http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/20/illinois.
Hoover in the Heartland
Is it an “academy” or a “fund"? The name of the new Academy on
Capitalism and Limited Government Fund could be read either way. And the
way people at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are reading
the name has something to do with how they view it.
Supporters describe it as a fund created by alumni to support interests
they have at the university, in this case the study of Western
civilization and free market economics.
But many professors see it as much more — as a move by conservative
alumni with influential national support to bypass normal faculty
governance, create new courses and impose ideological tests on who gets
certain pots of money. The alumni who have given the money for the
effort, currently housed at the university’s foundation, are explicit
that they want a formal role in who gets money from the fund, the views
those people should have, and the eventual goal of creating a new
version of the Hoover Institution at a top public university, with the
ambition of inspiring others to follow their model.
As a result of those statements and other concerns, professors at the
university are debating whether the new academy is appropriate for the
university. Some like the program, others think it could work with
certain oversight provisions, and others find the entire idea
questionable. With the program about to kick off formal activities and
the Senate at the university preparing to vote on oversight proposals
for the academy, the debate is heating up. And the debate comes at a
time that critics of academe are increasingly embracing a model of
creating free-standing centers to sponsor fellowships, courses, lectures
and other activities around such themes as American history, Western
civilization, and free markets.
Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and
Institutions has in many ways been the model for such efforts up until
now, and it has been praised (by people with a range of political views)
for the intellectual rigor of its programs.
But governance of some of these programs has been controversial. The
Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization was
recently created as an institution independent of any college, after
plans to have the institute as part of Hamilton College collapsed, with
the founders of the institute blaming the controversy on politics and
many faculty members at the college saying that the founders didn’t want
their program to have standard oversight that other programs receive.
Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, who
is on the advisory board for the new Illinois center and who has
championed some of the other programs, called these efforts “oases of
excellence” in higher education. But where Neal sees an oasis, others
see a swamp. “This has been an end run around faculty governance,” said
Cary Nelson, an English professor at Illinois who is president of the
American Association of University Professors. He said that the funds
had been accepted by the university without appropriate review and said
that he feared that committees now being created to oversee the program
were not real governance but would just amount to people with the power
to “whisper in the chancellor’s ear.”
What is the program being created that incites such feelings?
James E. Vermette, one of the founders and board members, makes clear
that the program has “big plans and big dreams,” and he said that the
programs at Princeton and elsewhere don’t have enough of an impact
because they are at private institutions. He would like to see something
on the scale of the Hoover Institution, which is on the campus of
Stanford University, eventually copied by other universities. Supporters
have already provided $2 million for the effort and there are plans to
raise $10 million within 3 years and $100 million within 10 years —
ambitious goals, but targets that those familiar with the backers of the
program say are probably achievable.
Vermette, a businessman and investor who is a former president of the
university’s alumni association, said that the program came out of the
conviction that key ideas are lost on too many students, and that money
coming into higher education doesn’t change that. “I just have been
concerned that the young people in particular are not being exposed to
the value of free market capitalism and also limited government at our
great universities,” he said. “There is almost a disdain for the free
market.”
“I have known many donors through the years — all capitalists — all
wonderful, generous people, who enriched our campuses throughout the
country, and the ones who have benefited from their wonderful generosity
seem to give dishonor to how they made their money,” he said.
The new program will sponsor educational programs (the development of
new courses or new curriculum for courses), lectures, conferences,
research and more. The programs will all be based on “free market
capitalism,” Vermette said, citing the ideas of Milton Friedman, Ayn
Rand and the Austrian economics school of such libertarian thinkers at
Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Vermette said that the founders of
the center “very much want to work with faculty” at Illinois to support
these programs. “We’ll work within the system,” he said.
Vermette stressed that the founders weren’t trying to exclude
professors, but he also said that the donors anticipated having a real
role in determining who gets support through the fund. Faculty members,
he said, “will help us decide what programs are acceptable.” If
professors at the university don’t want to get involved, he said, “we’ll
bring in adjunct faculty when we need to,” he added.
Another goal for the program is to develop video games for children —
but not standard games. “We’re going to try to develop game technology
to teach Western civilization and teach free market capitalism, and
especially financial literacy and entrepreneurial capitalism,” he said.
“There is potential to develop all kinds of games that would have a
profound influence on everyone who plays them. They could change young
kids,” Vermette said.
The academy’s official debut is later this month, with scheduled
appearances from Joseph White, president of the University of Illinois
System; Richard Herman, chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus; and
Robert Novak, the conservative columnist and an alumnus; plus some
university professors, Neal of the American Council of Trustees and
Alumni, and Stephen Balch, a board member of the academy and president
of the National Association of Scholars.
