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2 Football Conferences Will Merge, Creating a 5-Time-Zone Behemoth

October 15, 2011, 11:30 am

College football’s season of realignments continued on Friday as the Mountain West and Conference USA conferences agreed to merge, creating a megaconference that could end up with as many as two dozen members, USA Today suggested. The new conference, which would cover only members’ football programs, is not yet named. It would include teams in 16 states and five time zones. Some observers say the move is an attempt to gain an automatic entry into the Bowl Championship Series, which neither of the existing conferences now enjoys.

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  • dlazere

    This is another version of conservatives’ Koch brothers=George Soros equation.  In both of these cases, it seems to me that the analogy breaks down in the motives and special interests involved, or in the difference between philanthropy and propaganda.  That is, when the Koch brothers and other wealthy conservatives subsidize foundations, think tanks, and academic programs, their motive is often quite blatantly to recruit propagandists for their own financial interests, personal or corporate, creating a conflict of interest for those they subsidize. (This was clearly the case at Florida State.)   But can anyone really make a case that Soros’s or Ford’s subsidies (whatever their ideological bias may be) in any way promote their sponsors’ financial interests?  in many instances, the policies they support are actually opposed to their interests.  (For example, Soros supports policies to counter-act the growing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of his own class of billionaires.)  That seems to be the acid test of motives that are philanthropic rather than propagandistic.

  • jtlevy

    It might be that the Kochs would personally benefit from the policies they support. But what’s the conceivable expected value calculation that says “endowing chairs in economics at Florida State is going to result in decisive changes in policy outcomes that will bring us financial rewards that are greater than the amount we’re spending on the donation”?  

    Ideas and interests coincide for a lot of people.  But that doesn’t mean that philanthropy in support of the ideas is really disguised self-interest.  To show that, you need to show a plausible positive expected value return for the donor.  Remember that even “a class of billionaires” faces collective action problems!  

    And it can’t be the acid test for genuine philanthropy that one’s ideas do *not* coincide with one’s interests– that’s absurd.  Members of religious minorities have been traditionally strong supporters of religious liberty and of organizations that promote it; philanthropic support for civil rights groups has certainly drawn disproportionately (though not exclusively) from black donors; and I’d hope and expect that support for the AAUP’s academic freedom litigation is heavily financed by academics.  

  • toddgitlin

    I’d add that an affirmative action preference is not the same as an ideological test administered in part by persons chosen by the donor.  I don’t see how “maximize the educational benefits of diversity” and “use diversity as a resource” belongs in the same category of constriction as “support the free enterprise system.”  An African-American conservative applying for a job could easily make the case that he or she will “use diversity as a resource” by, say, assigning books by Thomas Sowell or Francis Fukuyama.  As long as the Ford Foundation’s people aren’t on the personnel committee, I would think that rejection of a candidate on those grounds would be prima facie evidence of discrimination.

  • mavprof

    It seems disingenuous of dlazere not to acknowledge that the Koch brothers’ motives might primarily be promotion of libertarian and conservative ideas (or ideology) in their grant support to foundations and political causes rather than simple attention to their financial interests (not to mention their own philanthropic grants to support the arts, medical research, etc.). It’s plausible both in the cases of the Koch brothers and George Soros that all possess far more wealth than they can directly consume and that what all want is the influence they can provide on an ideological level through their patronage of foundations and causes. But as for the Koch brothers’ grant to Florida State U, I think it yet unproven that their support for the proposed FSU professorships requires any such ideological tests and that there are reasonable measures to secure fairness in hiring procedures.

    (It should also be acknowledged en passant that the Koch brothers’ wealth was due primarily to profits from sales of essential commodities produced and transported, whereas the vast Soros fortune was built primarily on investment schemes and currency manipulations.)

    There is also in dlazere’s posting the unseemly insinuation that the Florida State economics academics to be hired through the Koch brothers’ grant are to be ideological propagandists.

    Perhaps dlazere would care to address the issue Mark Bauerlein raised on the ideological equivalence level rather than seek to dodge it by taking the easy low road in proclaiming the Koch brothers’ motives just to be narrowly financial.

  • markbauerlein

    Agreed, Todd, in principle, but in practice, especially as it is cast in this fellowship program (as aligned with “hire more people of ethnic and racial diversity), “use diversity as a resource” looks like an educational practice specifically oriented toward identity politics.

    I think, too, that my formulation of Koch awards as “support the free enterprise system” was too crude.  To me, their efforts appear to parallel job descriptions that I used to see in the MLA Job List, such as a preference for someone in “Marxist theory.”

  • goxewu

    I’ll stipulate that a great deal of foundation grant money directed to and within American higher education is ideological, on a continuum of vaguely to obviously. I’ll stipulate further that liberal foundations do this as much if not more than conservative ones. And I’ll buy closer scrutiny of the Ford Foundation’s grants.

    But is there a specific case with the Ford Foundation of its proposing to have, as the Kochs proposed at Florida State, of the Foundation having an actual representative on the hiring committee for a faculty position that the Foundation underwrites?

    If the Ford Foundation does that, it should be stopped. If the Ford Foundation doesn’t do that, then the Ford-Koch parallel is weak, and Prof. Bauerlein’s attempted “Gotcha!” is a whiff.

  • 7738373863

    Diversity does not imply any given political agenda.  Adding Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court certainly diversified it, but moved that one seat to the right, just as adding Sonia Sotomayor diversified it but moved that one seat to the left.  I’m afraid that in his comparison Professor Bauerlein has committed what in philosophy is known as metabasis–a category mistake.

  • markbauerlein

    “Diversity” is most certainly an ideology, 773, and your example proves it.  Just because the impact of diversity is sometimes to the right doesn’t neutralize it.  You don’t really think that the appointment of Clarence Thomas wasn’t a political/ideological action, do you?  And the action wasn’t ideological only in that Thomas was right-wing, but also in that he was black–and his racial identity had nothing to do with his personal politics, but with identity politics.

