College gifts now come with strings attached

[mahatmakanejeeves]

This article, from Bloomberg Markets Magazine, has been discussed in a previous thread. I am adding a new link.

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

From today's Washington Post:

College gifts now come with strings attached

By Seth Lubove and Oliver Staley, Published: May 14

John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T, 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. About 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.

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

[hedgehog]

1. Didn't they always?

[Hannah Bell]

2. +100

[spooky3]

4. no - most deans etc. were smart enough, and most donors sincere enough, that the strings

were extremely limited and usually justifiable (e.g., the endowed chair they were donating had to be in physics, not in biology).

The more strings there are, the less I think that the IRS should consider these as charitable contributions, and instead view them as simply investments that the "donor" is choosing to make, or worse, e.g., attempts to control universities while contributing only a tiny fraction of a % of the budget. The IRS should disallow the deductions if the university officials are too craven to say no in the first place.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. What I don't understand is how there aren't rules against conditions with donations in the colleges'

or universities' bylaws.