What's wrong with donating money to universities
Adam Novak on the academic betrayal of donor trust
My friend Adam Novak of Heritage writes for The Daily Signal about the betrayal of donor trust involved in the woke turn in academia:
I read a news report about a group of woke Yale students who burst into a panel discussion on civil liberties hosted by the Federalist Society on campus back to shout down & intimidate the speakers—who had to be escorted out by the police.
This kind of activity on campus has become so commonplace it barely makes the news anymore. But it struck me, as a former fundraiser for universities, how this behavior—the result of the leftist ideology being taught on campus—is actually being funded largely by well-meaning alumni who donate to their alma maters in the hope that young people will receive the same solid education & values that they did.
What they don’t realize is that the colleges they give to are not the places they once were.
Now, I’m proud of the gifts I raised—the new scholarships, student resources, & research dollars I helped secure. I remain forever grateful to the donors who chose to part with their hard-earned resources to improve lives. But when I see that these colleges have ballooning “diversity, equity, & inclusion” staff salaries, coursework in critical race theory required for graduation, & campus activists bullying of conservatives, I worry the promise I made to those donors might not be kept by those universities.
Do read the entire piece—it’s rare that anyone mentions the deep question of trust & the notion of duty in such matters… Adam will write for us soon about the deeper problems with donations to foundations, the corruption of charity by elites, & their exercise of influence over American institutions, doing an end-run around the electorate, indeed the public as such. More on subject this coming soon!