‘UnKoch’ Attacks Academic Freedom The group aims to block donations from the foundation they dread, but the gifts enable free inquiry. By Daniele Struppa
https://www.wsj.com/articles/unkoch-attacks-academic-freedom-1526841292
Mr. Struppa is president of Chapman University.
There has been a lot of hand-wringing lately, throughout the academy and in the news, about donations the Charles Koch Foundation has been making to universities. In the heat of the debate, many details of these donations have been described inaccurately or distorted purposefully. But after the allegations, irate commentaries and internal academic battles, the actual outcome of opposition to these gifts is to limit the academic freedom the protesters claim to champion.
I am president of Chapman University, a midsize private institution in Southern California. We recently received a $15 million grant to establish an institute dedicated to challenging the perceived tension between economics and the humanities, reintegrating their study in the spirit of Adam Smith. The institute is the brainchild of my distinguished colleague Vernon Smith, a Nobel laureate in economics, and his collaborators. Appropriately enough, the institute is called the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy, where “Smith” refers to both Adam and Vernon.
The institute is doing exciting and innovative work, offering a curriculum that infuses the humanities with desperately needed energy. I was thrilled to see the enthusiasm among students taking courses developed by the institute.
Yet the Smith curriculum and the faculty who devise it have come under attack because one-third of the $15 million gift came from the Koch Foundation. The criticism, led by the “UnKoch My Campus” organization, takes a familiar tone: The Koch brothers are trying to infiltrate the university so they can dictate curricula and research priorities. Ultimately, the critics’ complaint is that the gift is a challenge to academic freedom.
But here’s the paradox. The UnKoch people and their allies want universities to decline Koch money, and in so demanding they are asking administrators to curtail the academic freedom of faculty like Vernon Smith and his co-workers.
As president, I am being asked to turn down donations from the dreaded Koch brothers, even when, as in this case, the proposal for funding was inspired, developed and fully fleshed out by my faculty, in the most important exercise of their own academic freedom. The demand that research funding be declined because of its origin poses a grave threat to academic freedom. CONTINUE AT SITE
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