Accepting money from a criminally convicted of sex trafficker is not a slippery slope, it is downright unethical. Comparing this to the mysogny of Picasso is utterly ridiculous, not comparable.
The end does not justify the means.
Universities and colleges are now under pressure regarding their adherence to Title IX. How can institutions uphold Title IX and at the same time accept money from a convicted sex trafficker?
This sickening paradox is untenable and utterly unacceptable at this point in time.
3
This really just speaks to the lack of funding in much of the sciences. If scientists didn't have to put up with billionaires to do their projects, they wouldn't. Slimy people looking to clean up their reputation are just filling into holes that already exist.
4
The author made all this clear: the Koch’s et al are using Universities to insulate their wealth and lifestyles. Nothing more despite all the high minded noise about “improving the world.”
10
@Jim LoMonaco This column is a cheap shot. And at a certain level completely inaccurate. My son is a 1st-year medical student. Half his class is composed of women. Women aren't consciously being excluded from science & tech anymore. To believe that let alone to encourage that idea is tantamount to pushing a pernicious lie. The facts & the figures don't back up this assertion. This columnist has it backward. More than ever women are being encouraged to go into the sciences. There are more women in the sciences & more opportunities than at any other time in our history. Is it 50/50 across the board? No, it isn't & isn't likely to be for decades. You can't force someone who's not committed to go into a field this challenging...this isn't the Humanities. The ratio of men vs woman will even out over time.
The majority of wealthy people who donate to our colleges do so for the best of reasons. To use Jeffrey Epstein as a symbol for why women are allegedly being excluded from Tech is ridiculous. He was the rare exception. In any enterprise, there will be bad actors. We all know that. Taking the obligatory progressive low blow at the Koch's is equally absurd. If it's ok to fund liberal causes then there's nothing wrong with people who decide to support libertarian initiatives. Imagine a world where the wealthy didn't donate to our colleges. Imagine all the discoveries that would have never happened. There is no perfect system. But this one overall is as good as it gets.
9
Having worked in academia I want to add my agreement to those who are pointing out that State support for public universities has plummeted over past decades. If the States fully or adequately funded their universities they would win back much of their independence from wealthy donors, corporations and other outside sources of money like the Department of Defense.
10
Going backwards to tie together this one billionaire's sordid proclivities with discrimination against women in science is a very unscientific stretch. Conclusions should be reached after, not before, the evidence is analyzed. IMO, the scientific repercussions of private money in science is the bigger issue than is its social consequences (like discrimination). And the bigger social issue is not the private funding of academic science, but the public funding of private (and highly-selective, i.e. non-public) academics. American taxpayers support private and highly-selective, elite universities at roughly 10-fold that of regional state universities and community colleges. The social stratification of wealth and opportunity in America is profoundly perpetuated by this - and it is profoundly unjust. Average citizens often know intuitively that they help support an educational system that is stacked against them and their children.
4
As a general rule, I think that federal agencies (NIH, NSF, even DARPA) are better at handing out research money than private philanthropies (Gates Foundation, HHMI) and a lot better than personally involved billionaires (Koch brothers, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, etc.). By "better", I mean that the federal agencies, especially those that rely on peer review, are both more inclusive and more likely to fund major advances.
107
@Rank-and-file Scientist, agreed. Sometimes philanthropy is given as a justification for allowing individuals to accumulate enormous wealth. But it's a terrible justification, for exactly the reason you provide.
26
Must respectfully disagree re: the characterization of HHMI, among others. Although the process is far from perfect, HHMI’s approach has enabled scientists to take big chances. It’s no surprise that the NIH, among others, has adopted the “people not projects” model to provide longer term, stable funding.
5
@Rank-and-file Scientist
Yes. Gates supports a climate research foundation that gives 47% of its total grants to its own officers. Perhaps legal, but certainly unethical.
10
The local stations here are all about T Boone Pickens' death tonight-the billionaire donor to Oklahoma State University, whose name also graces the Cowboys' stadium. This kind of power radiates into political pull and popularity--the kind that let oilmen or grocery magnates or paper plate makers decide public policy--and they do. They use their fortunes as a kind of gravity, bending everything around them. When the public good is starved or abandoned, the private powers rule like gods. But as Epstein and Pickens' fates disclose, they die as men.
123
@jb
Institutions of higher learning will forever seek major donors to build needed facilities for many campus studies, and scientific research. And one of the tradeoffs is the use of "naming opportunities" for those large donors.
But, as I stated in an earlier post, in order to end university addiction to billionaires, the American People must renew their addiction to high-quality public education, from K-12 to higher education.
7
@David Ohman, it's not about "naming opportunities, David. It's about the political pull that accompanies the loot. Such as that which allows oil companies to frack us into earthquake damage and pay nothing for it, among many other perks of pals in high places, and not just VIP booths on Saturday afternoons.
11
@David Ohman
And there will still be private schools like MIT, Harvard and Cornell where the writer went to that believe in extravagance.
The issue is what students want at their state universities. The state pays for the cake and the donors pay for the icing. Maybe state universities need to be a cupcake vs a cake, at any state U you can easily walk around and see excess you don't have elsewhere in the world.
3
The US allows unlimited deductions to non profits which creates this whole mess. Billionaires are under-taxed
As their foundations become billion dollar tax avoidance schemes while they play power broker and decide who should get their largesse- all while our infrastructure crumbles.
And when a cure is developed it is immediately sold and the profits are privatized while all the costs were socialized so don’t tell me about the cures- we are overpaying for them and drowning in debt.
3
I used to work at one of these prestigious research/think tank based in Santa Monica. Think tanks are no exception. During my five years at this research institution, I have witnessed first hand how this research institution cares very little about gender equality let alone race.
I have witnessed firsthand the breeding of white patriarchy and entitlement and how systems of privilege are perpetuated in America.
Consistent with its track record of gender pomposity, this particular research institution is deeply mired with tainted money. Particularly noteworthy is a large 2018 donation from the Epstein Family Foundation, a flagrant about-face to this organization’s reputation as an objectively-driven research center. I blame top leadership for this. Management has consistently prioritized greed over courageous research.
This institution has become a fertile hunter and gatherer breeding ground where researchers are pressured to secure funding to sustain their work or risk losing their jobs. This “political think tank,” should be re-labeled as one the most elitist research center in America that cares very little about gender and racial equality.
Their research sets America’s policy agenda despite their frivolous claim of upholding objective analysis. According to who? White men? It is time that educational In true Molieresque fashion, this article underpins the ungodliness of our time. Satirical and sad. I should perhaps use this experience to write a play.
4
Great article. I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that women weren't invited, not only because of institutionalized sexism, but because these dinners and conferences were more than just dinners and conferences, and that women, in Mr. Epstein's world were nothing more than sex slaves or sex enablers. That Mr. Ito seemed incapable or unwilling to comprehend that he was acting as a cover for Epstein's pedophilia, tells me a lot about the culture of MIT, and probably other Ivy League Schools (Harvard, I understand has refused to give back any of the money it got from Epstein,) I read the article to one of the links, about John Brockman and his parenthetical statements about Epstein and (his beautiful young assistant from Belarus) and that Epstein has ((the largest private residence in NYC). Ito and Brockman are men of ideas? They are men with large appetites,weak morals and simplistic thinking. They really make me sick to my stomach.
1
This moral purity test for immensely useful contributions is lunacy. IS Mr. Perfect Manoo saying that if Epstein's or some other "evil" person's money leads to a cancer vaccine, we reject the vaccine?
Paul Gauguin preyed on 15 year old Tahitian girls when he was in his 40s. Tear down his paintings? And Picasso? Hello teenage girls, Pablo wants to talk to you!
Epstein sounds like he was emotionally disturbed. All we know so far is that he committed statutory rape. Many of the girls were voluntary prostitutes. So tellme, is shooting someone and stabbing a person in nightclub and selling lethal drugs to kids a bad thing? If so, delete your Jay-Z albums.
Even Epstein has not yet been accused of real physical rape. Bill Clinton has. Therefore...?
Moral posturing is a slippery slope on which most people take a downhill ride.
2
This is somewhat off topic but always worth mentioning - why is MIT so desperate for funds when it charges students $51k a year to attend?
3
Would you have preferred women to be included? By the way, the money helped MIT, it doesn't matter it came from an alleged child molester.
1
Artificial Intelligence.
Very Artificial Intelligence.
2
If you only use half your brain you only see half the opportunity. Or alternatively, as a an “Origonalist” might enterprpret the law of the land, we have always discriminated against half the population so we must continue.
Ho-him, what’s your point? People behave like, well, people. Rich men like to hang around other rich men.
2
Speaking of "faux billionaires" isn't the MIT Media Lab a "faux laboratory?" -- a headline-seeking Department of Trendiness launched within MIT's architecture school, rather than the engineering or hard science programs for which the university is known. The bio of its founder, Nicholas Negroponte, proudly proclaims he has "invested in over 30 startup companies over the last 30 years." I suggest a primary business objective of this "Laboratory" is to generate positive press for precisely these kinds of startup companies. I also suggest that the digerati press -- tech journalists like Manjoo -- are the key targets for the PR dispensed by the MIT Media Lab.
5
razor sharp
3
Is this Negreponte who excuses himself and I question whether he has a moral center is he still with "esteemed"MIT while the rest of us go to work and graduate from regular BIG TEN universities and honor those special geniuses we will never know at MIT and those special billionaires. OMG what a vacuous bunch!
Thank you 4 writing this article. At least the truth finally came out.
Perhaps the New York Times would like to introduce its readers to the members of its own board.
Perhaps we would be interested in its composition, how many degrees of separation between the members and convicted sex offenders.
How many billionaires sit on the New York Times board?
4
Stop robber barons from making those ill gotten gains. Also tax them. Don't stop them from giving it away to appropriate sources. Wrong again Manjoo
3
In an Op-ed about academia accepting money with strings attached from dubious billionaires (the Koch brothers among others were mentioned), there were two paid advertisements from... Koch industries, inviting us readers to click-through to listen to Charles Koch himself 'talk business' or 'talk about the environment'.
Whatever he might say about business or the environment, his decades of political spending speak loud and clear: deregulation, and reduction or elimination of any and all taxes on wealthy corporations. And then more deregulation.
Let us hope that the New York Times someday might actually practice what Mr. Manjoo is preaching here.
3
Farhad is rapidly becoming my favorite columnist
2
Information and news is essential. Supposition and opinion woven together with a sprinkling of facts does harm. Yes, this is an opinion piece. But it is poorly reasoned and poorly written. Opinion Editors, this surprises me. Your standards are usually much higher.
1
Next, the Harvard/Epstein story?
1
LOL. Addicted to billionaires? Not just scientists, but journalists too, no? Let's not forget Carlos Slim, eh? Or Jeff Bezos.
1
This is why so many university economics faculties are a mutual back-scratching collection of suck-ups to concentrated wealth, who don't even teach that public sectors of mixed economies were created to conduct socialism.
2
For the love of me I cannot understand why any self-respecting female scientist or administrator would even want to attend the above mentioned sausage fest, even if the sausages are attached to wealthy, good looking and even brainy men.
To watch fellow male scientist emasculate and humiliate themselves sucking up to "billionaires", faux-laughing at their back-slapping jokes and pretending to be interested in their "visionary" ideas, for a prospect of some future grant is below anyone's dignity...
Women were not invited because they would see through this vanity fair charade, and their presence would make it uncomfortable for the "bad boy" participants to let go of their inhibitions. Same reason they are not invited to stag parties...
Needless tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of funding infrastructure, education and research has resulted in MIT sucking up to pedophiles.
Our nation led the world in scientific breakthroughs - not because of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates... it was because we invented the transistor, C language, and Pentagon funded the early internet all with tax payer funded research dollars.
Today those tax breaks for the billionaires has killed the goose that lays these golden eggs.
Maybe Warren is a little extreme with her tax proposals but directionally she is right. Increase taxes on the wealth; fund public good.
2
Billionaires don’t exist in economic theory, they’re are an erroneous byproduct of capitalism.
Democracy depends in the current modern form on a well functioning and hence regulated capitalistic market economy.
Billionaires’ destructive influence on politics, education and the environment gives us a glimpse on what is to come.
They try to form the world in their own image: a dystopian world with few winners and billions of losers.
Billionaires are like cancers: they grow uncontrollably and whip the organ or whole organism into submission.
Yes, there are a few benevolent billionaires, but usually they have given up their vast fortunes and only are left with minimal control.
