Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War is a meticulously researched deep dive into the Koch network’s weaponization of free speech. The book is full of detail, easy to read, and fascinating. It will be available in November.
For a review of the book, click HERE
While the mainstream media told us about student protests against speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and decried a new free speech crisis on college campuses, Wilson and Kamola ask, "Who invites these speakers? Who funds them? And why?"
As they follow the money, they keep running into the Koch donor network. Does this sound like a conspiracy theory? Wait until you see the funding data, the uncovered emails, and proof of the multiple links between the Koch donor network and ostensibly independent student groups, legal teams, and (as here in Arizona) state legislatures. In this webinar, the co-authors use examples from the Arizona universities, but also draw connections to similar projects at other universities. They talk about the tension between academic freedom and (heavily funded) free speech that their research uncovers. Finally, they make suggestions for how these donor networks can be countered.
You can order the book HERE.
Author Ralph Wilson is the founder of the Corporate Genome Project. As co-founder and former research director of UnKoch My Campus, he helped students and faculty develop a resistance movement against corporate donor influence on college campuses.
Author Isaac Kamola is Associate Professor of Political Science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, coeditor of The Transnational Politics of Higher Education/Contesting the Global/Transforming the Local, and author of Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary (2019).
Recorded on Monday, Oct. 18, 2021
UnKoch My Workplace! A conversation with The Pima area labor federation, Kochs Off Campus, and APWU, and AFGE union leaders
UnKoch My Workplace! is an in-depth panel discussion about the Koch Network's efforts to outsource veteran's care, privatize the VA, and privatize the United States Postal Service. We explore how the Koch propagation of university campus think tanks like the UA Freedom Center are all part of a coordinated effort against working people.
This webinar was a collaboration between the Pima Area Labor Federation and Kochs Off Campus!
Recorded on February 24, 2021
Alex Hertel-Fernandez AND The Center for Media and Democracy! State Capture: How Businesses, Donors, and Right-Wing Activists Captured Arizona and the Nation - and How To Reverse It!
Alex Hertel-Fernandez - Assoc. Professor of Public Affairs, Columbia University, Author of State Capture
In this webinar, the author of State Capture, Alex Hertel-Fernandez, associate professor of public affairs at Columbia University, educates us about the privatizers’ troika that has been riding roughshod over our public institutions and services, including public education, as well as our democratic rights – namely, the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC] (that factory of reactionary legislation), the State Policy Network [SPN] (the right-wing think tank network), and Americans for Prosperity [AFP] (the Koch-scripted astroturf organization that turns out crowds of reactionary demonstrators to pressure legislators or provide them cover).
If you want to understand what we progressives are up against, and how we might learn from the successes of our adversaries and defeat them, you need to view this webinar. Alexander Hertel-Fernandez’s research focuses on the intersection of power and policy in the United States. His most recent book is State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States--and the Nation (Oxford University Press, 2019). You can visit his website at www.hertelfernandez.com.
You can visit the Center for Media And Democracy at https://www.exposedbycmd.org/
This webinar was a collaboration between Kochs Off Campus! and UnKoch My Campus.
Recorded on October 28, 2020
Benjamin Balthaser! Are Public Universities Doomed? – What Can We DO To Save Them?
The current crisis in higher education is staggering. In this timely webinar, Professor Balthaser gave us an overview of the crisis, analyzed how we got here and made suggestions for how we move forward.
Benjamin Balthaser is Associate Professor of Multi-Ethnic Literature at Indiana University - South Bend. He is the author of Anti-Imperialist Modernism from the University of Michigan Press and is also the secretary-treasurer of his campus American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter.
Professor Balthaser works through AAUP to protect universities. He is Secretary-Treasurer of the Indiana University South Bend chapter of AAUP and is helping to organize a midwestern AAUP network and other regional faculty union networks. Here is an article by him about the crisis in academia that was published in Democratic Left. Here is a recent article he wrote on academe/AAUP’s website discussing the serious challenges universities and their workers faced during the pandemic.
Recorded on October 1, 2020.