We still know remarkably little about how neoliberals reacted to changes in their own primary places of employment—universities—and what influence, if any, they had on higher education. … In his chapter, Edward Nik-Khah follows one such storyline through Chicago economist George Stigler. Beginning as an advocate of trustees as guardians of academic freedom against the student-as-customer, Stigler shifted after the campus unrest of the late 1960s towards a distrust of trustees themselves. He ended by advocating that research be hived off from instruction. Instead, privately funded institutes should produce knowledge directly respondent to the demands of the broader marketplace.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 35