Academia is supposed to be the one sanctuary for pure, uncorrupted thought, a place where scholars can explore new ideas and express themselves free of ulterior motives. However, at Florida State University, that free expression has taken a back seat to money, as billionaire Charles Koch (left) essentially purchased the right to hire professors for the institution’s business school, the St. Petersburg Times reported this week.
Charles Koch is the other half of the disgustingly rich Koch brothers—David, you may remember, was the subject of a prank call to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker at the height of the Madison protests. The bad publicity stemming from that incident hardly seems to have slowed down the duo, though, as the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation now gets final say on the hires made at Florida State’s business school for the neat sum of $1.5 million dollars.
According to The Times, the terms of the agreement give shockingly extensive control of a public university to a private foundation.
The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it’s not happy with the faculty’s choice or if the hires don’t meet “objectives” set by Koch during annual evaluations.
And those objectives? They’re not exactly noble, designed to serve the public interest. No, the foundation, according to The Times, aims “to advance [the Koch brothers’] belief, through think tanks, political organizations and academia, that government taxes and regulations impinge on prosperity.” This means that rather than FSU providing a forum for a variety of economic views, the Koch Foundation now moderates a very narrow discourse that crushes opposing views. Perhaps worst of all, the views the school does prop up are designed to widen the economic disparity between the Koch brothers’ class and the rest of the country.
This agreement isn’t exactly unique. FSU already whores itself out to BB&T bank, which funds a course on ethics in which Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a manifesto of the same libertarian beliefs the Koch brothers advocate, is required reading. The Koch Foundation also has similar arrangements at three other public schools: Clemson University, West Virginia University, and George Mason University.
So is this corporate influence the future of public education in America? It sure looks like a possible model, because the money involved means almost nothing to the loaded Koch foundation but everything to cash-strapped schools, as David Dayen of Fire Dog Lake points out in his excellent analysis of the issue. $1.5 million goes a long way at a public institution, but when that money comes from private groups, it does so with strings attached, strings that could seriously damage the integrity of those institutions. Dayen writes:
Academia is the natural next step for the conservative movement. Having already crippled the public sector and labor, they take to another bastion of liberal support. But more than that, they gain a foothold for credibility for their own ideas. It’s one thing to see a Koch-funded think tank produce some study showing that poor people would have a better life if used as fertilizer, but another for a university to publish the same study. Florida State University isn’t exactly the institution which will lend the kind of gravitas to this effort, but it’s only the beginning.
If this is only the beginning, it’s a trend that signals exactly how far corporate greed has seeped into our culture. We’ve already allowed private interests to shove their way into the public sector—they even fight and profit off our wars. If they’re allowed into our schools, we’re essentially giving up on any semblance of political debate, acknowledging that there is nothing we can do to fight the corporate line. States need to put their feet down and threaten to cut off funding to schools that make these sorts of agreements in order to preserve the integrity of the public university system.
“How about, instead of using a hypothetical to prove a point you actually find a real-world parrallel that is equivalent to what Koch is doing?” Ian. That sounded pretty feminine and you’re about a few minutes away from having your man card taken away. One imagines you wearing a tu-tu and stomping your feet while having this tantrum. “Mark Ellis” is correct. There is no accountability on most campuses. There is no academic/diversity of opinion and it’s reflected in the types of courses offered and who teaches them – without regard for the person giving the money. Shame on conservatives… Read more »
That donations to institutions of higher learning come with strings attached is not news, as Tom points out. The idea that no progressive or Democrat donor has ever attached express or implied ideological strings to a donation strains credulity. I stand on my assertion that if this was a progressive donor with ideological conditions on his or her donation the leftists would be MIA. While not precisely analogous, when Soros gave to PBS–another taxpayer subsidized entity–the only outcry came from conservative precincts. So what else is new? I support the right of any donor to make donations conditional, based on… Read more »
And by the way, this is coming from someone who got an Economics degree from Koch-funded GMU. There was little debate in class over wha the professors had to say. Anyone who didn’t agree with a radical free-market ideology was dismissed from the discussion from arrogant professors who were more interested in pumping out another study to make the front pages of The Wall Street Journal or spouting off to the New York Times about how terrible it is corporations have to pay taxes than to actually teach. There was no intellectual diversity either – something that not even free-market… Read more »
First of all, how do you know that these professors don’t allow other viewpoints to be expressed in their classes? Second, professors who believe in free market economics make up about 20% of the professors of the economics department at Florida State University. Would you prefer that number to be 0? Would that provide greater intellectual diversity?
And Mark Ellis doesn’t seem to hide his contempt for academia. How about, instead of using a hypothetical to prove a point, you actually find a real-world parallel that is equivalent to what Koch is doing? Oh, wait, you can’t? How quaint. Typical knee-jerk reaction from a narrow-minded conservative – use a baseless hypothetical that doesn’t exist, then accuse the other side of being intolerant when they dare to voice any dissent. This isn’t “accountability,” this flies in the face of academic inquiry and research. You don’t start with a presupposed notion, then use backwards reasoning to justify it –… Read more »
Dayden buries his own argument when he writes “another bastion of liberal support.” That academia is biased left is no newsflash to anyone. Why should the Koch brothers give good money to a school which is prejudiced against their own values? We’ve all seen conservatives like Ann Coulter and the Minute Men get blown of the stage at colleges by the intolerant left, so why should conservative money go to schools? I ask, would liberals be complaining if George Soros or Noam Chomsky gave a ton of money to a school and made stipulations with regard to how the money… Read more »
Well the Koch brothers have their greedy grubs all over our State and it’s not pretty. They aren’t educating they are growing maggots to carry out their warped agenda.
Mark is correct; a well-educated populace does not serve the interests of the far right, so the Koch brothers have no real reason to support education.
They do, however, have every reason to try to co-opt and undermine it, which is exactly what they’re doing. And that’s why their ‘gifts’ with poisonous strings attached, should be rejected.
Every institution of high learning has to deal with this issue. State schools included. Think of all the boasters who support sports teams. I happen to know that there is a huge donor to Harvard basketball that has conditioned his gift on certain achievements by the team. I agree with the sentiment that this is all wrong. It would be far better for college Presidents to paint a broad picture of what their plan is for the college or university they lead and make alumni donate exclusively to the general scholarship fund. But honestly that is not realistic. Every big… Read more »