Critique of UA’s review of the Freedom Center
The report of the External Evaluation Review Committee is surprisingly critical of Freedom Center Director David Schmidtz. But it shies away from criticizing the Freedom Center itself. It never addresses the public’s concern that the Freedom Center is bad for the University and bad for the community. It never acknowledges that the Freedom Center is part of a vast network of well-funded centers and think tanks that are working round the clock to bring an end to public education from pre-K through post-doc.
Donor interference
The report acknowledges that the Freedom Center is “embattled”, with opposition both on campus and in the community. However, it brushes off our concern that donors have influenced the Freedom Center’s hiring and curricula. It says, “The Center and the University possess evidence to refute this contention” (p. 6). If that is true, why is the evidence not included in the report?
Our concern is well-founded. Influence over hiring is specified in contracts with the Charles Koch Foundation, Randy and Ken Kendrick, and the Thomas W. Smith Foundation, summaries of which you can see here. Influence over curriculum was granted to Randy Kendrick in a memo from the Philosophy Department head, which you can see here. Randy thanked Charles Koch for teaching her about “enforcing donor intent.” (Read her romantic email to Koch here.)
On page 8 of the report, the Committee admits that, if the donors are not interfering now, it’s because they trust Prof. Schmidtz, and if his successor doesn’t measure up, donors might interfere. In their words: “Both the public and private donors [will need] confidence that the Center will continue to function as it currently does. Such confidence is necessary for the Center to function without undue interference from its benefactors.”
The Koch strategy to enforce donor intent through the directors of Koch centers was explained at the April 5, 2016, meeting of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, in a panel on “Establishing a Successful Academic Center.” Howard J. Wall of the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University told the audience, “The donor intent is vested in the director of the institute that is getting the funding.” Stephan Gohmann of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise at the University of Louisville added, “This is why it’s a five-year agreement instead of an endowment. . . . Either the money is spent how it’s supposed to be spent, or it isn’t coming in.”
It’s about the money, honey
The report on the review of the Freedom Center goes beyond not criticizing the Freedom Center to extolling its virtues and even arguing that its presence at UA is essential! The report claims that “the continued success of the Freedom Center is important to the welfare of the Philosophy Department and the University at large” (p. 7). To support that statement, the report gives Freedom Center professors credit for the high ranking of UA’s Philosophy Department in political philosophy. But that ranking would stay the same if the Freedom Center were to shut its doors because the Philosophy Department is the academic home of the Freedom Center professors.
The real reason for wanting to keep the Freedom Center around is money. The report argues that without the Freedom Center’s support for Philosophy graduate students ($270,000 in fellowships and tuition waivers in 2018!), UA’s Philosophy Department would not be able to recruit strong applicants. Our answer to that is: without the Freedom Center and the rest of the Koch think tanks pushing to cut funding for public universities, the Philosophy Department would be adequately funded and would not need money from the Freedom Center. This is Charles Koch’s plan in action: starve the university, offer money, move in, and take over the university.
Conflict of interest in the review committee
UA’s redaction of the names of the external review committee members [at the top of the review report] is egregious. There was no plausible reason for doing that, except to hide the identity of the committee members. One can see why UA would want to hide the name of one committee member -- Daniel Jacobson, Professor of Philosophy, who founded and directs the Freedom and Flourishing Project at the University of Michigan. (Both “freedom” and “flourishing” are Koch code words.) Jacobson received an $850,000 grant from the same Templeton Foundation that gave $2.9 million to the Freedom Center to prepare the high school course that Kochs Off Campus! has been fighting to get out of Arizona high schools. Clearly, Jacobson has a conflict of interest and should not have been on the committee. He was extremely unlikely to say anything critical about the Freedom Center.
Lack of transparency
Withholding the names of the committee members in the report is also a transparency issue. The report extols the virtues of transparency again and again -- but the report itself is nontransparent! The redactions are nontransparent, the fact that the University waited more than a year to release the report is nontransparent, and the fact that they released it after classes were over, right in the middle of a pandemic – when the public is least likely to read it – is nontransparent.
The report criticizes Prof. Schmidtz for his lack of transparency, so it’s ironic that the University was nontransparent itself about making the report public. Is the University colluding with the Freedom Center?
In any event, it was foolish of UA to redact the names of the committee members, since they already sent Kochs Off Campus! that information in response to our January 2019 public records request. The names of the External Evaluation Review Committee members are:
Daniel Jacobson, Professor of Philosophy, Founder and Director of the Freedom and Flourishing Project, University of Michigan
Barbara Hannan, Professor of Philosophy, University of New Mexico (Ph.D. from UA Department of Philosophy)
Edmundo Hidalgo, Vice President of Outreach Partnerships, ASU
Bob Varady, Research Professor, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, UA
In conclusion, UA’s review of the Freedom Center did not address our concerns. In response, we will encourage the UA Faculty Senate to conduct an independent evaluation of the Freedom Center, and we will launch a pledge campaign to get state legislators to stop funding the Center.