We need to curb the power of existing billionaires through taxes and regulations and we have to reform our economy in a way that prevents the emergence of undeserved wealth in the first place.
The survival of our civilization depends on this.
12
Such excellent writing. “Giving money to higher education amplifies a billionaire’s legacy. The money greases hiring decisions and shapes curriculums, and it can ricochet across the wider culture for decades, even after the billionaire himself has shuffled off this mortal coil.”
2
Mr Manjoo
An essential article.
The American university can now join the Roman Catholic Church and the US justice system as recent examples of crumbling institutions which have lost all ethical credibility through hypocrisy, mendacious behaviour and hubris.
Let us hope that the Sackler and Epstein scandals expose in particular the Ivy League institutions for the hollow shells of snobbery and social networking for the hereditary élite in America.
Such a valuable column. Nailed it.
Extrapolating that the gross behavior of a single billionaire is representative of all the wealthy is terrible science and poor journalism.
I'd like to point out that Nicholas Negroponte is John Negroponte's brother. Yea, the same John Negroponte involved in Iran-Contra.
1
Farhad is trying to get himself out of the tech ghetto into something a bit more socially relevant. There are so many non sequiturs here (the whole thing about adjunct faculty for example) you can’t take much of this seriously. The subject IS very important, but he is not.
1
A lot of good points here about how all of our respected institutions are dependent on money from not-so-respected sources.
But this piece is flat-out wrong about women not being invited to the Edge dinners. Look at
https://www.edge.org/event/the-edge-billionaires-dinner-2010.
Lots of high-profile, professional women, and not a "model" in sight.
1
down with generosity!
2
Nothing wrong in Academia benefiting from Epstein’s money. At least it was used for a good cause.
3
"Americans know the price of everything and the value of nothing." Oscar Wilde (paraphrased)
1
MIT sold its soul long ago, and now we act surprised? All of its "prestige" (=money) is built on a mountain of military/defense contracts that established that institution's wealth and prominence in the US. So now they are caught taking money from a high society pimp...and we're shocked! Seriously people, get a clue.
1
“What happens when women don’t get invited to these dinners is they lose out on professional opportunities,” said Sarah Szalavitz, a social designer and external fellow at the M.I.T. Media Lab whom I’ve long trusted as a keen observer of the industry. ---
Why didn't she resign when she learned M.I.T. Media Lab was taking money from a convicted pedophile? I'm glad that you trust her. she seems like an opportunist to me.
1
This is gross exaggeration. This piece does not support its headline, but reflects a misunderstanding of higher education endemic to the Times.
The Times covers the Ivy League, plus a few schools like MIT and Stanford. These are the schools Times writers aspired to and graduated from. They have billion dollar donors. Ninety-five percent of American universities do not.
2.2 million people graduated with bachelor’s degrees in 2018. Maybe 20,000 were from the Ivy League, which is well covered here. The rest of higher education is a black hole to Times writers.
This episode at this elite and unique institution suggests “intractable moral rot in American academia”? You have one bad example and no evidence with which to make this gross claim. “Men in the ivory tower can’t resist lowering their golden locks to let the plutocrat climb aboard.” Colorful language here, but that’s all.
Manjoo also says “Epstein’s money, too, inarguably had a pernicious effect on science and tech.” I have found that when someone says their argument is “inarguable” it almost always is not. There is nothing to support this claim, but, according to Manjoo, that’s because all this “will take a while to figure out.”
Nicholas Negroponte might now 80 percent of American billionaires, but most college presidents do not know one. There are 2,600 accredited four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. To say that they are tarred by this foul man who had access to a few elite institutions is nonsense.
2
Academics weren't the only ones befriending Epstein. I recall plenty of famous political and business figures too. Are you going to write a column disparaging all of American business?
1
You have to wonder what else was going on at those men only events. I must say that the bar for the standard of behaviour for men is probably lying around on the floor somewhere. I am sorry that young men today have to trip over that bar to find it.
There aren't that many billionaires.
What is your definition of many.
I know a lot of people who think even one is one too many.
2
Is there some seasonality for articles bashing universities as only for the wealthy? I think were up to 4 in a week. Smells like an agenda.
It's standard practice for private universities to prostitute themselves for the almighty dollar. The problem is that now the public universities are following suit. I used to work for a top tier public university and it was so depressing to see the state legislature cut funding and expect the public university to make up the different through "donations" from the unholy wealthy. Nobody ever gives millions without expecting something in return. The goals of education are perverted when millionaires dictate who should be taught.
2
Everything the Boomers touch dies. The only thing Boomers think about, as billionaires or administrators, is money. What a shock that the former yuppies whose Bible was "Looking Out for No. 1," whose mantra was "Greed is good," and whose poster children have been the Clintons and Donald Trump, should have corrupted higher education with money.
1
What a muddled column! Perhaps extrapolating from the experience of a violent sociopath like Epstein isn't the best approach to analyzing university funding.
Yes, very wealthy people have extraordinary influence and I would certainly advocate for a much higher tax rate on the wealthy. But does anyone prefer that rich people buy another mansion or a gulf stream or give to universities and other non-profits?
2
You can read OTHER stories (ad nauseam) about how women are excluded from science and technology. "He's a sex offender" is JUST the LATEST EXCUSE. The reality is men in science and tech will use ANY EXCUSE to exclude ICKY GIRLS from their exclusive little club.
It starts because women won't date/sleep with them and it ends when men hog the funding for research.
1
The corruption of EDU is simply that of late capital's military - industrial complex in one more venue. Eisenhower's 1960 warning finds its realization everywhere. Our society has no values, only money and power. What makes it worse for EDU is that these institutions who have horrendous moral records in hiring, money grubbing, financial polarization, and rabid classism continue to sell themselves as lighthouses of equity, morality, and justice. It is this disparity and hypocrisy which renders EDU particularly disturbing in a world ruled by universal immorality.
1
Praise the Lord! We now, FINALLY, have the possibility of a sea change in America's politic.
Bernie Sanders OR Elizabeth Warren
Or Both.
Now is the time. Finally.
1
Should the MIT’s Board be responsible here? The Media Lab is one of the most visible parts of the school. As such, the Board cannot câlin it is some obscure department that they did not focus on.
1
Absolutely, 100%. Thank you very much; this issue has been sidelined what with all the eyepopping tawdriness.
The problem isn't that women aren't invited to the billionaire dinners, the problem is that there are billionaire dinners.
This group that's all networked together and pompous enough to want to run the world shouldn't be opened up to women, it should be dissolved
1
The libertarian influence gutted taxes supporting all educational institutions nationwide. Universities began courting unethical countries and wealthy. Public schools continue to struggle. What a mess!
1
I don't worry so much about the Woman Question, which seems to preoccupy most Times columnists. I worry that all that scientific/technical expertise and all that money are combining to create some near-future SF nightmare.
Do we really need artificial intelligence? Maybe we ought to concentrate on developing our natural intelligence.
1
With respect, is there not something a bit hypocritical, a bit illogical, a bit wrong about claiming that "when women don't get invited to these dinners" where the billionaire pedophiles and other perverts, molesters, rapists, etc., hang out and hand out money, and likely create those "coercive" environments, those dinners are nonetheless where "[women] lose out on professional opportunities," and thus, this situation is to be lamented....not because money and perverts are corrupting the system, but because women are not participating equally in the system.
Well, that is shooting for equality indeed.
And we wonder how we got to this point, hmm?
No funded grants which the university can skim overhead from to pay for the administration? No tenure for you. Oh, you know a billionaire who wants to fund some fake science, and the administration can skim some money for the ballooned size and pay of administration? Go for it. there are just not enough billionaire who want to fund pure science or examine antiquities to see if the changing climate has lessons for us today.
1
I have some breaking news for you Farhad.
The entirety of America's public good institution eco-system from legal, to healthcare, to education, to research, to politics, to travel is a pay to play system. If you have money you can purchase influence, power and priority and all manner of sins can be forgiven or whitewashed.
Donald Trump is exhibit A, Joichi Ito's mistake was not realizing that even in the Trumpian era, there are normative limits to what money will forgive. Maybe after Trump wins re-election next November even these loose limits will fade away. In which case he will have been a victim of timing.
1
Interesting. According to his Wikipedia entry, Manjoo received his first degree from Cornell University, where he worked on the student newspaper. Presumably he wanted to go there; it’s an extremely difficult place to get into. Yet it was founded by — wait for it — a wealthy philanthropist, Ezra Cornell, the founder of Western Union. Would it have been better for Mr Cornell to be discouraged from such a gift, on the grounds that he sought thereby to improve his reputation? Perhaps — but we would then almost surely have been denied the benefits of Mr Manjoo’s provocative thoughts.
1
Learning Bill Gates also donated via Mr. Epstein, It actually knocked the wind out of me. With all this focus on those who harbored a criminal, I too almost missed the forest through the trees.
It all brought me back to Justice Kennedy and a few missing puzzle pieces. Why he retired, when he retired. A certain case that could only be Made in New Jersey brought it all into focus.
How, if at all, would Mr. Kennedy have ruled in the Gamble case? For Mr. Epstein to be lawfully re-apprehended, Gamble required a certain Judicial Reliability in fortifying the law around Double Jeopardy. Recall, Mr. Epstein had a global Get out of Jail Free card from the Feds. It was SDNY, not local NY authorities who incarcerated Mr. Epstein. Mr. Alito, who wrote Gamble's majority opinion, enjoyed a meal with Mr. Acosta, his former law clerk this past February. Mr. Acosta resigned within days of Mr. Epstein's questionable apprehension in July. All made less questionable by Gamble, a most timely Supreme Court rejected case 11 prior times before opining last October, just in time for Mr. Epstein. Julie Brown's Miami Herald piece dropped in November.
Mr. Trump's sister (a former Judge) has been quite a champion for Mr. Alito's career. And of course, her husband had served as counsel to Mr. Trump during those NJ Casino days. But why talk about Mr. Alito, when it's Mr. Kennedy who retired(?) Why talk about Any Complicit Men of Power, with all this Non Criminal MIT & Harvard malfeasance...?
This is factually incorrect.
From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , March 5th, 2015
"National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track
Wendy M. Williams and Stephen J. Ceci
PNAS April 28, 2015 112 (17) 5360-5365
The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disguising identical scholarship, for assistant professorships in biology, engineering, economics, and psychology. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Comparing different lifestyles revealed that women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers and that men preferred mothers who took parental leaves to mothers who did not. Our findings, supported by real-world academic hiring data, suggest advantages for women launching academic science careers."
https://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360
1
Just a small correction. Epstein was neither a billionaire nor a fake one. He was a 1/2 billionaire (real or fake).
Excellent Op-Ed! Epstein's crimes extend beyond the personal violation of innocent girls and women. His dirty money was accepted in the hallowed halls of higher-education despite his criminal background, fake reputation
and warning bells sounded by a brilliant WOMAN scientist.
Ito and Negroponte, in their drive to fund M.I.T's lauded Media Lab, have sullied the school's reputation and have tainted the research with a pedophile's funds. These institutions need to revamp their vetting processes and be held accountable for accepting funds from a pedophile. M.I.T. should loudly apologize, disavow itself of this money and the parties involved in this scandal should all be fired ASAP!
Even foreign Billionaires/Millionaires love American universities for various purpose. I was checking donation to various US Univ by rich Indians.
We need to remember that many/most such large donations are not disclosed for various reasons. Many of the donors still live in India. They do that for various reasons- like securing admission for thier children and other closed ones (even employees working with them), promoting and securing business interest, influencing public policy etc.
Probably most such rich Indians donated to US universities never gave almost any money to much poorer Indian Universities or for public education in India.
Few Examples:
* Ratan Tata- $50 million to Harvard Business School in 2010.
* Anand Mahindra- $10 million to Harvard University.
* Ambani Brothers- donated at least $5 million to Yale (where his daughter studied). Donated undisclosed amount to Stanford, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and other American univ.
* N R Narayana Murthy- $5.2 million to Harvard
* Siddharth Yog- $ 11 million to Harvard
* Anupama and Guru Ramakrishanan- $3.5 million to Univ of Chicago
* Rohini and Nandan Nilekani- $5 million to Yale
* Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon- $100 million to New York University (Chandrika is the sister of Pepsi CEO, Indra Nyoi )
* Indra Nyoi- undisclosed amount to Yale
2
Thanks for writing what needed to be said.
All the outrage at MIT for taking Epstein money (which is justified), but when Koch donated to MIT, they applaud him (and he announced at the time he was giving to cancer research b/c he had cancer).
