Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative

This session is sponsored by the American Historical Association.

Long considered among the twentieth century’s most influential economists, Milton Friedman was also an innovative policy thinker and a major ideological figurehead whose vision—for reduced government, expanded markets, and the twinned forces of capitalism and freedom—circled the globe and reshaped American politics.  In this first full biography based on archival sources, Burns explores his complicated relationships with high-profile figures like Fed Chair Arthur Burns while also illuminating his frequently overlooked collaborations with women like Anna Schwartz and his wife Rose Director Friedman, who were pivotal to his success.

Jennifer Burns is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. A graduate of Harvard College, she is the author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford, 2009), which was also the subject of her doctoral dissertation in history at UC Berkeley.  Professor Burns been a guest on both The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, and has published articles on conservatism, libertarianism, and liberalism in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Die Ziet, Quartz, and numerous academic journals. 

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partner (the George Washington University History Department) for their continued support.