Boehner shares stage with David Koch at Wall Street club
Two ThinkProgress reposts tell the tale of the tentacles of the Kochtopus.
Charles Koch, the billionaire libertarian who has funded front-groups and lobbying efforts to expand his anti-tax, anti-regulatory agenda under the guise of “free enterprise,” has now widened his reach into another key public policy area: academics. The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation entered into an agreement with Florida State University in 2008 in which the foundation would provide millions of dollars in funds for the school’s economics department.
The funds were marked to add multiple faculty positions in the economics department. But the money came with multiple strings attached, including a demand that Koch have the ability to directly approve who ultimately filled the positions. As the St. Petersburg Times reports, the agreement is now raising questions across the board about academic freedom and integrity at public colleges and universities:
Under the agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, however, faculty only retain the illusion of control. The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it’s not happy with the faculty’s choice or if the hires don’t meet “objectives” set by Koch during annual evaluations.
Koch wasted little time in asserting his influence. In 2009, he denied 60 percent of the faculty’s suggestions to fill the positions in the new programs, called the Study of Political Economy and Free Enterprise (SPEFE) and Excellence in Economics Education (EEE). The hires that were made were agreed upon by Koch and the department’s faculty.
But according to a memorandum about the agreement, obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat, the ability to pick and choose faculty members was hardly the only string attached. In addition, Koch wanted the ability to review work done by the economics faculty and much more:
The three senior professors must come in with tenure, and FSU must continue to fund them for at least four years past the project period.
The Advisory Board of SPSFC and EEE is allowed to review all publicly provided material submitted by applicants for the Professorship positions.
The Advisory Board will determine which candidates qualify to receive funding.
No funding for a professorship position or any other affiliated program or position will be released without the review and approval of the Advisory Board.
An undergraduate program will be devised and funded for $30,000 per year for three years. The committee responsible for the program will report to the Advisory Board.
Other strings spell out the right of the [Charles G. Koch] Foundation to annually review the work of funded professors, publications, publicity, etc., and to pick up their marbles and go home if not satisfied.
David Rasmussen, the dean of Florida State’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy, has asserted that academic integrity and “philanthropy” can coexist, arguing that there is no problem with the school’s agreement with Koch. But many universities have strict policies regarding donors’ influence over how donations are used, and Yale University once returned a $20 million donation because a donor wanted veto power over hires.
The agreement with Florida State is hardly Koch’s first foray into higher education. The Koch brothers have provided funding to numerous colleges and universities, including George Mason University, to which the Kochs have donated millions of dollars for an economics program that has played an extensive role in anti-regulatory policy development.
Because selling out its academic freedom to Koch apparently wasn’t enough, Florida State also entered into an agreement with BB&T, which provided funding for a course on ethics and economics and required that Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, be a part of the course curriculum. Responding to criticism of that agreement, Rasmussen said, “If somebody says, ‘We’re willing to help support your students and faculty by giving you money, but we’d like you to read this book,’ that doesn’t strike me as a big sin. What is a big sin is saying that certain ideas cannot be discussed.”
In the world where billionaires and corporations take over education, the only “big sin” is apparently fighting back against their control of academic curriculum.
The above is a repost by TP’s Travis Waldron.
What follows is by TP’s Alex Seitz-Wald.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) went to the heart of Wall Street last night to deliver a major speech on the deficit at the Economic Club of New York. The stage on which Boehner spoke featured a who’s who of financial moguls, including conservative billionaire David Koch, co-owner “” along with his brother Charles -of the oil conglomerate Koch Industries, and a major funder of right-wing advocacy and tea party groups. This AP photo captured Boehner shaking hands with deficit advocate Pete Peterson, as Koch looked on:
Koch was also one of the few people with whom Boehner shook hands as he exited the stage after his speech (Koch is sitting left side, fourth from the right, front row):
Boehner and Koch appear to have a friendly relationship, as Koch met with Boehner’s staff in the Speaker’s office on the first day of the new Congress, where Koch was hosting a party for freshmen GOP lawmakers. (HT: Politico’s @JakeSherman)
– ThinkProgress
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Heads should roll for this. If universities allow this soon state politicians will demand the right to approve faculty hires since they pay the bills. Universities would cease to be independent. The culture wars that would follow would end what is left of the humanities.
