ABSTRACT
Should universities accept funding from ideologically motivated private or governmental donors, when the purpose of such funding is to promote scholarship, create classes, or fill academic positions which promotes the donors’ ideology? This essay argues for a conditional “yes.”
Some believe this funding corrupts the university. Universities are supposed to be dispassionate centers, which seek the truth, but introducing monetary incentives surely provides a pecuniary incentive to promote what donors advocate, regardless of its truth. But this objection rests on an idealized and unrealistic vision of how universities function. In fact, universities are already deeply political environments. Empirical work finds not merely that most academics have an ideological slant (which by itself might not be troubling) but also that professors are hostile to hiring faculty with whom they disagree. Empirical work on political psychology finds that most people are extremely biased in how they process information and how they evaluate contrary points of view. They are automatically favorable to their own point of view, and generally try to avoid interacting with those with whom they disagree. The ideological slant of the university is probably not truth-tracking but just the result of ideological capture by an in-group.
While donors may be badly motivated, they nevertheless use their money to introduce new perspectives into the university. Introducing new ideas (even from badly motivated sources) will likely improve the overall epistemic status of academia. However, this doesn’t mean universities should “dumb down” scholarship to accommodate professors who can’t cut it in the mainstream. Professors on soft money should still be held to the same intellectual standards as others.