That money was tainted by a man representing all that a free-thinking, science-based university abhors. MIT should have rejected that donation.
7
There is clearly something seductive to some people about associating themselves with celebrities or those who possess substantial wealth. Looking at Ito’s status, one could argue the Times chose to affiliate with him based on his academic celebrity rather than any tangible achievements. With respect to Epstein, it’s hard to fathom his meetings were of much actual value, and as an alternative narrative, perhaps women were more likely to see Epstein as the poseur he was.
4
This column is a cheap shot. And at a certain level completely inaccurate. My son is a 1st-year medical student. Almost half his class is composed of women. Women are not consciously being excluded from science & tech anymore. To believe that let alone to encourage that idea is tantamount to pushing a pernicious lie. The facts & the figures don't back up this assertion. This columnist has it backward. More than ever women are being encouraged to go into the sciences. There are more women in the sciences & more opportunities than at any other time in our history. Is it 50/50? No, it isn't & isn't likely to be for decades. You can't force someone who's not committed to go into a field this challenging...this isn't the Humanities. The ratio of men vs woman will even out over time.
The overwhelming majority of wealthy people who donate to our colleges & universities do so for the best of reasons. To use Jeffrey Epstein as a symbol for why women are allegedly being excluded from Tech is ridiculous. He was the rare exception. In any enterprise, there will be bad actors. We all know that. Taking the obligatory progressive low blow at the Koch's is equally absurd. If it's ok to fund liberal causes then there's nothing wrong with people who decide to support libertarian initiatives. Imagine a world where the wealthy didn't donate to our colleges. Imagine all the great discoveries that would have never happened. There is no perfect system. But this one overall is as good as it gets.
1
The glaring omission in Manjoo's typically myopic column is why universities are now addicted to private philianthropy: our politics has dried up their public funding while creating a burgeoning class of billionaires. Don't blame the universities. Blame the American electorate.
As Sarah Szalavitz said (about excluding women) “It’s not a grand conspiracy. It’s just a fact.” Indeed. With 30 years in academic science I can tell you that is exactly the right description. Women are largely absent from power experiences and positions—they just are not invited or considered.
1
Let me get this straight: the problem you want to address is that women are being excluded from sex trafficker beach parties?
You have the right opinion to assert here, but you need to build a better case. The one you lay out here is opportunistic and incomplete. Do better.
1
This past weekend the NYT op-ed seemed to praise MIT for not giving preference to legacies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/end-legacy-college-admissions.html
Quote from MIT admissions guy: “I personally would not work for a college which had legacy admission because I am not interested in simply reproducing a multigenerational lineage of educated elite."
Looks like they don't need legacy money when they have millions coming from Saudi's and Epstein types.
This also seems explains why the number of Saudi International students has sharply increased in American colleges.
http://graphics.wsj.com/international-students/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/magazine/saudi-arabia-american-universities.html
I'll ignore the nonsensical, baseless identity politics of Mr. Manjoo and get to the more pragmatic point- in lieu of billionaires, where do you propose our universities should get their funding from? I can't deny that Epstein was a terrible man, but money is money and organizations like the MIT media lab have produced many important technologies for our regular consumption. Where do you propose universities get funds from if we're not to take from wealthy donors for fear of their influence on the university and questions about their moral scruples?
I remember having a similar conversation with fellow students during my time (in Boston ironically) in uni. There was staunch opposition to our endowment from fossil fuels, funding of science buildings from the NSA, and of course the typical milieu of BDS protestors found on near every campus this day. But the point I made clear- 20% of our endowment was from fossil fuels. The NSA upgraded our labs and classrooms in several buildings that hadn't been touched since 1950.
If you're not going to take money you insist is dirty, where are you going to get it from? Irrelevant of what my personal beliefs are towards the group or individuals you wish to divest from, show me an alternate source of funding and solve the pragmatics if you're going to fume, otherwise you're merely biting the hand that feeds you. Please, go ahead and complain in the new luxury dorm and classrooms funded by your "evil" corporations.
Manjoo writes:
"The chumminess suggests a deeper and more intractable moral rot in American academia"
Why restrict the 'moral rot' to academia - and just part of academia at that, considering the operating model of the NCAA ?
Grift/exploitation was historically endorsed, handsomely rewarded, and then underwritten as an American value by the public Treasury back in 2009:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html
If grift is no longer to be celebrated as an American value, a serious societal upheaval is in the making.
"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." Balzac
3
Fundraising should be directed towards the poor for they are virtuous.
'What gets me is the unctuous, oozing chumminess — the unembarrassed, hat-in-hand genuflection toward the pedophile rainmaker.' There is nothing unusual here, except in this case the object of appeals is a pedophile.
The Number One job of a university president in American higher education today is to get money from private donations. Unless the public purse is further opened, which is not likely, there is no other option and this situation is only going to get worse. So before you get too self-righteous about administrators being 'hooked on billionaires,' make a realistic funding proposal to back fill when you turn down their money.
I used to work in higher ed at a private university.
“Center” or “Lab” means it has to get its annual budget from somewhere. Sometimes the money is from NSF or NIH (e.g., many population centers), but often the money is from a private millionaire donor with his own politics.
An “Institute” has enough money to be endowed, that is, live off interest. It’s typically a huge some of money in the double-digit millions. (The university board of trustees are very controlling about what gets named what.) Even though the initial grant can be politically motivated and influential, there’s a level of political independence with this that obviously doesn’t happen with a “Center.”
Have there been instances in which faculty cast politically motivated votes on other faculty because their funder threatened to stop funding their center? Yes there have.
Besides faculty who run centers, development offices (read: fundraisers) have all kinds of practices that are off-putting, from spreadsheets of all alumni ever filled with random facts about you and rankings based on projected lifetime donation (yes, you too!), to literal menus for wealthy donors with things like naming a conference room or endowing a professorship.
Princeton’s development office is widely considered the best at tracking down alumni and convincing them to donate. I heard their operation compared to the CIA.
I was naive before that job, thinking the ivory tower was fueled by ideas. But it’s a dirty dirty business!
1
Agree in principle; of course, Epstein is hardly the only, or even the worst, example of a billionaire's influence on American universities. It's just fashionable to use his name at the moment.
State universities are also addicted to money. Administrators value money over truth and skewer whistle blowers who report research fraud. We not only depend on research, we pay for it with our taxes. Despite their protected status, tenured professors who witness fraud steer clear. Universities, educating the next generation, should set a good example by protecting academic whistle blowers.
Women are more successful and exist in higher numbers than men at every level of k-12 education, and also benefit from affirmative action and diversity quotas at the zero-sum expense of men.
If they are less represented in a given field than in the general population, that is due to their preferences alone.
Also, who cares where donated money comes from? If anything, repurposing the earnings of a morally defunct individual for a better cause should be viewed as constructive.
1
Not to distract but I was struck with this same thought last week, walking through the Met...
“I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!" -- Louis Renault -- and academics everywhere.
The way I'm reading it: some researchers were upset they didn't get funding from Epstein.
Everyone is addicted to serving billionaires. It is the worship of wealth and power as the meaning of life.
This is really the dirty secret of our famous private, insanely expensive university system, as well as the general low esteem (absurd given the costs) that education, public or otherwise, is held in this country, that many academics will go just about anywhere to find money.
Those who do not know an Epstein or are ethical enough to keep away from
him spend much of their energy applying for grants to keep their research going, instead of being able to do the actual research - which is performed by postdocs paying their dues until they too, if lucky, can end up doing the same as their mentors)
My father was a top médical professor at an excellent state university in the 1970’s. He left in disgust for Canada when he realized the unhealthy hobnobing between the university and the billionaires. Of course all future prospects ended for him but he finished his career without regrets and died as he had lived a hard working honest man.
1
Science and Tech are notoriously male dominated. I get that Jeffrey Epstein committed the vilest of sexual crimes. But, is there any evidence that his funding initiative was inherently more sexist? Did he make the workplace more hostile than Uber?
Is University X taking Saudi money morally better than University Y taking Epstein money?
Let us be clear. There is no data to suggest that a billionaire flying a few university professors to his private island has resulted in scientific breakthroughs.
Yes I agree that billionaires meddling in universities is deeply flawed. I agree that Epstein did horrible crimes. But by any standards his donations and vile influence
in science and tech is far less grave than what goes on everyday (the Saudis, the Koch's). The title seems overdramatic.
Stop dealing with education as strictly a competitive PROFITEERING BUSINESS. That is the biggest mistake.
"Note how Charles and David Koch used higher-education philanthropy to push a libertarian intellectual agenda that influenced policy wonk circles across the country."
That's all your going to say about the Koch brothers?? They did lots more than that; they are very much the main influencers concerning climate change.
Their money has been used to help create the movement of "climate deniers" who will end up responsible for millions of people dying or being reduced to poverty. Along with animals as well, of course. The brothers, even though they were educated at MIT, allowed their greed to overrule any science they may have learned. And MIT never said a word about that - probably because David gave millions of dollars to MIT. I'm not very happy with MIT for ignoring their grave misdeeds.
What a crisp example of the moral decay of this moment! The writing is so clear-eyed because the writer's moral compass is right. What kind of future are these science "geniuses" capable of creating when they put a college drop-out sex trafficker ahead of brilliant MIT trained FEMALE scientists? Did NONE of them object to the ethos of these trips/conferences? Quantum physics tells us "like energy attracts like". I have a feeling we are just starting to learn the level of depravatity the faux billionaire inspired in this men. These sad men may have adopted futuristic lingo, but they have cavemen brains and should not be counted on to create the future. It seems the stars are aligned for a long-overdue reckoning. May everyone reap what they have sown.
1
"American Universities Are Addicted to Billionaires"
One look at the jaw-dropping, never-ending series of multi $billion capital construction projects, major renovations, and skyrocketing bureaucracies featuring "endowed" coaching and administration slots by virtually ALL US colleges and universities shows how deep the addiction runs.
What Mr. Manjoo reports on it really the tip of a much larger iceberg -- Well, perhaps more like the London sewer Fatberg (2017) than an iceberg...
1
This happens in other industries too. When I joined a huge chemical company in the 80's there were "sales meetings" each year at nice resorts. No wives invited. I was an engineer and they could not de-invite me and let all the men I worked with go, so I went. Disgusting, juvenile and sexist behavior that really opened my eyes to the people I was working with when they were "away". Over the years I saw this again and again. And even as recently as 6 years ago I was told be a female colleague of a "retreat" that her sales team had been invited to by a key (male) customer. No women invited. She was told by her boss that it was really better that way - she would be "uncomfortable". Sickening. Will this ever change?
11
I was married to a university dean and administrator and spent many, many, many hours hanging out with this kind of wealth for the sole purpose of university fundraising. At first, I thought it was a good cause but as it warped my ex’s once progressive views on challenging problems in society like the homeless frequenting the shelter next to our downtown loft (he grew to despise them and hated having to deal with them when walking our dogs while I got to know them and developed an opposite view of their plight), I came to see universities’ decreasing governmental support and increasing dependence on the private philanthropy of wealthy white males as catastrophic to American society.
Starting in the administration of a well-known West Coast research institution and ending up at a middling Midwestern private university, he met many movers and shakers, Nicholas Negroponte being one of them. My ex was brilliant in seeing the future of technology in our society before many others in higher education did, so connecting with Negroponte made sense. But I’m now struck in hindsight at how completely disconnected they all were from the rest of us who aren’t wealthy white males.
Looking back at my marriage to a much older white male Boomer in the white male Boomer-dominated world of higher education philanthropy, stories like these only validate my growing unease with the whole system. I’m glad to now be out of it but very sad about the remaining state of higher education today.
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@left coast finch Hi, thank you for this comment. If you’d be interested in chatting more about this, I’d love to talk — I’m interested in the corrupting influences of wealth. Email me if you have any interest: [email protected]
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@ left Coast Finch, I am a university professor at a prestigious school in the Los Angeles area. I really appreciated your comments. I have been in academia for over 30 years and while I have not had a front row seat by being married to an administrator my husband and I are both tenured faculty and have seen the disintegration you speak of. Please contact the columnist- it would be brilliant if he could interview you - you have a lot to tell!
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@left coast finch. I think much the same can be said of hospitals, museums, performing arts groups,etc. All of these development, branding, "advancement", etc. people (and just look at how many of them are employed nowadays) watch their salaries go up and up and pretty soon all they're advancing is themselves.
41
Nonsense. All twisted to serve the latest political cause.
