This is an alarming article about the invasion of corporate and philanthropic money into higher education, not to underwrite the purposes of higher education, but to buy control of policy and thinking.
The most obvious example is the millions donated by Charles Koch to spread the gospel of free markets and individual responsibility.
All told, the Charles Koch Foundation has invested some $200 million in higher education activities since 1980, with more than $140 million of that money allocated since 2005, funding over fifty free-market research centers and institutes at universities. And these beachheads of private campus cash have become lush islands of ideological purity by partnering with like-minded philanthropists such as Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter and the recently deceased Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider.
But all this high-profile private funding has also provoked a backlash. Groups such as Kochwatch and UnKoch My Campus have galvanized public attention and even sparked protests at campuses nationwide. So the Kochtopus has rebranded. Starting in 2014, Charles Koch introduced the “Well-Being Initiative” with a blog post under his signature and a conference at the Charles Koch Institute in Washington, D.C.
One speaker was Koch beneficiary James Otteson, a philosopher and executive director of the BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism. BB&T is a bank holding company formerly chaired by a man named John Allison, who retired in 2010 and now serves as “executive in residence” at the center. He was also president and CEO of the libertarian Cato Institute. In 2011 he caused a stir by promising through the BB&T Charitable Foundation to provide grants as high as $2 million to schools that established courses on the first principles of modern capitalism with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as required reading. That novel, of courses, preaches naked self-interest as a virtue. At conferences like these, however, the candid celebration of capitalist predation doesn’t always align so cleanly with the institutional interests of the Koch Foundation. So the focus has been rejiggered to explore “what enables individuals and societies to flourish and how to help people improve their lives and communities.”
Koch is far from alone. Read the article and see how many other billionaires have stepped into the game to buy scholars and whole departments.
This is the auctioning off of academic freedom and intellectual pursuit. It is a scandal. Call it intellectual corruption.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A window into their ideology—everything is a commodity, nothing is sacred. This crowd will corrupt everything they touch.
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so poor in humanity that all they have is money
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“Fakedemics”
Scholar for hire
Faker and liar
Wanker for Koch
System is broke
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I wonder if these far right wing nuts who adore “ATLAS PLOTZED” are aware that Ayn Rand was 100% atheist. She also believed that democracy (her skewed view of democracy) and Randism/objectivism were totally incompatible.
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Not that atheism is a bad thing but most of these USA far righties are hyper religious, promote Creationism or Intelligent Design.
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Ayn Rand was a weird bird.
She was a fourth (or is it fifth?) rate author (at best) with a pre-pubescent “philosophy” and morality but whined incessantly about people who provide little or no “value.”
But maybe self-loathing was what it was all about.
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Go to YouTube and look up her interview with Mike Wallace from back in the day, and you’d think he was interviewing a bag lady.
Then, consistent with the gross hypocrisy of all Glibertarians, there is the fact that she received the evil-and-must-be-destroyed-at-all-costs Social Security and Medicare when she was old and sick.
Not so different from today, where the creepy Peter Thiel (“Germany’s worst export, ever”) calls himself a Libertarian, while his company Palantir sweeps up oceans of personal data for the government’s spy agencies.
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Michael Fiorillo They’ve made hypocrisy into a working ideology. It’s the same with Trump criticizing football players for kneeling (not standing) during the National Anthem. This from a person who REALLY respects the Constitution in oh-so-many ways.
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Ayn Rand was a strange bird indeed, but to be honest, I really think of Ayn Rand as more of a non-living thing than a person or a bird. Ayn Rand is more of an object, like a sludge pipe or a trash can. Like, “Hey dear, go put the lid on the Ayn Rand before it stinks up the whole neighborhood.”
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LeftCoastTeacher Rand, however, appeals to mental midgets who somehow were stopped in their developmental movements of mind. Unfortunately, in a capitalist culture (such as it is) what is authentic about “creativity” gets mixed up with “entrepreneur” and misdirected to mean: make more and more money, and where means and ends get separated from one another for the rest of their low-lives.
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And now we have Government of the oligarch, by the oligarch, and for the oligarch. And so, the oligarchy justifies the means.
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So tired it is all the same problem .
We need tax reform . A top marginal tax rate of 91% and if that don’t work 95% .
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Yes! Or even in the 70% range (for the top marginal tax rate) which it was during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. I don’t believe that the whole income was subject to the 70% rate but maybe the first million? Any good tax historians out there?
What’s the likelihood of that ever happening again? At this point in history, 0%.
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Marginal tax rate means income that falls within a certain tax bracket is taxed at a certain rate. As you make more money that income is taxed in incrementally greater rate up to 39.6%(?). So the first say $10,000 is taxed at the same rate as the guy who only makes $10,000 and so on.
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And all of that “free market” Randian claptrap is a cover for the ultimate goal: An xtian caliphate.
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Diane Yes–awhile back the students at George Mason University in Northern Virginia formally complained about Koch’s meddling and called for the University to make their donors’ influence public. Also, Education Week has several “sub-pages,” one of which is about the “business” of education. I’ll
post the next one when it comes in. But (as you probably know) anyone can subscribe free, and there are several that focus on higher ed and the influences there that this article speaks of. CBK
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EdWeek has some good reporters. The business of EdWeek sold out to the tech industry and the Walton Foundation.
I don’t open their emails anymore because it is always a webinar or a conference selling ed tech.
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dianeravitch Yes, exactly. Very “telling” about what they’re up to.
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Libertarians and radical conservatives have been resentful of academe. As a result many of them have criticized higher education and have become anti-intellectual because they feel universities subject young people to liberal ideas. Some conservatives like the Koch brothers believe if you control the money, you control the message. Unfortunately, this is correct. They are using their wealth to promote their brand of venomous conservative propaganda where young people can learn about the magic of the free market, how to disdain the unworthy and the virtue of price gouging. This is the Koch brothers brand of “villanthropy.”
