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{{DES | des = "At the 2014 annual meeting of the Koch-led group of mega-donors and politicians in Dana Point, California, known as "Freedom Partners", vice president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation Kevin Gentry explicitly stated the link between donations to universities and promoting a political agenda." | show=}}
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The Charles Koch Foundation and the now-defunct Claude R. Lambe Foundation are member organizations of the Koch Family Foundations. Each year, the family's foundations contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to academic institutions. According to the Charles G. Koch Foundation website, "the Foundation primarily supports research and higher education programs that analyze the impact of free societies, in particular how they advance the well-being of mankind."[1]

According to IRS tax filing data compiled by Greenpeace, Charles Koch has given over $68 million to over 300 universities from 2005 to 2013.[2] The Center for Public Integrity calculated that the Kochs spent $19.3 million on 163 colleges and universities in 2013 alone.[3]


Contents
1	How Universities Fit into Charles Koch's Political Strategy
1.1	Structure of Production Theory
1.2	The Link Between Koch University Gifts and Political Ideology
2	Koch University Spending and Academic Freedom
2.1	George Mason University
2.2	Florida State University
2.3	College of Charleston
2.4	Criticism from the American Association of University Professors
3	Contributions from the Charles Koch Foundation to Academic Institutions
3.1	2018[20]
3.2	2017[22]
3.3	2016[23]
3.4	2015[25]
3.5	2014 [26]
3.6	2013[27]
3.7	2012[28]
3.8	2011[29]
3.9	2010[30]
3.10	2009[31]
3.11	2008[32]
3.12	2007[33]
3.13	2006[34]
3.14	2005[35]
3.15	2004[36]
3.16	2003[37]
3.17	2002[38]
3.18	2001[39]
3.19	2000[40]
3.20	1999[41]
3.21	1998[42]
4	Contributions from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation to Academic Institutions
4.1	2009[43]
4.2	2005[44]
4.3	2004[45]
4.4	2003[46]
5	Articles and Resources
5.1	SourceWatch Articles
5.2	References
How Universities Fit into Charles Koch's Political Strategy
Structure of Production Theory
Longtime Koch Industries executive Richard Fink, Charles Koch's top strategist, explains how the universities are the first step in the Koch network's "Structure of Social Change," a process for influencing politics and culture modeled off of Friedrich Hayek's "structure of production:"[4]

"When we apply this model to the realm of ideas and social change, at the higher stages we have the investment in the intellectual raw materials, that is, the exploration and production of abstract concepts and theories. In the public policy arena, these still come primarily (though not exclusively) from the research done by scholars at our universities. At the higher stages in the Structure of Social Change model, ideas are often unintelligible to the layperson and seemingly unrelated to real-world problems. To have consequences, ideas need to be transformed into a more practical or useable form."

"In the middle stages, ideas are applied to a relevant context and molded into needed solutions for real-world problems. This is the work of the think tanks and policy institutions. Without these organizations, theory or abstract thought would have less value and less impact on our society."

"But while the think tanks excel at developing new policy and articulating its benefits, they are less able to implement change. Citizen activist or implementation groups are needed in the final stage to take the policy ideas from the think tanks and translate them into proposals that citizens can understand and act upon. These groups are also able to build diverse coalitions of individual citizens and special interest groups needed to press for the implementation of policy change."[5]

The Link Between Koch University Gifts and Political Ideology
In 1974, in his capacity as president and chairman of the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS), Charles Koch urged the IHS Board of Directors to avoid giving money to universities unless they would help advance business interests:

“[W]e have supported the very institutions from which the attack on free markets emanate. Although much of our support has been involuntary through taxes, we have also contributed voluntarily to colleges and universities on the erroneous assumption that this assistance benefits businesses and the free enterprise system, even though these institutions encourage extreme hostility to American business. We should cease financing our own destruction and follow the counsel of David Packard, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, by supporting only those programs, departments or schools that ‘contribute in some way to our individual companies or to the general welfare of our free enterprise system.[6][7]

At the 2014 annual meeting of the Koch-led group of mega-donors and politicians in Dana Point, California, known as "Freedom Partners", vice president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation Kevin Gentry explicitly stated the link between donations to universities and promoting a political agenda. In a recording of his speech obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, Gentry is heard stating "The [Koch] network is fully integrated, so it’s not just work at the universities with the students, but it’s also building state-based capabilities and election capabilities and integrating this talent pipeline...So you can see how this is useful to each other over time,” he continued. “No one else has this infrastructure. We’re very excited about doing it."[3]

