Robert Whaples writes for the Martin Center about efforts to thwart the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University.
Last fall Wake Forest University announced a $4.2 million donation to fund “the study of human flourishing” at the university’s newest institute—the Eudaimonia Institute (EI). Although it took people a while to pronounce this elegant Greek word correctly—the pronunciation is “yoo-dye-mo-NEE-uh”—the generous gift seemed to be a perfect fit with Wake’s mission.
The Greek root words in “eudaimonia” are “eu” (meaning good) and “daimon” (meaning a protective spirit). It turns out that the word “demon” (as in Demon Deacon) comes from the same root word as “daimon,” so the institute’s name fits especially well with the school’s identity. In Greek, “eudaimonia” means “good spirit” and Demon Deacon means “servant spirit”! Nice match.
But that’s not the way a lot of faculty members saw it. This wasn’t a good-spirited endeavor in their eyes. It was bad.
The Greek word for “bad” is “kako,” and the institute’s detractors knew it was bad because the main source of the gift had a bad name: Koch. “Koch” and “kako” even sound similar. (Actually “Koch” comes from a Germanic word meaning “cook.”)
Charles Koch, whose foundation donated the money to Wake Forest, is about as evil as they come, according to campus radicals, who soon educated the unenlightened by holding protest meetings and circulating a lengthy petition describing Koch’s vast plan to hijack higher education and spread his benighted ideas. Faculty and students soon learned that the multi-billionaire Koch is a libertarian. Or maybe even a conservative (which is obviously still worse).