    And there’s no “gotcha” here, goxewu. Everybody knows that Ford is a starkly ideological organization, and if Ford wants to promote is diversity-thinking on college campuses, so be it. (The same goes for Koch and its programs.)  While Ford doesn’t have people on personnel committees, it does use its considerable funds to boster job candidates who have a certain racial/ethnic identity and who have an ideological orientation in their teaching (“diversity-as-educational-resource”). 

  • toddgitlin

    Mark, In my only personal experience with the Ford Foundation, they backed openDemocracy, which was (and remains) an ideological diverse online magazine.  There were genuine Tories involved in oD from the start, though the leadership was liberal.  When I was involved editorially, we commissioned wide-ranging debates.  The Foundation never vetted writers or editors.  As for putting money behind fellowships for persons whose categories are underrepresented, I agree that this is a *position.*  But it’s not the same as an ideological lockstep, since the “members” of the category are entirely free to subvert what some donors have in mind for legitimate members of the category. The corruption in the Thomas appointment came when G. H. W. Bush called him “the best man for the job,” when his qualifications were meager.  If Ford were boosting Marxist candidates, in a position to enforce the hiring of Marxists whatever their talents, that would be something equivalent.

  • markbauerlein

    The open Democracy project is a praiseworthy one, Todd, and I concede that it counters my charge that Ford is too ideological.  But when it comes to higher ed, it seems to me, the partisanship rises.  Here’s what I’ve written elsewhere:

    “Consider the Ford Foundation and its support of ‘diversity’ in higher
    education.  In 2003, Ford gave Rutgers University’s Institute for Women’s
    Leadership $346,000 “to examine faculty’s role in initiating and supporting
    programs to advance diversity in higher education policy and practice.”  It gave
    University of New Mexico $400,000 for ‘a consortium of minority serving
    Southwest universities to build knowledge and develop programs on diversity and
    institutional excellence.’  The National Council on Research on Women received
    $250,000 for ‘research on women’s leadership in higher education and its role in
    increasing racial and gender diversity.’  The Association of American Colleges
    and Universities got $113,000 for a ‘Diversity Digest’ newsletter that would ‘identify and communicate new strategies for addressing campus diversity
    issues,’ plus $225,000 to ‘explore how colleges and universities can connect
    diversity and academic excellence.’  San Francisco State’s Center for
    Integration and Improvement of Journalism got $400,000 to ‘conduct programs to
    promote diversity in the news media and undertake a strategic planning
    process.’

    “Or consider Ford’s Campus Diversity Public Information Project, an initiative
    to foster ‘diversity learning’ endeavors in higher education.  Several years
    ago, Ford hired Martin & Glantz (later changed to ‘FowlerHoffman’) with the
    goal of ‘re-positioning the image and identity of these programs, which can be
    controversial and are often portrayed in a negative or cynical light’ (see
    summary here. Among its activities were ‘training diversity messengers, generating feature stories and op-ed pieces, reaching out to representatives of the local and regional
    media and local survey research.’  In other words, it was a marketing campaign
    to insert more diversity programs and thinking onto campus.”

    Again, I have no objection to these efforts, which are legitimate actions within an open society.  But they are also activities directed at steering universities in particular ideological directions.

  • mavprof

    Mr Gitlin evidently sees “support the free enterprise system”– just like his view of the present ideologically “Republican” Supreme Court majority–as far more ideologically pitched and controversial than “maximize the educational benefits of diversity,” etc., but the distinction Mr Bauerlein made holds when one lifts the cover of euphemism and observes the practice. However, it’s not surprising that many accept “diversity” stances as less controversial since it’s now become the default ideology in most institutions of higher learning.

    It might also have been helpful to have had an initial disclosure from Mr Gitlin about his association with the Ford Foundation (in my own case I’ve never been associated with any of the individuals or institutions mentioned in the Bauerlein posting).

  • _perplexed_

    I think there is quite a difference between supporting the development of scholars with particular ideological views (Ford and any number of other foundations) and usurping the role of the faculty in the hiring process (Koch).

  • wbgleason

    This is a sticky issue.  Here is my perspective. In the seventies it was decreed – evidence upon demand – that women could not be chemistry profs at an R1 university. Places like the University of MInnesota were forced – by court decree – to hire women.  The world did not end.

    For the Ford foundation to encourage hiring to promote diversity does not seem to me to be equivalent to prescription by the Kochs that conservative economists of their stripe be hired…

    Bill Gleason

  • barbarapiper

    Prof. Bauerlein wants to make this an issue of ideology, but the most salient criticisms of the
    Koch/Florida deal seem to be the sharing of control over hiring, and Prof. Bauerlein does not offer a view of whether that is acceptable or not. The Koch/Florida issue appears to have hit the media precisely because of this stipulation, not because of some ideological agenda.
     
    Let us agree that grants, endowments, all manner of funding, are saturated with ideological
    considerations. That seems evident. When my university choses to hire an oncologist rather than a public health specialist it has made an ideological choice to value expensive one-on-one medicine rather than the more cost effective work of public health. When my dean agrees to hire another English Lit faculty member, he has made an ideological decision about the nature of education, and STEM faculty may feel that this support for a 19th century model of the educated individual – who knows the subtleties of Shakespeare but little or nothing about genetics – is a giant step backwards in the 21st century. We make such choices all the time.

    I was involved in a related case recently, in which a wealthy family wanted to endow a chair –
    a welcome offer – but wanted to name the first incumbent. The family was told politely that even though their choice was perfectly acceptable, the stipulation was not: hiring is the exclusive privilege of the university. The money was declined. Faculty understood that the principle at stake was worth the loss of one position. Florida appears to have made a different decision about the Koch funding. That’s their right, but we should not pretend that this is similar to the Ford Foundation case that Prof. Bauerlein describes.

  • markbauerlein

    Good points, Barbara, but I’m not sure that your examples rise to the level of ideology.  They could have been practical decisions, or financial ones, or simply a matter of belief or preference, and not all beliefs or preferences or practicalities are ideological.  When we encounter terms as loaded as “diversity,” though, we cross the bar. 

