Universities getting Koch cash for libertarian economics

Last summer, a top lieutenant of Charles and David Koch’s vast network of philanthropic institutions, laid bare the billionaire brothers’ strategy to evangelize their gospel of economic freedom.

Political success, Kevin Gentry told a crowd of elite supporters attending the annual Koch confab in Dana Point, California, begins with reaching young minds in college lecture halls, thereby preparing bright, libertarian-leaning students to one day occupy the halls of political power. 

“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,” he said.

“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.”

It is no secret that the Kochs’ network has invested hundreds of millions of hard-to-track dollars in conservative political nonprofits that influence elections. The brothers, who earned their billions leading private oil, chemical and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries Inc., were dominant forces in recent election cycles. They’re now poised to rank among the most influential Americans shaping next year’s presidential and congressional vote.

Much less well known: their activities on college campuses.

The Kochs are among many wealthy political patrons who give money to education, including conservative Robert McNair, independent Michael Bloomberg and liberal billionaire financier George Soros. (The Center for Public Integrity receives funding from the Open Society Foundations, which Soros funds. A complete list of Center for Public Integrity funders is found here.)

The Kochs’ giving, however, has a laser-like focus on a specific, politically relevant discipline — free market economics — unmatched by other political mega-donors. Koch officials routinely cultivate relationships with professors and deans and fund specific courses of economic study pitched by them. 

At the College of Charleston in South Carolina, for example, documents show the foundation wanted more than just academic excellence for its money. It wanted information about students it could potentially use for its own benefit — and influence over information officials at the public university disseminated about the Charles Koch Foundation.

It sought, for one, the names and email addresses — “preferably not ending in .edu” — of any student who participated in a Koch-sponsored class, reading group, club or fellowship. The stated purpose: “to notify students of opportunities” through both the Charles Koch Foundation and the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University.

And the foundation certainly did not want the College of Charleston to speak to news reporters about its Koch-funded programs without prior consent from the Charles Koch Foundation.

Rasmussen, who routinely pursues private funding on behalf of his department, declined interview requests from the Center for Public Integrity, as did Guilford.

Florida State University spokesman Dennis Schnittker described the email exchanges as “friendly correspondence between individuals,” adding that collegial communications are a valuable part of school culture.

“Most university presidents would tell you before you can fundraise, you have to ‘friend raise,’” Schnittker said.

Today, the Kochs’ friendship with Florida State University appears stronger than ever.

An email written in September 2014 by Jesse Colvin, Florida State University’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy development director, indicates the Charles Koch Foundation is committed to funding the work of economic department doctoral students “during 2015-2016 and in subsequent years.”

A series of other meetings and conversations between Hardin, from the Charles Koch Foundation, and Florida State University officials followed, documents indicate.

In November 2014, Florida State University officials huddled in the office of newly installed university President John Thrasher for a meeting entitled “Koch briefing.” Schnittker, the university spokesman, said the meeting was an “opportunity for our new president to be briefed by university staff about a gift agreement that obviously preceded his tenure.” Hardin of the Charles Koch Foundation was not present, Schnittker said.

Nowhere is expanded Koch involvement in higher education more evident than at George Mason University, which receives more funding from the Kochs than any other school.

The large, diverse public school in northern Virginia, about 20 miles from the White House, today houses and lends its name to what’s effectively Charles Koch’s personal academic workshop. The Charles Koch Foundation in 2013 donated more than $14.4 million to George Mason University and the research centers it hosts. That’s on top of tens of millions in Koch dollars that George Mason University and the affiliated research centers have collectively received in recent years.

Charles Koch himself is a George Mason University fixture. He’s the recipient of an honorary doctorate in science from the university, which boasts a student population of more than 33,700. He is a director of the university-based Mercatus Center — Mercatus means “market” in Latin — that Charles Koch Foundation Vice President Ryan Stowers described at the 2014 Koch gathering in California as “critical” to advancing policy priorities.

Koch also enjoys the company of several current and former George Mason University affiliates who play multiple roles across the Koch brothers’ sprawling educational, corporate and political network.

Chief among them is Gentry, who presided over the Koch’s closed-door higher education workshop last year.

Gentry possesses unique knowledge about the interconnectivity of the Koch’s various interests and operations because he embodies its reach. He’s a Charles Koch Foundation vice president and a key fundraiser for the Kochs’ political action arm. He’s a former vice president of both the Mercatus Center and the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. And today, he’s even Eastern vice chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia.

Brian Hooks, now president of the Charles Koch Foundation, is another key Koch network player.

Congress is also paying more attention to the Mercatus Center, which from 1999 to 2008 was mentioned by name 32 times in either the Congressional Record or congressional committee reports. Since 2009, it’s been mentioned 93 times, often in reference to Mercatus Center faculty who were testifying before Congress.

