That’s one way to flush a university’s reputation down the sewer — let faculty appointments be sold to the highest bidder, and sell out secretly to ideologues. George Mason University is just the latest subsidiary of Koch Industries,
The gifts, in support of faculty positions in economics, “granted donors some participation in faculty selection and evaluation,” Cabrera said, noting that one such agreement is still active (the rest have expired).
All 10 of the now-public agreements relate to the university’s Mercatus Center for free market research, a locus of Koch-funded activity. Three of the agreements involve Koch. The two most recent, from 2007 and 2009, stipulate the creation of a five-member selection committee to select a professor, with two of those committee members chosen by donors. The other Koch agreement, from 1990, also afforded Koch a role in naming a professor to fund.
George Mason also allowed Koch a role in evaluating professors’ performance via advisory boards. And while the agreements assert that final say in faculty appointments will be based on normal university procedures, the 2009 agreement says that funds will be returned to the donor if the provost and the selection committee can’t agree on a candidate. … The university has consistently said that the foundation is a private entity and that compromising the confidential nature of donations through that avenue by releasing such documents could chill giving. Koch was a joint, $10 million donor on the law school deal.
I would just like to point out that I am currently chairing two search committees at my university, yet the Koch’s haven’t come calling to bias our decisions. I guess that means none of our candidates are ideologically compatible with the Kochs, so they lack motivation to slide me ten million dollars under the table. There’s just not much room for bullshit propagandizing in biology, unlike economics departments or worse, garbage think-tanks like the “Mercatus Center for free market research”.
Henry Farrell does a fine job of summarizing the problems with letting anyone buy out the independence of a university.
The ordinary protection against conflict of interest, and against donors using the university’s reputation as an ideological/financial cutout or flag of convenience is to build institutional firewalls, which allow donors to provide large money with broad conditions attached (such as: this money should be used to hire an endowed professor carrying out research and teaching on Topic X) but without specific controls on who that professor is. This is at best imperfect – but it at least somewhat curbs the voracity of development officers and individual academic “entrepreneurs.”
It would appear that any such firewalls were comprehensively breached at George Mason University (which is a public university, with consequent public obligations). The ferocity of the university administration’s efforts to keep the arrangements secret suggest the reputational damage that the university now faces. It’s also worth observing that many GMU faculty have suspected something like this for a long time, but weren’t able to get straight answers from the administration until its hand was forced by this lawsuit.
Finally, it’s notable that the person representing the interests of an as-yet unnamed big donor to the law school is Leonard Leo, who is the Federalist Society officer largely responsible for the ideological vetting of judges for the Trump administration. That doesn’t say great things either.
Just to be fair, though, it wouldn’t say great things if George Soros were buying up faculty appointments, either. This isn’t about which heinous ideology is corrupting universities, but a complaint about any corruption of academic freedom.
At the very least, though, I now expect the top brass at GMU to all be sacked, and faculty hired under the Koch affirmative action plan for wingnut economists to be dismissed. Anything less, and GMU should face major accreditation problems and a shameful loss of reputation — they’re just another Liberty University, a fake school with wealthy donors.
Good to see you can still joke about it. Ha ha!
Research into free markets, or research as a product on free markets?
GMU also recently renamed its law school the Antonin Scalia Law School after it got an anonymous $30 million donation (initially they planned to name it the Antonin Scalia School of Law, which at least would have provided an appropriate acronym).
And, in what is no doubt a complete coincidence, George Mason is where Robin “We Need Sex Redistribution for Incels” Hanson teaches.
https://slate.com/business/2018/04/economist-robin-hanson-might-be-americas-creepiest-professor.html
Dunc, I think the more accurate description is the free market as a product in and of itself.
My eldest got a BS in econ from George Mason. There, she became quite the Austrian/libertarian economist. Wrote her thesis on the legalization of prostitution.
Post graduation, all the graduates of that department were mailed a copy of “Atlas Shrugged.” I kid you not.
The book came with a letter that explained that they were sending a copy it to each graduate of the econ department. There was an accompanying letter. University funds didn’t pay for the book distribution. I believe it was funded by something call the Mercatus Center.
scottmange,
You sure it wasn’t the Locutus Center? “Resistance is futile.”
