George Mason Faculty Demands Review of University’s Agreements With Donors

Essdras M. Suarez for The Chronicle

The controversy surrounding George Mason University’s relationship with donors escalated on Wednesday, as its Faculty Senate called for the suspension of an agreement between the law school and the Charles Koch Foundation that has divided many professors here.

Last week the Senate passed a resolution expressing “deep concerns” with plans to rename the law school for the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, and protesting the university administration’s failure to disclose more about the agreement. On Wednesday it took an even more aggressive stance. The Senate voted 25 to 12 to call on the university’s leaders to put the agreement, which also involved an anonymous donor, on hold to subject it to more review. The Senate also called for greater oversight of such deals.

“We need to stand up for our rights,” David L. Kuebrich, an associate professor of English and a Faculty Senate member, said in urging his colleagues to pass the measure, which he characterized as written to ensure that their institution conforms with the American Association of University Professors’ standards dealing with donor agreements. He denounced the process by which the university approved the agreement with the law school’s donors, who pledged $30 million for scholarships over several years, as “too rushed — maybe deliberately so.”

Citing a provision in the agreement that has especially aroused faculty opposition — a requirement that the donors be notified if the university replaces the law school’s current dean, Henry N. Butler — Mr. Kuebrich said “donors should have nothing to do with faculty.”

In a separate voice vote, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a motion to request that Ángel Cabrera, George Mason’s president, and Tom Davis, rector of the university’s Board of Visitors, answer a series of questions betraying suspicion of the agreement. One of them asked what the university would do if the anonymous donor cut off the pledged funds before handing all of the money over.

A ‘Hate-Filled’ Resolution

In response to Wednesday’s Faculty Senate votes, Renell Wynn, a university spokeswoman, issued a statement that said George Mason “appreciates the valuable feedback” the Senate offered and is committed to promoting diversity and not being aligned with any single ideological position. She also said, however, that “this gift provides $30 million for scholarships, and that money will help hundreds of students attend law school — students who otherwise might not have had that chance.”

“That is why this gift is so important to Mason,” she went on, “and why we believe we should continue to move forward.”

A few Faculty Senate members from the law school spoke out against the proposals in harsh terms. D. Bruce Johnsen took issue with Mr. Kuebrich’s assertions that the Koch Foundation’s past contributions to the university have led to accusations that Koch-financed programs there are involved in conservative indoctrination and lobbying. “This is just a thinly veiled attempt to tell a lie and repeat it again and again,” Mr. Johnsen said.

A second law professor, Lloyd Cohen, called Mr. Kuebrich’s resolution “hate-filled” and “an unprecedented assault on the academic freedom of one unit of our university.” Arguing that the measure had been motivated by a desire to squelch speech viewed as conservative, Mr. Cohen said, “if this was a gift from George Soros to create the Harry Blackmun Law School, we wouldn’t even be here today.”

More than 30 student groups signed a statement criticizing the proposed renaming of the law school as undermining the university’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. Speaking to the Faculty Senate, Geoffrey Payne, a junior who is a spokesman for the student group Pride Alliance, argued that, as a gay and transgender student, he would “feel less safe at Mason because the name change would lend credibility to judicial opinions and public statements which fanned the flames of homophobia and transphobia.”

Samantha Parsons, a senior who has been president of the group GMU Student Power, reiterated her group’s demand that all of the university’s grant agreements and memorandums of understanding with private donors “be made transparent and public.” She denounced the proposed law-school name change as “a symptom of a much deeper problem: undue donor influence and our university’s lack of consultation with important university stakeholders, such as faculty and students.”

Overblown Fears

In a “Dear Colleague” letter sent to the Faculty Senate last week, President Cabrera characterized much of the criticism of the agreement for the law-school gift as based on misunderstanding, and argued that fears of donors’ influence had been overblown.

“Our donors understand that, no matter how generous they may be, they will have no authority whatsoever in our faculty selection and promotion processes, our student admissions, or our curricular choices. If that’s not acceptable to them, we simply decline the gifts,” Mr. Cabrera wrote.

His letter said philanthropy plays an increasingly important role at public universities as a result of the continuous decline in their public support, but it remains “a very small percentage of our budget,” accounting for about 5 percent of its $920 million in spending for the 2017 fiscal year.

Citing a New York Times analysis that estimated that the Charles Koch Foundation had given $50 million to the university over the last decade, he said, “To put things in perspective, that would amount to about 0.6 percent of our average annual budget over this period.”

“The suggestion that gifts of this magnitude can shape the ideology of the largest public research university in Virginia is far-fetched, to say the least,” he wrote.

Calling the Charles Koch Foundation “one of our most consistent and generous donors,” and observing that George Mason lags behind peer institutions in terms of the share of its finances derived from philanthropy, he said, “Our problem is not that we receive too many gifts, but that we don’t receive enough.”

President Cabrera’s letter acknowledged that some faculty members find some of Justice Scalia’s opinions “objectionable and even personally offensive.” But the president said the university is not renaming the law school for him based on any agreement with his views.

Rather, he said, “we are recognizing a man who served our country at the highest level of government for 30 years and who many experts of diverse ideological persuasions — from faculty colleagues in our law school, to his peers on the Supreme Court, to the president of the United States — consider to have been a great jurist who had a profound impact in the legal field.”

Rejecting a gift based on a disagreement with Justice Scalia’s opinions, he said, “would be inconsistent with our values of diversity and freedom of thought.”

Correction (05/05/2016, 12:35 p.m.): This article originally referred to Renell Wynn as a man. Ms. Wynn is a woman. The article has been corrected accordingly.

Peter Schmidt writes about affirmative action, academic labor, and issues related to academic freedom. Contact him at peter.schmidt@chronicle.com.