The relationship of shady characters and academia has been all over the place.
I remember Harvard’s cozy relationship with oligarchs pillaging Russian state resources. A very famous professor of economics was advising the top brass of Russia while his wife was running a hedge fund trading/investing in companies that were forming in Russia.
Harvard paid the legal fees and penalties. The professor is still there (tenured but alas no longer with a vanity plated chair) and his wife, an extremely wealth woman, still runs a hugely successful hedge fund.
Go figure!
3
What are the chances Epstein picked male researchers for unsavory reasons that go beyond sexism, such as trying to tempt them into behavior which he could later blackmail them for?
Predators are predators. That they have different approaches for different groups is rarely favoritism, it is usually strategy.
4
I bet you Epstein was doing this to satisfy some sort of a wish to stay close to academic brilliance because of an inferiority complex he had. Don’t forget that he was a high IQ person with a good mathematical mind. He managed to get in to Cooper Union which says something, went on the NYU which is very famous for its Courant Institute of (Pure and Applied) Mathematics. He dropped out without a degree. That probably stayed with him. His “largesse” to MIT and Harvard could be seen in this context. Pay to play with the players who he couldn’t be part of their team.
In any case, as despicable character that he was, he definitely was a complex bad guy.
1
As oily as this kind of relationship is, it's only one aspect, as Manjoo points out regarding the Kochs. Jane Mayer's 'Dark Money' points out that in establishing entities like the Mercatus Center at George Mason University (and exercising control over who it hired as researchers), billionaires like the Kochs produced policy-affecting research that directly benefited their pocketbooks.
It all stems from the neoliberal model regarding higher education in this country.
I went to a biological conference a couple of years ago (so fairly recently). It was big, influential conference where one of the directors from the NIH gave a keynote. Over half of the attendees were women. exactly 2 of over 50 talks were given by women, and those were both "lightning talks," not important slots. This is how women are excluded and passed over in the halls of scientific power, when their work and influence is overlooked, as Farhad has keenly observed.
1
They are likewise addicted to full-pay foreign students whose families have to pay the staggering sums demanded by colleges and universities. The average in the United States is now 75% national, 25% foreign. Administrators have less and less contact with professors and the students themselves. They're MBA's whose focus is profit. There could well be a financial crisis in higher education as foreign students search for other countries that are safer and less antagonistic politically than the United States.
1
As a social historian of science and technology, I have been thinking about the problematic interaction of wealth and discrimination at academic institutions since my undergraduate days in a southern university in the 1960s. The problems discussed in the article are certainly not new. Anyone who argues that there have not been policies of systematic exclusion and discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, or religion is simply wrong. Only in the past few decades have some of these policies begun to change, generally as the result of legislation followed by legal action. Academic institutions have a very poor record of self-regulation.
Good column. Can you write about how the billionaires seem to end up with patents worth far more than their contributions when discoveries are made?
1
There are hundreds of national research universities, which employ hundreds of thousands of professors and other research staff. A few cherry-picked stories about a few bad apples doesn't add up to a column.
1
That is because only sensational stories like this come out. Academic shenanigans involving donor money abound. In the two institutions I was involved in (both Ivy League) these issues were visible to the naked eye if you bothered looking.
Public universities is the answer. Funded by tax-payers and allowing citizens an education and the nation the best research.
Have you heard of ETH in Zurich? University of Vienna, Heidelberg, Gottingen, Copenhagen? École Normale Supérieur, École Polytechnique in France?
Have you heard of Quantum Mechanics, Relativity Theory? Beautiful mathematical proofs that led to Fields Medals?
All with public money. Something to think about!
5
I’m trying to figure out which logical fallacy keeps popping up in these columns ... it’s like doing a science study based on one example.
@Blunt
Exactly. And until 50 or so years ago, that's how it was in the U.S. also.
And then the GOP 'government is the enemy' brainwashing campaign began.
1
I suppose I am so 20th Century, but what is a "social designer" and what field of science do they study or operate in? My wife is a geospatial engineer. My daughter in law is a marine biologist. I know what they do. Are there actually degrees in "social design"? Should Ms Szalavitz have been named in the article as Dr. Szalavitz? Where did she earn her degrees or is "social designer" just another way of saying "social butterfly"?
1
Too bad the author did not reserve some of his blistering invective for the many politicians who pander to the whims of the American Oligarchy.
One could argue that universities at least attempt to put the money to good purpose.
1
There are far more female teachers, nurses, and psychologists than male.
Why are men being "excluded" from these professions?
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@Graham: because sexism goes both ways: exclusion from male dominant jobs like engineers or pilots and push into “traditional” female jobs like nurses, teachers and hairstylists.
1
Thank you for this column. I still struggle to understand why so many powerful men in industry, finance, and academia seem determined to squash and silence this country's best qualified and brilliant women. The predominance of scientific evidence shows that diversity improves outcomes and profitability in every area of endeavor. That said, I'd like to know what they see as the end game of their pernicious misogyny.
1
If you give a substantial gift to any charity, you will be assigned to someone in its so-called "Institutional Advancement" group. Charities like colleges and hospitals have dozens of salaried/bonused solicitors on staff who will hound you in every way possible to give more. If you give enough, all of your kids can get into your former college, and you'll never have to wait to see a physician or get any medical procedure on offer. If you give enough, your name will be emblazoned on walls of honor or you can even have the whole charity or its buildings renamed for you. It's all the result of inadequate public funding that needs to be supplemented with money from big donors.
A thoughtful piece as usual...but - as with most journalism regarding colleges/universities today - it is too focused on elite schools. More than 90% of colleges and universities are not in bed with billionaires (though they would happily do so in most cases)...and that is where most students pursue higher education. We aren't going to get anything done to fix the higher education/opportunity relationship by focusing on only the elite schools...
Thanks, Ed
2
when billionaires fund the universities, billionaires can dictate the education, curriculum, faculty, and the message at the universities. Louise Powell wrote, a generation ago, about the importance gaining control of college curriculum in his recipe for turning the country into a conservative bastion.
Women have their exclusive conclaves too. They go by names like "Women's Leadership Conference."
Do powerful and wealthy women sponsor them, and do the attendees go there to schmooze with potential sponsors? Do those powerful and wealthy women exert influence on future agendas and decisions?
If you decry the men doing something, you might want to notice that women are doing something similar. Otherwise you might end up granting men fewer rights simply because they are the currently dominant group. Equality does not lie in that direction.
The right to have such conclaves is separate from the morality of the people pushing an agenda, and the agenda itself. Epstein was clearly an immoral person who should not be setting an agenda for anyone. The Koch brothers agenda is inimical to American democracy, and their money gives them the ability to foist it on scientists and researchers who need their money.
There's the right to hold exclusive-sex conclaves, and the right of the wealthy to use their wealth to set the agenda for public institutions. These are two separate issues blended into a single type of event.
1
This is only a small example of the corrupting influence of great wealth accumulated by a few. Many of those who have it think they deserve it, and think they deserve it because they are so clever. Therefore, their argument goes, they can best determine how to use the money,
This is among the causes for wasted funding -- spending on flashy things that are inefficient and often counterproductive, and it leads to the huge fortunes of the Harvards and MITs when a more equitable sharing of funding of educational institutions would probably engage a more diverse student body, leading to demographic and geographic dispersion of resources. Of course, the Harvards and MITs, with some truly exceptional faculty and students, deserve to have extensive funding of their important research and teaching -- just not so much. Just think, the argument of the billionaire class has often been that the free market (economic and intellectual) produces the greatest open competition and thus the greatest results. Opening resources for more should produce such results.
Someone lucky or clever enough to make a lot should be able to keep a lot. But after, let's say, $7 million of wealth anyone should be satisfied. The rest, when properly taxed and used for the public good, would undoubtedly lead to a better life for all, including those fortunate enough to have such abundant resources (the money, luck and cleverness). A nice house, a Tesla, health care, plenty of spending money -- what's so bad?
4
As a professional fundraiser I would argue that some of the language used in this article is unnecessarily inflammatory and one-sided. While funding, research, hiring decisions, etc. do have implications for the long term and may in fact be pernicious -- this is true whether the funding is government funds or private. Researchers and administrators at state universities in conservative states, for example, have to toe a very careful line when speaking about or conducting research on certain issues, e.g., climate change or else face retaliatory budget cuts -- a form of censorship undoubtedly. Moreover, I have seen countless state legislatures get themselves very involved in the minutiae of day-to-day operations in very questionable ways. Academics are always free to decline money or pursue funding from other sources. Universities are unique institutions and have always operated in a particular cultural and historical contexts. There is nothing inherently wrong with universities responding to market forces or launching educational or research programs in response to individual, corporate or private philanthropic agendas. Arguing that they should or that it is possible to remain free from any external influence at all strikes me as unrealistic at best. Until and unless the government funds universities, cultural organizations and other not-for-profits at a sustainable level, I wonder what alternative you would propose?
Quite a number of commenters here decry our supposed lack of government support for higher education compared with Europe, thus our universities' dependence on sky-high tuitions and wealthy donors. In fact, government spending on higher ed -- as a % of GDP -- is HIGHER here than in most of the OECD countries. (See https://mises.org/wire/government-spending-colleges-us-higher-countries-free-college.) The difference: our universities SPEND much more money on, among other things, lavish rec centers, stadiums and arenas and "alumni centers." The real addiction on display here is our higher ed administrators compulsive expenditure of the taxpayers' and students' money.
1
@Peter Blau: I suspect our higher ed institutions spend a lot of money paying high-priced administrators too.
I wouldn't presume to compare this with Europe because I know nothing about European higher education.
@mlbex I haven't seen a comparison between Europe and the US on this. but Chronicle of Higher Ed lists 17 public and 61 private college presidents paid over $1 million salaries. Amazingly, some lower-end colleges pay more than the top ones. (No doubt to "attract the best talent.) Quinnipiac in CT paid its president $1.57 million in 2016, while Yale's president only got $1.28 million. One university, Baylor, pays their president in the range of $5 million, but don't envy him; their football coach makes over three times as much!
1
And except for their Medical School are they really a good university? I don’t think so.
1
There is a systematic problem with funding public higher education through philanthropy. A society that values public education as a cornerstone of a viable democracy provides public funding, i.e. state funding. The last few decades have seen both a reduction in state funding of higher education and a concurrent need to rely on "gifts" from a variety of sources. It should not surprise anyone that this has created a climate where universities turn a blind eye to the dirty money of all the Epsteins, Kochs and corporate conglomerates. The dependency on such money, of course, has political ramifications: You don't want to anger those who fund your work by pursuing research they do not like. The pressure on individual researchers and their institutions is enormous. Republicans have been very successful at creating this scenario by cutting public fiscal support of higher education. The scenario described by Mr. Manjoo is but one example of the ugly outcomes.
1
The funding debate aside, charity vs. taxes (which is a much needed debate indeed), colleges and universities NEED to get their spending and operating costs under control. There is too much waste in the system: administrative bloat, sports and stadiums galore, posh dorms, student leisure activities galore, etc, etc. There is too much waste in the system that in unrelated to education. If that were done, there would be less need to court billionaires and other wealthy donors for money.
A good, quality faculty, and the necessary tools for them to do their work, are the foundations of a good school. Perhaps colleges and universities need to revisit that premise first: in other words, get back to the basics.
1
Even if women had been well-represented at these Epstein circuses, I would condemn them. I do not like the way that top scholars are used (and lionized) by university administrators. This is institutionalized begging and produces all sorts of perverse incentives into academia that are unrelated to our core missions of research and teaching.
3
Thank you for this article. It's high time we started focusing on "where's the money (coming from)?" And it's not just higher education that's hooked on billionaires. Museums, transposed from repositories of culture into today's cathedrals of wealth and power, also rely on the largesse of the uber wealthy, including the Sacklers. Directors there should be held accountable as well.
2
Cue the college faculty/staff comment that the reason this kind of fund raising is going on is because state's have reduced their support of colleges.
Yes, state support has dwindled, but it's tough to defend the rampant spending when most football coaches are the highest paid employees in the state, and Taj Mahal rec centers are built.
I read about a decade ago that one Ivy League school had added two majors in 20 years; but in turn had added 200 administrators. While colleges aren't businesses, they also do not adhere to simply economic models that when you have debt and deficits, you shouldn't be spending like drunken sailors.
Back to the article, the author is spot-on. See the University of Oregon where NIKE founder and alum Phil Knight basically owns the school.