@6 – Whoa. Just…whoa.
Well, if anyone ever calls you a pessimist, simply show them this post. Your line is one of the most optimistic pieces that I have seen in a long time. In other words, I think it is more likely they will be promoted for demonstrating ingenuity in obtaining funding for innovative research. Because GMU has obviously made the choice that it is far better to be a propaganda machine than an educational institution (and it pays better).
@6, 8 Yeah, whoa is the only word for it.
I have to point out to the Kochs, though, that buying professors (and even attempted indoctrination of students) is a tricky proposition and ultimately a losing investment. Professors, even students, are notoriously likely to start out one way, then wildly shift positions and outlooks as the years go by. So, a professorial candidate vetted and approved by the buyers is not a robot who will perform its program without end. Some the purchases will, but the majority are, unfortunately for the Kochs, people, who will end up going all over the map.
The Kochs must be confused by their experience with Scott Walker, whom Charlie Pierce called “the homunculus hired by the Kochs to manage their wholly-own subsidiary formerly known as Wisconsin.” But Walker’s just a politician. People who are professors go into that job because they want to do their own thing. And so, they’re very much more likely to stray.
That’s interesting. I graduated from Ohio State School of Law, it is now the Moritz School of Law at Ohio State, basically from a fairly hefty grant that got them a nice new building at least. I thought that was outrageous, silly me.
I had several professors at law school who were members of The National Lawyers Guild, they encouraged me to join, I now wonder if that is still permitted.
#11
Seriously, you don’t see the difference in your described situation and having a donor have 40% of the makeup of the hiring committee for faculty? Were these professors receiving money from the National Lawyers Guild?
For your other example, do the Moritz folks have the ability to directly influence the hiring and firing of faculty and do they have a say on who gets hired? Otherwise, I fail to see your point.
@whywhywhy #12:
They are using their lawyerly analyticalness, which Trumps all. For such a section of the analyticalful lawing set, this sort of argument is all that matters. Win in court, win in life, right? Right?
Oh this is much worse than Liberty University, which at least has the honesty to call itself a private university. This is the deliberate and secretive undermining of a public university for private interests.
Also, in a decent country, these administrators would not just lose their jobs, they’d face fraud charges.
About 10 years ago my wife’s beloved Shimer College (near Chicago) was the object of a sort of academic hostile takeover by this a**hole semi-affiliated with the Heartland Institute. Sorta like this story.
Shimer uses The Great Books and has an impressive % of kids (and adults) going to grad school. Socratic.
If you don’t know the Heartland Institute, shame.
They defeated the takeover but barely.
I’m surprised that nobody has pointed out that the Federalist Society is another Kochtopus organ. See SourceWatch: Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
I now expect the top brass at GMU to all be sacked, and faculty hired under the Koch affirmative action plan for wingnut economists to be dismissed.
I join Reginald Selkirk in admiring your sense of humour.
Ed Wegman (https://www.desmogblog.com/edward-wegman) is also at GMU but in the Computational Data Sciences not in the Mercatus Center for Deranged Austrian School and Mad Libertarian Economists.
The one good thing I know of to come out of GMU is the free bibliographic management system Zotoro. https://www.zotero.org/
@ 16 archangelospumoni
I remember reading about the attempted takeover of Shimer College. The Heartland connection was hair-raising.
I was amazed and pleased they beat back that scum, well okay, a**hole.
Great, now I have even less motivation to go back to GMU and finish my BS in infotech.
cysyajads mf,
Do you have any evidence Soros is influencing the fillings of faculty positions at the University he founded? Otherwise your comparison is moot.
The Mercatus Center is at George Mason. Whilst supposedly entirely “private financed”, its financiers are known to include entities linked to Kochroach Bros and similar odious nutters.
@ 21 rpjohnston
Well, judging from Wegman and team, they even have problems cutting and pasting from a web page to a word processor so I would at least recommend avoiding that lab for your undergrad research project.
One of the funniest things I read about the Wegman saga was a climate researcher reading the (retracted) research paper reported saying to himself, ” I could not have put that argument better myself…wait a minute”.