The 20th century's untiring advocate of free men, free minds, and free markets has passed. Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate and economist extraordinaire, died on Nov. 16. He was 94 years old. A tremendous loss for the free world, Friedman's passing is particularly heartbreaking for the Columbia community. We have lost one of our own. We stand to learn from, apply and honor the life and teachings of Milton Friedman, PhD '46 and one of Columbia's most underappreciated and unrecognized alumni. From national economic policy to our own dining hall, Friedman's ideas have the power to change our world.

Although Milton Friedman is traditionally associated with the University of Chicago and Stanford University's Hoover Institution, he spent many of his formative intellectual years at Columbia. Friedman, the 1976 Nobel Prize winner in economics, received his PhD in 1946 and served on the faculty from 1937-1941, 1943-1945, 1964-1965. According to author David Walsh, Friedman spent his first 14 years in economics "shuttling back and forth between Chicago and Columbia, where he learned mathematical economics from [eminent Columbia Professor] Harold Hotelling." While Friedman finished his dissertation before the outbreak of World War II, Columbia withheld his degree until 1946. Columbia deemed Friedman's "findings about the salutary effects on physicians' incomes of various restrictive practices" quite "controversial." My money, of course, would have been on Friedman. During the war years, however, Friedman put aside any lingering ill will as he divided his time between "the U.S. Treasury Department and the Statistical Research Group at Columbia." All told, Friedman spent nearly a decade of his life working and studying at Columbia-far more time than most of our celebrated alumni.

In both the professional and political world, Friedman's contributions were numerous. Many consider Friedman and his peers in the "Chicago School" the driving intellectual force behind today's fusionist brand of conservative-libertarian economics. His scholarly work is brilliant and far beyond my meek understanding of economic theory, but this is not where his greatness lies. Friedman could have led his life, as many brilliant men have, purely in the academic realm. His papers and policies alone would have revolutionized world markets and industries. This, however, was not Friedman. This was not his spirit, and it was not to be his legacy. From his 1980s PBS series, Free to Choose, to his popular books and frequent lectures, Milton practiced what he preached. Every individual, he believed, has inherent worth and dignity; you cannot force ideas and programs upon a people if they wish to remain free.

Friedman believed that the free market was the only just arbiter of a man's destiny. While generations of stoics and policy planners spoke of the ignorant "masses," Friedman argued the contrary. For decades, Milton and his wife Rose defended the classical ideal of individual responsibility. No government planner or bureaucrat, they argued, could recognize and advance self-interest better than the individuals themselves. Friedman encouraged cutting taxes and lifting government-imposed burdens to return both autonomy and responsibility to the people. He resisted big government and the unchecked growth of bureaucracy, once caustically noting, "Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless." As a policy adviser, Friedman helped eradicate the debilitating inflation of the 1970s alongside former U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Unwavering in his commitment to human freedom, Friedman approached each problem with the amalgam of common sense and sheer brilliance that made him "America's economist."

As dynamic and influential as Milton Friedman was during his lifetime, we are still a long way away from realizing his dreams. It is well within our capability, however, to start small, to apply the basic principles of free markets, competition, and choice to our surroundings. Columbia is no exception. Take a most trivial and amusing example-John Jay Dining Hall. While generations of Columbians have criticized John Jay "cuisine"-dare I call it that-few bother to ask why it has reached such a sorry state. Drawing straight from Friedman, the answer lies in the absence of choice.

Columbia University signed a contract with a food-service provider. To guarantee the income required to sustain the venture, they require all incoming first-year students to adopt the meal plan. Assuming the majority of students opt for fewer meals and more dining dollars, the average cost per John Jay meal runs nearly $11 with a high of $13.10. Now ask yourselves, "What could you buy for $13 from the dozens of establishments within a five-block radius of Columbia?" If Columbia removed its mandatory meal plans and encouraged local businesses to accept Dining Dollars, no University dining facility would be immune from competition. Once students are given a legitimate choice, the Columbia administration would have to improve quickly and lower prices to compete. So long as Columbia first-years bond over their criticism of the meal plan more than they bond in the hall itself, there's a problem. But as we've learned from Milton Friedman, there is an answer-a free market.