Charles Koch remains chairman of the Institute for Humane Studies, which is located on the Arlington campus of George Mason University and regularly receives six-figure grants from the Charles Koch Foundation, in addition to over $35 million to the George Mason University Foundation.[8][9]

Koch University Spending and Academic Freedom
Individual university faculty members, organizations such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and numerous independent observers have criticized the gifts given by Koch-related entities to universities for the conditions and restrictions they apply for severely limited academic freedom. With multimillion-dollar gifts to universities, administrators and faculty are compelled to hire faculty, shape curricula and organize student activity in a way that supports the Koch political agenda of free-market economics.[3][10]

George Mason University
Koch-related entities have given more funding to George Mason University than any other university, donating over $14.4 million in 2013 alone. Charles Koch has received an honorary degree from George Mason and serves as the Director of the free market research group/think tank the Mercatus Center. The think tank was described as “critical” to advancing policy priorities by Charles Koch Foundation Vice President Ryan Stowers at the 2014 Koch gathering in California.

The Mercatus Center's influence in Congress has been growing in recent years, as it has been cited in the Congressional Record 32 times between 1999 and 2008 compared to 93 times since 2009. In 2015, a Mercatus Center study was cited in House Concurrent Resolution 27 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 11, which stated that the Center “estimates that Obamacare will reduce employment by up to 3 percent, or about 4 million full-time equivalent workers.” Center's Vice President Carrie Conko denied accusations of political bias, asserting “our researchers are interested in understanding what shapes societies and economies and that covers a spectrum of research from the history of economic thought to the application of economics to questions of public policy.” The Mercatus Center spent $3.64 million to “support graduate students at George Mason University” by “training future scholars and decision-makers to advance and apply a research agenda for understanding institutions and change,” according to a tax filing.[3]

In addition to the Mercatus Center, George Mason is home to the Institute for Humane Studies, a libertarian non-profit organization which provides educational and career programs. The Institute for Humane Studies has been described as the Mercatus Center's "sister organization" and describes its mission as "developing a growing supply of opinion leaders who champion the principles of individual liberty and free enterprise." Since 2010, the Institute has received over $10 million from Koch Foundations.[11] The Institute for Humane Studies is currently led by Charles Koch Foundation Vice President and Eastern vice chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, Kevin Gentry.[3]

In 2018, according to The New York Times George Mason University President Angel Cabrera "ordered an inquiry into whether big-money donors are being given undue influence over academic matters after documents were released showing that the Charles Koch Foundation had been given a voice in hiring and firing professors." The order for an investigation came after documents were revealed —as the result of an UnKoch My Campus Freedom of Information Act request— which exposed "problematic gift agreements" according to Cabrera. [12]

Florida State University
In 2011, Florida State University (FSU) professors Ray Bellamy and Kent Miller exposed controversial provisions mandated by the Charles Koch Foundation in exchange for an initial $1.5 million grant to FSU. In an article for AAUP's Academe magazine, Bellamy and Miller revealed that their ultimate fear was how the Koch Foundation could wind up influencing the curriculum in FSU's Economics Department:

From the start, there was a misplaced emphasis in the media, with most of the attention going to the hiring of faculty. We thought the long-range damage would more likely come from the impact on the curriculum, with the Koch Foundation effectively having access to thousands of undergraduate students.

Defenders of the grant tended to concentrate on a limited set of arguments: universities can’t function without outside help; all grants come with strings attached; donors have a right to say how their money is spent; conservative ideas don’t get a fair shake because of the number of liberal professors; no one complains about the influence of liberal funders; intellectual diversity is absent in state universities; the attack on the Kochs is politically driven.

