FSU drew the attention of the academic
community in 2011, when the Tampa Bay Times revealed that multibillionaire and conservative activist Charles Koch, through the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, had made a
$1.5 million donation to the FSU Economics Department in 2008 to be
used to hire new faculty for a program promoting “free enterprise.”
In exchange, the Foundation's representatives participated in the
screening process and were given veto power over new hires for the
program. Under this agreement, Koch rejected 60% of the applicants
suggested by the faculty, and two new faculty members approved by
Koch were hired. When the the agreement become public, it was
rejected by the FSU University Senate, but university senates have no power.
Dr.
Barron came to FSU in 2010. He responded to the Times
story and the Senate's objections by renegotiating the agreement in a way that leaves its consequences largely unchanged. Koch's
representatives no longer participate in the screening process, but
the Foundation is permitted to withdraw its funding if it objects to
the faculty's choices. Since this would leave FSU on the hook for
their salaries, it gives them an obvious incentive to hire candidates
acceptable to Koch.
It
would be naïve to think that academic scholarship is unaffected by
political considerations. Government and corporate grants often
determine what research topics are investigated and have been shown
to exert a subtle influence on research results. The Koch Foundation gives approximately $80 million per year to about 150 universities
(including Penn State). However, the FSU arrangement is a
particularly egregious violation of the norms of academic freedom.
Economics is a highly polarized discipline with clear differences
between mainstream and conservative economists. The FSU donation
seems to suggest that members of the corporate class can use
donations to buy their own version of economic “knowledge.” It's
not surprising that they would try to do this, but disappointing that
a state-owned university would allow it to happen.
The
Koch-FSU controversy takes on an additional twist given that Dr.
Barron is a climate scientist, while the Koch brothers, deeply
involved in oil and gas production, have used their wealth to secretly promote climate change denial. The FSU Economics Department uses an
introductory textbook, Economics: Private and Public Choices, by James W. Gwartney, et
al. Dr. Gwartney is an FSU
faculty member, and two of his three co-authors were formerly
affiliated with the university. Dr. Yoram Bauman, an economist with the Sightline Institute, has given the textbook a failing grade for misrepresenting the findings of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other climate research.
It is rated second worst on this issue of 18 popular introductory economics texts.
No one
is accusing Dr. Barron of being a climate change denier. Between
1986 and 2006, while he was director of the Earth System Science Center and later Dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at
Penn State, he recruited Drs. Richard Alley and Michael Mann, two
distinguished climate scientists. Dr. Barron's views of climate
science can be heard about 21 minutes into this interview. He
appears to be a climate moderate concerned with predicting the future
effects of climate change but emphasizing the scientific uncertainty
about what these effects will be.
When
Dr. Barron reports to State College for work next month, one of his
first orders of business should be to explain how he intends to
ensure that the Koch Foundation's Penn State donations do not
influence research and teaching at the university.
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