I have a new neighbors that send their children to a private school, The Gulf Pointe Latin School, a school with a classical curriculum. I have found no evidence that this school is a charter. On their mission statement page I found the following:
All children are taught that the United States of America is a Capitalist society and that Capitalism enables human achievement because it is morally superior and truly humane. Capitalism respects the source of human achievement: the individual mind. Only individual rights and liberty, which are Capitalism’s essence, can secure a society where one can nurture the capacities required to live this life to the fullest. What are these capacities? The human mind – reason – is man’s essential tool to understand reality, harness nature, sustain his life, and create a life worth living that is worthy of admiration.
Yikes! No common good here, only promotion of the responsible individual.
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Wow, Gulf Pointe Latin School sounds like Ayn Rand herself except for the fact that it’s a religious/Christian school.
From the GPLS web site: Gulf Pointe Latin School is a private, classical, Christian school in Navarre & Gulf Breeze, FL. Class sizes are small with an average of one highly qualified teacher for each ten students.
Rand felt that Christianity and capitalism were incompatible.
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It sounds like the people from Gulf Pointe and the Christian right like DeVos and Pence see the capitalism and Christianity as copacetic. I guess they didn’t get the memo from Jesus, a compassionate collectivist.
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Joe Ayn Randian(ism) is a possible resting place of an unfinished democracy–a low-level resting place, which is now occupied by the “faker-makers” among us, or by what one philosopher, Eric Voegelin, refers to as “libido dominandis” (Remember Romney’s speech). A democracy by definition cannot work unless the power that is invested in “the people,” and then shared with their representatives, is informed, at least for a tipping-point many, by high-quality character, if not reflective intelligence, and by a modicum of common manners, if not high culture.
Eric Voegelin, BTW, who also was an historian, also fled Germany mid-century but fortunately didn’t turn into a reactionary or a moral degenerate.
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retired teacher,
You wrote: “Yikes! No common good here, only promotion of the responsible individual.”
AMEN! The deformers are really (fill in the blanks).
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This report has excellent examples but it did not include the Walton Endowment at the University of Arkansas with scholars hired to offer proofs of the superiority of charter schools—except the online schools which were so bad the scholars had to admit no learning could be documented.
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Laura, good point. I bet there are many more examples that he didn’t have time or space to add.
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I am sure there is enough for separate articles about Waltons and Gates alone. Then there are the Trump Universities and Broad Superintendent Academies, but that’s a slightly different kind of academic fraud.
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That was a compelling article.
What isn’t for sale? The university is for sale. School boards are for sale. Elementary and secondary schools are. Public media are. Any campaign is for sale. Membership in a club owned and frequently visited by a sitting U.S. president is. Nights in the Lincoln Bedroom have been.
The above aren’t examples of free market conditions. They are examples of dangerous corruption in dangerously high places.
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This article should be called “The Body-Snatchers.” And, there’s real-life ghoulisness too: Kochs lure a prominent polysci prof onto their team– got him to ‘change his mind’ (!) and become a loyal booster by spotting him to life-saving brain surgery at top national clinic. 🙂
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When academic freedom dies, can Liberty be far behind? We must have independent thinking people in academic positions. We have already read about the fading legitimacy of think tanks, whose research is quickly becoming suspect. Now we have this.
When the rich tycoons of the last century put their stamp on traditional universities, they did so without a specific political agenda. Modern tycoons think academics need to be corralled intellectually. Dangerous.
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Diane and Roy Turrentine A behind-the-curtain look at what’s going on with the sciences will show that many on both “sides” of the ideological movements (what we commonly refer to as “conservative” and “liberal”) ** willfully mistake: (a) the ACTUAL findings of science (and actual reported truth) for (b) it’s unwanted POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS. The logic goes like this: What scientists are finding conflicts with my ideological (and funding) investments; therefore, the science must be bad. Further, if THIS science is bad, then a shadow hangs over ALL science and their findings–ALL science and press reports are naturally suspect.
We can extend this same kind of thinking to ACADEMIA in general, not to mention the mainstream PRESS (that is, when either is actually doing what they are supposed to do). That’s why the Right is trying to either kill or control academia at present (notably, Koch)–the truth is re-framed to be merely “liberal bias” (a false analogy based ONLY on the political spectrum) because it offends their own ideological and moneyed investments.
Scientific openness and truthful reporting will ALWAYS have political implications, sometimes VASTLY so. But that doesn’t mean a scientist or scholar is NECESSARILY politically biased. But to an ideology rooted in oligarchic or corporate control, it is NECESSARILY biased. There goes the openness to/of the UNIVERSE-ITY. And that’s why curriculum is so important to the continuance of a democracy.
Legitimate movements of science and the press are about OPEN INQUIRY They are, by themselves, about new understanding and truth; and, though they always have political implications, their legitimate movements are always beyond their implied politics on principle–scientists and/or reporters go at their fields not yet knowing what they are going to find OR what its implications will be–until they find it. Not so for an ideological-controlled “science” or press.
Minds that have allowed themselves to be TOTALLY governed by this-or-that ideology tend to automatically reject conflicting scientific or reported truths–allowing their ideological desires to falsely equate conflicting but legitimate science with opposition politics; and to “trump” those findings with their own ideological concerns. . . . global warming or the infamous tobacco executives . . . the “war machine” . . . or in the academy, economical, psychological, sociological, philosophical, political, aesthetic, ethical historical and spiritual movements of mind? (With Twain, I could have written a short document, but I didn’t have time.)
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