ustxtxb_obs_1991_05_31_50_00023-00000_000.pdf

Scholars Continued from page 7 critical of the narrow political focus of these foundations’ philanthropy. The Olin Foundation, which boasts as its president IEA-founder William Simon, donated $85,000 to the NAS in 1988 according to its 990-F tax return, and the next year upped its donation to $125,000 according to the 1989 Olin Foundation annual report. In 1989, Olin gave $123,402 to the IEA, including $89,782 “to support the Campus Journalism Program.” The Madison Center that year received $30,000. In his bestselling book A Time for Truth., Simon lays out his Ayn Randian philosophy concerning philanthropy: “Business must cease the mindless subsidizing of colleges and universities whose departments of economics, government, politics and history are hostile to capitalism.” Simon fears that “capitalism is no longer the dominant orthodoxy” in universities today, and believes that pro-capitalist philanthropy can save the universities. “Business money must flow generously to those colleges and universities which do offer their students an opportunity to become well educated not only in collectivist theory but in conservative and Libertarian principles as well,” he wrote. The Bradley Foundation began as the local philanthropic arm of the Allen-Bradley Company; the national foundation was formed, according to Gottfried, in 1985 when Rockwell International Corporation acquired the parent organization. Bradley in 1988 conferred $475,000 in seed money on the Madison Center, then headed by neo-conservative darling Bill Bennett. Bennett today is an Olin-funded fellow at the Hudson Institute, whose head, Leslie Lenkowsky, is vice chairman and executive committee chairman of the Madison Center, as well as a former officer at the U.S. Information Agency. The Bradley Foundation funds “scholarly activities” nationwide at about $23 million annually, Gottfried writes. The Sarah Scaife Foundation lists as its president Richard Mellon Scaife, heir to the Mellon fortune and funder of the New Right. According to a landmark July/August 1981 Columbia Journalism Review article, Scaife teamed up with Joseph Coors to provide seed money for the Heritage Foundation in 1974. The president of the Heritage Foundation since 1977, Edwin Feulner, sits on the board of trustees at the Scaife Foundation. Scaife owns several media outlets, including newspapers in the northeast, and during the late ’60s and ’70s operated Forum World Features, a London-based news agency. The CJR article said “Scaife shut down Forum in 1975 shortly before Time Out, a British weekly, published a purported 1968 CIA memorandum, addressed to then-director Richard Helms, which described Forum as a CIA-sponsored operation providing ‘a significant means to counter Communist propaganda.’ The Forum-CIA tie, which lasted into the seventies, has been confirmed by various British and American publications.” Scaife’s foundation funds right-wing organizations from Accuracy in Media to Freedom House to the Committee on the Present Danger. Apparently the Scaife Foundation feels it’s getting its money’s worth from the National Association of Scholarsin 1988 Scaife gave NAS $50,000 according to its tax return. In 1989 according to the Scaife annual report, the NAS received $300,000. In 1989, IEA received $60,000 from Scaife. R. Randolph Richardson, the president of the Smith-Richardson Foundation, sits on the board of directors of the Madison Center. While no figures were available at presstime concerning Smith-Richardson ‘s funding for MCEA, Gottfried cites the foundation as a major funder of the pre-merger IEA. SmithRichardson ‘ s board of governors includes former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, Jeanne Kirkpatrick and neoconservative author James Q. Wilson, all “neoconservative `reliables,'” writes Gottfried. Bork doesn’t receive Smith-Richardson funding, but does takes an annual fellowship of $162,000 from Olin. That a national conservative crusade on college campuses should be heavily backed by right-wing foundations is not surprising; it merely illustrates the character of the enterprise. Progressives in Texas, as well as nationally, can’t afford to dismiss these highly political attacks on the “politicization” of education. S.H. Note: Much of the information contained in these editorials was updated from articles co-written with Austin writer . Tom .Philpott Jr. The “Corporate Curriculum” section of the first editorial is based on the article, “On the Political Economy of Institutional Racism,” which appeared in Polemicist, May 1990. The second editorial grew out of research for the article “NAS: The New Right and UT,” Polemicist, September 1990. Thanks to Tom for thevital help and insights that contributed to this work. CLASSIFIED ORGANIZATIONS LESBIAN/GAY DEMOCRATS of Texas Our Voice in the Party. Membership $15, P.O. Box 190933, Dallas, 75219. TEXAS TENANTS’ UNION. Membership $18/year, $10/six months, $30 or more/sponsor. Receive handbook on tenants’ rights, newsletter, and more. 5405 East Grand, Dallas, TX 75223. CATHOLICS for a Free Choice DFW Metroplex. Information: 35270ak Lawn Ave., Ste. 156, Dallas, TX 75219. JOIN AN ACTIVIST, issues oriented Democratic women’s group in the Houston-Ft. 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