Why George Mason’s Agreements With the Koch Foundation Raised Red Flags

Essdras M Suarez for The Chronicle

A long-simmering debate about George Mason University’s relationship with its donors has boiled over anew with the release last week of several agreements between the institution and benefactors, including the Charles Koch Foundation.

Wehwalt via Wikimedia Commons license

The agreements were signed between 2003 and 2011; only one was still active. Nevertheless, they raised red flags among faculty members and students who have argued that the foundation’s strong financial support of the university has allowed it to exercise an outsized influence over faculty and curriculum. The documents contained language that provided donors with opportunities to weigh in on faculty hiring and stated with some specificity what those faculty members would study.

Ángel Cabrera, George Mason’s president, called the agreements “problematic” and said that they “fall short of the standards of academic independence I expect any gift to meet.” On Monday, Cabrera said in an email to faculty members that the sole active agreement would become void. He also said that he had ordered a review of the university’s gift-acceptance policies and active agreements “to ensure that they do not grant donors undue influence in academic matters.”

Cabrera and a Koch Foundation official both said in statements that the agreements’ most controversial language was largely a thing of the past. John Hardin, director of university relations at the Charles Koch Foundation, said in a statement that it “was not unusual for universities to offer donors this type of input at the time — and, especially where named and chaired professorships are being created, this is still something that many universities do today.”

“This is not something, however, that the Charles Koch Foundation does today,” he said.

The foundation’s more recent grants to universities, some of which are on its website, do not have the clauses some have objected to. A grant template posted by the foundation also contains more anodyne language.

“We took criticism of our agreements seriously when similar concerns were raised about a grant we made in 2008 to Florida State University,” Hardin’s statement said. “This grant agreement followed standard university procedure at the time and provided for a donor representative to review candidates for the faculty positions we pledged to support. We did not exercise that option and always respected university governance; however, in light of those concerns we invited outside academics to review our grant agreements and suggest improvements.”

So were the George Mason agreements a reflection of standard practice? If not, how do they fall short of academic standards?

‘It Gets Tricky’

Rudy Fichtenbaum, president of the American Association of University Professors and an emeritus professor of economics at Wright State University, said he saw two issues with the agreements: First, the donors appeared to have a hand in choosing who would be hired and how they would be evaluated. Second, the donors were relatively specific about what the professors whose positions they funded would study.

“Sometimes it gets tricky to know where to draw the line,” Fichtenbaum said. “When you start getting into a study of free enterprise then you’re really, I think, stepping into a territory where you’re promoting a political agenda.”

A pair of 2009 agreements solidifying a gift from the Koch Foundation to the Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank that is based at George Mason and employs its professors but operates independently, sheds light on what has given pause to Fichtenbaum and campus critics. The language in the 2009 agreements is generally in line with that of the other documents made public by George Mason last week, including these clauses laying out the “objectives” of new Mercatus professors: GMU-Koch 2

Eliza A. McNulty, president of the Association of Donor Relations Professionals, said that gift agreements are meant to protect both the donor and the organization. “An organization needs to have flexibility,” she said. “Institutions evolve, majors go away, faculty leave.”

McNulty declined to comment specifically on the George Mason agreements. But she said that generally it is not common for donors to have a role in selecting the faculty members who will fill the positions that they are funding. The George Mason agreements seem to have left open the possibility that the funders would in fact have such a role.

Here, for example, is a description of the selection committee to fill a position at Mercatus. According to the agreement, the five-member committee was to include two members chosen by the Koch Foundation: GMU-Koch 3

The foundation was also given the ability to name a representative to a three-person advisory board: GMU-Koch 4

That board’s authority included the right to assess professors and recommend that they be removed from the position at Mercatus: GMU-Koch 5

The agreement limited the board’s influence, however, in a clause that specified that its role was simply to ensure that the agreement’s objectives were met. GMU-Koch 6

Internal Revenue Service regulations prohibit donors from being too involved in how their money is directed, McNulty said. They cannot name the recipient of a scholarship, for example. She said it’s unusual to see a professor named in a gift agreement.

“Typically you don’t see that for the reason of it calling into question the charitable status of the gift,” she said.

At least one of George Mason’s agreements named the professor who would fill the position that the agreement created.

