The Faculty Senate of Western Carolina University voted against accepting $2 million in seed funding from the Charles Koch Foundation to create a self-sustaining Center for the Study of Free Enterprise. Faculty members feared first the center would stigmatize the college, although the Koch Foundation has contributed to about 250 schools already, and WCU is one of them. Secondly, professors were concerned the Free Enterprise Center would constrain academic freedom.
The Faculty Senate statement also raises the concern that any research that is consistent with the foundation’s ideological perspective “may be considered fruit from the poisoned tree” and dismissed by the scientific community.
