The publicity surrounding the Koch Brothers’ payments to Florida State University for the hiring of economic department faculty who will have to answer to the Kochs casts an interesting light on a growing phenomenon. The Kochs have already poured a ton of money into George Mason University in Virginia, and the similarly minded BB&T Foundation has endowed “free market” faculty at the University of Texas, West Virginia University, Western Carolina University, and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
What makes this interesting is that this new breed of right-wing donor is subsidizing the Capitalist Gospel not just at private institutions, but at money-hungry state schools. And ironically, they are propagating a particular point-of-view, namely Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, that is aggressively hostile to the Christian beliefs of the bulk of the populations of Florida, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and Texas.
You have to wonder if the vigilant Christian Right organizations in these states will wake up and protest these capitalist subsidies for secular humanist teaching.