The following is from UnKoch My Campus, “a national nonprofit project that works to expose and prevent donors like Charles Koch and his network from being able to buy undue academic influence in an attempt to legitimize and bolster their political and corporate agendas.”
New Report Shows George Mason University Continues to Top Schools Funded by Charles Koch, With DC’s Catholic University of America in Top Five
UnKoch My Campus has released their new report detailing Koch Foundation spending in Higher Education. Using tax records, the project discovered that in 2019, Koch university funding totaled $112,044,071. This is an increase of $24.24 million from 2018. It’s the second year in a row that Koch outspent it’s previous annual total by about $25 million. This one-year total is over a hundred million dollars more than Koch foundations spent annually on universities a decade ago, at $10.5 million in 2009.
George Mason University (GMU) in Virginia continues to eclipse all other schools that Koch funds. GMU, and the two Koch-controlled political organizations that are formally affiliated with GMU, the Mercatus Center and the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS), received a combined $23.4 million in 2019. GMU, Mercatus, and the IHS have received $179 million from Charles Koch’s foundations since 2005. This represents about 40% of Koch’s total $456.6 million in expenditures at over 500 college and university campuses and programs since 2005.
…Charles Koch himself admits that his funding of hundreds of universities across the country is intended to mainstream free-market ideas and approaches to public policy that support the Koch network’s legislative goals at the state and federal levels:
… there are basically four way in which [the pro-capitalist businessman] can fight for free enterprise – through education, through the media, by legal challenges, and by political action… I do maintain, however, that the educational route is both the most vital and the most neglected… We should [support] only those programs, departments or schools that contribute in some way to our individual companies or to the general welfare of our free enterprise system.” — Charles Koch, 1974
“A school that accepts funding from the Charles Koch Foundation is making a commitment to endorse & enable the Koch network’s harmful political agenda to halt action on climate change, deny millions of people healthcare, and strip rights and wages from workers globally.” — Jasmine Banks, Executive Director, UnKoch My Campus
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