    Also, the Koch/FSU deal did not give Koch the power to name incombents.

  • wbgleason

    But did the FSU situation give the Kochs  veto power, Mark?  It seems to me that this is the point.

    Is diversity really a loaded term? Again, I refer to you my point about hiring women at Minnesota. Until “diverse” people are hired, how can we know that they cannot do the job? I remember one person in particular for whom the main concern was that she have an opportunity to shop in Minneapolis. She did not get the job.  When I asked what happened to her, my research advisor replied that  she had gotten a job at some small place in the East.

    It was Brown.

    Female faculty members hired at Minnesota in the Chemistry Department  have certainly proven that they can do the job, in fact, spectacularly. 

    My best.

    Bill Gleason

  • dlazere

    Mavprof, the Koches’  support for llbertarian ideology advances precisely the unchallenged concentration of wealth and exercise of political and economic power by their own corporations, including their controversial labor and environmental practices.   How jtlevy can compare a corporate oligopoly of wealth and power with civil rights or academic freedom, and imply that just an elite few individuals like the Koches lobby for the latter causes and command comparable wealth or political power, for purely selfish motives, is beyond me.  Let’s see some facts and figures, JT.

    And Mark, I still don’t see what you think the motive of the Ford Foundation is in supporting diversity.  Does it or its parent corporations stand to profit from diversity?  Does it receive major funding from minority or feminist organizations, or maybe from the all-powerful poor people’s lobby?

  • chuckkle

    The two quotes at the start from Gitlin and Nelson are selectively appropriated from much more substantial arguments they made.  Kind of sneaky, methinks.

  • goxewu

    There’s no “gotcha!” but there was an *attempted* “gotcha!”

    The Ford Foundation may well “use its considerable funds to bolster job candidates who have a certain racial/ethnic identity and who have an ideological orientation in their teaching,” but this is a) vague, and b) done–or its equivalent done–by lots of big-funds foundations who contribute to underwriting teaching positions in higher ed.

    That’s a lot different, though, (and on the other side of a very significant line) from trying to plant somebody on the actual committee choosing who gets the job.

  • 12009444

    When my children go to college, I would like for them to be exposed to various points of view. I find Soros’ goals thuggish and otherwise offensive, but I would want all students to take classes from instructors that would review a variety of ideologies. We ought not fear what we disagree with. So long as the students support and benefit from the grants, an institution should accept them. Anything less would suppress important conversations and smack of Big Brother-ism.

  • barbarapiper

    Perhaps you have a higher threshold for identifying
    “ideology”, which is often disguised by a cloud of talk about need,
    practicality, etc. The claim that “not all beliefs or preferences or
    practicalities are ideological” sounds like an English Lit professor’s
    view, not the perspective of a social scientist. I mentioned ways in which an institution
    regards disease and imagines responses to it, and how an institution thinks
    about what an educated person is: these are certainly and unambiguously matters
    of ideology, as much as “diversity”. In the cases I mentioned they also represented ideological matters in precisely the sense that Jean Comaroff described in her well-known discussion of the difference between ideology and hegemony: the underlying principles in each case were made public and were contested, and in times of limited resources there are more and more challenges to the simplistic dodge of practicality or need.

    “Also, the Koch/FSU deal did not give Koch the power to name incombents.” I was not aware that I had said that – my point was that universities are often confronted with a range of conditions for accepting gifts or grants of money, and while many of those conditions are normal, usual, and not problematic, gifts or grants that require donor
    participation in selection or evaluation of faculty are not standard, and are, in my experience, declined. I cited a case at one extreme, to emphasize that the principle of institutional autonomy can lead to a rejection of the funding proffered, but apparently you didn’t catch that point.

  • jdelton

    Excellent article, Mark.  Even before its diversity initiatives the Ford Foundation was regarded as ideological.  Conservatives in the 1950s opposed its influence, as did the New Left in the 1960s.  Conservatives are only trying to counter the influence of liberal foundations like Ford and Carnegie.   

  • madmaggs

    The original goal of the Ford Fellowships was to increase the number of minority faculty on college and university campuses.  In 2005 the program became a diversity program intending to increase diversity of college campuses.  So, you are arguing that the desire to provide opportunities to people who were, in many cases, not even allowed to attend most campuses in the United States is an ideology parallel to the Kochs’s goal of advancing the privilege of the wealthy “ruling class”?  If civil rights movements are ideological, then good for them!  In the structure of this argument, are movements that forward privilege for the same privileged people not also an ideology and an evil one at that, one that perpetuates the lack of opportunity for a large portion of the population?

  • cwm4c

    Yes.

  • markbauerlein

    Correct, Barbara, in the Koch/FSU remark I was replying to another commenter.

    As for the distinction between ideology and belief/opinion/practicality, ideology forms a more complex network of assumptions, ideas, and practices with concrete political effects, “political” defined as “access and distribution of resources.”  The latter, of course, may be (meaningfully) connected to one ideology or another, but they sometimes they are not.  An entire program, heavily-funded and longstanding, devoted to one concept and practices that flow from it, has a direct connection.

    Bill asks the reasonable question about whether “diversity” is a loaded term.  His example, though, dates from the 70s, and back then “diversity” was not a loaded term.  After the Bakke decision, though (in Justice Powell’s opinion), “diversity” grew and spread as the primary justification for affirmative action once the “historical remedy” argument lost legal force.  And in the last few years it has become a magical word that stands for an entire industry of offices and practices and publications.

    Donald seems to believe that for there to be serious questions to be raised, then the sponsor must materially benefit from the ideology.  What are Ford’s motives? he asks.  The motives are, precisely, ideological.  Ford believes in diversity practices as a moral and social good.  (Of course, Koch Foundation believes that free enterprise is a moral and social good, too.)