1
I don't know anything about this environment (other than what what Farhad has reported), but it seems that unless some sort of position that checks the ethics of interactions with these large contributors is in place, everyday human weakness to have an otherwise worthy aim accomplished is going to come into play and moral and ethical compromises are the byproduct. The fix, no interactions without a watchdog involved so the contributor understands that if their strings for a contribution don't align with the institution's ethics that even individuals at the highest levels within it can't bend the rules to take a check. Farhad quite ably has illuminated the problem, now lets see if Universities utilize some basic common sense to solve it.
2
The Koch brothers both studied at MIT and as a result it is not surprising that their money was welcomed there. 'A university's acceptance of money from a convicted sex offender with no obvious ties to the university would seem to fall into a different category.
The article does not address the important issue of tax breaks for university donors. I would be interested in reading the author's suggestions in this matter.
1
Here is a simple suggestion:
Universities should be public institutions funded by our tax dollars.
It works. Please look at the list below:
Heidelberg, Gottingen, Tubingen, ETH, École Normale Supérieure, École Polytechnique, Vienna, Normale di Pisa, Copenhagen, Moscow State University, Leningrad State University produced Nobel Prize winners, Fields and Abel Prize medalists for Gravitation, Quantium Mechanics, Relativity Theory, Hilbert’s 10 problems and so many beautiful mathematical proofs.
All public institutions. No weirdo funders. No robber baron funders.
2
Another example that was not fit to print:
Answer: Public Universities funded by out taxes.
Heidelberg, Gottingen, Tubingen, ETH, École Normale Supérieure, École Polytechnique, Vienna, Normale di Pisa, Copenhagen, Moscow State University, Leningrad State University produced Nobel Prize winners, Fields and Abel Prize medalists for Gravitation, Quantium Mechanics, Relativity Theory, Hilbert’s 10 problems and so many beautiful mathematical proofs. All public institutions. No weirdo funders. No robber baron funders.
So, what is wrong with the picture?
5
The title of this piece misled me. I thought it would be a larger examination of the contributions of billionaires to universities in general. (For example, the money that Stephen Ross has given to the University of Michigan.) While the points raised in the article are valid, I think it would be worthwhile to explore the way universities have become addicted to the large cash infusions from these wealthy individuals.
4
To me, this article is about money and leadership. How much control should we allow the uber wealthy to exert over our society's institutions and agenda?
In this case the complaint is fairly narrow; men gain an advantage in university science programs because women are excluded from privately-funded conclaves where they schmooze with each other and with potential donors and sponsors.
But the larger problem remains; extreme wealth is coming to dominate the country's politics and future, and they are using that power to increase their profits at our expense.
I question whether a university that is so controlled by wealthy donors can rightly be called a public institution or not. In the larger sphere, can a country controlled by the wealthy really be called a democracy? When does it cease to be one?
I've been teaching in American universities for 40 years. When I started no one knew this word "development." Now it runs the entire "mission," from accepting students, curriculum, supporting and hiring faculty, research, etc.
4
Of all the professions, I find the exclusion of women in the sciences to be particularly absurd. The sciences are about the pursuit of knowledge wherein having an open mind is a occupational requirement. Yet, we choose to leave virtually half our talent on the bench when they should be in the lab. It makes no sense.
One day, when some woman cures cancer we'll ask ourselves if this could have been accomplished decades ago.
3
Academia can be a strange place. I find that strong support for the far left can find a comfortable home among the faculty. Most of my political views are also far left so I am typically supportive of these views among the faculty. However, I'm not supportive of either far left or far right views being foisted upon students. When I suggested the placing of "safety pens' on faculty doors was not a good idea unless we noted it was also a safe place for Young Republicans. This was just one of my views/behavior that got me ostracized from my left leaning colleagues. Basically, expressing the view that our job was to teach students in our area of expertise and staying out of politics resulted in amazing accusations and hostility. One does not have to worry more about the influence of far right influences in the University than far left influences. Far right influences are mainly on the administration by the wealth and powerful and far left influences are mainly on students by the faculty. Our job is to teach, not advocate our political views.
1
During my rather brief employmemt with a campus in the University of California system, it didn't take long to discover a simple truth. With campus fundraising efforts targeting California's wealthier residents, that addiction to billionaires (and millionaires) has been necessary to avoid raising tuition rates to impossible levels. Thus, the real problem is, taxpayers should be addicted to supporting public education, especially in higher education.
Until Prop. 13 reduced property taxes, California's public education programs were pretty well funded. But there had been a strange real estate boom as the "stagflation" of the early 1970s launched. As home prices skyrocketed, property taxes rose accordingly, affecting older homeowners with fixed retirement incomes.
Those property tax reductions were promoted by big real estate developers seeking to reduce their tax liabilities. The result was the gutting of public school funding. Ever since, anti-tax conservatives have given public education short shrift.
The problems of underfunding education and infrastructure can be blamed on those anti-tax conservatives. It has taken on a socio-economic version of "natural selection." It is also a reflection of America's addiction to getting something for nothing.
Republicans are addicted to spending on the Treasury's credit cards while rejecting the Democrats use of "taxing and spending". The former bloats the national debt. The latter does not,
1
@David Ohman Thank you for mentioning the genesis of Proposition 13 in California and its effects on education there. That campaign rippled across much of the country and in Colorado we have our own version, TABOR, originated by California refugee Douglas Bruce, which has similarly decimated education here. As one person explained to some years back, "My kids are out of school, so I am going to vote against all taxes for schools in the future."
If universities don't accept funding from organizations with agendas, where will funding come from? State legislatures have reduced funding in many, if not most states, witness tuition increases and student debt increases.
3
I think the NYT and many other companies would do well to have some board members who don't have thousands of millions of dollars and tens of thousands connections. Some of us, men and women. both, out here in the country might be able to help recalibrate your moral compass.
People who have obscene amounts of money charged way too much for their product and were both taxed and paid their workers way too little.
6
@Mike S. While not universally true, after 50 years in business analysis my conclusion is that many ultra-wealthy people earned their money the old fashioned way: they stole it.
2
Of course what you really mean is that universities are addicted to money.
It just happens that billionaires have most of the the money.
The image problems arise because one doesn't (usually) become a billionaire by studiously following the Ten Commandments and being purely ethical. Universities are very expensive places to run (successfully) - administrative costs, infrastructure costs, and fancy faculty costs (regular faculty, not so much) so they're are nearly forced to beg from the morally compromised.
3
This idea that ONLY having a degree makes you worth something. Those that make that claim live in houses made from "uneducated" men, if they have a heart attack the paramedics (also "uneducated") could and may save your life. Nurses, plumbers, electricians etc are all valuable jobs but the education industrial complex demands we look down on those who don't have a degree.
I am a full professor at an Ivy League university and hold an endowed chair paid by a billionaire. Attending conferences at other universities sometimes attended by donors (nearly always men), I have witnessed those donors disparaging and insulting distinguished women scholars with sexist remarks. I am aware of academic projects funded by donors who keep close tabs on the projects and I see a nearly complete exclusion of women from the projects. I know of donors to an academic journal whose editor and editorial board is 98% male. I doubt all these donors are sexual predators, but contempt for women seems widespread in the male donor class. Their misogyny has had a huge impact on preventing dissemination of women's scholarship and their careers, and on shaping the future directions of my field. Unless it is stopped, I fear the downfall of the university as we know it.
28
Resign your chair. I am sure plenty of excellent schools will hire you where you don’t have to carry Cain’s mark on your forehead.
2
Behind every great fortune is a great crime. History is full of examples: the Rockefeller’s and Kennedy’s involvement in liquor during prohibition, the Carnegie’s and Mellon’s ruthless treatment of labor in steel making, the Morgan’s and Astor’s dominance in banking, all created huge fortunes that these families used to establish some of our greatest universities. The University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University and many others were founded this way. It’s happening again not because our great institutions of learning have not lost their moral compass. It’s because in an era of wealth concentration and defunding of public support for research and education, institutions are forced to turn to wealthy donors. MIT is a vastly influential school that doesn’t need Epstein’s money. The technologies created there and by our alumni are a source of much of the wealth created in the US since WWII. The Media Lab in particular is to the 21st century what Bell Labs was to the 20th. Mr. Ito may have been flawed in his judgement, but MIT is not the villain in this narrative, it is the one of Epstein’s victims. Don’t think for a minute that smart people can’t be seduced by an apex predator like Epstein. If you don’t want to see this episode repeat itself at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, or fill in the blank of your favorite university, address the unbridled wealth concentration behind the crime. If you want money to stop talking, silence it at the source.
3
Or just focus on Public Universities funded by tax-payers with no strings attached and no vanity licence plates.
1
@Jeffrey Schantz: Enough people of doubtful judgment voted in the right places to elect an apex predator US president.
Public Universities funded by out taxes.
Heidelberg, Gottingen, Tubingen, ETH, École Normale Supérieure, École Polytechnique, Vienna, Normale di Pisa, Copenhagen, Moscow State University, Leningrad State University produced Nobel Prize winners, Fields and Abel Prize medalists for Gravitation, Quantium Mechanics, Relativity Theory, Hilbert’s 10 problems and so many beautiful mathematical proofs. All public institutions. No weirdo funders. No robber baron funders.
So, what is wrong with the picture?
4
In all institutions which are deserved to serve the interests of human citizens and human beings, the corrupting influence of money and special interests needs to be stopped and immediately would not be soon enough to reverse the downward spiral of ethical education, ethical government and ethical leadership among our universities, institutes of government and all other institutes that are designed to promote human's higher capacity of mind, body and spirit.
It is OK to take money for research from creeps with money. This is neither wrong, immoral, nor illegal. But it is not OK to take money from creeps and then lie about it on required public disclosure forms for non-profits.
Is it wrong to take fully disclosed money for research from felons with money? I would think it depends upon if the money is connected to felonious behavior, like drug money. In the case of Epstein, it is not clear that his money is related to his convictions or to the allegations of felonies that he will never be convicted of.
Does "bad money" get cleansed through subsequent virtuous application? I am sure many such examples could be found. For example, the dubious Koch brothers set up an institute at MIT so study prostate cancer. Is that clean money or dirty money and are the finding of the research invalid? It is legal money, which is what matters.
1
We need to reserve tax break on donations to higher ed for those people donating to public institutions only, eliminating the break if they are donating to a private institution.
If only you were king.
I am female Adjunct Professor at a Community College. This is way beyond my academic experience. Low wages, meeting students for “office hours” without compensation or a private office.
My focus is supporting students any way I can. There are no dinners or retreats, but coffee is only 99 cents a cup.
8
Bless you.
It is pitiful the way education is conducted and funded in this nation. Billions are wasted on things that are totally irrelevant to education, supposedly collegiate sports being the most obvious one.
European and many Asian universities are free. They product excellent work, research, students, doctors, Nobel Prize winners, Fields Medalists and Economists. Instructors and professors are civil servants and get paid very well. Well enough to live respectable lives not having to go through what you and do many others have to go through every day.
8
Not just billionaires. Check out all sorts of favoritism. The students know, but are afraid to speak up. Don't forget the most respected HBCUs.
People who don’t work at research universities simply don’t understand how they work, and increasingly, how they are being forced to work when it comes to both education and research. It is especially true at public universities, many of whom must somehow make up for constant reductions in tax-funded budgets, but private universities face related challenges since the money to fund basic operations (facilities, IT, staff, energy, etc...) still needs to come from somewhere. Both need to fund salaries of professors that earn every dollar of their sub-market pay, in part because the most well funded granting organization, the NIH, caps the amount of salary that they will pay at the salaries of our genuinely nonfunctional Congress members but still expects full effort to be devoted with additional funding from universities, which needs to be raised through endowment growth (which is now taxed), tuition (which is hard to raise) and indirect costs on grants (which are negotiated and hard to increase). Of course they need to pursue large donations while raising tuition to balance competing needs while avoiding bankruptcy. This is not to say that what MIT and Ito did was right - but these egregious cases are the exception, and articles like this just needlessly fan the misplaced populist flames.
4
I graduated from a university named after two of the wealthiest men of their times. One of these founders wanted better engineers for his steel mills and customers, the other wanted better medicine to live longer.
3
@Steve Bolger: Both Carnegie and Mellon wanted to make quality education affordable to talented students from blue collar backgrounds.
if we taxed/spent at the proper rate, philanthropy would not be needed. public institutions should never accept private money.
