Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War by Ralph Wilson & Isaac Kamola

Author:Ralph Wilson & Isaac Kamola [Wilson, Ralph & Kamola, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780745343013
Goodreads: 57550104
Publisher: Pluto Press
Published: 2021-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

THE REPUBLIC OF SCIENCE

David Koch once described his philanthropic efforts this way: “[i]f we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding. We do exert that kind of control.”115 The same leverage exists within Koch’s academic philanthropy, deployed with calculating efficiency to create a network of academics willing and able to feed into the broader political and ideological apparatus. As with tobacco and climate denial, the aim is not to push a single doctrinaire point but rather to seed a debate where none previously existed. In effect, Koch investments are not merely purchasing a particular piece of writing or buying a specific class (although this sometimes happens). Rather, they are creating a whole academic ecosystem in which donor-preferred ideas can thrive. This ecosystem includes its own journals, conferences, professional organizations, and academic centers.

Publicly, operatives within the Koch donor network justify their academic philanthropy through the metaphor of expanding the marketplace of ideas. Privately, they fully acknowledge the relationship between the funding of academic centers and the political outcomes these investments will yield. For example, before introducing several of the previously profiled professors at the 2016 APEE conference, the Koch Foundation’s Brennan Brown extolled each of them as an “intellectual entrepreneur” who engages students in “meaningful conversations about a marketplace of ideas, a diversity of thought.”116 Implicit in this claim, however, is the assumption that a marketplace of ideas functions as an idealized libertarian free market—in which individuals enjoy full liberty and autonomy (to say what they want), where money is speech, corporations are people, and all regulations are oppressive.

In a 2015 interview, Charles Koch laid out this particular understanding of the marketplace of ideas using Michael Polanyi’s concept of the “Republic of Science,” which draws a direct equivalence between the production of knowledge and the invisible hand of the market. Polanyi suggests that “self-coordinated initiatives” are the “most efficient” way to organize science, and as such, he envisions a capitalist utopia in which autonomous scientists produce knowledge, using funding from “private sources,” to push knowledge forward.117

Asked whether he funds libertarian scholarship for his own benefit, Koch said no, contending instead that “[w]hat I want to see is the marketplace of ideas” where there is “no perfect balance, and how would you know what the perfect balance is? … [L]et people figure this out on their own.” When asked what guides his campus investments, Koch expressed a desire to see “every university apply a Republic of Science” and said “let us be open to all different ideas.” However, he expressed fear that universities do not teach the full spectrum, “[a]nytime students shout down a speaker … And ‘safe zones’ to express your opinion? That’s the opposite of the Republic of Science.”118

Lofty Republic of Science language aside, Koch’s public claim that his massive private (and donor-directed) spending on academic centers is simply a selfless attempt to create a free marketplace of ideas is obviously misleading.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.