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Saturday, July 30th, 2016

Koch’s Latest Propaganda Disaster: Another Academic Sell-Out Sets Off Controversy With Remarks

Author:     Alex Kotch
Source:     Alternet
Publication Date:     July 28, 2016
 Link: Koch’s Latest Propaganda Disaster: Another Academic Sell-Out Sets Off Controversy With Remarks
Stephan:   The Kochs use their money to buy a world that serves their interests. That's ethically shabby but not surprising. They are but the latest generation of a type. They have a lot of money so in the post Citizens United world they can spend a lot to achieve their political ends. And there is no limit as to what they can spend in academia.  For me the moral turpitude is not so much that ethically challenged rich people try to buy influence, but that so many institutions and individuals in our culture seem all too happy to sell themselves. Western universities with interdisciplinary faculties and great libraries trace to the Alexandrian Mouseion begun by the Ptolemy I (311-283 BCE)  and part of the collegium function was to both encourage the arts, sciences, and philosophies in a non-political way, and to protect individuals from influence. They did this in two ways, by according them a stipend that would allow them a decent living, and by the institution protecting them from being bullied or seduced. This report gives a good assessment of what the Koch's are doing.

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Credit:radio.foxnews.com

Credit:radio.foxnews.com

Yet another controversy is boiling at a Charles Koch-funded university project to promote an extreme economic agenda, this time at Troy University in Alabama. The libertarian billionaire, who is known for his powerful, conservative political donor network, has led a movement to create academic centers on college and university campuses that promote his brand of tax-slashing, regulation-killing economics, benefiting his massive industrial corporation’s bottom line.

Since 1980, the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) has granted $200 million to hundreds of colleges and universities, often to establish free-market academic centers and in other cases funding professors, doctoral students and free-market courses within established programs. From 2005 to 2014, Koch family foundations, led by CKF, donated nearly $108 million to 366 colleges and universities, as Facing South reported.

With a large grant in 2010, CKF helped establish Troy University’s Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy, an on-campus think tank that advocates right-wing extremist versions of smaller government, lower taxes, decreased regulation and privatization, designed to aid big business. George Crowley, on faculty at the Johnson Center, spoke at an annual […]

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