Nicholas C. Burbules, chair of the Senate at Illinois and professor of
educational policy studies, said that professors have a range of views
about the new program. “Some faculty want to just give the money back
and say this has too many strings attached to it, that it is too
narrowly and rigidly prejudging not only the broad scope of research but
the particular conclusions that the research should be reaching,” he said.
Senate leaders have been working, however, to develop appropriate
governance measures that might make the program acceptable to more
professors, Burbules said. At a meeting October 1, the Senate will hear
proposals to create an ad hoc committee to work on the program now, with
the idea that a permanent committee be created later. The principles for
either committee, he said, would be to assure that any program had
quality, preserved academic freedom, and respected “multiple points of
view.” He said that “we want to give faculty an appropriate voice” in
the project.
Currently, the program is set up so the chancellor would approve all
funds distributed for courses or other programs and “everyone [on the
faculty] agrees that is not sufficient” to protect the values of the
university, Burbules said. (The chancellor’s press officials did not
respond to inquiries about his views on the project.)
The Senate wants to be clear that its concerns are not about the
ideology espoused by organizers of the capitalism academy, but about
process and oversight, Burbules said. “This is about very broad
principles of academic freedom, accountability and openness, which we’d
apply to any other academic entity.”
Still, the program envisioned by its funders is “unprecedented,” he
said. Generally at Illinois (and in higher education), donors play more
of a role in setting up a broad subject area for support than in
selecting recipients. In terms of statements that Vermette and other
founders of the academy have made, Burbules said he disagreed with the
idea that they could hire adjuncts for their programs. And of the idea
of the center creating video games to encourage children to be more
capitalist, Burbules said: “I can’t imagine any faculty member or
department taking money for that purpose.”
He also questioned the idea that the campus was somehow against free
markets. Urbana-Champaign has “one of the biggest and most influential
business schools in the country,” Burbules said, as well as a “very
strong” and very market-oriented economics department. A wide range of
political views are present on the campus. “I really don’t think
Illinois is a particularly good example of a campus with a left wing
bias,” he said.
Nelson, of the AAUP, said that the idea that the new program might hire
adjuncts to teach courses was a perfect symbol of the flaws of the
effort. “The want to emulate all the worst elements of capitalism in
higher education,” he said. “They want to promote the capitalist
exploitation of workers in higher education. They may want to fund
additional wars in the Middle East, too.”
There is nothing wrong, Nelson said, with professors with common
intellectual interests banding together to build centers or programs, or
building programs with a particular philosophy. He said his questions
were about the idea that the center was being created outside of normal
procedures for new academic programs.
Nelson said it was “good that the Senate was trying to lasso this
enterprise,” but he questioned why the discussions about oversight were
happening “after the fact,” when funds have been accepted and opening
ceremonies planned with senior university leaders. He also said he was
disturbed by Neal’s involvement. “I am ashamed to see Anne Neal’s name
associated with the university,” he said. “I am concerned that her
presence on the roster means this academy will try to engage in
unscrupulous ad hominem attacks.”
Of Nelson’s remarks, Neal said that academe “should be about ideas, not
about demonizing people who are on advisory boards.” While the advisory
board has only just been created, she said she would push for all
programs to be open to people from a range of perspectives. There is no
reason for faculty to be fearful of such efforts, Neal said.
Professors should be pleased that “there are alumni who want to provide
resources for students to have more choices and more ideas,” she said.
Jeffrey Brown, a professor of finance at Illinois, is another member of
the advisory board. He said that he’s not shocked by the opposition —
“there are some people here who think profit is a dirty word” — but that
he views the new program as a good thing.
Brown said he was “not an expert on university rules,” so he didn’t know
the specifics of how funds would be given out to support projects. But
he said that since this was a “donor-initiated fund” and that the goal
was to involve professors from a range of disciplines, it made sense to
house it in the university’s foundation. The programs the new academy
will support all make sense to him. “The types of things they are
talking about doing — research and seminars and speakers — these things
are the lifeblood of any academic institution,” he said. Brown added
that he “could not imagine” the academy dictating who would be hired for
professorships or anything that would intrude on faculty roles.
When he was approached about the idea, he said, “what I saw were a
fairly motivated, dedicated group of loyal University of Illinois alumni
who had a vision and were willing to dedicate some resources to what I
saw as a good educational program.”
— Scott Jaschik