    Finally, madmaggs asks whether it’s wrong to sponsor programs that provide support to members of groups formerly discriminated against.  But that isn’t what I highlighted in Ford’s fellowships.  The problem for me is that Ford requires that candidates use diversity as an educational resource.  They must teach with it, revise curricula according to it, etc.  This is to plant an ideology into educational practices, and it is no different from another organization saying, “use free enterprise as an educational resource.”  Plus, to repeat the point above, free market believers actually believe that free markets don’t support cronyism, corporate welfare, monopolies, and other potential evils of capitalism that profit an oligarchy.  They believe that free markets help more people and in more ways than any other system.

  • madmaggs

    I think you’re playing with words here.  The Ford Program does not “require” anyone to use diversity as a resource in teaching or revise curricula.  Using diversity is one of several possible positive factors that can be considered in the review.  Also, using diversity, or promoting inclusion of all people does not sound like a dangerous policy or ideology to me–it sounds like the basic world veiw of decent human beings.  Maybe I’m just not a good nationalist. By the way, anyone who currently believes that free markets help more people in more ways have not looked at the situation of the poor and the middle class in this country since Reagan and trickle-down economics, or at the entire world after mad financial manipulators were allowed to pillage the world through speculation and manipulation of funds.

  • mavprof

    dlazere, the Kochs’ support for libertarian and conservative ideas might also preclude their receiving the economic advantages afforded by statist politicians to “crony capitalists.”

    And it’s amusing to hear financial support for an array of ideologically liberal-left causes and politicians George Soros funds called “philanthropy.” I suppose when the financier who mused that he’d give his entire fortune to defeat former President George Bush was then only wishing to affect the “perfect” philanthropist.

  • wilsonau

    I personally find this to be much ado about nothing.  From what I have read, the faculty at FSU do still have significant input into the selection of faculty hired from funds provided by Koch.  I can assure you that donors are frequently consulted about those being hired for endowed chairs, etc.  I do not know about veto power by Koch.  If that is the case, then maybe it is a bit strong.  But donors rarely give money totally unrestricted.  And the larger the dollars, the greater the level of involvement donors typically wish to have.  Our university has many endowed professorships, scholarships etc. and donors and constantly cultivated to provide more funds.  How about scholarships where a donor has specified that candidates must be from a certain town or certain high school etc.  Donors are free to place conditions on their gifts.  Universities can then decide whether to accept or refuse such gifts.  In my view and from what I have read, the Koch issue has become broader than just FSU.  I gather that given the wealth and influence of the Koch’s, there are those that wish to diminish their perceived influence.  To be honest, since when was private enterprise and capitalism a bad thing?

  • tgroleau

    Very recently some Chronicle readers have decreed that conservatives cannot be social psychologists.

    http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/social-psychologists-ponder-their-own-political-biases/30310

    However, it’s highly unlikely that any court decree will ever force a university to hire conservative psychologists.  Therefore would it be OK if the Koch brothers were funding psychology positions instead of economics (where conservatives can likely find jobs)?

  • dlazere

    Don’t the Koches’ large contributions to and lobbying of politicians and their attempts to control legislation directly in their corporate interests show that they are up their neck in crony capitalism?  Such “libertarians” are blatant hypocrites.

    Can you please specify what policies of Bush were opposed to Soros’s financial interests?  It seems to me that Bush acted to vastly enrich billionaires like Soros.  Soros’s opposition to Bush was certainly ideological: he believed B’s policies (continuing those of presidents from Carter and Reagan to Clinton) were destroying democracy and replacing it with plutocratic rule by Soros’s own class.  So what do you see as self-serving in Soros’s ideology?  

  • wbgleason

    Sorry, but the threading is not so good.  I can’t reply directly to:

    Mark – I accept your argument that my example is old and that diversity in the seventies may not mean what it means today.

    tgroleau- Koch or anyone else can fund whatever chairs they care to in whatever discipline. My problem is with them picking or having veto power over the appointees to the chairs.

    Conservatives won’t like to hear this, but I think they get more than an even break in academic appointments partially because some of us want diversity.  The problem is, for whatever reasons, there seem to be a lot fewer conservatives than non-conservatives.

    King Banaian is an economist at St. Cloud State university and a state legislator.  Although we disagree on a lot of things he is very intellectually – a bad word I know – sound.

    I took a course when I was an undergrad at NU in the good old days.  From Eliseo Vivas who was widely known on campus as a conservative.  When he asked me why I took the course, I replied that I wanted to take one from a conservative because I didn’t believe – at that time – that anyone with any brains could be a conservative.  He laughed… and proved me wrong.

    As Mark Bauerlein does.  Thank you Mark for your always thought-provoking contributions.

  • dlazere

    Mark says, “Koch foundation believes that free enterprise is a moral and social good, too.”  How convenient that this selfless good would serve to “free” Koch Industries from any effective opposition by American society to their runaway accumulation of profits and personal wealth, monopolization of corporate ownership, buying of politicians (like Gov. Scott Walker), media, and now educators, as well as to their union-busting and environmental devastation.

  • katisumas

    Mark Bauerlein,

    The Ford Foundation is a nonprofit trust run by a board.  The Koch brothers are alive and well and are deep in their neck in immediate politics and in furthering their personal economic and power interests.

    Diversity is not an ideology.  There is nothing in encouraging the hiring of minorities that pertains to their political orientation.  There is nothing in diversity that purport to change the social order, unless your own ideology is to keep a segment of the population down (women, etc).

    Control of the economy and thus political power by a small minority is ideology.  It undermines the foundation of our democracy and advances plutocracy.

    Democracy and plutocracy are ideologies.  An ideology pertains about the structure of power.  Diversity doesn’t. 

  • katisumas

    You know, no one is ever going to buy any of the things you advertize on this site.  I respect the fact that you’re trying to make a living, but it wont work  that way, so think of something else and go away already.

  • katisumas

    The George Soros Foundation has never ever attempted to dictate what faculty to hire to any US university.  Actually, the Soros Foundation doesn’t give grants to universities.

  • katisumas

    Good point,

    I have to note though that the Ford Foundation is not linked to the Ford corporation.  It was funded in 1936 by Edsel Ford as an entirely independent trust with the aim of promoting the “general welfare”.  It is governed by a board whose members have absolutely no ling with the Ford corporation (which of course wasn’t even a corporation when the foundation was set up).

