said...

Isaac Newton was secretly a Unitarian, but he had to hide the fact, because were it known, he would not only have lost his position at Oxford, but would have been lucky to make it across the Channel alive, since the prevailing political disposition was Trinitarian.

I may have gotten the Tri- and the Uni- mixed up, I forget the details.

Jupiter said...

"What is characterized as systemic racism among whites and their affiliated tribes, including police officers and Black Republicans, is actually mistrust of and justified fear of black criminals who are legion."

It is that, but there is another, darker aspect as well. Why are black criminals legion? What if there is something wrong with black people, and you can't fix it? Of course, that is racism straight up, and unacceptable, so let me rephrase it. Why are white racists destroying the black community? What if there is something wrong with white people, and you can't fix it? There, that's better.

DEEBEE said...

In all this lack of common sense in Yellen is the saddest part.

Michael K said...

It is that, but there is another, darker aspect as well. Why are black criminals legion? What if there is something wrong with black people, and you can't fix it?

The black family was approximately the equivalent of the white until 1965 or so. Certainly the black family was impoverished but the standard of living for all was quite different. A good friend and fraternity brother in California brought me home to spend a weekend with his parents. They had a 700 square foot, 3 bedroom, 1 bath home in Monrovia, an eastern suburb of Los Angeles. The father was working in a big nursery and they had been able to send a son to a private university. In 1956, when I began, USC tuition was about $250, per semester. Even accounting for inflation since, that is well within the means of a lower middle class family.

Here is a discussion of what has happened since.

Gahrie said...

What if there is something wrong with white people, and you can't fix it?

This is the unspoken assumption of the Left today.

Iman said...

Scratch a gooey lefty and you are likely to find a fascist center.

Martha said...

Some economists consider the NYTimes article a hit job. On econjobrumors.com:

“Mashing up the Uhlig non-story with a story about deep rooted bias in the profession suggests, in a sloppy and irresponsible way, that he’s biased. Zero evidence. In fact, he’s one of the least likely to cave to the inner circle of econ. Is he unpredictable? Yes. Does that piss off the inner circle? Absolutely. Hence hit job.”

The NYTimes interviewed Uhlig by email and did not represent the interview accurately. The full unedited interview is posted here:
http://haralduhlig.blogspot.com/2020/06/my-interview-with-new-york-times.html

Martha said...

and on Twitter, another economist:

You should also read Harald's letter to the editor referenced in the article. The article implied Harald was questioning calls for diversity (by cutting out the preceding sentences), whereas if you read the full letter he was making a point about global representation 2/

The Crack Emcee said...

Fascist economists.

Kirk Parker said...

hombre,

Whoa! I am an old South Sudan hand, how do we bootstrap some kind of contact here?