I do have to take issue with the idea that the "institutionalists" opposed  
Friedman's appointment at Wisconsin because they feared math coming in and  
supplanting their own approach.  Wisconsin had a long history of strength  
in the teaching of statistics, first with Thomas S. Adams and then with  
Harry Jerome.  Wisconsin had close contacts with the NBER, Commons serving  
on the Board, Jerome and Willford King being members of the early research  
staff.  Jerome died in 1938 and the teaching of stats in the economics  
department passed to members of the math department who were nowhere near  
as up to date as Jerome had been.  Bringing Friedman to Wisconsin was the  
idea of Harold Groves (himself one of the institutionalist group, and a  
person heavily involved in the passage of Wisconsin's unemployment  
insurance bill) who wanted him to work on an NBER project at  
Wisconsin.  Friedman was not seen at that time as particularly  
non-institutionalist, he was seen as someone with strong empirical skills,  
and trained in good part at the Bureau.  He was an NBER man!  Groves had  
the idea that Friedman should review the statistics offerings at  
Wisconsin.  This, of course put Friedman, as a very junior (and visiting)  
member of the faculty, in a very unenviable position.  Friedman wrote his  
report, a very critical one, as one might expect.  Groves wanted Friedman  
appointed as an assistant professor, despite his not having his PhD.  The  
vote on that was 5 to 4 against with Groves, Leschohier, Taylor, and  
Perlman in favor.  The matter then became heavily embroiled in university  
politics. 
 
There was some degree of anti-semitism at Wisconsin, but a great deal less  
than at most ivy league schools.  Perlman had experienced some of that, and  
even among those who thought of themselves as "liberal" there was an  
attitude of "see how liberal we are to accept these people."  I have no  
doubt that anti-semitism played its part, but it is quite inaccurate to  
portray this event as institutionalists on one side against the math econ  
types on the other.  Witte was opposed, but probably motivated most by a  
desire not to offend the existing instructors of the statistics  
courses.  The institutionalists were in fact on both sides of the issue,  
and of course Friedman was being used by Groves to try to achieve his  
desire to regenerate the former level of statistical expertise within the  
Department. 
 
Malcolm Rutherford.