    So this actually reinforce your argument that , in contrast to the Koch borthers, the non profit Ford Foundation doesn’t stand to gain anything by promoting the “general welfare” (and surely “diversity” fits with the Fund’s mission).

  • gayetuchman

    Diversity is clearly different today than it was in the 1970s, because the demography of the country is different.  However,the demography of the faculty at many leading research universities hasn’t changed all that much — at least in terms of race.  For instance, relatively few African Americans (and relatively few women) have tenured faculty appointments in science departments at leading research universities.  To discuss race and gender as though they were “merely” ideological phenomena involving identity politics makes it easier to avoid noticing that race and gender are also implicated in the exercise of power.   It’s a sorry state of affairs that the contingent faculty at comunity colleges are more demogaphically representative of how the US is changing than are leading research universities. One can always claim that white men deserve these position at the top institutions, because they are more academically accopmlished (and even smarter).  But this is clealry an ideological position in as much as it reproduce existing power relationships.   It seems to me that the term ideology is usually applied to programs intended to help racial/ethic minorities and women, but not to existing programs that seem to reproduce existing hierarchies.

  • katisumas

     When you contrast promoting “diversity” with “control of faculty hiring in order to promote people who share free market ideology but don’t practice it”, you are supporting an ideological position about power in our society.  As well as a surprising assumption about the homogenity in the political orientations of minority members…..

    I am more than aware that the brief post-modern fashion redefined “ideology” in pretty fluid terms.  However if the word is to retain any meaning, it still is the set of beliefs that justify a socio/economic/ political order.  A set of beliefs attached to the distribution of power in a society. 

    In the view of some people this distribution of power is linked to historical minority status within a society.  In your view, the slaves who in spite of the law risked their lives to learn how to read and write, or the women who attended all female universities were pursuing an idelogical agenda…

    Doesn’t at some point the ideology of democracy links to ethics?  Isn’t ideological democracy based on an ethical foundation of respect for human lives and livelihoods?

    So the Koch brothers’ are supporters of the ideology of plutocracy while the Ford Foundation is a supporter of democracy (which the indenpendance of institutions of higher learning as one of the features democracies need to survive). 

    The difference is manifested, as other posters have noted, in that the Koch brothers are looking after their own personal power interests while the Ford Foundation, founded by Edsel Ford, is independently pursuing its original and drastically opposite mission of promoting the “general welfare”. 

  • katisumas

    “metabasis”:  I love it!  I hadn’t thought of it but after reading your very cogent post, I now realize that what Mark Bauerlin is doing is “mixing apples and oranges” and thus sowing categorical confusion. 

  • katisumas

    The Ford Foundation does not do that.

  • mavprof

    Well, I don’t expect the Koch brothers would invite a “too-big-to-fail” taxpayer bailout or a special “green technology” government subsidy (let alone a taxpayer-financed corporate takeover to save their union employees’ jobs and benefits) if their business enterprises were failing. Isn’t that what “crony capitalists” do? And all major interests–left, right, center, or non-political lobby for their causes and supporters, including the AAUP.

    And I understand the Kochs also support gay marriage and legalization of drugs–I suppose some financial gain for this might be fancied, but I’ll let others like dlazere opine the connection.

    For I’m not as sure of my powers of discerning others’ motives as dlazere evidently is. If I were I expect I could cook up a number of pejorative “motives” for Soros’s funding of liberal-left causes and politicians (from gaining some “covering” advantage over other wealthy financiers, to left guilt at the questionable means one’s wealth was acquired, to extreme distaste for traditional American values, etc.). But as I said earlier, I think in the cases of the Kochs and Soros it’s the wish to have their values prevail that seems most plausible to me.

  • trendisnotdestiny

    Well said Katisumas.

    After reading these posts, I landed in an altogether different place than I expected.  While I am sure there leaves much to be desired from “applying diversity standards” and espousing the merits of diversity, I am rather astonished that the benefits of diversity (i.e. biological adaptability and resilience) have not been invoked here. 

    It is pretty clear among learned people that heterogeneity (diversity) is preferred to ideological binaries of dominance (Koch Bros or Larry Summers, Robert Rubin).  Even when we do attempt to increase systemic diversity their is a major resistance that maintains pre-existing hierarchies.  Bauerlein seems to be too caught into the competitive binaries here.  If we look at the mass deaths of species after species in the last few years, having a more diverse ecology seems to be an essential concept (and yes I am talking about the evolution of investment bankers and hedge fund managers too).  

  • mavprof

    “playing with words,” indeed, if “promoting inclusion of all people” is effected not by equality of opportunity but assured equality of result through reverse discrimination, set-asides, and quotas. The “by the way” stuff is just crass leftist boilerplate.

  • katisumas

    Mark Bauerlein, you gave yourself away with your “Marxist theory” comment. 

    Any social scientist and philosopher would tell you that Marxist studies do not promote a leftist agenda.  Marx was a nineteenth century economist and philosopher.  Marx and Marxism form a valid field of study, just as Adam Smith and economic laissez faire do.  To study human history is not ideological.  You cannot study and teach the history of Western philosophy, or economics or sociology without a section on Karl Marx. 

    Don’t you realize that in your view everything is ideological and there are only two ideologies in existence in the world both harking back to the nineteenth century? 

    So you could argue that the Texas Board of Education that took Thomas Jefferson out of high school US history textbooks was just pursuing a different ideology from the people who insists he is part of US history.  This is similar to your statement that a university seeking someone specializing in Marxist theory is pursuing ideological aims contrary to what the Koch bros. are pursuing?  How about anyone teaching the history if philosophy, or as a recent issue, just teaching the history of labor movements, or actually any history course not fitted into the framework of one of two nineteenth thinkers? 

  • katisumas

    Do you even know what Soros’ goals are? 

    PS:  The Soros Foundation is not involved in US higher education.

