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Universities, money, and intellectual freedom

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Following up on Erik’s post referencing today’s NYT piece about the potentially invidious effects of industry funding academia (or academics), I’d like to throw out a few hypotheticals, some of which are closely related to some current goings-on in legal academia that I won’t discuss directly at this time. These hypotheticals all touch on the increasingly fraught issue of the extent to which donors should be given the power to shape the intellectual structure of an institution via restricted gifts. (The issue is increasingly fraught because universities are becoming increasingly dependent on private giving in general, and restricted donations in particular, to fund their operations).

Of course all restricted gifts dedicated to supporting research have this effect to some extent: for example if someone endows a chair for the study of constitutional law or financial regulation, that means that relatively more of the institution’s resources will be dedicated to the study of constitutional law or financial regulation than would otherwise be the case. So all restricted gifts are “ideological” in this sense. But what about the following?

A chair in originalist constitutional theory.

A chair in the legal rights of the unborn.

A chair in reproductive rights.

A chair in Marxist legal thought.

A free enterprise chair.

Which of these, if any, would be problematic, and why? Should a dean consult with a law school’s faculty before accepting a donation for some of these purposes? Does it matter if the school is public or private? What other considerations ought to be relevant?

. . . to sharpen the question a bit, at what point to the terms of the gift become sufficiently restrictive that it ought to be rejected? As phrased, all of these gifts strongly imply the donor’s desire to see a certain political project advanced. But what if the terms of the gift are explicit? For example: “This chair will be dedicated to producing scholarship that advances [originalist constitutional theory, the legal rights of the unborn, reproductive rights, Marxist legal thought, the legal protection of free enterprise].”

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