We think the groups complaining about the Koch Foundation gift are suggesting a litmus test that neither we nor they would want to apply to other cases. We welcome constructive criticism, but we believe it would be a mistake to stifle debate by pretending that genuinely controversial positions are official church teaching.
We’re grateful for the $1 million, and we’re keeping it, because it would be an unhealthy precedent for a university to refuse support for valuable research because the money, somewhere back up the line, once belonged to a donor whose views on other subjects were unpopular within the academic community.
This reminds me of the HoBD blog when I was a deputy to General Convention. I learned very quickly to NEVER comment because the people who run the site are rabid left wing reappraisers. I did make a comment one time about something like union membership and said we shouldn’t be debating or passing legislation at GC that dealt with political issues on which Christians could differ and still be faithful. I was INSTANTLY informed by several bloggers that if I didn’t agree with the left wing political agenda of TEC, I was neither faithful nor a Christian. This appears to me to be the same situation.
it seems left-wing political success had emboldened them to note enforce ritual purity standards on any possible opposition. Got to nip it in the bud.
I realize I am a minority on this website, but there is more than enough evidence to suggest that the Koch brothers have neither read the Papal Encyclicals and church teaching about social justice (yeah, I know all that left-wing radical stuff) nor give a damn about it. Their concern for the poor, the immigrants, the lower-classes is all too reminiscent of traditional and contemporary social darwinism. CU should be very careful about the sources of their funding. On the other hand, it is CU’s business school we are talking about.
Well, regardless of one’s views of the Koch brothers, and I’m no fan of theirs, the school has a valid point. Apart from academic programs, there are some interesting cases of major international prizes or prestigious lecture series that were set up by rich guys who made their fortune in some very dubious and morally tainted ways, but tried to use their generous benefactions as a way of redeeming themselves. Probably the best known example would be the Nobel Prizes, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the latter being somewhat ironic when all the money came from the hugely profitable arms business run by Swedish manufacturer Alfred Nobel.
Similarly, the school where I got my Ph.D., Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, has a prestigious annual lecture series, the Sprunt Lectures. Each spring distinguished academic or church leaders give those guest lectures, which are normally later published as a book. But where did the endowment come from to set up the fund that underwrites those important lectures? Well, the Sprunt family made tons of money during the Civil War by managing to smuggle guns and other supplies into the South, by sneaking ships through the Union blockade of Confederate harbors.
It would be a shame if the Nobel Prizes, or the Sprunt Lectures, were to cease because the financial trusts and foundations upon which they depend are tainted by how all that wealth was created in the first place.
OTOH, when individual politicians take large gifts from wealthy donors we call that bribery and rightly suspect that something very dubious or even flagrantly immoral is going on, the buying of illicit influence. When schools get large gifts from such donors, we call that philanthropy and praise such benefactors.
David Handy+