One of Charles and David Koch’s most ambitious PR schemes is facing major setbacks: A recent Center for Public Integrity report exposing the Koch effort to infiltrate and hijack higher education on a national level is making waves — and, from Florida and Maryland to Utah and Wisconsin, outraged students are fighting back.
In the last month, students at the University of Wisconsin and University of Maryland have taken to the opinion pages of their college newspapers and accused the Kochs of using their “philanthropy” to influence curriculae and advance their political agenda.
Now the student backlash has gone national, inciting on-campus protests and spilling over into major news publications across the country.
At Utah State University, for example, The Salt Lake Tribune reports that students are calling for greater transparency with regard to the Koch brothers’ donations to the school:
[T]he terms of a current contract with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation are still hidden, points out USU student Diego Mendiola. The sophomore journalism major on Monday filed a records request for the information. He believes the petrochemical businessmen, known for backing conservative and libertarian causes, are buying influence on campus.
According to the Tribune, thirty students, led by Mendiola, held a recent rally and march to raise awareness for their cause.
In Florida, meanwhile, the Tallahassee Democrat reports that students at
[O]rganizers maintain, as have other student activists and faculty in the past, that the Koch money comes with strings attached. They claim that it forces the university to embrace the multi-billionaire’s beliefs in fewer government regulations, unfettered free enterprise and similar economic philosophies. The Koch donations have been earmarked for FSU’s economics department.
And in Wisconsin, UW-Madison students are being increasingly vocal about their opposition to Koch Industries’ sponsorship of their athletic program, according to the Wisconsin Gazette:
A chorus of students and alumni have posted letters to the school, the athletic department and to Wisconsin newspaper editors noting the irony of the university benefiting financially from a conglomerate owned and operated by the billionaires behind political efforts to cut funding to public education, co-opt academic programs, influence scientific research and bust teacher’s unions.
The Kochs have for years sought to buy leverage on college campuses using the guise of “philanthropy” to indoctrinate students and advance their political agenda. But as students and alumni begin to speak out against the Kochs, the two brothers’ on-campus influence appears to be waning.