  • mavprof

    Since dlazere likes figures, he should be pleased to know that the Kochs’ contribution to Gov Walker’s campaign ($43K) represented less than half-a-percent of Walker’s total campaign expenditures ($9 million). Cost them more than double that to “buy” NY Gov Cuomo–yes?

  • electronicmuse

    One cannot legitimately equate the Koch so-called “Foundation” with the Ford Foundation. The Koch brothers actively seek to skew political processes to protect their wealth. There is nobody at the Ford Foundation who seeks to do this. The fact that both entities push “ideological” agendas doesn’t make their attempts at influence equivalent.

    Barkin’ up the wrong tree here, Mr. Bauerlein.

  • dlazere

    You give your game away by saying you “could cook up” devious motives and actions by Soros and other liberals out of wholecloth and with no actual evidence.  Conservatives are compelled to muddy the waters of public argument by “cooking up” theoretical or factitious cases of liberal forces behaving as badly as conservative ones.  I suggest that you do some research in the ample, demonstrable evidence on the Koch brothers’ influence on politicians to enact legislation, not fostering free enterprise, but directly favoring their corporate interests, prime instances of “crony capitalism.”

  • goxewu

    Thank God for Small Favors Department (Weasel Words Division):

    “From what I have read, the faculty at FSU do still have significant
    input into the selection of faculty hired from funds provided by Koch.”

  • drnels

    I understand the concern about corporations.  I agree with it.  But private funds are private funds that can be distributed in ideological ways that public funds cannot.  It’s why we need to encourage those who have the money to support ideological work that contrasts with the work of other foundations (and why I am setting up a trust when I die for certain scholarships for certain students).

  • dlazere

    I’m repeating this reply to mavprof so it will appear as a recent post rather than getting buried in the past ones:
      You give your game away by saying you “could cook up” devious motives and actions by Soros and other liberals, out of wholecloth and with no actual evidence.  Conservatives are compelled to muddy the waters of public argument by “cooking up” theoretical or factitious cases of liberal forces behaving as selfishly as conservative ones.  I suggest that you do some research in the ample, demonstrable evidence on the Koch brothers’ influence on politicians to enact legislation, not fostering free enterprise, but directly favoring their corporate interests, prime instances of “crony capitalism.”

  • mavprof

    Right, “cook up” in the way that some on the left concocted some no-evidence conspiracy theory about the Koch brothers stealing Wisconsin power plants for a pittance that supposedly Gov Walker would deliver to them in exchange for their campaign “bribes.” That sort of rubbish didn’t even past muster in a number of politically liberal circles.

    And I’ll remind the polemical dlazere of the hypothetical “if” (“if” I trusted my own speculations as much as dlazere seems to trust his) I stipulated in my earlier posting. But truth is, I don’t; so I’m willing to accept both the Kochs and Soros are all primarily promoting their ideological values (as we are now in these exchanges) in their contributions to causes and politicians in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary. I wasn’t much impressed with the incompetent error-filled brief laid against them by Lee “Contango” Fang of ThinkProgress (one of whose benefactors is Soros) that was pretty well answered in a series of articles by John Hinderaker over at Powerline, among others.

    That said, I’m also not unaware of the environmental damage fines Koch Industries has paid out over the years, or, conversely, the environmental awards they’ve received. Nor am I unaware of Soros’s felony insider trading conviction in France and his controversial currency manipulations, or, conversely, of his promotion of democratic values and open government in Eastern Europe. On the whole, however, I think the Kochs have outdone Soros in what clearly qualifies as philanthropy (e.g., support of the arts, museums, medical research, and institutions of higher learning). All seem to agree on various measures to decriminalize certain kinds of drug use.

  • dlazere

    Mavprov’s latest examples stretch for selfish behavior by liberals of every variety, like Soros’s market manipulations.  These aren’t hard to find, to be sure, but they evade the issue at hand.  I am mainly criticizing financial expenditures by wealthy interests that are a quid pro quo to gain favor for their businesses, directly or indirectly, as in the Koches’ support for libertarian policies that conveniently enhance their own profits and power.  You and Mark Bauerlein have failed to show that either Soros’ or the Ford Foundation’s favored causes directly or even indirectly profit them; nor have you identified what selfish motives might plausibly lie behind Ford’s support for diversity or Soros’s support for raising taxes on the rich and curbing the plutocratic concentration of wealth and power in megacorporations.  Hmm?

    Are those trashing Soros here getting their information from Glenn Beck, or what?  What is the place of that level of demagogy in the Chronicle of Higher Education?

    By the way, how about running the numbers comparing executive income and money spent on lobbying by AAUP versus corporate America?

    Another underlying issue here is the dubiousness of equating lobbying by organizations like AAUP or labor unions that democratically represent the interests of large numbers of constituents, and lobbying by billionaire stockholders and corporate executives like the Koches’, which serves demonstrably to entrench their inordinate personal wealth and power (no matter how much or how little they may contribute on any particular occasion, or to other, worthy causes, mavprov).

  • trendisnotdestiny

    OK, I have had just about enough of these false dichotomies… I do not know whether it is blind insolence or selective memory, but we have to acknowledge that our country has moved further and further to the right (corporate monied interests).  This is point one. Koch or Ford, it makes no difference.

    I bring up point one not to call for a move to the left (or the false notion that it-would-be-all-better-if-the-left-were-in-charge-bullshit), but to provide some context for the cemented corporate state unification structure where privacy is diminished, business is predatory, and the echo chamber ignores massive systemic problems in our ecology, neighborhoods, and social support systems. 

