The creation of a new fund to support the study of entrepreneurship, free market capitalism, individual liberty and limited government at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has sparked controversy at the midwestern campus. Some Illinois faculty are concerned the creation of the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government represents an end-run around faculty governance to advance a right-wing ideological agenda. As Inside Higher Education reports, some faculty see the Academy as
a move by conservative alumni with influential national support to bypass normal faculty governance, create new courses and impose ideological tests on who gets certain pots of money. The alumni who have given the money for the effort, currently housed at the university’s foundation, are explicit that they want a formal role in who gets money from the fund, the views those people should have, and the eventual goal of creating a new version of the Hoover Institution at a top public university, with the ambition of inspiring others to follow their model.
As a result of those statements and other concerns, professors at the university are debating whether the new academy is appropriate for the university. Some like the program, others think it could work with certain oversight provisions, and others find the entire idea questionable.
The Academy officially launched this past week with a half-day conference featuring Steve Forbes and UIUC alum Robert Novak. For more on the controversy, see here, here, and here.
I say the agendas of the right wing are always crashing down on faculty, but some how the agendas of the left wing always strike.
As a bastion of PC, it's no wonder they live in fear of radical ideas like free speech, diversity of ideas, and free trade.
I can't imagine the school has drifted too much rightward from my undergrad days in the early 70's, where my Econ 101 teacher started the first lecture by proclaiming Socialism as a virtue, making jokes about the ineptitude of the Chicago School, and using a pulp expose of David Rockefeller's lifestyle as a textbook.
They lost me when they made Stanley Fish dean of the Chicago campus.
Of course, the liberals in charge of "normal faculty governance" would never do that ....
In fact, this move reminds me a great deal of EV's HLR article on slippery slopes.
Lastly, I do have a genuine question. What does U of I chancellor mean when he says he will have "final approval" of the use of the fund, and how can that be reconciled with the donors' rather explicit condition that they can dictate what the fund is used for. Does mean that both can veto each other? If so, isn't the double-veto going to mean that the fund is not going to be used at all, or it is going to be used exclusively for conservative purposes?
No need. 99.9% of colleges and universities already have one.
It's called tenure.
Doesn't the University of Chicago already fulfill the quota for right-of-center academics at major universities in the Midwest?
Conservatives are so complain-y. There's already Hoover &Claremont in the West, UChicago in the Midwest and George Mason's law / econ departments in the East. And yet, the expansionism continues unabated. What's next? A majority conservative department somewhere in the Ivy League? How far does this have to go before proper people rise up and tell these university imperialist rightists, "no more!"
UofC is certainly not conservative on the whole, but it is conservative where it counts the most--law school and econ department. As for the rest of Howard's identifications, I presume he meant Claremont-McKenna, which is essentially the seat of the Pacific Research Institute. He's also right about George Mason and Hoover, although Hoover is more pretentious than academic and is not directly affiliated with Stanford. But there is a lot more in right-wing Academe--for starters, try Ashland University in Ohio, Regents, which has become infamous because of Monica Goodling, and Boston University. So there are plenty of outposts where these donors could have taken their wares.
tvk is also right--Federal Dog's idiocy notwithstanding, no university (other than perhaps Bob Jones, Liberty and Oral Roberts) wants to see outside forces controlling the curriculum, faculty hiring or other internal academic matters. This is not just a slippery slope--it's outright censorship. If these donors want to control the message, let them start their own college--just like the four above-mentioned institutions based on particular religious principles. But what they want is really to have the cake and eat it too--they want full control of the funds they would provide, but they want the state to foot the bill for the infrastructure and overhead for distributing their ideological message. That is preposterous! This is not what university education is about.
And one more thing--Bob Novak and Forbes as highlights of an academic seminar?? And you want to trust these people with faculty appointments?
Why? Is it because they would not otherwise qualify on their own merit? So if neo-Nazis or Islamo-terrorists wanted to have a small enclave at the university to promote a different perspective from that taught in the rest of the school, you would support their attempt to buy their way into academia? Or perhaps you care to explain how this case is different.
The lack of that wanting to kill minorities thing?
"if George Soros created the "Promotion of Wacky Liberal Professors" fund"
The idea that university academies, centers, and institutes should be ideologically neutral comes from people with the best intentions. But my university has a very well-funded "Peace Studies" institute. The program and the research are ideological from the get-go, as is the "discipline" of peace studies. We have a Labor Studies center. Ditto. Gender Studies institute. Ditto.
I find it unlikely that this is the only place.
The academic left doesn't have anything like the high ground on this question.
No they have joined the Palestinian Liberation Front like all the other cool schools.
The few conservatives on campus are old guys like Becker and Posner. When they are gone, U of C will be a counter hegemonic enclave like Harvard and Yale.
We need to drain the academic swamp. Abolish tenure, faculty governance and incestuous hiring. Get them off welfare. If the Federal government wants to fund research, it should be done though Federally owned and managed institutions like NIH.
i take it then that you never went to college. because if you did then you a supporter of terrorism and should immediately turn yourself over the CIA for
tortureinterrogation.