2
About 100 years ago, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) was established by academics to establish professional standards and policies as conditions for academic freedom so that knowledge could be created and shared for the common good. Tenure was one of the key conditions of academic freedom. A the principle concerns of the founders of the AAUP was the power of people with wealth to exercise control over hiring, firing, and the direction of research, teaching, and public speech by professors. Due to massive disparities of wealth, underfunding of public higher education, and employment insecurity of massive numbers of academics, the issues faced 100 years ago have returned and been amplified.
3
While "men in ivory towers can't resist lowering their golden locks" for plutocrats, the reality is that the ivory towers are built and sustained on the back of the federal student loan program. Many of our largest and most endowed universities have grown in wealth on the backs of students, who will be in the student loan debt until they die.
Reform needs to happen at all levels of university funding, and the fact that universities are not pushing for it, speaks volumes.
6
Reading through some of the reputed conversations Epstein had with highly accomplished academics, one of whom said Epstein gave greater weight to his own opinions than to published research, one could not help but be struck by the fact that this so called finance genius was babbling nonsense, and the academics he targeted were genuflecting. Interestingly, the stakes were fairly trivial. In a more genteel age, tenure at top universities was often achieved by being known as the federal grants rainmaker. In those cases, the institutions were looking at funding for generations of scholars, and the rainmaker often would teach others how to write grant proposals. The current crop of self proclaimed billionaires seem to dole out funds by the spoonful, while they at the same time expect a return in the form of something other than scholarly work. Status comes cheap.
As a woman scientist, I am well aware that there are many streams of funding that are difficult not only for women to access, but also men who are either not charismatic, don't conform to the donor's stereotype of a scientist, or remind the donors of themselves when they were young. However I don't think adding any of these under represented groups would have fixed anything about this particularly odious funding source. This source was eventually, after an inexcusable delay, fixed the correct way: through law enforcement, and the people taking money from it are being fired.
As to the less noxious funding sources controlled by old boys networks (including some federal funding), that is a much harder problem.
This column makes me mad. Not because it's wrong so much as because it's limited. It makes me sad and angry that beating up on universities (and by the NY Times no less) seems to be a full time sport. Yes, lecturing the leaders of universities is useful; yes we need to be morally upright, and hire more people from the growing panoply of underrepresented groups. But this responsibility lies not just with universities, but with society at large. There seems to be this feeling that despite being underfunded and filled with food-stamp adjuncts, that morality is uniquely the job of our schools and universities. Yet we academics do not exist in a vacuum, we can teach morals, and try to follow them, but why expect universities to be moral when corporations are not? How about this--make Amazon be moral (hello antitrust, hello living wage) and then universities can follow.
9
Bravo! Having Farhad among the Times's columnists may be the most redeeming element. It's welcome evidence that the paper has remnants of the high principle of speaking truth to power.
Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
5
Large donations from those who have it has corrupted our educational system the same way it corrupts our political system, the press (advertising), religious institutions, etc. These donations are the antithesis of democracy. There is no easy fix to this problem, but too many people are willing to compromise sound principles for cash. This has always and everywhere been true. We think we need more money to pay our bills, avoid bankruptcy and not look like "losers," but in doing what is necessary to imitate this impression of "success" we all lose. I don't doubt that this guy discriminated against women, but the problem with the influence of larger donations in public institutions is much broader than this one issue. For instance what impact does it have on sicentific inquiry, free speech, the curriculum. and all that is spun from this tangled web of the influence of those who have it?
2
@Robert Scull: One wonders how much has been lavished on law schools to confuse law students about what an "establishment of religion" is. The whole US government looks like an establishment of religion as a result.
Universities have been addicted to wealthy circles for a long time. They should use this connection to reduce their tuitions and fees and make college more affordable. While they take millions from wealthy sources with one hand they demand high fees from students with the other hand. They are definitely not ethical!
1
Of course private universities are going to depend on wealthy donors to support the faculty and programs of the university. Competing for the top faculty in any field, and maintaining necessary equipment for research in many science and engineering programs, for example, requires more funding than already very expensive student tuition can provide.
But the same also applies to state-run universities. Over the past years, state legislatures have cut funding to their state institutions to the extent that external funding is absolutely a must if the best faculty are recruited and the best facilities are provided for their students.
It is unfortunate that some of the wealthy, like the Koch brothers, for example, always have political strings attached to their financial support. But, thankfully, all don't.
3
Certainly if money was dangled with a condition that was illicit, immoral or unethical, the money should be rejected. Taking an extreme example, if money was offered to a college by a racist who said it could not be used to benefit minority students, obviously that money would be rejected.
However, I think the fundamental issue here is whether money contributed to a good cause is tainted if contributed by a bad person or if it was earned in a way society deems illicit, immoral or unethical.
Money from the likes of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie did a lot of philanthropic good in this country, including at colleges. But yes, their businesses also did some harm to the country, such as by polluting the air and water. Should their money have been turned down?
If a billionaire approaches a college with an offer of money to do certain work and the work and its purpose are not illicit, immoral or unethical, in my view that is the university's decision to make, consistent with its own values and mission.
Or put another way, if Jeffrey Epstein, the horrid person that he was, offered a ton of money to a university to research cures for cancer, I would not see accepting it as wrong. In fact, to the contrary--such a gesture might turn out to be one of the few decent things an otherwise bad human being did in his life.
5
Critique accepted, wealthy donors are suspect. Now explain how universities fund research, pay great salaries to professors and other staff members, ensure the environment is completely safe for students, provide an array of counseling and other support services, and keep tuition low.
1
A good point, but how much research is important, and how much is created to feed the academic promotion system? And how many university administrators are actually necessary? Perhaps if the research done by these institutions is beneficial to society and not to just a few professors, they wouldn’t need to take money from suspect donors.
Dear Farhad:
I'm glad that you pointed out at the beginning that he was faced ... "with a problem well known to anyone who’s ever labored in academia: He was low on funds. But unlike, say, the thousands of adjunct professors who toil in American universities at poverty wages, ..."
What this really destroys is whatever flimsy remaining notion we have that hard work, grit, diligence and even genuine ability count for anything if we are not well-connected.
Where is the wonder in seeking to understand how the world works and in helping the human race?
It's mostly about how much cash you can get (though it should be at least "apparently" legal), not whether you are doing anything meaningful or worthwhile. It's all about politics, protecting your position on the food chain, keeping outside people out of the feeding trough, and satisfying bean counters (who cannot estimate scientific merit and therefore rely on cheap metrics).
1
The idea in this article is right, but I wish the author had not reduced it to being gender based. As a result it diminishes the larger point.
Universities are about invention and ideas. When a billionaire donates an enornmous amount to a single institution, the funding tends to create imbalances in the ecosystem of thought. Money has the effect of providing great weight to the ideas and values of one institution, but that is a type of power that tends to silence all the others. In the world of academia, the government and other types of research funding left for the rest can begin to be relatively small once a billionaire shows up and gives 10x or 100x to one institution. In a world of competitive thought, the others get drowned out as the few gain control. It creates an unlevel playing field.
The problem is really no different from what we see in politics with CItizen United, or with monopolistic corporate and media complexes. Abundant resources for the few tends to drown out the voices and speech of all the rest. Smaller academic programs become the equivalent of what we think of as Main Street and bigger programs get labelled as “elitist”, where Ivy and other favored institutions come to dominate, not because of superiority but because of dollars. Sadly, the system ends up squelching other voices in a way that leads us all astray. This is all predictable when choose to become a country that allows massive dollars to be gathered in the hands of the few.
10
Just compare the campuses ( correct word- I looked it up) of Stanford and Berkeley. Not a blade of glass out of place at Stanford, not a building without a name on it. Berkeley, a public university that has no grass that isn’t smoked, has cracked sidewalks and crumbling buildings. How do they manage to recruit and hire? It is a sad state of affairs when public universities can’t compete because of budget cuts.
12
Governments should take a large chunk of billionaire money and fund research so that it is not guided by the search for product to make money with.
3
I am still reeling from the fact that Ito got a million from Epstein for his personal investment fund, which would seem like a bribe/payoff of the kind that most universities would not allow. But I am not surprised about the involvement of male scientists. No decent human being would want to be at an Epstein dinner, but to be a successful scientist almost requires a talent for looking the other way at sexual discrimination and indeed harassment, as the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine described last summer, when they said in American society only the military allowed more sexual harassment. Everyone who has ever in any setting has consciously normalised sexual harassment.
In the 1890s MIT educated three important women architects: Marion Mahony, Sophia Hayden and Lois Howe. More recently it was early to have a woman dean. But there have been no more women graduates of Mahony's fame (she was Frank Lloyd Wright's draftsperson and won her husband the competition to design Canberra on the strength of her drawings). The media lab grew directly out of the architecture department, in which a few years ago almost no women students were taught the work of these or any other women except probably Denise Scott Brown (usually under her husband's name) and Zaha Hadid, if that.
4
Instead of "American Universities Are Addicted to Billionaires", you could change the title to "American Culture is Obsessed With Wealth, Chapter 225". The cycle in the 1890s was more muted, the current more severe cycle began when radio and then television created the concept of stardom, and the public loved the voyeuristic titillation of the highs and lows of the Kennedys and the Marilyn Monroes. Institutions like MIT and some billionaires like the Kochs also want the glow they get when the media is acting friendly.
If we want a better society, we need to focus on putting the media and the internet in its proper place (not allowing it to do our thinking for us), the concept of building wealth in its proper place (how much is enough), and having courage to tell the truth when it's not convenient. Let's all stop being enablers of corruption, and try to bring out the goodness that is inside people, all people.
18
Manjoo's indictment of MIT and places like MIT where enterprising men cultivate rich men for the benefit of smart men is well taken. However, this is really about the tippy top 1 percent of the top 1 percent where science gets done. And, at the tippy top 1 percent, as it turns out that not a whole lot of real science was getting done. At the MIT Media Lab, in particular, it seems like the whole outfit was more about raising and spending money than cranking out meaningful science.
I think Manjoo could serve women scientists better by taking a broader look at American universities and scientific laboratories. If he does, he'll find that gender gap closing in dramatic ways where women now outnumber men in all subfields of biology and statistics. Chemistry and math are now almost at parity. Given that medical research is the best-funded of all sciences, more women than ever are having flourishing research careers, doing work that is impactful. Moreover, immigrant and international women make up a significant portion of the growth.
9
@UC Graduate There are more women in the entry levels, but the number of women diminishes as you move past ass’t Professor. And sexual harassment still flourishes.
Sad and devastating as his scenario is, it is begging for an SNL sketch depicting aggrieved women scholars seeking funding from Epstein, being told by their deans/department heads to adjust their approach with Epstein.
Such a sketch would virtually write itself, as the realities themselves are, unfortunately, veritable caricatures of corruption and sleaze. Any comedy troupe could take this on, according to their particular content restrictions (audience, hour of broadcast etc.).
4
Money makes the world go around. These schools are elite because they can raise tremendous amounts of money from alumni and wealthy “donors”.
Without the money, they become middling institutions. Our country is hostile to public spending as a rule.
What happens if the money they raise from the wealthy were shutoff? What would be the implications for R&D?
4
You nailed it! Should be required reading in the academy. Morals, ethics, fairness, equality are sadly in short supply--even at so-called Christian colleges and universities. Exhibit A: Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Liberty University, the world's largest Christian university. Evangelicals should read all about him and weep. Perhaps it will take a woman in the White House to return the country and its universities to a place of moral and ethical excellence. What good is a booming economy when there is a moral bankruptcy with American institutions of higher learning?
3
What an incisive column. I'm certainly not rich, but I can and do contribute to worthy causes. The only time I've ever given to a school is when a professional athlete client of mine was raising money to build schools in Darfur. Never would I give to my law school or college -- surely, surely there are far more needy people and organizations that deserve my modest donations. I paid my tuition, paid off my student loans and consider myself "done."
And I certainly am never, ever giving a dime to an educational institution that has wall after wall of corporate and law firm names crowding out the ivy. Enough with the self-gratification. Give money where it's truly needed, not where it's used to boost egos.
13
American universities are also more interested to attract kids from rich families from within USA and also abroad than talented and dedicated students. Most of those rich students from abroad are least qualified or even interested to pursue education but use that admission to an US Univ to enter USA and then somehow manage to live here than getting education and develop as a professional. In many cases, US Univ prefer foreign students and neglect even truly talented local students. Those foreign ones give more money to the Univ. Most US companies also prefer foreign students passing out from US Univ as they are more willing to accept lower wages and easier to manage (read, coerce or exploit.)
