$5 million to Chapman University from billionaire Charles Koch sparks an uproar
(OC Register)

     A Nobel laureate decries the “hate speech.” The university president accuses faculty critics of seeking to stifle academic freedom. Professors tar each other as “disingenuous,” spreading “baseless lies and accusations.”
     The normally tranquil Orange County campus of Chapman University is in the throes of a bitter controversy — all due to a $5 million donation from the Charles Koch Foundation.
     The gift from the conservative billionaire helps fund a program in “Humanomics,” which the university defines as “reintegrating the study of the humanities and economics.”
     The question at hand: Are political strings attached to the money?
     “No other donor would be allowed to pre-select professors based on their ideology,” said Tom Zoellner, an English professor. “Appointments were hustled through without due process or necessary transparency.”
     Last fall, the English department voted to reject two candidates for tenured professorships partly funded by the Koch donation. The two literature scholars were later hired by the business school for the interdisciplinary program, but only after the head of an economics hiring committee resigned in protest, citing “a lack of objectivity.”
. . .
     Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, the Kansas-based oil and chemicals conglomerate, and his brother David are ranked by Forbes as the 8th richest people in the world, with a net worth of $60 billion each.
     The brothers are best known for spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect conservative Republicans to public office, and to dispute the impact of fossil fuels on the global climate.
. . .
     Protests have erupted over Koch donations at public universities such as Florida State, Montana State, Arizona State, George Mason University, the University of Utah, the University of Kentucky, the University of Kansas, the University of Arizona, and Western Carolina University.
     But private institutions are also vulnerable to government funding cuts and eager for Koch support. Faculty and students at Wellesley College, Wake Forest University and Catholic University have pushed back against the foundation’s gifts, claiming it seeks to exercise ideological influence on faculty hiring.
. . .
     In April, a student lawsuit forced the disclosure of confidential agreements between the foundation and Virginia’s George Mason, the recipient of some $50 million in Koch gifts. The documents show Koch officials exercised a say in the hiring and performance reviews of the professors who benefited from the donations.
. . .
     The money, disbursed over five years, will help pay to hire 11 professors, five post-doctoral fellows, visiting academics and conferences. They are to include scholars in economics, politics, philosophy and literature.
. . .
     And not all the hiring for the Smith Institute has been rocky. The philosophy department, without incident, brought on Bas van der Vossen from the University of North Carolina, a specialist in political philosophy and ethics, and co-author of the 2017 “Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism.”
     “I hold libertarian ideas,” van der Vossen wrote in a Panther op-ed. “I believe that market economies generally make people better off, rich and poor. But… I am a philosopher first, and a philosopher’s job is to seek the truth, following the arguments wherever they might lead.”
     Students seem divided over whether the Koch donation matters....