For about a decade, a far-right political group financed by a handful of evangelical fracking billionaires has pumped millions of dollars into state legislative races across Texas in hopes of advancing its reactionary agenda. Empower Texans, which receives most of its funding from billionaire Tim Dunn, the founder and operating CEO of oil and gas company CrownQuest, is best known for bankrolling primary challenges against incumbent Republican lawmakers who are deemed too moderate.

The organization and its funders are also tied to broader, national right-wing movements, using their oil and gas fortunes to lead attacks on abortion rights, LGBTQ communities, and taxes and regulations, among other causes.

But universities, state pension funds, and cultural foundations across the country have been, perhaps unwittingly, financing the business empires of the billionaires behind Empower Texans, according to a new report from the watchdog group Public Accountability Initiative, or PAI.

The report, which was released on Wednesday, found that a number of public retirement funds and universities — including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University — have tens of millions invested in Lime Rock Partners IV AF, which funds CrownRock, a joint venture between CrownQuest Operating and Lime Rock Partners. (Dunn is the CEO of CrownRock, as well.) The California Public Employees’ Retirement System declined to comment.

CrownRock was funded by a $750 million Lime Rock fund called Lime Rock Partners IV LP, the report explains. Then in 2018, Lime Rock raised $1.9 billion to finance the new fund, Lime Rock Partners IV AF. PAI cites a Bloomberg report that says “the ‘vast majority of the asset value’ in the new fund comes from its stake in CrownRock.”

Most of the investors in Lime Rock Partners IV AF aren’t yet known, Public Accountability Initiative notes, but many are likely the same ones that invested in the previous fund — Lime Rock Partners IV LP — including $43 million from the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, $40 million from the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association, $30 million from the Denver Employees’ Retirement Plan, and $25 million from the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System.

Harvard College, the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, Reed College, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Pomona College, Carnegie Mellon University, Scripps College, DePaul University, and philanthropic foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, Knight Foundation, Pritzker Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York were also investors in the old fund.

“I know that concerns about investments among universities and pension funds are gaining more and more salience, you’ve been seeing in recent years discussions and sometimes divestments from things like the fossil fuel industry, the gun industry, private prisons,” said Derek Seidman, a co-author of the report. “It remains to be seen whether stakeholders in these funds would see fit to question whether these funds are being used in an ethical way.”