My jaw dropped when I saw this item in the St. Petersburg, Florida, Times (via the vigilant folks at Buzzflash.com).
Florida State University has accepted a $1.5 million gift from businessman Charles G. Koch to fund a teaching position in the school’s economics department. But it comes with strings attached: Koch’s representatives get veto power over who will teach the courses funded by Koch’s grant. The school, incredibly, accepted that condition.
According to the newspaper, “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.
Charles G. Koch is well known in political circles as an ultra-conservative billionaire who is a major funder of right-wing causes. He is widely considered to be the primary financial force behind the Tea Party movement.
The newspaper article continues, “David W. Rasmussen, dean of the College of Social Sciences, defended the deal, initiated by an FSU graduate working for Koch. During the first round of hiring in 2009, Koch rejected nearly 60 percent of the faculty’s suggestions but ultimately agreed on two candidates. Although the deal was signed in 2008 with little public controversy, the issue revived last week when two FSU professors — one retired, one active — criticized the contract in the Tallahassee Democrat as an affront to academic freedom. Rasmussen said hiring the two new assistant professors allows him to offer eight additional courses a year. ‘I’m sure some faculty will say this is not exactly consistent with their view of academic freedom,’ he said. ‘But it seems to me it would have been irresponsible not to do it.'”
Personally, I find it amazing that a department chair of a major state university would make such a statement. To put this in proper perspective let me offer you an analogy. Let’s suppose that in the 1980s, Evergreen State College had accepted a $1.5 million grant from the now-defunct USSR to support the teaching of 8 new economics courses with a proviso that the grant was conditioned on Moscow having veto power over the hiring of the faculty chosen to teach the courses. Do you think this would have caused a row among American conservatives? You bet it would have! And, hopefully, among American liberals too.
Well, this is exactly the same thing, in principle. What was Professor or Administrator or Whatever-His-Official-Title-Is Rasmussen thinking when he agreed to this?
The reason I’m posting this here is because this blog is oriented to an academic community and I hope that any academic reading this will contact FSU and have a friendly discussion with anyone down there willing to listen about why it’s a bad idea to let donors who generously offer to fund university chairs dictate to the university who gets hired to fill that position and what they’re allowed to teach.
I know these are tough times for state universities but this is the Mother of Bad Precedents.