[Peace] Conservative fund's causing a stir on campus

[Brian Dolinar]

Oh boy...

 [image: The News-Gazette.com] Conservative fund's causing a stir on campus By
Christine Des Garennes
<http://www.news-gazette.com/news/reporter/cgarenne/> Sunday
September 16, 2007

A new donor-driven initiative at the University of Illinois, set to launch
publicly later this month, has the potential to shake things up in academia.

If it hasn't already.

With a slate of conservative advisers backing it, the Academy on Capitalism
and Limited Government Fund is ostensibly an endowment to support the
research and teaching of free market capitalism, limited government,
entrepreneurship, enterprise and individual rights and responsibilities.

Its founders have big plans.

On the to-do list: invite high-profile lecturers to the UI campus, support
faculty research and classes, and maybe one day build a building of their
own.

And they talk big.

"We think we have something that is so powerful – this may sound like hype –
but we want to change the world for the better. And the golden goose is free
market, entrepreneurial capitalism," said Jim Vermette, founder and member
of the academy fund's board of directors, and a former president of the UI
Alumni Association.

Fellow founder and board member Tom O'Laughlin is not shy about stating what
the initiative is all about. In essays through the years, he often has
written about "what we perceive to be an imbalance in the critical scheme of
things.

"There's a decided left-wing bias in schools," he said. "This is our attempt
to offer a forum for another point of view."

Conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak and Steve Forbes, president of
Forbes Inc. and a former Republican presidential candidate, will be in town
later this month to offer such points of view at the academy fund's
inaugural event.

While the academy's ideology might have raised a few eyebrows on campus,
what's caused a stir recently are discussions about how the academy fund is
structured (is it an academy or a fund?) about quality control and academic
freedom and accountability, as well as the fear of a possible "mission
creep," meaning the academy fund would go from sponsoring research or
sponsoring classes to dictating research and offering classes, according to
some faculty members.

"All ideas are welcome on a campus – we need all ideas – but they all need
to be in fact treated equally in terms of the governance policies about
education," said Vernon Burton, UI history professor and chairman of the
University Senates Conference, which includes senates from all three
university campuses.

The academy fund is within the University of Illinois Foundation, the
university's fundraising arm, not one of the UI's colleges or departments.

Last week the Senate Executive Committee, made up of faculty, student and
staff representatives from the UI Senate, approved the creation of an ad hoc
group that would work with UI Chancellor Richard Herman on reviewing and
evaluating proposals that might receive money from the academy fund. The
committee forwarded several faculty names to Herman and it intends to
suggest the names of possible student and staff members as well.

"The advisory committee was a big step, a crucial step, in moving (the
academy fund) more in line with the structures of accountability the Senate
insists upon," said Senate Chairman Nicholas Burbules, an educational
policies studies professor.

"I think that any entity that sponsors faculty scholarship, teaching,
conferences or similar activities as this does must be subject to the
traditional mechanisms of academic accountability," Burbules said. "There is
a role for departments and colleges in this process, but there is also an
independent role for the UI Senate, the campus's guiding body on academic
matters."

During the summer, faculty members peppered Burbules with questions about
the academy fund, asking for more information.

Initially, the fund's Web site was on the UI's uiuc.org Web site, not the UI
Foundation's Web site, which is part of the UI system's site,
www.uillinois.edu. That was an issue for some faculty members. The site is
now on the foundation's Web site.

Eventually, faculty members also raised the issues of academic freedom,
accountability and shared governance.

"As members of the Senate, faculty are especially concerned with protecting
their role in any decision affecting the university that has an academic
ramifications," Burbules said.

"Faculty members have the right* *to establish any interest group they want
on campus," said Cary** Nelson, emeritus English professor with the UI and
current president of the American Association of University Professors, an
organization that works to protect academic freedom and shared governance.
Nelson said he welcomed the Senate's intervention.

"If an entity is involved in supporting instruction, in making decisions
about instruction, they should go through the process of shared government,"
he said.

If, for example, a donor wants to build a fountain or renovate the stadium,
faculty and campus academic units might have little say, Burbules said.

But if a donor wants to endow a professorship or support research in a
particular department, the departments or colleges would be involved, and a
formal process would be set up to determine who would qualify and how the
professor would be chosen. The Foundation and donors wouldn't make the
decisions themselves, he said.

The same goes for when a donor wants to establish an institute on a campus.
Campus agencies, such as the Senate, would be involved in reviewing the
proposal.

In meeting with the Senate Executive Committee, Herman has said he has the
right to approve what the fund sponsors. And the ad hoc advisory committee
is intended to provide Herman with input on the proposals to receive funding
from the academy fund's endowment, Burbules said.

Vermette said he can understand the concerns raised, and he and other
members of the academy fund are willing to work with the UI Senate.

"We want to work with every department and university college. The reason
that (the academy fund) has been placed within the foundation is it's the
best place. First of all we're all donors. Second ... we want to work with
every department, any faculty member who shares our dream," Vermette said.

The foundation's role is to "administer and manage the fund," said Jim
Gobberdiel, director of marketing and communications for the foundation. The
foundation will not have any interest or dealings with any academic research
or teaching proposals, he said.

"Through the foundation we can underwrite research, teaching and curriculum
development. ... It's more of a neutral environment over there," O'Laughlin
said.

Before they established the academy fund, founders like Vermette and
O'Laughlin turned to alumni, academics and members of various business and
industry associations. They sought the advice of people from the Hoover
Institution, a public policy center at Stanford University; (Hoover Senior
Fellow Victor Davis Hanson is on the UI academy fund's advisory council);
the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (its president Anne Neal is also
on the advisory council); and the National Association of Scholars (its
president, Stephen Balch, is on the academy fund's board of directors). Both
Balch and Neal will participate in the inaugural conference Sept. 27.

Nelson said he was disappointed to hear about Balch and Neal's affiliation
with the academy fund.

Neal's American Council on Trustees and Alumni "is an extremely conservative
organization that fundamentally does not understand academic freedom. They
constantly attack professors exercising what (the American Association of
University Professors) regards as their academic rights," Nelson said.

"The idea of she and Stephen (Balch) being enshrined in a building on campus
suggests those kind of activities will spread to our campus. That will not
be a positive contribution to collegiality."

Nelson said the local AAUP chapter is scheduled to discuss the academy fund
this week.

"We represent an opposing point of view – and one some may reject. All we
want is a hearing," O'Laughlin said.

The fund is at $2 million, and the goal is to increase that to $10 million
in three years and $100 million in 2015, Vermette said.

"We have to flesh out some definite long-term plans," he said. And someday
those plans could include a building, he said.

The inaugural one-day conference is a way to introduce the academy fund to
the public, O'Laughlin said.

It will be Sept. 27, in the Illini Union, just before the start of the UI's
"Foundation Weekend," when members of the foundation's board and the
university's prominent donors meet to review the year's fundraising
activities and plan for the upcoming academic year.

University President B. Joseph White and Herman are expected to deliver
remarks. Novak and Forbes will deliver speeches, and there will be a panel
discussion including Balch, UI finance Professor Jeffrey* *Brown, Neal and
UI classics Professor Jon Solomon. Brown is on the academy fund's advisory
council, and Solomon is on the board of directors.
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Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com
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