Commentary | How money corrupts academic world

Mike Gossett | The Courier-Journal

Since Greek antiquity of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, distinguished universities have been one of the last bastions for intelligent free inquiry and pursuit of truth.  Herculean efforts go into striving for intellectual honesty and excellence in academic scholarship at least at credible institutions.  And for good reason since it is critical and necessary to live up to a reputation deserving of both the large capital outlay and years of hard work invested by students to be “educated.” 

Thus, one would think it would be unthinkable, even laughable for a university to do anything in terms of harming its academic reputation by debasing and/or cheapening its course offerings.  One cannot even imagine Harvard, Yale or Princeton offering intellectual pursuits in astrology, palmistry, creationism, etc. 

And yet, today, powerful special interest are afoot with less than honorable intentions that are brazenly seeking to change how people view certain pseudo academic course offerings that offer no intelligent scholarship but rather amount to sinister promotion of politicized extremist utopian economic propaganda. 

One might casually dismiss my assertion by skeptically saying how in the world would one go about doing that?  What could be done to convince seemingly intelligent and honorable university administrators to consider putting the inestimable esteem of a university at risk by implementing substandard charlatan coursework.  Well since the beginning of time, money usually works, especially large amounts of it, for achieving anything including things of dubious ends.  And so as always, the more things change the more they stay the same. 

A recent Courier-Journal front page story informs us that for U of L you can get the job done for $6 million.  UK, on the other hand, was apparently a harder sell and so it took $12 million.  Big money athletics, sleazy business dealings, and extremist political ideology, now corrupts even the academic world and is seemingly the new norm. 

Right-wing extremist libertarians, including local pizza magnate John Schnatter and billionaire businessman Charles Koch, who is shamefully known as a staunch supporter of extreme right-wing political candidates who actively fight against the economic interests of the working class and their families, are gifting millions of dollars to UK and U of L business schools in exchange for establishing so-called free enterprise programs of learning into their business school curriculums. 

If that takes your breath away, consider also that complicit in this disgraceful public university gaff is BB&T Bank, a bank that obviously shares the same libertarian utopian worldview and is the chosen propaganda minister for the new centers of study or, more aptly, spin mills. 

If one has the time, patience and energy to stay up on current events, it's common knowledge that free enterprise lexicon when uttered by this cabal of far-right extremist libertarian crowd is code speak for Ayn Rand-type libertarian neoliberalism economic political sleaze.  It’s the tiresome prescriptive oversimplified ideology for solving of all societies economic problems by reducing size of government, taxes and regulations. 

In reality, it is nothing more than a despicable and mischievous economic ideology that simply tilts the scales of justice to greatly advantage wealthy, privileged and powerful interests in ways that subvert the common good and flourishing of the great majority of ordinary citizens, society and even the planet. 

Follow the money

The New York Times reported some years back that then BB&T’s former chief executive, John Allison, said he believed the Ayn Rand philosophy and worldview would be the lead director of political economy in 25 years and then the article when on to report that BB&T spent millions putting Rand’s books in U.S. colleges that agreed to teach Rand’s brand of solipsistic slop. 

One finds no better example of what to expect from this new free enterprise program at U of L than a recent commentary in the Courier-Journal authored by a faculty member of the new center.  The professor is actually referred to as a "BB&T Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise." 

For god's sake, what buffoonery.  A BB&T Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise?  What's next, a Looney Tunes Distinguished Professor of Politically Correct Cartooning at the U of L Art School.  How about a Darryl Issacs Distinguished Professor of Ambulance Chasers at the U of L Law School.  Or we could have a Pat Robertson “700 Club” Distinguished Professor of Elmer Gantry Televangelism in the Theater Arts Department.  How about a Glenn Beck Distinguished Professor of Scorched Earth Politics in the Political Science Department. ( Stop me, this is too much fun.) 

Well, you get the idea.  It's obvious there might be just a tiny bit of conflict of interest and credible scholarship since this business instructor comes by his academic accolade of distinguished professor from a member of an Ayn Rand smitten bank and his article rife with affirmation of her nauseous egoist worldview. 

Ah, nothing like principled, academic pursuit of truth and applied tenets of the scientific method.  The same kind one might find, say, from academics in the science labs of tobacco industries or even the science and archeological academic inquiry at the Creation Museum.  Oh, and let’s not forget that minuscule number of climate scientist that sell out to the highest bidder in return for discrediting the science of climate change in favor of the fossil fuel industry. 

Mike Gossett, a lifelong resident of Louisville, is a retired insurance executive.