The Next Koch Brothers Frontier - Propagandizing Higher Education

When big donors write checks to universities, they typically don't get a say in who gets hired with the money they've provided - until now. The Koch brothers are thinking long-term again - push universities to hire libertarian assholes to push the Koch political agenda.

The power of university faculty and officials to choose professors without outside interference is considered a hallmark of academic freedom.

Under the agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, however, faculty only retain the illusion of control. The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it's not happy with the faculty's choice or if the hires don't meet "objectives" set by Koch during annual evaluations.

The Dean of the College of Social Sciences, David Rasmussen, defends this agreement and another with BB&T bank, which funds a class with Atlas Shrugged as recommended reading.

A separate grant from BB&T funds a course on ethics and economics in which Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is required reading. The novel, which depicts society's collapse in the wake of government encroachment on free enterprise, was recently made into a movie marketed to tea party members.

This is just the beginning, I'm sure. We've been hearing about how universities brainwash young people into being liberals. Now the right wing will start using universities to actually brainwash people into wing nuts - and they'll use public universities to do it because they're hypocritical leeches. Twenty years from now universities across the country will be places where Rush Limbaugh guest lectures only to tell you how liberal your campus is even while there's not a liberal thought left there. It will be just like the "liberal media" trajectory we've been on these last few decades where CNN hires conservatives and parades their opinions around as if they are mainstream - when in reality, they are tea bagger loons.

When these jackasses talked about the threat of a "left wing conspiracy" they were just attempting to deflect from their own vast right wing conspiracy. Say goodbye to academic freedom and integrity at our institutions of higher education and say hello to the Koch brothers and their anti-government obsession.