As such rich people are well connected, these students also get jobs, mostly in lucrative/influential positions by virtue of their network than talent, honesty, or leadership quality.
As per data, USA used to be 2nd (only after Swiss) in global ranking in terms of output of higher education & research in 1995, when systemic data collection started. USA slipped to 16th position as per latest data I have (as of 2012.)
The consequences are all around us in form of rise of mediocrity and total breakdown of leadership in both private & public organizations with growing nepotism and other form of corruption.
8
This all rings true, but only scratches the surface. When billionaires provide money to universities, they want to dictate how it is spent, and the universities bend to their will in order to get the money. In fact, there's no net benefit: the universities have more money, but it has strings attached, so the universities can't use the funds to pursue innovative programs for the public benefit.
When you cut taxes for the rich and then depend on support from the rich, you get a skewed and biased outcome that serves the donors more than it serves the global good. No surprises there.
13
Print comments that are diverse. Mine are intelligent, learned, humorous and civil.
5
Billionaires never pay for anything. They make you pay for whatever you sell them and that’s why they are Billionaire. When universities enrol the kids of Billionaire, it’s naive on the part of school administration to think that their kids are paying for the tuition unlike kids from poor background who look like liabilities, though slogging on measly scholarships. The entire nation pays for a billionaire kid’s education and that includes very smart professors. Even their charity is the charity of workers, pensioners, scholars and anybody who is not billionaire. I hope scholars know the maths. I don’t know whether It is their naïveté or it is easy to woo one guy who is holding the key to everybody’s wallet, so they give in to easy money. More the universities are run like small dynasties, more they are likely to buckle under the pressure for research funding.
3
But there was a justification for Ito’s actions: money for MIT. We brag about our great centers of higher education, but they exist due to donations by donors who often have their own agendas. It’s ironic that if Lori Loughlin were a billionaire, she could just have given the school a building and bought her daughter’s admission with no questions asked, similar to the Kushners, instead of being merely wealthy, bribing a coach, and being on trial for it.
If nothing else, maybe this sleazy episode will provoke some thought as to whether universities, cultural centers, etc should be engaging in extracurricular activities with donors. Take their money because it’s needed, but for goodness’ sake, forego the visits to private islands!
3
Epstein was a corruptor in many ways. Nothwithstanding an anecdote here and there about not experiencing sexism in the sciences or medicine, serious, statistically driven studies show more than enough evidence of sexism continuing in the sciences.
Universities do need funding. And for California, let's not forget that under Republican Governor Pete Wilson a major burden of "self funding " was placed on the University of California. This helped drive the search for very rich donors to replace that funding. So the doors open for philanthropy to bias how that money is spent, a problem much magnified in private non profit universities without state oversight or under Republican "oversight" whose motto is, if you pay for the new department building, of course you have the right to tell'em what to teach there and who to hire.
4
If our educational system can separate billionaires from their billions, I’m in favor of it. Even schools that don’t really need the money. That alone is some social good.
7
Anybody in academia anywhere at a certain level has to deal with donors and donations.
Very few institutions have sufficient funds for what they really need (Yes, there are the few like Harvard with astronomical endowments, but they got that way by courting donors).
It is not easy. You want people's money but not to really give them an academic say. Stonewalling them there is important. It is a game of cat and mouse, donor recognition vs academia. With a good relationship the donors will agree to butt out of academic issues and appointments and research policy.
It is not always easy to understand rich people's heads.
One thing in my experience at least (albeit not major league USA) has been that rich donors often come as couples. They are a team, each partner playing a particular role in the process, and they often compliment each other's skills and weaknesses in a decision making process. You get one, you get both, whether or not one is behind the scenes.
Also, the wife often outlives the husband. Ultimately, she will call the shots.
8
Women are not systematically excluded from the sciences.
I taught for 32 years at both the HS and University level, and some of my best students in mathematics, were female. There was never a policy of exclusion at any institution where I worked.
More females graduate from college these days than males. Has it ever occurred to anyone that females are just not attracted to the sciences at the same rate as males? (They don't have to be statistically identical.)
Most people would agree that men and women are different.
45
@Raz
There is a little more too it than that.
For example, there are fewer female role models in the sciences. This makes it harder for female students to see themselves as potential scientists.
There is plenty indication that it is not just about women not liking science or math. For example, a much greater percentage of women drop out of a math major than men. Presumably these women who are declared math majors like math.
Of course, it seems improbable that the same percentage of women will like a given field as men, but when the numbers are really far off there is usually something more to the story.
24
@EL
My point was that women are not being SYSTEMATICALLY excluded from the sciences.
Of course there are factors involved, influencing the choices of both men and women, but they are not necessarily biases.
75% of public school teachers are women (it's almost 50/50 in high school and higher). Does this mean men are being, systematically, excluded from K-8 education?
20
The science says otherwise https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html
95
Farhad Manjoo criticizes universities for cozying up to billionaires, but what should universities do? Reject billionaires' advances? Reject potential scholarship money that can help thousands of students attend college? Reject money that helps the advancement of various underfunded disciplines?
Billionaires do many good things for universities. Billionaire money probably helped me and many others reading this article go to college. Billionaire money pays for many scholarships. Billionaire money probably helped employ many of the professors who taught us. Billionaire money can help advance research.
Sure, billionaires can also influence things, but only so many things at universities can be politicized.
Only a few academic fields can affect policy. Most don't affect policy at all and most aren't really political at all (though people who want to see everything in political terms might think otherwise).
Furthermore, billionaires don't influence hiring decisions (to my knowledge); they don't decide who gets promotions (to my knowledge); and, they don't decide who can attend a university.
Wealthy individuals support entire fields. For instance, the humanities would struggle a lot more than they do without philanthropy.
I know it is in vogue to not like billionaires and there are plenty of reasons to not like billionaires, but the fact that they give a lot of money to universities isn't one of them.
22
@EL This is what you do. Go ahead and court donors but with a strong and rigorous philanthropy governance system that makes clear to donors, they are most welcome to donate to the school or the department, but they will not be allowed to bias or interfere with who gets hired, or what gets taught. And of course schools and museums must not let themselves get used as money launderers, in effect sanitizing the criminal behavior of a Jefferey Epstein or the Sackler family.
7
@EL
"Furthermore, billionaires don't influence hiring decisions (to my knowledge); they don't decide who gets promotions (to my knowledge); and, they don't decide who can attend a university."
The Koch Brothers definitely influenced faculty hiring & promotion decisions at a number of the universities to which they donated (they were proud of the strings they attached and pulled, in fact). By creating/endowing/enlarging specific academic departments or programs they were _implicitly_ deciding who would attend a university by virtue of whom those programs & departments would attract. By creating/endowing/enlarging specific academic departments or programs they were _implicitly_ imposing limitations on the _curriculum_ taught by the faculty at those universities.
When GMU renamed its law school after Antonin Scalia, do you think the institution was merely honoring a famous jurist? No, I think it was bowing obsequiously in the direction of the Federalist Society and the deep-pocketed sponsors of libertarianism.
Lest you think I'm picking on the Koch Brothers' influence because of an ideological ax to grind, there are numerous other instances of universities enduring interference from their big-ticket donors. Indeed, some have notably decided to give back the money.
The much-vaunted principles of academic freedom as enshrined by American Association of University Professors wither under such financial influence.
10
@EL
Furthermore, billionaires don't influence hiring decisions (to my knowledge);
Uh, yes they do. Ball State's agreement with the Kochs specifically states that the Kochs can withdraw funding for its entrepreneurial program if they aren't satisfied with who teaches the free market courses. And Ball State will gladly not rehire any adjunct faculty that complain about the Kochs.... and these faculty members often find work in the Far East!
3
The Federal Government should have a vetting process so it’s not funded by money from bad people.
1
"American higher education has long been hooked on billionaires..." Leaving institutions like MIT and Harvard aside, how should large state schools raise money when Republican legislatures around the country continue to slash university budgets, yet demand that those universities maintain academic excellence without raising tuition?
Academia has always relied on rich private donors. It's not particularly savory, but it's also important not to equate what happened at MIT with other institutions who are trying to make do with less.
17
@jrinsc
High demand, massive administrative bloat and dubious expenditures have made tuition rise dramatically. Now that people are realizing many degrees are not an especially great value, the system needs to scale back the wasteful spending but this is not likely to happen overnight. Since it is hard to cut the administration and perks quickly, more essential functions can get squeezed in the short term.
Adding more public funds to perpetuate the status quo is counter-productive.
5
@Alan
You're right that administrative bloat is a problem in some schools, as is the arms race among universities to attract a dwindling supply of students (which results in luxury amenities). But those costs are far less than legislative cuts in large state schools. At the University of South Carolina, the legislature cut public funding for universities by more than 30% in the last fifteen years. Think about that: 30%+ cut, but is still supposed to be competitive AND not raise tuition. That's not bloat. Its state funding is under 10% now, yet the state still controls its tuition rate. These cuts are what's driven increased tuition costs in SC, not "wasteful spending." It's also what has lead to the poverty wages of adjunct professors that Mr. Manjoo mentions.
The oft-repeated refrain of "wasteful spending" does not encompass the nuanced problems that affect higher education. Like it or not, wealthy donors help mitigate some of these problems.
7
@jrinsc Exactly right! When state schools lose a significant portion of their funding, they need to make up that money somewhere else or quality has to diminish.
It's easy to pontificate, but what's the real world answer if not courting wealthy donors?
1
I was a student at MIT in the early 1950s when support from external sources was much less than now. As the cost of operating the place continued to rise and more strings got attached to federal support, turning to the billionaire class was an obvious alternative. MIT has enough of a reputation to be attractive to this group. We are seeing how that option worked
out.
8
Most of the money taken from the billionaires goes to maintain academic excellence. MIT does a good job in maintaining academic excellence. There may be some undesirable things on the margins that damages academic purity, but emptying the wallets of billionaires in itself worth taking the money. Besides, if MIT doesn’t take it, Stanford takes it or Harvard takes it. I wouldn’t loose sleep over it.
7
I have two degrees from the University of Oregon. I have watched Uncle Phil (Phil Knight) spend loads of money on the school to remake it in his image. I certainly can't make any difference with my paltry dollars, so I don't send them any longer.
1
It feels like the university system is on the verge of collapse. Read the linked article about professors on food stamps because half the positions available are part-time.
If I were deciding where to go now, Croatia would be a good choice, schools there are free and for foreigners very inexpensive.
Plus you will have experiences that are invaluable and outside tainted American academia.
5
MIT doesn't have a review process of any sort for donations? Especially large ones? I would think that the administration would want to have a look-see at funds coming in for reputational effects and to make sure that they are being used wisely...
8
@beeceenj Epstein was not on MIT's official approved list of approved donors. Ito and the higher ups at Media Lab were disguising his donations by marking them as anonymous while still allowing him input into how the money was used.
As opposed to the, saintly by comparison, robber barons of the 19th century, today's billionaires feel no sense of nobelesse oblige. The thieves of old built libraries, parks, hospitals and other public institutions, perhaps to salve their way into heaven, that acknowledged they were part of a society that needed to raise the standing of everyone -- after they got theirs of course. Today's plutocrats got lucky by building an app and cashing in at age 30 or by sloshing electrons from one bank to another; they never got their hands dirty or fought their way up the rungs of the corporate ladder and have never encountered true adversity. Ridiculously rewarded by our winner-take-all society, they only donate to the winners. What's more, they also like to be worshiped by others they fancy to be like themselves. Giving money to a community college and receiving the gratitude of those worthy students just could not compare with the adulation of someone in the MIT Media lab who might go on to invent the next "Angry Birds".
48
I think one reason civic engagement from business owners has plummeted is that CEOs now care about juicing stock for short-term profits. Shareholders might live anywhere in the world; they don’t care about being a good “corporate citizen.”
The financial return is too amorphous, and it’s not their home. They just want the money.
11
@stan continople
While working with a non-profit environmental organization on the coast of Orange County, Ca, we had to deal with the great divide amongst our donors. The older, wealthy residents were more inclined to support our mission, while the newly-wealthy could care less.
The newly rich, as a group, seems more self-absorbed and insulated.
5
@stan continople
What you say is empirically false. The biggest billionaire philanthropists give away a much greater percentage of their wealth than the robber barons did. Just look at Bill Gates, or Warren Buffett. These people don't just donate to winners. There are many thousands, if not millions, of people who would not be living today if not for the Bill and Melinda gates foundation.