There is at least some guidance for donors suggesting that it’s not completely off limits to play a role in selecting a professor. A 2002 book called Intelligent Giving: Insights and Strategies for Higher Education Donors, published by the RAND Corporation, instructed potential benefactors that “it is never desirable to skew the fundamental mission and faculty of schools toward donor wishes.” The book said there are some gray areas, however. “For example, it may be okay for you to be on the search committee for your endowed chair,” it read, “but you cannot have veto power.”

Every university is different, said Linda Durant, vice president for development at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, but each has a clear process for hiring a professor. She said that in her experience, it’s unusual for a donor to have a role in the hiring process. Her organization publishes sample language for how donors and universities can write an agreement to establish an endowed chair.

The suggested language is simple and grants broad authority to the university. “The chair holder will be a recognized expert in the field of ____ and will be recruited according to the university policies and procedures in place at that time,” it reads.

Durant also declined to comment specifically on the George Mason agreements. She said university officials must walk a very fine line between fulfilling their donors’ intent and maintaining their own standards of academic freedom.

“You’re ensuring that you’re in line with the mission of the university, in line with the academic program,” Durant said. “You’re matching the interest of the donor to that mission and to that purpose.”

The language in the George Mason documents that alarmed faculty critics was accompanied by clauses limiting the influence of the donors. For example, in the Mercatus agreements, the advisory board was given “no authority or control … over the administration of the Professorship or selection of the occupant of the Professorship.” And a clause gives the university “the final say” in who gets hired. GMU-Koch 1

In a statement to The Chronicle on Wednesday, Hardin said again that the Koch Foundation’s practices have changed.

“Over the many years of our support, our giving has supported the university in hiring numerous great faculty, supported undergraduate scholarships and graduate student fellowships, helped the university build its economic history work, among many other academic pursuits,” he said. “During that time, we’ve refined our materials to better reflect the high standards for university governance and academic independence that have always been a core tenet of our giving.”

‘Consistent With the Handbook’

Language expressing deference to university hiring procedures is still common in Koch agreements, but clauses that preserve a role for foundation-appointed advisers and selection-committee members are not a staple.

Take, for example, the case of Florida State University, which Hardin cites as a turning point in Koch’s grantmaking practices. In 2008, a gift from the Koch Foundation allowed the university to establish two programs within its Gus A. Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education. An agreement cementing the deal appeared to give the foundation a seat at the table in faculty hiring. Koch-FSU 1

Under the terms of the agreement, an “executive committee” of members of Florida State’s economics department would choose candidates for the faculty jobs and make the final calls on whom to hire. But an advisory board would review the candidate pool “and make a recommendation as to which candidates are qualified to receive funding.”

“In consultation with the Chair of the Economics Department,” the agreement stipulated, members of that board “will be chosen by CGK Foundation.” Critics of the Koch Foundation’s giving to higher education cited the Florida State agreement as an especially stark intrusion on the faculty’s power to make hires and curricular decisions.

By 2013, when Florida State and the Koch Foundation amended their agreement, the language that most directly pointed to a role for the foundation was removed. The updated agreement specified only that the professorships “will be recruited and hired in a manner consistent with the FSU Faculty Handbook.”

The amended agreement also changed the nuts and bolts of hiring. Under the terms laid out in the 2013 document, the economics department’s executive committee now notifies the dean of its choice to fill a professorship. The dean then sends information to the foundation about the choice. The Koch Foundation decides whether or not to fund the professorship; its decision, according to the agreement, “will under no circumstances jeopardize the offer to the candidate.”

The disappearance of the most-controversial language doesn’t mean everyone is comfortable with Koch’s role in funding faculty positions.

Some professors at George Mason say that their university has already been damaged by its association with the Charles Koch Foundation because of its founder’s public support of conservative political causes and candidates. Those ideas, they say, have had an influence over the work produced by scholars in the departments that the Koch Foundation has helped fund.

“What’s happening in the law school and the economics department — it’s impacting our reputation,” said Craig Willse, an associate professor of cultural studies. “We’re seeing resources funneled there while the majority of our classes are taught by underpaid adjuncts and buildings are crumbling.”

Jennifer N. Victor, an associate professor of political science at George Mason, said she did not feel the Koch influence in her department. She appreciated the president’s recent comments on the issue, but still worried that outsiders would assume the influence was there.

“It’s frustrating for us to have this association out there,” she said. “It would be nice if the university were able to do more to publicly curtail that relationship.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.

Clarification (5/3/2018, 10:19 a.m.): This article has been updated to more clearly reflect the nature of a professorship at the Mercatus Center. The center does not confer tenure, though George Mason University does.