Paul William Friedrich (October 22, 1927 – August 11, 2016) was an American anthropologist, linguist, poet, and Professor of Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
He studied at Harvard with Roman Jakobson, and received his Ph.D.
Among his best known works were Agrarian Revolt in a Mexican Village (1970; 1977), The Princes of Naranja: An Essay in Anthrohistorical Method (1987), both ethnographic works describing local politics in a small community in the Mexican state of Michoacan.