The Koch brothers, aka the Dave n’ Charlie Show, have gotten some fairly negative publicity regarding a large number of donations they have either made or leveraged to George Mason University in Northern Virginia. A recent article in the New York Times by Erica Green and Stephanie Saul quotes Bethany Letiecq, an associate professor at George Mason and president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, as saying that the school had “ceded our authority and autonomy to one of the wealthiest industrialists in the world.” In addition to the Kochs, it appears that officials from the Federalist Society, after giving George Mason a gift of some $20 million, had the temerity to suggest a student for admission to the university’s law school.
Well, I’m sure that’s never happened at Harvard, except in the case of White House dude Jared Kushner. Back in 2006, author Daniel Golden wrote, in his book The Price of Admission, about how some of us are more equal than others, and how Jared’s dad gave Harvard $2.5 million the same year his son was admitted. In a recent article, “The Story Behind Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance into Harvard”, Golden explains how the Cambridge Colossus trolls for donations in a way that, I suspect, never occurred to the simple souls down in Virginia.
But beating up on Harvard, however meritorious in and of itself, has taken me a bit off course. The real purpose of today’s post is this: why should the Kochs beat around the bush? Why can’t they create their own university, lock, stock, and two smokin’ barrels?
Admittedly, “Koch U.” is just not going to cut it. But what’s in a name? Why not buy a couple thousand acres of attractive West Coast real estate and create a first-rate university out of nothing—nothing but a couple billion of Koch Bro cash? The simple fact is, the good old USA needs another first-rate university—in fact, it needs a couple. Schools like Stanford and, yes, Harvard all admit that they turn away thousands of absolutely top-flight students. So why not create another absolutely top-flight school for those students to attend?
Okay, this won’t be easy, but the good things never are. Just announce that this is going to be absolutely top-flight university with absolutely no political correctness. Announce the obvious, that neo-Marxian, neo-Foucaultian fol-de-rol has run riot and made its masterpiece throughout higher education in the United States and that there is no reason for such nonsense to be tolerated in a new university.
Instead, announce that there will be limits to acceptable thought in Koch U., ranging (I guess) from some sort of neo-Thomism (if it’s not too medieval) to Ayn Randian rowdiness, as long as the primacy of free markets, in both thought and commerce, are recognized. Now, this will of course outrage everyone, but in my opinion, enough cash and enough elegant, wood-paneled offices for the faculty, plus tuition set at less than half the competition, will solve everything. Plenty of “conservatives” will be happy to escape to Koch U., along with, I suspect, plenty of “hard” scientists who really don’t give a damn about anything but their hard science, but will jump at the chance to escape from quotas.
Because there won’t be any quotas at Koch U. If the incoming class consists of 4,000 Chinese guys whose favorite sport is badminton, well, then that’s the freshman class. Deal with it. And the same goes for the faculty as well.
A “dramatic”, ocean-front setting, plus gobs of high-end architecture, will be necessary to give the operation the necessary prestige, and attract the necessary high-end folks, both as professors and students, but, because Koch U. would be a brand new, built fresh from the ground up operation, Koch U. could take advantage of all the accoutrements of the digital age to offer a wide range of learning experiences that, with sufficient “rigor”, would command respect throughout both academia and the private sector, while making first-class learning experiences available to a far wider population than is currently the case.
Private enterprise is already playing this game, of course, gobbling up academic stars in artificial intelligence and other hot fields with abandon. And the various think tanks in Washington DC and around the country aspired to create an alternative intellectual universe of sorts close to fifty years ago.
But the think tanks are too closely tied to policy, and don’t have the kind of endowment necessary to provide real freedom. The right-wing outfits in particular have ended up as Republican Party auxiliaries rather than incubators of enlightenment. Koch U. wouldn’t have that problem. The idea would be to spend whatever was necessary to create a prestigious, “non progressive” faculty, provide them with an endowment that would guarantee them their future independence from anyone, including the Kochs, endowing Koch U. with “cruising speed”, and then just let the whole thing evolve of its own accord.
What’s the likelihood that the Koch’s will do this? Not a lot, I would guess. The Kochs spend millions, but a university—a full university—would cost billions, and the infighting surrounding such a bonanza would be intense. And, most of the time, I haven’t really been a Koch guy, noting that they shrieked bloody murder when President Obama spent billions on health care for the poor, but rejoiced when President Trump blew up the budget to give tax cuts to the rich. After eight years of “Kenyan socialism”, each Koch has doubled his wealth, from $20 to $40 billion. Instead of spending millions to add to their billions, why don’t the Koch’s kick in a billion or two to create a living monument to free thought?