What a hoot! ‘Academic Freedom’ plutocrat fashion! The US will be a laughing-stock for just so long as it takes the Masters to impose just such thought control in the other capitalist pathocracies. The UK will not be far behind, as they privatise their universities and cleanse them, through massive fee hikes etc, of the serfs. The parameters of the kleptocracy’s neo-feudal project grow more clearly defined and ambitious by the day. This is really no longer merely Rightwing authoritarianism, but a totalitarian ideology dedicated to absolute thought control. We see it in the entirely Rightwing MSM, where the range of acceptable opinion has been so straitened over the last forty years as to make the shades of the long dead Holy Inquisitors look on with admiration. Of course academia has suffered from regular purges of unacceptable opinion for decades, and denial of tenure to non-conformists, McCarthyite tactics of smear and character assassination etc, but the Kochtopus takes it all to its logical conclusion. The money power can simply buy the academy, and declare what is right, what wrong, what truth and what anathema. This will start with ‘economics’ a base pseudo-science at the best of times, but will spread to ‘hard science’ soon enough. I mean, the Kochtopus’ riches are a certain sign of God’s favour, so what could be more righteous than God’s representatives here on earth dictating the laws of physics, chemistry and climatology, to better concur with Their Holy Purpose, to make as much money as possible?
Wow…. IMO Florida seems to be circling the drain even faster than Texas.
This is a logical end point of the advent of economic rationalism (Thatcherism, Reaganomics) when universities stopped being seen as public ‘goods’, properly funded by taxpayers, and were forced to become money making machines and sausage factories. The old ideals long associated with the idea of a ‘university’ died hard in some places but dying they are and this surprises me not in the least, ME
Koch was smart enough to choose a weak spot. Tallahassee isn’t Athens, and Florida State is not Harvard. Hell, it’s a pretty crappy college, and is not even Kansas State. It will be kind of like when a professor from Texas A&M did a video in a lab coat showing how Gulf oysters love oil. The public and their academic peers won’t pay much attention.
More insidious has been the oil companies’ penetration of places like Stanford, Berkeley, and the New York Times. They had to come up with a lot more money in these spots, but realized that geeky professors can be bought sometimes too. Stanford was already full of whores, but I’m really disappointed in Berkeley in taking all of that BP money. Notice that we don’t hear any of the strident activism on this subject that the place is famous for.
The United States of Koch? We the Sheeple?
This is getting scary.
Joe, it would be great if you could give the students and faculty at WPI some press for their refusal to accept Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as their commencement speaker on Saturday. Instead, these brave students invited Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute to be their alternative commencement speaker.
Exxon is a big donor to WPI, so it took courage to defy their administration. More info on this issue:
http://wpi2011.wordpress.com/
” … Government of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% shall not perish from the earth”
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely
This arose as a quotation by John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902). The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887:
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”
Another English politician with no shortage of names – William Pitt, the Elder, The Earl of Chatham and British Prime Minister from 1766 to 1778, is sometimes wrongly attributed as the source. He did say something similar, in a speech to the UK House of Lords in 1770:
“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it”
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely.html
Killer Koch is making a very poor investment, as florida’s days are numbered by rising sea level and increasingly powerful atlantic hurricanes. The winding down of the space program at the kennedy center will also sap any decent jobs left in florida, low paying tourism is the only sustainable industry. increasing property insurance rates are killing the real estate industry, in some cases property insurance in florida is like real estate taxes in new york state, except that in florida you get less government services and the wages are lower.
Much of the southeast and south central states will be paying much higher insurance premiums if the trend of increasing climate related catastrophes continues. While rebuilding will spur economic growth for a short while, the higher insurance premiums will sap any long term benifits. Eventually, even an american idiot will realize the south is becoming uninhabitable!
I like this quote from Gord #8,
” … Government of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% shall not perish from the earth”
True, until the earth perishes!
Considering that Florida will be very vulnerable to 1 foot of sea rise, a real possibility by 2040. it seems the hierarchy at FSU seems blindsided not by reality, but by money- too bad it will not save the state from serious problems beginning a decade or 2 down the road.
FSU is no longer a university or an institution of learning, but just a private industrial outpost of lobbying. They should lose any tax status given to an educational organization, of course. (Don’t hold your breath.)
I don’t know the details, but there are national organizations that accredit colleges and universities. At the finer places, the round of accreditation just amounts to a bunch of red tape to certify the obvious, but here is a case where accreditation should be withdrawn. I believe this means that other colleges do not accept students’ transferred credits, which is certainly the right thing under the circumstances.
If FSU repudiates this whole deal, they might be rehabilitated, provided anyone with authority over the mess is fired, but only after years of probation, increased oversight, and openness.
I recall an early episode of “House” in which the research hospital was granted $100M by a highly successful businessman, who eventually revealed himself to be a control freak who wanted to run the hospital as a business. I guess the FSU board of trustees didn’t see that one.
(They are also the same school who somehow got to keep their caricature native american mascot — I am sure involving some large sums of $$ — when the NCAA was making its sweep to eliminate these.)
Outrageous. FSU degrees should be worthless after this.