We agree that outside funds are necessary and that donors have a right to specify in general the areas of focus for their gifts and to receive an accounting of how their money is spent—but nothing beyond that. All ideas should be welcomed at a university; the politics of the giver should not be a disqualifying factor. That is the essence of academic freedom. We would hope that any grant from any foundation that had the provisions and restrictions of this one would evoke an identical response from us.[10]

For the New York Times, Stanley Fish called FSU's president at the time, Eric Barron:

"In a telephone conversation with me, FSU President Eric J. Barron (who was not in office when this all went down) explained that while the foundation’s representatives could have exercised a veto, it never came to that. He added that if the new faculty members ever failed to meet the foundation’s expectations and its gift was withdrawn, the university would step in and provide the necessary support. He acknowledged that these arrangements might make people nervous — some administration members expressed reservations in 2008 and changes were made to the contract — but he insisted that, despite press characterizations of the situation, FSU had not sold its soul."[13]

College of Charleston
In return for a donation, the Charles Koch Foundation requested that the College of Charleston supply the Foundation with the names and email addresses of students "preferably not ending in .edu" who had participated in a Koch-sponsored, club, class, reading group or other programs. The stated purpose of this request was to notify students about opportunities at the Charles Koch Foundation and the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. In addition, the Charles Koch Foundation requested prior consent from the College of Charleston before speaking to the media about the Koch-funded programs.[3]



Criticism from the American Association of University Professors
Embellishing the controversy at FSU, Inside Higher Ed reporter Dan Berrett examined Charles Koch Foundation "Memorandums of Understanding" signed with West Virginia University, Utah State University, and Clemson University, as well as detailing Koch's long history at George Mason University. Berrett's research indicated the similarities between arrangement at schools receiving over $1 million in grants from the Koch Foundation, and quoted AAUP's former president Cary Nelson to detail the concern that Koch's intentions are at odds with academic freedom:[14]

"Many of the donor agreements — to the extent that the institutions made them available — included consistent, if not identical, language regarding the goals and objectives of the grant. The money paid for the hiring of new faculty members and the expansion of centers with a mission to study capitalism and free enterprise. The goals and objectives of these grants were to support 'research into the causes, measurements, impact and appreciation of economic freedom,' with faculty hired with this money expected to advance 'the understanding and practice of those free voluntary processes and principles that promote social progress, human well-being, individual freedom, opportunity and prosperity based on the rule of law, constitutional government, private property and the laws, regulations, organizations, institutions and social norms upon which they rely.'

"To Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors and Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, such language violates academic freedom and poses problems because of its unspoken agenda.

"Although the Koch Foundation’s objectives are written so as to sound upbeat and cheerful, they amount to code words calling for the dismantling of the welfare state,' Nelson wrote in an e-mail. ' "Economic freedom," sounds like mom and apple pie until you realize it means the government shouldn’t collect taxes, and "free voluntary processes" means buy health care on your own if you can afford it.

"It is wholly inappropriate for an outside foundation to use a university to promote its ideological biases in this way,' he continued. 'The Kochs can fund positions to hire faculty members who study these issues, but not control what stand the faculty members hired [to] take on them. That distinction is part of the firewall protecting academic freedom.' "

Greenpeace posted analyses of Koch contracts with Florida State University, West Virginia University, Clemson University and Utah State University, using source documents to highlight provisions that AAUP and other academics have flagged for violating academic freedom and affording too much control to the Charles Koch Foundation. In the case of Florida State, FSU Economics PhD student Matt Brown was working for the Charles Koch Foundation, with a 3-year salary totaling $549,931 as he helped the Koch Foundation negotiate its first contract with the FSU Economics Department.[15]

In response to criticism by university professors and student activists on Koch-funded campuses across the United States, the Charles Koch Foundation posted a statement on academic freedom on it's website.[16]

In 2015, Illinois State University professor and AAUP Committee A member John K. Wilson noted how FSU's amended contract — which removed the explicit provisions giving the Koch Foundation some level of control over professor hiring--still left room for Koch to influence who would be hired with their grants:

"Making funding for faculty positions contingent upon approval is a threat to academic freedom because it means that a department knows it will benefit by picking certain faculty.

"This is highly unusual in academia: in general, a donor gives money to support a particular department, chair, or program. Then the department chooses the faculty. Florida State’s practice of donors holding their money hostage until the faculty they like are hired is a threat to academic freedom. It creates a financial incentive for departments to hire based on ideology."[17]

A lawsuit against Kansas University (KU) by KU professor Art Hall, a former Koch Industries lobbyist, blocked a student open records request aimed at revealing the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation contract with KU.[18] This case sparked a national dialog about updating the definitions and limitations of academic freedom, with the Kansas chapter of AAUP supporting student inquiry on whether or not Art Hall is advancing Koch's political interests out of his KU office.[19]
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