opinion

Lakey: Koch-funded positions raise serious concerns

As citizens of the United States, many of us worry about our right of free speech. But how often do we get stressed over academic freedom? What is academic freedom anyway? I know, it sounds like convoluted university mumbo-jumbo.

It isn’t, though. Trust me.

Academic freedom wasn’t even on my radar until FSU’s Presidential Search Advisory Committee voted to fast track John Thrasher as president of FSU. After that, academic freedom became my obsession.

Why? Because, it protects the professors’ and students’ right to seek, research and publish the truth. It guarantees us a role in the democratic governance of the university’s institutional life. Without academic freedom, there is no truth. Without truth, tyranny and corruption are all but guaranteed. Why should you care?

In 2011, after discovering the highly controversial 2008 contract between the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) and FSU’s Department of Economics, FSU’s Faculty Senate put together a committee to address concerns about the CKF agreement and its challenges to academic freedom. The concerns arose because the 2008 agreement gave undue outside influence to CKF in areas of faculty hiring, oversight and curriculum control. The Senate’s review report made recommendations that appeared to be ignored until a second agreement, signed in 2013, was uncovered. The 2013 agreement was signed in secret, and many of the committee’s concerns were unaddressed.

Faculty recommendations included a suspension of hiring under the agreement until the advisory board included two faculty members and worked by majority. The 2013 agreement includes two faculty members and one CKF member, and demands a unanimous vote. The 2013 contract says that the selection of professorship positions must go through normal university processes of hire but before the hire takes place the information on the candidate must be put past CKF, which is under no obligation “to provide funding” to the selection.

This means that CKF still has veto power over who gets hired in the department with its money. This means the department must put forward someone CKF approves in order to get the position funded.

The Faculty Senate report also notes a host of concerns in regard to the agreement’s language about the undergraduate program in the Department of Economics. Of primary concern is the language which implied that CKF wanted an “alternative” undergraduate program at FSU that would set forth only the “objectives and purposes” of the Charles Koch Foundation.

Nothing about this concern was addressed in the 2013 contract. It is unclear that any of the final recommendations of the Senate report have taken place at the university. These recommendations include college, department and university foundation collaboration in the review and development of language that creates more clear guidelines on private donor funding.

Did this happen? It does not appear so. Furthermore, Provost Garnett Stokes signed the 2013 contract — and she did so in secret.

Of final concern, not to the Faculty Senate report, but to me, is this: The Charles Koch Foundation offers funding for five professor positions, but only funds these tenure-track positions for five to six years. That is exactly the amount of time it takes to gain tenure. At the time of tenure, CKF funding disappears and the 2013 agreement mandates that FSU agree “to assume full responsibility for the continued maintenance and funding of the Professorship Positions.”

In other words, the Charles Koch Foundation puts its people in and then the taxpayers are required to keep them. Five years of CKF funding to guarantee a lifetime taxpayer position.

When will this stop? On Thursday at 3:30 p.m. in the Turnbull Conference Center, Room 215, I am going to ask John Thrasher this question at an open meeting. Join me in the meeting and sign the petition (http://bit.ly/1FzagGO).

Academic freedom is just as important as free speech. In the words of Chief Justice Earl Warren in the majority opinion for Sweezy v. New Hampshire: “To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our nation … Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.”

Lakey, her full legal name, is public relations chair of United Faculty of Florida-Florida State University-Graduate Assistants United (www.fsugau.org). Contact her at butterflylake@gmail.com.