This year, Congress even cited Mercatus Center research in the text of budget bills. House Concurrent Resolution 27 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 11 note that a Mercatus Center study “estimates that Obamacare will reduce employment by up to 3 percent, or about 4 million full-time equivalent workers.”

Mercatus Center Vice President Carrie Conko, while declining to address critics’ “ad hominem attacks” of Charles Koch, stressed the institution’s work is the product of hard work and high standards — not the whims of some patron puppet master.

“As a university research center, our scholarship is independent and subjected to rigorous peer review,” Conko said. “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.”

Conko also noted that the Mercatus Center abides by a strong conflict of interest and research independence policy, which she described as “stronger than those of most found with typical academic centers or departments.”

Mercatus Center officials note that the center isn’t part of George Mason University the same way as, say, its chemistry or psychology departments. Instead, it’s organized as a stand-alone nonprofit, and as such, George Mason University isn’t directly responsible for it.

The Mercatus Center doesn’t receive direct funding from George Mason University, Conko said.

But George Mason University and its students do receive millions of dollars in annual financial benefit from the Mercatus Center, according to federal tax filings.

That alone is a major incentive for a public university in Virginia, where state funding of higher education is dwindling, to host a privately funded operation on its campus — today, a fairly common practice among public schools.

The Mercatus Center spent $3.64 million during that time 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.

The Mercatus Center helped fund $1.82 million worth of communication efforts that included promoting its research and ideas “to the media and opinion shapers.”

And it made a $10,000 grant to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which operates a “global network of more than 400 free market organizations.” They include several Koch-backed nonprofit groups such as Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Tax Reform.

The Mason-Mercatus-Koch nexus may seem like rich fodder for a Democrat such as Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, whose national party brethren makes demonizing the Koch brothers a central strategy of their electoral and fundraising agenda.

McAuliffe’s own political committee, Common Good VA, bashed  the “ultra right wing Koch Brothers” in an email earlier this month, accusing them of working against “expanding health care for all” and “ensuring a living wage.”

But McAuliffe — the outspoken former chairman of both the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign — declined Center for Public Integrity requests to discuss George Mason University’s relationship with the Koch brothers.

George Mason University’s top undergraduate leader, Student Body President Khushboo Bhatia, also declined comment. 

University spokesman Michael Sandler explained that George Mason is among the nation’s most diverse campuses, and “this notion of diversity and inclusion that is so central to our mission applies to our donors, as well.”

Sandler said the university appreciates the Charles Koch Foundation’s donations, as well as those from thousands of other donors.

“While we are grateful for all of the gifts we receive, we value academic freedom above all else,” Sandler said. “This freedom allows our faculty and researchers to ask questions and make discoveries that others wouldn’t otherwise pursue, and we will not compromise that freedom for anything or anyone.”

Jennifer Victor, a George Mason University politics professor who specializes in how individuals and groups influence government, is skeptical.

George Mason University’s marriage to an ideologically motivated donor with a policy agenda to achieve “raises some eyebrows,” Victor said. “I don’t really see what Mason gets from them, and I don’t think the situation is healthy or consistent with the university’s teaching mission.”

Some college officials such as Sandler are willing to discuss the financial support their schools receive from Koch-run private foundations, with many emphasizing that gifts from donors, whether liberal or conservative, don’t affect coursework or the manner in which students learn. They also note that their schools receive hundreds, and sometimes thousands of contributions each year from individuals, private foundations and the like.

But it’s not uncommon for other school officials to button up.

Take Victor Nakas, a spokesman for The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Posed a series of questions about the $215,000 the university received in 2013 from the Charles Koch Foundation, he emailed a pair of dated press releases announcing grants.

“We will be unable to provide you with more than links to these announcements,” he said.

Follow-up messages went unreturned.

Michael Schoenfeld, the vice president for public affairs and government relations at Duke University, declined to say how the school used the $37,000 it recently received from the Charles Koch Foundation.

“As a rule, we do not comment on individual donors or contributions without the donor’s permission,” he explained.

Officials at Oklahoma State University likewise offered no details about how the school used the $69,000 the Charles Koch Foundation recently gave it.

Why the silence?

An email exchange between two Florida State University officials, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, offers a measure of explanation.

In it, the officials indicate deep concern about the potential effects of releasing more information about the school’s moneyed donors in response to activist demands.

“[R]equiring donors to disclose more than they already do will likely result in fewer gifts and smaller gifts, and it will impose an additional administrative hurdle for the university,” wrote Thomas W. Jennings, vice president for university advancement, to David Coburn, Florida State University chief of staff.

