The $5 million effort to bring a flotilla of conservative tenured professors to Chapman University looks pretty good at first glance. An outside philanthropist is paying to expand the faculty. American universities could certainly benefit from dissenting voices to balance out what is undeniably a liberal sphere. Nobody associated with a university should be afraid of a conflict of ideas. That is, after all, our specialty.

But the closer you look at the deal Chapman University made with the Charles Koch Foundation and several other unnamed donors to hire eleven humanities professors, the worse it looks. In fact, Chapman stands to get a raw deal in the long run for a number of reasons.

• The grant covers only the initial years of these professor’s appointments. After that, our other donors will be paying the tab for decades, whether they want to or not, and it will easily run into eight figures.

• The Koch brothers are playing by different rules than any other donor. They have pre-selected their chosen professors not just on the strength of their scholarship, but also because of their political beliefs. This is an unprecedented level of control over a gift.

• This “affirmative action for conservatives” program tells the rest of the world that you don’t need to play by everybody else’s rules so long as you check a certain box — a practice that is anathema to regular conservative ideology.

• By their own words, the Koch network seeks to “leverage science and universities” for their business ends, a stark deviation from the traditional philanthropy that depends on a hands-off approach. They are, in essence, hijacking Chapman’s good name to generate findings to make still more money for themselves. Their agenda includes undermining the scientific consensus on climate change.

• The appointments came in a flurry of half-truths and procedural violations that left otherwise harmonious colleagues at each other’s throats, damaging the friendly and open atmosphere that has characterized this university for decades.

• The publicity surrounding these appointments has given prospective donors and students good cause to wonder whether we are turning ourselves into “Koch U,” with a catalog full of classes that seeks to push a political point of view rather than impartial scholarship. Our long-term reputation is on the line, and this legacy will last far beyond the temporary squabbles of the 2010s.

• At other universities that have accepted Koch-funded professors, there have been complaints about right-wing economic teachings surreptitiously inserted into the curriculum without proper context. Students might not know what hit them until years later. Should our classes now come appended with warning labels?

There are many who believe that free market thought should have an honored place inside the American university, and I completely agree. This is a terrible way to do it, however. These appointments were made outside the free-market fashion: they were railroaded through by a central authority and were not subject to the traditional “open search” made at the departmental level.

I would be equally as troubled if these appointments had been bankrolled by George Soros or a comparable leftist organization seeking to change the national frame of reality through blunt force and curriculum-gaming. This is not about any prejudice against the politics of the Koch brothers; this is about respect for tradition, procedure and fair play. Nobody should be able to get a free ride though the rigor of the hiring process because of a secret handshake.

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California’s job numbers aren’t good Chapman University will get through this crisis, somehow. Skeptical members of the faculty have had friendly conversations with President Daniele Struppa and Provost Glenn Pfeiffer and although we clearly disagree with them on this matter, we admire their zealous commitment to free speech and their commitment to dialogue. We remain supportive of their overall leadership.

To that end, we are hopeful that our Faculty Senate will form a committee to examine what happened and develop a set of best practices for dealing with future outside donations. Our faculty has been quiescent for too long and it is time they took a stronger position in governing the school, as they do at many other universities.

American universities are the pillars of our intellectual and social life, and they should never be perceived as tools of any special interest, movement or corporation. The infusion of activist money into Chapman needs to stop immediately, and we need to uphold the traditions of scholarship driven by facts and data, not by agenda-driven billionaires.

Tom Zoellner is an associate professor of English at Chapman University.