Global Justice & UChicago Imperialism
“The Chicago Boys”
In the 1950s-1970s, a group of Chilean economics students known as “The Chicago Boys” came to UChicago to study Milton Friedman’s free market economics.
This was through an exchange program that was part of the US State Department’s plan to increase influence in Latin America in response to growing socialist ideas.
Chicago boys returned to Chile and developed an economic program. This program was used in the 1973 CIA backed coup that overthrew elected socialist president Salvador Allende.
Augusto Pinochet was subsequently installed as the president of Chile – in his reign, the Chicago Boys were given ministerial positions in government in which they implemented an extreme version of Friedman’s free market economics.
The dictatorship lasted for 16 years, and led to extreme privatization and a formation of a select power elite.
The Chicago boys’ economic system outlasted the dictatorship, leading to mass economic inequality that ultimately prompted the student-led 2011 Chilean riots.
Viewed as an experiment to test out the ideas that would inform the neoliberal policies of those such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan
Weapons of mass destruction
As UChicago itself advertises, research for the atomic bomb was started at UChicago when Enrico Fermi and a team of scientists set off the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction.
Research on Agent Orange, the herbicide that led to mass defoliation and lasting civilian poisoning across Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, also began at UChicago.
Investments
Citing the Kalven report for maintaining supposed “neutrality”, UChicago has continuously invested in oppression throughout the world. (see more in the Budget section).
Unlike peer institutions, it refused to divest from apartheid South Africa or Sudan during the Dafur Genocide.
UChicago currently also refuses to divest from or take a stance on Israel apartheid (see Justice for Palestine), Indian Hindu nationalism and possible genocide (see Hindutva, Casteism, and Solidarity for Kashmir), or the fossil fuel industry (see Environmental Justice), despite calls from students and community members to do so.
