Schools find Ayn Rand can't be shrugged as donors build courses

John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T Corp, admires author Ayn Rand so much that he devised a strategy to spread her laissez-faire principles on US 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. Some 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, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue.

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

Allison, 62, is one of a number of wealthy philanthropists who are making bold demands on schools as a condition of giving, says Jack Siegel, a lawyer whose Chicago-based Charity Governance Consulting works with colleges and nonprofit groups.

Seeking to leave their imprint on everything from the direction of scientific research to the performance of sports teams, these benefactors are stirring conflicts when their causes don’t fit with the priorities of administrators and faculty.

STRINGS ATTACHED
The strings attached to the gifts present university presidents with tough choices: While schools suffering from diminished endowments and government funding cuts following the recession need the money, administrators are sometimes forced to reject the offers to avoid a dust-up on campus.

“I have known some gifts in which the university just could not agree to the terms,” Ohio State University President E Gordon Gee says. “If there are too many strings attached, you have done yourself a disservice. If someone gave me $100 million to start a school of massage at Ohio State University, I’d have to say, ‘Sorry, it’s just not in our strategic plan.’”

Donors as far back as John Harvard, the first benefactor of what was renamed Harvard College after his death in 1638, have gotten their names enshrined on buildings in a quest for immortality. “They’re building a tombstone,” Siegel says.

Henry Kravis, the billionaire co-founder of KKR & Co, pledged $100 million last year to fund an expansion of Columbia University’s business school. The new lecture hall at his alma mater will be called the Henry R Kravis Building.

Many donors on Thursday insist on more than a marquee. Robert Burton, who runs his own investment firm in Greenwich, Connecticut, said he gave more than $7 million to the University of Connecticut with the understanding that he would have a say in the football program. In January, he asked for his gift back, saying the school hired a football coach without consulting him first. A month later, the university announced that it and Burton had reconciled their differences.

“Donors want something back, and in many cases they want a say-so in what’s happening,” Siegel says. “When their money isn’t used the way they want it to, they are unhappy.”

In one of the more ambitious demands made by a donor, hedge-fund manager Jim Simons tried to use his pledge to change tuition practices within the entire State University of New York system. In July, Simons’s pledge of $150 million to SUNY’s Stony Brook campus seemed like a life buoy thrown to a drowning institution.

SUNY was facing $210 million in budget reductions. Before writing the cheque, Simons, 73, the founder of Renaissance Technologies, demanded that the state legislature pass a law allowing the 64 SUNY campuses to set their own tuition for the purpose of reducing their dependence on state aid. The legislature rejected the proposal in August.