Hill Heat

Students across the country have launched a new effort to protest the influence of the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers on their campuses. As part of their effort to influence the American political system, Charles and David Koch have flooded hundreds of universities with contributions intended to promote their economic agenda. Although the contributions go back for decades, the spigot has been opened wide in recent years; from only seven universities recorded to have Koch contributions in 2005 to over 250 by 2012. According to UnKochMyCampus, the new grassroots effort to oppose Koch influence on higher education, 390 different colleges and universities have received Koch money.

The UnKochMyCampus effort was launched by three young activists: Kalin Jordan, a graduate of Suffolk University, where the Koch-funded Beacon Hill Institute is housed; Lindsey Berger, a Missouri State University graduate and campus organizer, and Connor Gibson, a University of Vermont graduate and Greenpeace researcher. Jordan founded the Koch Free Zone campaign at Suffolk in 2013 to end the Koch influence over the Beacon Hill Institute, one of a nationwide network of right-wing think tanks. The UnKochMyCampus site has a organizer’s guide to help students launch campaigns on their own campuses, including background research on the Koch brothers.

There are now at least four campuses that have active student efforts opposing Koch influence:

• Suffolk University in Boston, Mass.: KochFreeZone.org
• Florida State University, Tallahassee, Fla.: Progress Coalition
• University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans.: Students for a Sustainable Future
• George Mason Unversity, Fairfax, Va.: Transparent GMU

All four universities have clear evidence of Koch influence over the educational system; George Mason houses the Mercatus Center, the Koch-powered deregulatory think tank. Florida State is the center of a scandal over a $1.5 million pledge from the Kochs that gave them control over hiring and curricula at the school. In 2001, the Kochs founded the University of Kansas Center for Applied Economics, modeled after the Mercatus Center, with a Koch lobbyist as its head.

There are also online efforts opposing Koch influence at the University of Arizona, Catholic University of America, and California State University at Northridge.

In September 2014, Gibson and Berger published an extended Greenpeace report entitled “Koch on Campus: Polluting Higher Education,” that detailed the $49.5 million known to have flown from Koch foundations to over 250 campuses, based on IRS filings.

This money is in addition to the $185 million David Koch has given directly to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and $20 million to Johns Hopkins University, primarily for cancer research. Although those seem like substantial sums, those amounts are dwarfed by the billions of dollars in cuts in public funding for cancer research that have come as a result of Koch political advocacy.

In addition to the website, UnKoch My Campus has a Twitter account.