One Idea to Rule Them All by MIchelle Stiles

Author:MIchelle Stiles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIchelle Stiles
Published: 2022-11-29T19:14:36+00:00

The intermediaries are jointly created by several foundations and function as centralized coordinating agencies that operate as instruments of control by claiming supreme authority in a field despite being staffed in many cases without representation by rank and file experts in the field.

Money is rarely distributed without strings. The foundations favor their own pet projects, programs, and personnel in addition to supplying detailed operational budgets to the extent that, in some cases, the only thing supplied by the participating institution is their name and prestige, functioning more like a department of the foundation than a separate entity.

Grants were given to certain select universities more frequently than others leading to even further consolidation of intellectual capital. Columbia, The University of Chicago, Stanford University, and The University of North Carolina were several of the highly funded institutions at the time of the Reece Committee.

The demand for empirical research as evidence of academic achievement eventually became another control point of the foundation gravy train. “Publish or perish” became a precondition for advancement on the academic ladder of success. Research requires funding, and professors wanting to move up the ladder would need to toe the line of idea orthodoxy. Those ideas that are nonconformist, unconventional or simply do not comport with the dominant ideology espoused by the foundation trustees would be left to wither on the vine, having little reach or power to influence.

Much of what is called “truth” today is supported by “research.” The “research” says . . . is the essence of supposed objectivity and the backbone of a superior argument leaving the fellow without research in the dust. The logic is as follows: All worthy ideas get funding for research; your ideas have no supporting research; therefore, your ideas are inferior.

As you can easily see, all ideas do not have equal opportunity to advance if the control lever of funding is biased. With this scheme in place, entire intellectual flotillas of specialized science could be created and used to commandeer social policy, legislation, and judicial rulings by directing the money spigots flowing into academia.

The Reece committee was able to ascertain the dangers stemming from a virtual idea syndicate. Their tragically muted warning cries out to us today from the dustbins of history. The Foundation’s chokehold on the marketplace of ideas has remained hidden and unchallenged; they alone will give birth to the ideas Americans embrace; the grant-writing “losers” can lick their wounds and go home.

Foundation control of monies to academia can be thought of as a chokehold on the seedbed or ideological germination centers targeting idea creators and their livelihood. In this next section, I’ll describe the use of front groups as a means to influence or capture the flow of ideas targeted directly at Joe consumer or Joe citizen.

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