    Consequently, point two is that game theory is being used by market participants (oligarchs) to exploit profits, observe data, and manipulate larger narratives.  Examples of this are:

    1) Game Theory & Media:
      A) De-sensitize through repetitive loud messages of fear
      B) Complex thought derision where only those thoughts of 1 min or less filter through
      C) Broadcast the divisions, hypocrisies, and policy disagreements as binaries
      D) Steering critical content to and away from these binaries

    2)  Game Theory & Pharma/Healthcare
      A) Create the notion that there are quick short term fixes to our problems (pills, surgeries)
      B) Market these drugs as an on-going need that people will have forever
      C) Foster dependency by using the medical community and the media
      D) Do not address central issues directly, develop products to disturb consumers into buying
      E) Erode the boundaries between researchers, drug developers and company executives
      F) Sell the notion that most problems reside within the person
      G) Price out the world’s poor from the product

    3) Game Theory & Finances
      A) Debt as a tool of subjugation (mortgage, student loan, revolving, leveraged, private, country)
      B) Install institutional debt pimps (IMF, World Bank, WTO & other more stealthy organizations)
      C) Create debt junkies all around the world (individuals, families, states, countries, regions)
      D) Use Neoliberal Policies as an enforcement arm: privatize, de-regulate, cut supports
      E) Use Social & Financial Crises to push through what would have been impossible before
      F) Change the rules for those who have resources (bailouts versus austerity)
      G) Ignore one person’s extreme wealth may be related to a whole country’s extreme poverty

    Point three relates to a discussion that we often have here at Brainstorm relating to the intentions of our president.  I have often argued that what he says makes little difference as he is one person, a figure head or one brand side of the coin.  Others here (Mavprof, Livefree and notable others from time to time) claim that he is a leftist socialist bent on changing the American way of life (common rhetoric we hear from the white male dominated Tea Party).
     
    Nonetheless, we have to acknowledge that our brothers on the right do have perspectives that warrant merit on many issues that are not so clear cut or black and white (where right and wrong change with the daily context).   But, I often find it difficult to have empathy for those who perpetuate what Obama has done. First, he is anything but a leftist. Second, we live in a capitalistic global society (if he is getting funded by big finance, pharma, media, then the institutional right must know something that the “lay-right” does not). In fact, I think there has always been a big gap between GOP institutional leaders and their constituencies, but to suggest ignorance of the either base gets sticky (elitism versus parochialism). Instead today, I thought I would share some evidence. 

    So, here is an article by Ross Douthat (for me an acolyte of Karl Rove), but he is someone who is recognizable to conservatives.  He has written an article in the NY Times suggesting that Obama wants a right leaning deficit deal: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/opinion/11douthat.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 

    For me, this cements my view of Obama (that and hiring Summers, Geithner), he is a brand of corporatism that is more palatable to left and is being used to do what (like Clinton and NAFTA) could not have been done with a republican in charge.  Obama has systematically damaged the left in this country by stirring up our participatory emotions (change, hope) and created a blow-back lull as-if-he-is-just-like-every-other-politician will have a deep affect on future participation and funding of elections.  This now makes for the Citizen’s United decision more clear to me since Americans are now ever more indebted and disillusioned. There is no alternative, but corporate funding….

    Also, as someone (Obama) who ran on a platform of change and hope that we all can believe in, this seems to be in direct conflict with many of his actions (re-upping the patriot act, ending habeus corpus, institutionalizing bank bailouts, escalating and maintaining wars for oil and not addressing the foreclosure crisis/fraud).  We need to acknowledge that our country has:

    1) Drifted to the right (for good or bad)
    2) Game Theory is relevant in our own commercial-state capture
    3) Obama is not a left-leaning liberal (he is just like all the other presidents; NEOLIBERAL)

    In terms of diversity, people should study the company Acxiom (a Little Rock Arkansas based data mining company) who compiles information or profiles of around 80 types of personalities for companies to market to.  The Ford and Koch Foundations surely have access to this kind of data and probably have different reasons for their philosophies (some easily gleaned and other not so much).  Nonetheless, I wonder if we are off base comparing binary institutions here since they have a lot more in common with each other than they have differences.  They both have shifted to the right, use data mining informational asymmetries to make decisions about who to fund, and may claim to be one thing, but really are something completely different from their brand.  

    This is so basic.  The narratives that we play with each week are only slivers of an actual knowledge.  The rest is pomp, arrogance, competition, and wasted air.  Welcome to the decline of empire.

  • molneck

    The Ford Foundation fellowships do not assign power to an outside body to approve faculty appointments, or to review academic programs. The FSU contract with the Koch Foundation does.

  • dlazere

    For whatever it may be worth to the Soros-bashers here, see his article “My Philanthropy,” in New York Review of Books, June 23, partly a response to right-wing attacks on him.

  • jschoepke

    The Ford Foundation Fellowships were created to bring about
    more equitable outcomes for ALL in higher education and to help
    alleviate the past and current effects of white supremacy (no, I don’t mean KKK here) which persist
    in the U.S. It’s a program designed
    to help remedy the effects of centuries of legalized discrimination.
    This is not the purpose of the Koch Foundation Grants. Really, the
    article is comparing apples to oranges- the argument presented doesn’t
    make sense when you look at it through an equity lens.

  • mavprof

    dlazere is of course free to persist in fancying that narrow profit motives alone, and not ideological ones are the only criteria on which to judge the Koch brothers’ contributions to political causes and politicians. He’s also free to call Soros’s contributions to American political campaigns “philanthropy” if he chooses, but that won’t convince me to unshackle that euphemistic use of the term from scare quotes where they rightly apply.

    Nevertheless, I think Mr Bauerlein raised an interesting point about diversity ideology promoted by Ford Foundation grants and whether these ideological promotions should undergo the same scrutiny as the Koch Foundation grants. My answer is yes, they should.

    Since dlazere is prone to speculation again–this time about Glenn Beck–I’ll answer: I know who he is and have a passing acquaintance with a few of his ideas, though I’m not a follower and have never watched his show or visited his website. But it’s amusing to read of dlazere’s indignation that presumes only political rightists like the Kochs may be “trashed” (and not political leftists like Soros) on an academic website. dlazere may be cured of this groundless delusion and its attendant leftist tetanus by reading more of the opinions of right-leaning academics like myself. Cheers,

  • markbauerlein

    Very well, but let’s be clear that programs that “remedy” historical conditions from the past can be just as ideological as programs that maintain a status quo.  The casting of diversity-practices as simply the outlook of decent people is, to say the least, naive.