Also, the MIT Media lab works on things quite a bit more meaningful than Angry Birds. They work on real things that enhance people's lives. Also, many people who work in the Media Lab and come up with great things never get rich. Most of them aren't in it for the money.
8
Why not tax these multi-millionaires and billionaires more and provide more scientific funding through the government? Same with the arts.
164
@Susan—that’s what we used to do. Beginning with Ronald Reagan the balance began to shift
10
@Susan. It can't hurt, but when you have someone like Trump in the WH, it's hard to believe much of that money will find itself in arts and education funding.
3
@Susan Exactly. We could start with reinstating the estate tax (at very, very high rates for billionaire estates) and going back to what we used to do with the progressive income tax - and much more. As Minmin says, the dismantling of our social system began with Reagan and Margaret ("there is no society") Thatcher in the 1980's. Trump had little to do with it, except in continuing the enactment of the republican program. Focusing on Trump as the source of all problems is foolish and counterproductive, Sparky, and in any event it is the Congress who decides how to spend money not the President.
2
I regularly get letters from my two elite Ivy League universities asking me for money. At this stage in my life, So-Called 14th Life (age 87) I choose to contribute to other deserving institutions where the people who work there very likely would not be as blind as apparently countless male university researchers are.
Would be interesting to see a few hundred of these male researchers fill out a questionnaire with questions such as: How did you react when Epstein turned away from you to ask the bon-bon about her portfolio? Did you notice that there were hardly any female researchers present?
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
26
@Larry Lundgren Always look forward to reading your thoughtful comments. It is so interesting to me how people either see the "Billionaire" as just wrong. Or just wish it was them. So many great reference in the comment section to all the awful things that have been done to our fellow human beings.
Colleges are no different than large corporations who will take on all the money they can get. I use the phrase “big college” to describe their tactics. The worst of which is bamboozling their customers (students) to over borrow to pay for degrees of dubious value. The government is just as complicit for not turning the money spigot off.
19
Actually colleges are worse than corporations. Large corporations have to stand by the product they sell to the customer. Colleges do not. Colleges do not offer fee concessions if a course is taught by an adjunct rather than a full time professor.
Colleges do not abide by equal pay for equal work. An adjunct gets paid way less than teaching the same course than a regular faculty.
Colleges espouse humane behavior they are happy to hire temporary teachers with zero healthcare benefits.
Colleges talk about healthy living -- they are happy to sell their cafes to highest bidding fast food chains.
Universities and colleges are neither businesses nor do they pursue higher moral standards. They are the worst of both.
31
@EL That is not an accurate representation of the situation for adjunct professors right now in, I'll guess, most schools. When adjuncts are having to teach too many classes (sometimes at multiple institutions...) AND drive for lyft/uber/delivery because they are struggling to make ends meet that does not leave them time or energy to do the research/publishing necessary to get on tenure track. I am on a campus shared by two schools. Many adjuncts teach courses at multiple institutions. Technically, yes, they are part time. But three part time jobs add up to full time hours (and then some). Too many schools use adjuncts, in my view, to cut cost corners by taking unfair advantage of the economic insecurity especially felt by those who are just starting out. Universities do add important things to society but they do so because of their teachers, not overpaid admins, and should take care of the employees who make the schools worth attending in the first place.
5
They are just following what business has done. There’s plenty of businesses who’d rather hire two part timers with no benefits than one full timer. This is nothing new.
1
How many fortunes have been made through ventures that are morally and ethically questionable?
Trading slaves underwrote many fortunes. The use of slaves created fortunes in cotton and sugar. Selling opium to Chinese was very profitable. Pius Quakers who made fortunes at the dawn of the industrial revolution had women and children working 12 hours a day in their mills. Many fortunes were made when Prohibition was repealed and illegal businesses once again became legal. How many fortunes have been made from illegal drugs - laundered through 'legitimate' businesses?
Even the robber barons who made fortunes building industries did so by maximizing output from poorly paid workers. The money they spent on 'charitable works' may have done far more good if distributed among their workers in the form of higher wages and better living conditions.
Then you have Cecil Rhodes - who made a fortune exploiting a good part of Africa and put it to use promoting a permanent Anglo domination of the world. His legacy lives on in countless groups that serve to guide policy in countless nations. How much different would Africa be if those riches were shared with the natives that lived there?
The unethical and amoral thrive and perpetuate their beliefs.
Someone like Westinghouse who accomplished so much and treated his workers well was forced to cede control of his company when bankers called loans early forcing a cash squeeze.
59
@cynicalskeptic - Interesting that you mention the example of an inventor/biz titan who was squeezed out by the system, his vulnerability exploited for daring to be different. But by the same token, we can look at Henry Ford's decision to double his workers' pay, since he reasoned they would be a market for his autos.
So much of history seems to depend on timing and randomness.
4
@cynicalskeptic: Yes, and ethical people leave these organizations which means it's run and staffed by people who are just fine with exploitation and greed.
2
Excellent column...the bottom line is $ for even the highest cherished such institutions.
Note the NYT had another about how Harvard took lots of money from a monopolistic Russian oil baron.
The vast consequences of the high cost for what you actually get educational industrial complex are being fleshed out in many policy debates (nothing will change) -- but at least this concern is another angle.
Another question is from whom such universities won't take money. The answer might not be appealing.
4
True, they need money. Private and public. Americans don't value education (vote for state and federal government legislation; states and federal government dont fund like they do defense) like other countries. Some Americans can't give cause they don't have the money.
5
"What happened when Jeffrey Epstein funded science and tech? Women were excluded."
That's literally the lesser of the many problems that arise when billionaires take over research in universities.
24
Farhad,
I think VK means that the Kochs funded lots of libertarian think tanks within universities that came up with ideas like Citizens United, then Kochs funded lawyers to bring that case, won it, and now our Federal Government is bought and sold. Campaign finance corruption paralyzes the Congress so that the Executive can stack the Courts, so then the only one of the 3 branches of government that functions is an unopposed unskilled Executive. Millions lose health care, the infrastructure goes unfixed, debt piles up, allies are alienated, trade becomes unstable, career experts leave Washington....maybe in aggregate this is far worse than perpetuating the glass ceiling in academia, although both are very bad. VK did not say that excluding women was OK, but he was just providing perspective, albeit without the detail I provided.
54
@Farhad Manjoo
That comment is disingenuous. You have shown on an anecdotal basis that some women were excluded from some things. But who were these women and what were they excluded from?
1) It seems to be the case that the women who weren't invited to these gatherings who might have been had they not been women were women who were already at the top of their fields employed at prestigious well-paying universities.
2) Going to these meetings may have helped people secure private funding for research, but they arguably weren't important for career advancement. Hiring decisions and promotions weren't made on the basis of who attended these meetings. Again, these women who were excluded were already at the top of their fields and hiring decisions aren't made on the basis of who some billionaire likes.
Based on these considerations, it seems to be the case that the type of exclusion you are really talking about is the exclusion of a few top level female scientists from securing funding from a particular source. I wouldn't really call that the exclusion of women from science.
Nothing described in this article prevented any women from going into science, or from getting the careers they wanted within science.
16
@EL - you are quite wrong in point 2 about advancement. Research dollars are tied to overhead income for the institution. So, faculty who can secure big research dollars are highly sought after by universities.
15
This is exactly what happens when Amer. institutions depend on "charity"---the givers get to warp what should be egalitarian.
No one "deserves" billions of dollars---time to hike taxes back up to the rates when our econ. was booming in the 'fifties."
113
@SLB
Why do you think no one deserves a billion dollars if they earn it in a way that is legal and ethical? I know this is a popular thing to say today, but I have not really seen anyone provide an argument for this claim.
Of course, you can argue that we should tax the wealthy more because current taxation rules regarding the wealthy aren't sustainable and cause many people who are less well off too struggle. That is reasonable.
But, even if you raise taxes, there will still be billionaires. Let's say the highest tax bracket is taxed at 70%. There will still be plenty of billionaires then. Is that a problem? If so, why?
5
@EL Not a problem at all. Tax them at 95%. There will still be plenty of billionaires then too.
6
@SLB. Yes, we need to raise taxes very substantially on the extremely wealthy. The guy who makes $500,000 and the guy who makes $50 million should not be in the same tax bracket as they are now.
But I frankly have little faith in the government's ability to distribute the money intelligently. Look at how ignorant, corrupt and incompetent so many of our "leaders" are today.
This is an inevitable result of so much income and wealth inequality. If only the very wealthy have money to spare, only they can support the institutions we need. We should consider ourselves fortunate if anything of broad social value comes from this.
So, indeed, thank you Bill and Melinda Gates, but unfortunately we are also given Epstein, the Sacklers, the Kochs, and others who can be counted on to use their charity to influence or excuse purposes our society should not endorse.
79
@Larry N
The Gates contributions to higher ed and secondary schools come with strings too. They are business investments - that require future purchases or to hook students on their products. The Gates donations should be questioned for their sincerity of helping the greater good as much as the others.
5
@Larry N - It should also be pointed out that our current society rewards/glorifies grift.
Manjoo says "The chumminess suggests a deeper and more intractable moral rot in American academia", but it's not just academia. In the very recent past, the public Treasury yuuugely underwrote grift:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15AIG.html
allowing continued glorification of extracting piracy, justified as propping up 401k's.
Our grifting Billionaire problem bled from the business arena into political life, and has infected academia as well, epitomized by the Greed is God (um, er, good) mantra.
Until the mantra of unrestrained piracy is buried, pirates will continue to cannibalize the polity.
3
First & foremost there should NOT be billionaires that even exist. No person or family should have that amount of money in the first place. (which is obscene on so many levels)
Secondly, if governments around the world worked properly of the people, by the people, and for the people, then there would be no need for charity of any kind. (and NO peddling influence from anyone - let alone criminals)
Having said all that, we are on a collision course with said wealth and ideals about Socialism for the 1%. (that is to say they lock in the profits while downloading all of the risk and costs to all of us through illicit means, corruption and influence via said money)
The planet cannot any longer handle naked consumerism, waste and destruction/pollution from all of us, but especially from people that jet here and there, and have multiple homes, cars and the like.
Our priorities will shift to saving ourselves, and those with the biggest bank accounts will try and buy their way to the front of the line, but the line does not exist.
In the end, the decimal points will not matter.
178
Institutions in 21st C. America court wealthy donors because their missions cannot be sustained by public funding. Public funding has been slashed because of the antipathy of the wealthy to taxes. The wealthy would rather fund these institutions themselves than pay taxes and have the government fund them. The logic of what is happening is painfully obvious.
Whatever the wealthy say to justify this, the real reason is that, in their pride, they suppose they can do it best. Pride is the reason the wealthy do everything. And pride goeth before a fall...
47
@FunkyIrishman
"Secondly, if governments around the world worked properly of the people, by the people, and for the people, then there would be no need for charity of any kind"
That's a bit out there. Most people aren't supportive of the type of research that goes on at universities. People don't want their tax dollars going to support philosophy research, anthropology research, etc. This is why it is good that wealthy people can donate their money. Different people have different interests and want to be able to support different things.
5
I’m very skeptical of “absolutes.” This type of thinking (us verses them) does have a particularly useful purpose - primarily as a mobilization tool. This is also the crux of populism.
The dire state of things means that this type of mobilization - without purpose - will not lead to objectively better lives for us as a species.
Not sure if you’ve seen the memo - but governments are not infallible. They are heavily in debt. Humans so far have been woefully inept not only with personal spending, but certainly spending on public goods and services.
Climate change means that not only do we have to mobilize, transcending the baser instincts that are trending towards geopolitical chaos and financial volatility, but that trillions of dollars need to be invested on scientific advancements.
Just want to, you know, provide some context.
1
This is not new. Gilded age tycoons build buildings and endowed universities (do the names Stanford, Rockefeller, Duke and Carnegie ring any bells?). We don't have email from the 1890s, but if we did I feel confident it would be no more flattering to the donors and donees.
34
I’d like to know if and how those 19th and 20th century major donors influenced what was studied.
9
@Julie
The floor of the academic building at one such university was slanted so the building could be converted into a mill if the school flopped.
I am not sure if that directly counts as influence, but it sure seems like a strong hint.
1
@Julie One example is the Stanford-Binet IQ test. It was normalized to white men, and then adjusted to accommodate white women. The rest had to be judged by the experience-based IQ of white. A simple example: if a question refers to golf which a white may be aware of but not others - of course the 'others' will not get it [except perhaps by chance]. That was the BASIS of what Shockley [and other eugenicists of the early 20th century] based much of their attitudes.