The infusion of partisan projects and the polarization of once noble institutions is underway, influenced by billionaire investors and conservative state legislators. In Arizona, Republican elected officials leveraged an initial investment by the Charles Koch Foundation to advance an agenda that undermines faculty governance and the integrity of the humanities and social sciences in public universities.
Arizona State University's president, Michael Crow, recently was quoted in a New York Times story about using public money to support a pet project of Arizona conservatives: The School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL). Crow said, “They were interested in having a broader set of curricular offerings than the one we presently have, particularly as it related to economic thought or political theory, philosophy.” He added, “The fact that someone from the state came along and gave us money for it, O.K., good.”
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