Here’s Why Politically Motivated Philanthropy Is Dangerous

Anyone who believes that public higher education is crucial to our democracy should be alarmed by the recent suggestions by George Mason University’s president that donations to the institution from the Charles Koch Foundation have had “undue influence in academic matters.” Philanthropic donations intended to promote a particular political agenda challenge the bedrock principle that higher education should serve the public interest.

The Koch foundation is just one example of a politically motivated donor, but it’s a prominent one. The conservative group has made grants to hundreds of colleges, with some past agreements containing restrictions on academic freedom and shared governance. At Utah State University, the foundation supplemented the salaries of five business-faculty members, and while one part of the contract claimed that normal hiring practices would prevail, another part required that the foundation approve all hiring under the grant.

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Another view: All College Giving Should Be Held to the Same Standard

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A similar agreement was made at Florida State University, where the Koch foundation was represented on an advisory committee that vetted academics applying for positions. The panel was also in charge of evaluating the performance of faculty members funded by the foundation, to make sure their views were consistent with its political and ideological goals.

There are examples beyond the Koch foundation, which says it stopped including such requirements years ago. For example, a donation to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte by the BB&T Charitable Foundation, connected with a regional bank based in North Carolina, required that Ayn Rand’s “free market” ideas be incorporated into the curriculum, and that her books be mandatory reading in certain courses.

In 2013, the University of Colorado at Boulder announced that it was hiring a conservative scholar in residence. The position was being financed by $1 million in private money. The ostensible purpose was to provide intellectual diversity and balance to the liberal leaning faculty. One of the finalists for the position was Linda Chavez, at the time listed as chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, which describes itself as “the nation’s only conservative think tank devoted to issues of race and ethnicity.” Chavez was also a syndicated columnist, a commentator on Fox News, and an opponent of affirmative action. Yet the creation of a conservative-scholar-in-residence post was, in essence, an affirmative-action hire for people with a particular political agenda.

What principles are endangered by strings-attached philanthropic gifts? One is shared governance, which gives the faculty primary authority over teaching and research. It is based on the understanding that faculty members are professionals qualified by virtue of their expertise to judge both teaching and research. It also means that they should have primary say over the hiring, evaluation, and retention of fellow faculty members.

It means, too, that faculty members should have primary control over the curriculum, including course creation, requirements for graduation, and the establishment or dissolution of academic programs. Faculty recommendations in those areas, because they are based on professional expertise, should be overridden by administrators only under extraordinary circumstances — and when such an override occurs, it should always be explained openly to reinforce the general rule that faculty recommendations should be honored.

A second, and related, basic principle that is threatened is academic freedom — the right of faculty members to teach, to engage in scholarly activity, and to comment on policy. The matter can involve internal university policy or external public policy. It is essential that faculty members be free to investigate controversial ideas without fear of retribution from administrators, trustees, donors, or politicians, and to express freely the outcome of their investigations.

These twin principles — shared governance and academic freedom — are fundamental and essential because they ensure that institutions of higher education serve the public interest, as opposed to the narrow special interests of big corporations, wealthy donors, or powerful politicians. An educated citizenry is the foundation of a democratic society: This basic truth is the primary reason for the existence of publicly funded higher education.

In no way does that truth diminish the need for colleges and universities to provide training or to engage in research that has practical significance. But it explains the reason for public funding for higher education. It’s significant that private nonprofit institutions, too, are heavily subsidized by taxes and, in many cases, directly receive significant public funding.

Of course, there is nothing new about donations from wealthy benefactors to both public and private colleges. Nor is there anything necessarily wrong with wealthy individuals, corporations, or philanthropic foundations making such donations, provided they do not interfere with the mission of serving the public good.

But the risk of such interference is now greater than ever, and the reason is rooted in the defunding of public institutions of higher education. Almost all colleges receiving public funds have witnessed significant cuts in that source of money over recent decades. This defunding, which fosters inequality in wealth, income, and political power, has deplorable consequences, including tuition hikes and the consequent explosion in student debt.

Another important consequence of the public defunding is that it increases the need for external donations while magnifying the influence of those donations. For example, consider a typical state university, at which public funding is now only half, if not one-third, of what it was before. As a result, each dollar such a university now accepts from an external donor weighs twice or three times as heavily as before, in comparison with a dollar of public funding.

So, even if the dollars offered by the external donor come with strings attached, colleges are considerably more likely than before to accept them. This situation has created an opening for cash-rich corporations, wealthy individuals, and philanthropic foundations to remake public universities into entities that better serve their narrow political and economic objectives at the expense of the public interest.

The public defunding of higher education has already generated a host of terrible consequences. If politically motivated donors pick up the slack, things will only get worse. Higher education can’t function properly when it is beholden to special interests. That bodes ill not just for colleges themselves. It bodes ill for our democracy.

Rudy Fichtenbaum is a professor emeritus of economics at Wright State University and president of the American Association of University Professors.