Corporate pigs offering colleges big bucks to serve up Ayn Rand-flavored Koolaid

[marmar]

(Bloomberg) John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T Corp. (BBT), admires author Ayn Rand so much that he devised a strategy to spread her laissez-faire principles on U.S. campuses. Allison, working through the BB&T Charitable Foundation, gives schools grants of as much as $2 million if they agree to create a course on capitalism and make Rand’s masterwork, “Atlas Shrugged,” required reading.

Allison’s crusade to counter what he considers the anti- capitalist orthodoxy at universities has produced results -- and controversy. Some 60 schools, including at least four campuses of the University of North Carolina, began teaching Rand’s book after getting the foundation money. Faculty at several schools that have accepted Allison’s terms are protesting, saying donors shouldn’t have the power to set the curriculum to pursue their political agendas, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue.

“We have sought out professors who wanted to teach these ideas,” says Allison, now a professor at Wake Forest University’s business school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “It’s really a battle of ideas. If the ideas that made America great aren’t heard, then their influence will be destroyed.”

Allison, 62, is one of a number of wealthy philanthropists who are making bold demands on schools as a condition of giving, says Jack Siegel, a lawyer whose Chicago-based Charity Governance Consulting LLC works with colleges and nonprofit groups. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-05/schools-find-ayn-rand-can-t-be-shrugged-as-donors-build-courses.html

[bbinacan]

1. 2 way street. n/t

[Enthusiast]

10. What do you mean by

"2 way street." ?

[fascisthunter]

13. I'm waiting for a reply

[fascisthunter]

14. so, who on the left is bribing colleges to peddle propaganda?

[Odin2005]

2. This is why "business schools" are just RW indoctrination centers.

[themadstork]

3. "the ideas that made america great"

oh gag me.

[fishwax]

4. "the ideas that made America great" -- lol, don't think I'd put any of Rand's ideas in that list

:eyes:

[onehandle]

5. 'Atlas Shrugged' has nothing to do with the fundamentals of capitalism.

It has more to do with rocking back and forth in your basement clutching your gun and 'knowing' that it's not your fault that you are a hopeless loser.

[pscot]

6. Two million isn't nearly enough

:rofl:

[MisterP]

7. "donors shouldn’t have the power to set the curriculum"

which is why they're pimping Rand: education isn't education, it's a salable commodity
everything can be converted to the almighty dollar, and thence into stocks, bonds, derivatives--especially students

[jmowreader]

8. If you want to teach Capitalism, you don't teach Rand

Rand's thesis as explained in Atlas Shrugged is, "anyone who isn't rich is worthless." I really can't see how this ties into anything related to capitalism.

I can understand teaching Jude Wanniski's The Way the World Works, Arthur Laffer's The End of Prosperity and Return to Prosperity, and Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson and The Failure of the New Economics in a course on capitalism, but Ayn Rand's wheel chock adds nothing to the discussion.

[regnaD kciN]

9. Paying people off to teach a particular theory...

...doesn't seem to show much respect for the "free market of ideas."

[Heywood J]

16. Evidently the "free market of ideas" needed a little subsidy. (NT)

[SolutionisSolidarity]

11. Total war. That's what we are facing.

They will never stop, no matter how many victories they rack up. All I ever hear from the left is "compromise", and how the right has such great ideas. And on the right, they will stop at nothing to destroy any person or institution they view as a potential threat, and to purge their crimes from history. Republican legislatures defund the school system, giving Republican billionaire financiers the opportunity to buy it. And there is no organized fight back against them that appears capable of even delaying their agenda, much less stopping it. They'll get the schools. They'll get social security. They'll get everything they ask for, and no one can stop them. We're too far gone.

[fascisthunter]

12. pure propaganda being pushed by big money... how pathetic

they can't get people to agree with her so now they try to pay colleges to promote their propaganda.... disgusting.

[xchrom]

15. Recommend