The Koch Foundation has made gifts to over 300 institutions of higher education. These gifts are restricted, given to create an “institute” or “center” where libertarian ideas can be promoted on campus. In one such center, a speaker was invited to lecture on “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.”
Universities should be open fora where different ideas can be debated, but it’s absurd to have a center devoted to only one point of view.
Fortunately a group called UnKoch My Campus has made a mission of exposing Koch money and its purposes.
I received this message recently:
At the beginning of February, Brown University faculty members voted to postpone the creation of a new Koch-funded center, the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). This push could not have happened without grassroots organizing efforts spearheaded by Students Against Koch Influence (SAKI). The faculty now intends to adopt a more robust gift and grant acceptance policy ahead of the next vote on the PPE center.
With growing awareness of the ways in which Charles Koch buys influence over hiring, research, and curriculum in higher education to achieve these goals, a call to protect against such donor interference in academia is growing. We built power with SAKI students to ensure we enacted a cohesive strategy to employ a rigorous pressure campaign at Brown University. We’ve also provided the resources to take campaigns like this to the next level, like our Model Funding Policies for higher ed institutions.
The move to kick Koch-funded research programs off of campuses across the nation is already underway and we’re hot on the Koch network’s trail. Join us for our national network call on Tuesday, March 15th at 5 pm EST. Representatives from SAKI will join us to discuss organizing tactics they used and how they plan to adopt a more robust gift and grant acceptance policy at their university. You are not going to want to miss this call.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
https://www.dailyposter.com/how-dark-money-shaped-the-school-safety-debate/
If you want to track the origins of school reopening during COVID start reading. Some of the names & talking points will be familiar to Diane’s readers.
Here’s one example:
“In May 2020, two months after the World Health Organization declared COVID a global pandemic, the Hoover Institution, a right-wing think tank based at Stanford University that has received substantial backing from Koch over the years, held a virtual conference at which senior fellow Eric Hanushek argued that remote learning was causing learning loss among low-resourced students and damaging “teacher accountability” through the elimination of standardized testing.
The Koch-affiliated right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), meanwhile, published a “blueprint” for reopening schools, citing the need to get parents back to work. The State Policy Network and its affiliates also started pushing for school reopening.”
and another:
A week later, the Mercatus Center published a policy brief warning of “educational scarring” if schools remain closed. Mercatus would later start funding the work of Brown University economics professor and parenting blogger Emily Oster after she began publishing controversial research and articles supporting school reopenings and downplaying concerns about children and COVID.
Emily Oster, an economist at Brown, has made her public impact by dismissing all concerns about covid in children and urging a return to schools, unmasked. She has no background in epidemiology, but gets her oxygen from her Koch affiliation. She’s had several articles in TheAtlantic in support of this disasterous perspective. That money can buy you a lot of PR.
Emily Oster is funded by the Koch Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the John and Laura Arnold Foundation.
GBH News (2-25-2022)
“MIT abandons Russian high-tech campus partnership in light of Ukrainian invasion”
David Koch was a lifetime board member of MIT. The school which labels itself “a corporation” is the alma mater of Fred, Charles, and David
Good to hear young people are pushing back against corporate propaganda. I wish we could UnKoch my PBS as well. Remember this?-“Citizen Koch was completed using funds from a successful Kickstarter campaign,[2] after public television’s Independent Television Service (ITVS) pulled funding it had initially committed. The filmmakers were told by ITVS staff that the title, which referenced conservative billionaire David Koch, would be “extremely problematic” as Koch served on the boards of flagship public broadcasters WNET and WGBH.[3][4] “
A few years ago, PBS aired a series based on a book that advocated market-based schooling and lauded for-profit schooling. With a little research, NPE learned that the program was funded entirely by rightwing foundations. After a letter-writing campaign, I was invited to comment on the show by NYC’s PBS station, Channel 13. I spent my few minutes criticizing PBS for accepting money from partisan, ideological funders.
I have never been invited back again.
Money is power, but also corrosive as it tends to divert and diminish intelligent growth and reasonable discourse (see most, not all, of our world oligarchs).
The two together in real-time . . . the diminishment of the human spirit and untethered corruption . . . “corrupt absolutely.”
The Kochs have been at this a long time . . . and we’ve discussed their political influence on the campus of George Mason University several times here on this blog. (I’m pretty sure GMU is where the above student movement started.)
I’m so glad to see that the work of UnKoch My Campus has continued. I am reminded of the youth in Russia who apparently (according to some news reports) aren’t “buying” the corrupt influences either. CBK
Money subverts democracy. If we really want a democratic republic, we should get the money out of politics. Billionaires like the Koch network rob the people of a representative democracy, especially when elections depend on lots of money.
If folks are interested, they can read the major grant agreements that the Koch Foundation has signed with colleges and universities: https://charleskochfoundation.org/who-we-support/major-grant-agreements/
That’s not a complete list. I’ve seen elsewhere that the Koch Foundation has made grants to more than 300 institutions of higher education.
Those are the major multi-year grants to colleges and universities. A list of all organizations can be found here:https://charleskochfoundation.org/who-we-support/partner-organizations/
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels? According to the Koch Industries website, the company has multiple large scale businesses in Russia. Unlike BP, Exxon, and other oil companies with interests in Russia, Koch has not severed ties due to the attack on Ukraine. Morals indeed! Humph.
Charles Koch Institute (12-17-2021)
“New Poll:…Americans are generally against the U.S. going to war against Russia if it were to invade Ukraine…”
Interesting that there are a lot of shared sentiments among the Koch network, the religious right, those attacking public schools, and those who could be viewed as aiding Putin’s agenda.
“Michael Flynn- once indicted over Russian communications- voices support for Russia ahead of potential Ukraine Invasion.” (1-24-2022) At a recent event organized by a “biblical prophecy expert”, a speaker, Michael Flynn, who previously said there should be only one religion in the U.S. announced. “We’re going after the school boards.” Eric Trump was also in attendance at the event.
Ohio will continue its theocracy. Jim Renacci ( was one of the 10 wealthiest members of Congress) will run against Gov. Dewine. The Koch network ran ads for Renacci during a failed run for Senate. Renacci promotes school choice. His running mate for Lt. Gov. begins
his bio with the pronouncement that he is, “a conservative Christian.”
Media reported that Jim Renacci was at the recent event that featured Milo Yiannopules.
Daily Beast and other media reported the archbishop of Cleveland chose to offer a blessing at the event. There is controversy about whether Malesic had intended to say words at the meeting (before public scrutiny), or not. Media also identified Fr. James Altman as involved.