Title : BIG MONEY IN POLITICS? HOW ABOUT BIG MONEY IN ACADEMIA!
link : BIG MONEY IN POLITICS? HOW ABOUT BIG MONEY IN ACADEMIA!
BIG MONEY IN POLITICS? HOW ABOUT BIG MONEY IN ACADEMIA!
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY STUDENTS FORCE TRANSPARENCY ON DONORS' INFLUENCE
How many times have you read some article or seen some television news report about how our colleges and universities are hotbeds of liberalism and academia is engaged in the wholesale liberal brainwashing of America's young people? Yeah. Plenty. Listening to right wing critics it sounds like like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and liberal colleges are universities all across the country are dungeon like Gulags where students are chained to their seats and forced to watch Soviet style indoctrination videos every day. While conservatives bemoan this dire crisis/scandal that is undermining the very basis of American democracy and threatens the very future of America, I can't recall a single article about how conservatives are actually undermining academic freedom through the one thing that gives them power: money. Until now.
George Mason University (GMU) is no Harvard or Yale. In fact, it's not even a Georgetown or Virginia's prestigious University of Virginia located in Charlottesville just a few hours south of GMU's suburban Washington campus. Unlike Harvard's nearly 400 year old genealogy, GMU originally began as a branch of UVA in 1949, gained independence in 1972, has a main campus in Fairfax, Virginia plus three satellite campuses. It hosts 45,000 students making it the third largest university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. George Mason has never had a reputation for being particularly liberal and in fact has a reputation for being a business-like institution of higher learning tending towards the practical rather than the esoteric in its varied academic offerings.
An article in this morning's Washington Post (GMU DONATIONS CALLED INTO QUESTION ) highlights one of the lesser known influences on higher education, the funding of academia through grants and donations. Now, this is not unusual nor uncommon to all of our colleges and universities. But in the case of GMU and the donations and grants provided by the Koch Brothers, it has been revealed that the grants and donations have secret strings attacked. Like requirements to appoint Koch supporters to the panel that administers such grants and donations. Or the naming of buildings for prominent conservatives, like Supreme Court Associate Justice, the late Antonin Scalia, who has his name attached to a building at George Mason, the Anton Scalia School of Law. Or the participation of donors in the selection of faculty members and their evaluations. How many articles have you read about this academic reality?
While perhaps a common practice, it is a bit troubling that donors appear to have a continuing influence over the offerings and operations of the academic institutions they donate to. Taking the Antonin Scalia School of Law, for example, I can certainly appreciate and understand donors being involved in the selection of an architect, the siting of the building, maybe even the building's materials and interior furnishings, but after the dedication ceremonies, why should donors continue to be involved the the university's affairs? This is what the students at George Mason have exposed.
How has the influence of the Koch Brothers come to light in this case? Well, just like the Parkland "March For Our Lives" movement, it is GMU's students who forced the university administration to admit that "some financial gift agreements accepted by the school “fall short of the standards of academic independence” and raise questions about donor influence at the public institution." This from GMU's President, Angel Cabrera, after being confronted by Transparent GMU, a student organization who demanded access to the agreements the university enters into with donors. The naming of the Antonin Scalia School of Law, established though a $20 million donation via the Federalist Society (an avowedly conservative organization) and a $10 million donation from Charles Koch Foundation, sowed the seeds that led to the student demands to reveal the contents of the donor agreements with the university. I congratulate them.
Sure, you will say: But Bill and Melinda Gates, George Soros and other avowedly liberal donors have probably also entered into such agreements where they exercise some degree of control over what happens to their money and I'm sure they do. In fact, they surely have. But that's not my point.
My point is that while we are presented with the evils of liberal influence over our colleges and universities in the media, I for one, have never seen a single newspaper article nor a single television report about the influence of conservatives and conservative donors like the Koch Brothers in our colleges and universities. If you know of any, please let me know. Once again, the national narrative, as in so many other areas of our "national discussions," is controlled and disseminated by conservatives. (Well, and now our President: "Very Fine People On Both Sides.") To me, the most intriguing aspect of this Post article is that George Mason University is your basic run-of-the-mill, four year, institution of higher learning and not some prominent conservative bastion of right wing ideology like Liberty University or Pepperdine University, two colleges known for their conservative teachings. One can readily imagine a steady stream of conservative money flowing to these institutions, but George Mason University? How many other run-of-the-mill colleges and universities are being influenced by grants and donations from rich, big money, conservatives?
And why isn't this a national crisis/scandal as liberal influence is?
Have A Great Day But Beware Of Stalinist Curricula If You're In College!
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