A prominent economist compared the leaders of the
In a series of tweets on Monday, Harald Uhlig, professor of
"They knew this is a non-starter, and tried a sensible Orwell 1984 of saying, 'Oh, it just means funding schools (who isn't in favor of that?!?)," he wrote. "But no, the so-called 'activists' did not want that. Back to truly 'defunding' thus, according to their website."
—Harald Uhlig (@haralduhlig) June 9, 2020
Uhlig then wrote that Black Lives Matter was doing a disservice to George Floyd.
"Sigh. #GeorgeFloyd and his family really didn't deserve being taken advantage of by flat-earthers and creationists."
—Harald Uhlig (@haralduhlig) June 9, 2020
The German-born Uhling is a consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the European Central Bank. He is also co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy, which has an impact factor of 6.342, putting it in the top 1.3% of most influential economic publications.
In another tweet, Uhlig, who has close to 5,400 followers, wrote it was "time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all: e.g. policy reform proposals by [the Democratic Party] and national healing." "We need more police, we need to pay them more, we need to train them better," he wrote.
Saying he appreciated the desire to protest, Uhlig urged demonstrators not to cause property damage or break curfew.
"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," he added. "Enjoy! Express yourself! Just don't break anything, ok? And be back by 8 pm."
—Harald Uhlig (@haralduhlig) June 9, 2020
Commenters, including other economists, quickly took him to task.
"A white male economist lectures us that leaders & supporters of #BLM aren't 'sensible adults [who can] have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all,'" Jonathan Isham, an economics professor at Middlebury College, tweeted. "I guess for those conversations we've got to go to that diverse center of academia, the @UChicago econ department."
—Susie Symes (@susiesymes1) June 9, 2020
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman called Uhlig "yet another privileged white man who evidently can't control his urge to belittle the concerns of those less fortunate."
—Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) June 9, 2020
"Free speech means you have the right to say whatever you want," he wrote in a later tweet. "It doesn't mean that your expressed opinions have no bearing on whether you should be editing a flagship journal, especially if they raise doubts about your objectivity."
Uhlig told Business Insider his colleagues "have advised me to choose my words more wisely and to point out that I am speaking for myself, and not, say, for the University of Chicago," he said.
"Some colleagues have disagreed in other ways, too," he added.
"It matters how leaders in the discipline speak to & about POC and the BLM movement," Johannes Haushofer, a behavioral economist at Princeton, tweeted. "He is entitled to his speech. We're entitled to say he doesn't speak for us, and we don't want him to speak for the JPE."
Along with University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers, Michigan State University economist Scott Imberman, and others, Haushofer shared a petition drafted by UC-Berkeley environmental economist Max Auffhammer calling for Uhlig's resignation as editor of the 128-year-old Journal of Political Economy. (As of Wednesday the petition was "no longer accepting responses.")
Slate business writer Jordan Weissmann also resurfaced a 2017 blogpost Uhlig wrote in which he compared pro athletes taking a knee to "football players waving the confederate flag and dressing in Ku Klux Klan garb" during the national anthem.
"Forcing a major journal editor to step down would be a major step showing that the field won't tolerate the old kinds of behavior that helped make it so overwhelmingly white and male and once were passively accepted even by people who felt personally repulsed by it," Weissman tweeted Wednesday afternoon.
Conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan criticized those who sought to "punish" Uhlig, and described the petition as "an explicit call to purge a professor and deny him any scholarly cred solely because of a difference in views."
—Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) June 9, 2020
In a follow-up series of tweets on Tuesday, Uhlig said he did not "choose my words and comparisons wisely."
"I said what I said because these are difficult, but important matters to speak up about and we all should engage, and not because of my professional expertise," he added. "How can one watch what happened to George Floyd and not speak up?"Uhlig shared "several concerned e-mails" Imberman had sent and thanked him for his remarks.
In one email, Imberman said Uhlig's comments were "insulting to many (myself included) and dangerous to the profession."
"It sends signals of hostility to the ideas and people who support them and says they are not welcome here," Imberman wrote. "It infantilizes people with genuine concerns that should be addressed through civil policy discussion."
Uhlig then reiterated he was "frustrated" with Black Lives Matters for siding "with the extreme version of #DefundThePolice."
"My last tweet was trying to make fun of that radical and untenable view of massively cutting funding of police departments," he wrote." Wrong words, mea culpa. But we all share the same goal."
He then addressed "my colleagues, students, neighbors, and friends of color," saying they "are not against the police. These people are desperate for a police that stands with them, supports them, ensures their freedoms."
"I believe that many in the police wish to do exactly that. They wish to separate themselves from those that violate their oath to protect and serve, and they welcome sensible reform," he wrote. "The freedoms we enjoy were so hard to come by. Let us work so that all of us get to enjoy them. Apologies for this lengthy tweet: nuance is hard on Twitter. Perhaps this helps."
In response, Wolfers tweeted that Uhlig's reply "does not allay my concerns about his judgment."
"My reading: It's ass-covering, followed by him speaking on behalf of communities of color in a way he has no business doing."
The Journal of Political Economy did not respond to a request for comment.