Buying a Think Tank

The Public Sphere

Free speech is a core tenet of our democratic and academic systems. But as in politics, universities are increasingly under siege by large donors carrying bags of cash. What do billions of dollars entitle you to? Does it entitle you to shape what is taught and researched at a public university? How can you tell when or if ideology is subverting core institutional values?

These are the questions at the heart of controversies over the Charles Koch Foundation donating millions of dollars to US universities. The spirit of the questions also applies to other billionaires making donations like Phil Knight or George Soros, but the Charles Koch Foundation has stirred more controversy in part because of the lack of transparency around many of these donations and the strings that have come attached to the money, such as influence in faculty hiring, scholarship and fellowship awards, and curriculum decisions. They’ve also drawn attention because some feel that the far-right ideology of Koch funded “university-based research centers” may be itself be so extreme as to cast doubt on the scholarly validity of the research it produces and teaches.

We’ll be talking mainly about George Mason University today. GMU is a public university in northern VA that has received $95.5 million of that $142 million donated by Charles Koch Foundation since 2005. On Tuesday, April 24 a student group on campus, Transparent GMU went to trial against the GMU and their fundraising arm, The George Mason University Foundation to release documents under the FOIA. While that case is still undecided, documents detailing the donor agreements were released, providing us with direct evidence that the Kochs dictated hiring and other academic policies, which GMU is now admitting.

• Jane Mayer interviewed on NPR Fresh Air.
• Jane Mayer at Stanford University.