Chicago ? Plans by the University of Chicago to establish a research institute named after legendary free-market economist Milton Friedman have caused an uproar at the school on the city’s South Side.

More than 100 tenured faculty members have signed letters and a petition opposing the institute, which would be paid for by private donations and would conduct research in economics, medicine, public policy and law. Critics say that they are concerned the institute will be a partisan, elitist organization and that it shouldn’t be under the auspices of a university.

“There are a lot of aspects that look like a right-wing think tank. I’m very worried about that possibility,” said Bruce Lincoln, a professor of the history of religions who helped draft the letters and petition. “People are concerned about the blurring of the line between Friedman’s technical work in economics and his fairly well-known persona as a political advocate of a very pure, free-market conservative or neoliberal position, where the market is the solution to everything.”

The institute was launched this summer with about half a million dollars in university seed money and is seeking $200 million in private donations of $1 million or more.

The opponents’ petition voices concerns that wealthy donors would have inordinate influence over the institute’s research. The petition also said that Friedman-esque positions, such as privatization of Social Security, would be foregone conclusions, and that the state and nongovernmental organizations would be regarded with “distinct suspicion.”

University Provost Thomas Rosenbaum said such fears are unfounded.

“Donors will receive reports and attend lectures, but they won’t belong to the institute,” he said. “They will have nothing to do with its direction, and no economist worth their salt would take that kind of direction anyway. We will bring in people from all over the world with all different approaches.”

The institute was proposed by the economics faculty last year and approved by various faculty committees, Rosenbaum said. But, in June, faculty members from a variety of disciplines sent a letter to the university asking for a meeting. After a summer meeting with the university’s president, Robert J. Zimmer, which Lincoln described as “unsatisfactory,” they demanded that the issue be aired in a meeting of the faculty senate.

Zimmer agreed to convene the senate in the fall, for the first time since 1998. Rosenbaum said the senate meeting won’t necessarily result in concrete changes to the institute but will involve “talking more broadly about the intellectual portfolio of the university.” The senate is made up of all faculty members.

In some ways, the fight over the institute is fitting. Friedman, a longtime professor at the university’s economics department who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1976 and died in 2006, was always a lightning rod. His laissez-faire philosophy prompted him to describe as unjustified such government actions as rent controls, Social Security, minimum-wage laws and the military draft.