Revealing donor gift agreements, even for donors who have not requested anonymity, might “have a negative effect on FSU’s relationships with many of its donors, who don’t want that kind of attention,” Jennings continued.

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill received $115,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2013, one of nearly 100 schools that year to receive a five-figure contribution from a Koch foundation.

But that’s information not easily accessed by students. Whether by design, happenstance or ignorance, “most individuals don’t know where any of the university’s funds come from,” University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Student Body President Houston Summers said.

University spokesman Jim Gregory confirmed the school received $110,000 for the Charles Koch Visiting Scholars Program in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program, conducted in collaboration with Duke University. Donors are allowed to remain anonymous, if they choose.

However, some universities are facing blowback over scant information about school donors from increasingly organized anti-Koch groups and activists.

The umbrella group UnKoch My Campus, for one, has staged protests, demanded meetings with administrators and launched chapters at George Mason University and Florida State University, among others. The organization accuses the Kochs and their allies of undermining issues many students care about, such as environmental protection, workers’ rights, healthcare expansion and public education.

Its immediate goal, beyond convincing colleges to de-Koch themselves?

“Transparency, because students should have the capability to be more aware of who’s funding their school and their education, and where funding might conflict with student interests,” said Kalin Jordan, an UnKoch My Campus organizer. “The universities — most don’t do a good job of informing students at all.”

Said Colin Nackerman, a student activist at George Mason University: “You should know, if you’re going into a classroom, that $30 million is going into your school from someone who wants you to think a certain way.”

Largely silent in the past, the Charles Koch Foundation has begun to push back at such dissenters.

“They don’t want students and scholars to expand their educational horizons,” Hardin, the foundation’s university relations director, wrote in a May 26 Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Rather than engage in a vigorous and civil debate about the merits of different ideas, they seek to prevent those with which they disagree from ever being heard.”

Unlike the Kochs, Soros and many other prominent political donors, both left and right of center, have charitable agendas that largely diverge from their domestic political agendas.

Robert McNair, the Houston Texans owner who this year alone has spread $3 million among five super PACs backing several Republican presidential candidates, used his private foundation to give millions of dollars to various medical schools and a scholarship program for doctors performing research in areas such as breast cancer, juvenile diabetes and neuroscience.

Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, two other top-shelf Republican donors whom 2016 presidential candidates have endlessly wooed, directed almost all of their university-related private foundation funding — millions of it in 2013 — to medical research.

A private foundation co-run by former World Wrestling Entertainment honcho Linda McMahon, a major GOP donor who herself twice unsuccessfully ran self-funded U.S. Senate campaigns, gave its most sizable, six-figure contributions to substance abuse help group Liberation Programs.

Then there’s one late Republican superdonor whose philanthropy has been at war with his political giving: Harold Simmons.

The Texas businessman bankrolled his eponymous foundation, but his liberal daughters run it. In doing so, they saw to it that Planned Parenthood — the ultimate Republican scourge of late — received more than $300,000 of his money during 2013. It’s also given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Public Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based money-in-politics reform group also supported in 2013 with $300,000 from a private foundation led by liberal hedge fund manager Jonathan Soros, son of George Soros.

Money the Harold Simmons Foundation did give to colleges in 2013 mostly went toward infrastructure and general operating expenses.

While more schools than ever are engaging with Koch foundations, at least one school — the University of Dayton in Ohio — has seemingly soured on Koch cash, which it has previously accepted in five-figure amounts.

Jay Riestenberg, a research analyst at campaign reform advocacy group Common Cause and University of Dayton alumnus, earlier this year emailed the school’s Interim Provost Paul H. Benson, asking him if the University of Dayton is still funded by, or seeking new funding from Koch foundations.

Attached was an op-ed Riestenberg has written for the school’s student newspaper. In it, he explains that his education at the small Catholic school inspired him to care about other people, protect the environment and fight for social justice.

“UD accepting Koch funding is in clear violation of the institution’s Catholic Marianist values,” Riestenberg wrote in the April 28 email.

Benson replied later that night. His answer: The University of Dayton no longer accepts Koch cash, and it will not in the future — despite the efforts of Koch-backed organizations.

“There have been instances in which other foundations who are funded in part by the Koch Brothers have tried to interest us in establishing centers at UD,” Benson wrote Riestenberg. “We have not supported those proposals, precisely for the reasons you cite.”

Benson declined an interview request by the Center for Public Integrity.

In a statement, University of Dayton spokeswoman Cilla Shindell explained that the school did reject a recent proposal from a “foundation that is in part funded by the Koch family” because it “would have been structured in a way that would limit oversight by the university in such areas as curriculum and faculty hiring.”

She did not name the foundation. 

This story is from the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative media organization in Washington, D.C. Read more of its investigations on the influence of money in politics or follow it on Twitter.