Koch Foundation boosts university donations
McLEAN, Va. — The conservative Charles Koch Foundation is dramatically increasing its donations to colleges and universities at a time when its philanthropy is facing increasing scrutiny, according to tax records.
The foundation gave nearly $49 million to more than 250 colleges across the U.S. in 2016, according to an Associated Press review of the foundation’s most recent tax records. That’s a 47 percent increase over 2015.
John Hardin, director of university relations for the foundation, said the increases stem from the fact that the foundation’s philanthropy is becoming more well known and professors are increasingly approaching them with proposals. He also said the foundation’s relationship with schools has deepened to where some schools that might have received only a few thousand dollars five years ago now receive hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
“We’ve had the opportunity with more and more folks hearing about us to have more and more scholars coming to us,” Hardin said, with proposals for study not just in economics but also in criminal justice and free expression.
The foundation, though, is finding its philanthropy receiving an increasingly skeptical reception at campuses across the country.
A scandal erupted last month at ground zero for the Koch Foundation’s philanthropy — George Mason University, Virginia’s largest college.
While the foundation gives money to colleges across the country, no university is a bigger beneficiary than Mason. Of the $49 million donated to colleges in 2016, Mason and its affiliated Institute for Humane Studies received more than $19 million of it.
For years, University President Angel Cabrera and other school administrators had brushed aside concerns from student activists that the money compromised academic independence at the school, which has developed a reputation as a conservative powerhouse in law and economics.
On April 27, Cabrera sent a “Dear Colleague” note to Mason faculty saying he had recently become aware that some agreements between the foundation and the school’s Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank, “fall short of the standards of academic independence I expect any gift to meet.”
Specifically, the agreements gave the foundation a say in the hiring and firing of some professors.
Mason’s links to the foundation stretch back decades and had largely escaped scrutiny until 2016, when it renamed its law school for conservative jurist Antonin Scalia in conjunction with a $10 million Koch Foundation gift.
Mason is just one among many campuses that are scrutinizing Koch money. Ralph Wilson, research director for unKoch My Campus, said the Koch Foundation’s philanthropy in higher education “has grown exponentially” over the years. But he said more and more campuses are questioning the funding, and that the revelations about the Mason grant agreements are fueling those concerns.