U. OFC. PROFESSOR DEFENDS DECISION TO INVITE BANNON
Professor Luigi Zingales defended his decision to plan a debate with Steve Bannon at the University of Chicago, telling about 50 students at a town hall Monday evening that he has valuable perspective on understanding President Donald Trump’s rise.
“In spite of the character of the guy, I think he was able to interpret and understand a feature of the American people that we, academics, missed,” he said. “Everybody at the University of Chicago was shocked on Nov. 7 when the results came in.”
Zingales says Bannon has succeeded at selling a “pretty explosive combination of nationalism and a lack of democracy against globalization.” As a researcher whose interests include populism and as the director of an academic center — the Stigler Center, which hosts a variety of speakers — he said he decided it would be productive to hear what Bannon has to say.
Zingales, a professor at the University’s Booth School of Business, made clear that he is a hardline believer in trying to understand even the most outrageous ideologieswhen he was asked if he would have supported giving a platform to Hitler.
“I think I would distinguish early Hitler from later Hitler. I think it would have been very useful to know ahead of time what he was about,” he said. “If the world had known earlier what Hitler was standing for, I think there would have been a better fate, no?”
Bannon, former chief strategist to Trump and former Breitbart executive chairman, is an economic nationalist who has long advocated for greater restrictions on immigration.