  • dlazere

    To mavprov:

    Can’t you see that you keep going around in circles in your distinction between special interests and ideology?  You’re still evading my point that in the case of Koch and many conservative funders, the ideological  ideals espoused in a substantial portion of the causes they fund (llke the tea party) also serve to advance their financial special interests, while this is not the case with Soros or the Ford Foundation, at least as far as you or Mark have been able to show.

    You’re welcome to bash Soros all you want.  He’s not my sacred cow (no billionaires or Wall Street speculators are!).  I just wanted to see if you were getting your info from Glenn Beck and Fox News, who have committed these same logical fallacies about Soros’s motives, and added a large dose of outright lies, slanders, and bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.  What ARE your sources about him, and,  what “traditional American values” does he oppose?

  • trendisnotdestiny

    In reading your reply to mavprof, I thought of this quote that I came across today from a poster from another blog (cognitive dissonance from the zero hedge financial blog).  He had a quote that I thought fit here in this discussion around right wing propaganda:

     ”To say that we are not significantly and continually influenced by this massive propaganda onslaught is the prima facie evidence of the very success of that conditioning.”

    It is almost like Mavprof has never heard of Edward Bernays….

  • toddgitlin

    My “association” with the Ford Foundation consisted of a meeting about six or seven years ago, and an unsuccessful attempt to raise money from them about 45 years ago.  Got me!

  • toddgitlin

    I would not permit an undergraduate student to write “was regarded as” as if it had any content.  Btw, the New Left opposed Ford because *it considered it insufficiently left-wing*!

  • mavprof

    dlazere: Yup, I suppose if “going around in circles” is distinguishing between special interests and ideological motivations–a two-dimensional version of your “beating the drum” or “flogging the straw man” in a simplistic one-dimensional reduction of the Kochs’ motives to profit only.

    But that you let slip the Kochs’ desire for “power” as well as profit seems to concede that they share with Soros the desire to influence political policy by funding causes and candidates that accord with their values. The Ford Foundation likewise seeks to promote the power and influence of its ideological values such as its vision of racial and ethnic diversity through grant projects. And somehow I suspect the non-profit Ford Foundation’s (or the Koch Foundation’s) executives and staff to be in some other class than that of purely altruistic unpaid volunteers on food stamps.

    And as for Tea Party supporters in general, I can’t assume their motives are any more self-interested in a narrow financial sense than, say, teachers’ or public sector unions (not even considering the corrupt nexus between public sector unions and the compliant politicians they fund, increasingly to the detriment of the interests of the taxpaying citizenry as a whole).

    Since you’ve drawn Fox News into your polemical orbit, I find their generally (tho’ not exclusively) right-leaning version of opinion programs no less plausible that those found on the left-leaning alphabet media, NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, etc. And to characterize Fox News in general as providing a “large dose of [. . .] bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracy theories” is not only itself bizarre, but an example of the slander you purport to abhor.

    tind, I’d barely heard of Edward Bernays (tho’ now I know a bit more from Wiki), but of course I’m quite familiar with his crackpot witch-doctor of an uncle, who founded the pseudo-science of psychoanalysis–in the view of Nobel-Prize winning biologist Peter Medawar–”the most stupendous confidence trick of the twentieth century.”

  • trendisnotdestiny

    Yeah, I do not know very many people anymore that are enamored with Freud.  If you look at his family genogram analysis, it is easier to understand who he became and why… Then again, I suppose you could say that about the lot of us….

  • trendisnotdestiny

     Katiesumas, if we look at global demographics… we have to acknowledge that the entire globe is becoming less white, less western, and less concerned about our empire’s needs for their resources.  In our own country, we see the demographics changing rapidly too.  So the concentration of wealth over the past few decades makes more sense as a means of resisting trends that would have really challenged capital’s power.

    One might even make the case that the Bush and subsequent Obama presidencies are experiments in social engineering. So much so, that power is held another generation in the hands of wealthy white entrepreneurial owners.  Here are but a few examples:

    1) Massive changing of the Estate tax laws over the past decade (Rich get richer)
    2) Nationwide repeals of many Affirmative Action hiring laws (Prop 6 State of Michigan)
    3) Issuance of debt, collusion of industry, lack of regulation (sub-prime, revolving, payday)
    4) Massive socialization of losses (TBTF Bailouts of the Banking System)
    5) The Bush tax cuts going to the wealthiest 1% (designed, renewed and extended)
    6) Wages stagnate over the past thirty five years (inflation adjusted)
    7) Inflated Middle Class Pass-through Externalities (health care, college tuition, food)
    8) Off-shoring of jobs (cheap labor) and assets (foreign banks – swiss, the caymans)
    9) Regulatory Capture (EPA, FDIC, SEC, CFTC, FDA)
    10) Professional Capture (Attorneys, Physicians, Accountants, Deans, Media)
    11) Cutting of social supports (education funding, attempts at medicare/social security)
    12) Creating weapons of mass financial destruction (home foreclosure, bankruptcy, joblessness)
    13) Creating For-profit substitutes for safety net services, selling TINA (there is no alternative)
    14) Creating a massive shadow banking industry predicated on speculation and stealth
    15)  Incarceration totals has skyrocketed (US Prison) – not a lot of diversity in prison either

    There are hundreds more examples of how the increasing influence capital has intervened to stabilize the interests of white, wealthy men in American, but I’ll leave that for another day.  

  • mavprof

    Correction noted. I should rather have noted Mr Gitlin’s association with OpenDemocracy, which receives funding from the Ford Foundation.

  • 3rdtyrant

    22 Teams, 20 of which aren’t that great.  Sounds like a terrific idea.  I hope they contract with The Mountain to show their games, and then their revenues will be less than Women’s Softball (no offense to women’s softball, it’s just not a big money-maker).

  • rcsloan

    Shall we assume any connection between the formation of this new five time zone conference and the academic missions of the individual institutions is coincidental?

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