from Radical Education Department
(Flynn and Dave’s article was originally published in Forum.)
RED’s Introduction to “The Koch Brothers at Villanova”
The article that follows was recently published in the Villanova student magazine Forum. It uncovers the hidden influence exerted by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers on Villanova University’s campus. The Matthew J Ryan Center, Flynn and Dave show, receives large sums of money from the Kochs precisely in order to serve as their puppet in peddling neoliberal indoctrination under the disguise of the academic pursuit of
knowledge.
RED has a particular interest in the Koch’s secret influence at Villanova, since our group first banded together–under the name “Nova Resistance”–to disrupt a Ryan Center event. In early 2017, the center hosted a talk by the widely disgraced pseudo-intellectual Charles Murray, who became infamous in the 1990s for openly embracing the eugenicist view that workers, women, and people of color are genetically inferior to rich, white men. The event was billed as an expression of Villanova’s deep commitment to academic “free speech”–a ridiculous claim, given that the talk was secretly purchased by billionaires spreading an agenda that does not stand up to academic scrutiny, on a campus that refused to allow the “free speech” of an openly gay performance artist on campus. Moreover, it came to light that the university paid between $10,000 and $15,000 for additional “security” from the local police department out of fear that activists would exercise their purportedly constitutional right to protest the Charles Murray event. For more on our disruption of this corporate bank-rolled, over-securitized, pseudo-intellectual spiel, see this official statement.
Dave and Flynn’s article highlights a problem that goes far beyond Villanova University, however. Corporate and military interests regularly shape academic life on college campuses, in what some aptly call the military-industrial-academic complex. See, for instance, this article and this piece. The university system is not set apart from the forces of social domination that structure our society. It is neither a pure “ivory tower,” nor simply a harmless public service aimed at helping students find jobs. It is a site of social struggle. In it, reactionaries seek to advance, by any means necessary, an agenda of social domination. But history repeatedly shows the university can also be a means to infect society with radical, liberating social change.
The aim of the Left should not just be to protest corporate and military interests on university campuses. Such a reaction is defensive; it fails to make a lasting change, leaving the university at the mercy of reactionaries. Instead, the goal must be nothing short of a radical offensive: transforming universities into spaces from which to spread radical social change. This is precisely one of the reasons why we founded RED in the wake of our disruption of the smooth functioning of the military-industrial-academic complex at Villanova University.
– RED
The Kochs at Villanova
Kinjal Dave and Jack Flynn
The Symptoms and the Structure by Kinjal Dave
For most of Villanova’s recent history, this money has been quietly recorded in unreadable 80 page PDFs of tax forms, often transferred under several aliases. Recently, Villanova has sought and received this money openly. For years, rumors have circulated that Koch money sponsored campus events. This article will aim to chart information derived from 990s filed by Koch Industries, 501(c)(3), and affiliated nonprofit groups. Furthermore, this article aims to contextualize the path of the money and explicate the philosophy that drives it. We maintain that donations accepted from Koch Industries have a uniquely clear and established track record of pernicious impact when compared to the impact of nearly any other source’s donations. Much work has been done by journalists and writers to explain the strategy of Koch spending, and we’ll try to reintroduce many of their concerns in this essay.
Koch Brothers 101
What we know today as Koch Industries was originally founded as an oil refinery in Wichita, Kansas in 1940 by Fred C. Koch. Since then, it has grown to a multinational conglomerate with a seemingly infinite number of subsidiaries. Koch Industries is run by Fred Koch’s sons, Charles and David Koch, who own 84% of the corporation. Charles Koch himself is worth an estimated $47.8 billion, and he stands at the head of the Charles G. Koch Charitable trust.1 Koch Industries is involved in every imaginable form of exchange, from derivatives trading to cattle trading, natural gas to hedge fund management. The Koch Brothers together have donated about $1.5 billion to an equally diverse array of philanthropic causes, from public television to cancer research.2 Koch contributions in ostensibly “non-political” areas are often seen as legitimizing their philanthropic position. Of course, the Koch brothers are not the only individuals pumping money into education. Democratic billionaire George Soros donates sizable sums of money to schools and philanthropy, as does Independent Michael Bloomberg. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife stand on record as the largest donors in US education with their $100 million gift to the California Institute of Technology.3 Yet, the Kochs remain unrivaled in their strategy and singular aim as philanthropists, articulating exactly what they wish for the money to accomplish when they donate it.
In 2012, Charles G. Koch Foundation President Richard Fink outlined what he calls “the structure for social change.”4 Based on the economic model created by Frederic Hayek, Fink lays out the theoretical strategy guiding Koch philanthropic efforts. Broadly construed, Hayek’s account of market organization—similarly named the “structure of production”—asks us to think about the process by which raw materials end up in fully processed and packaged items on a retail shelf. To start any production process, raw materials must be collected, mined, and refined. The materials then go through manufacturing plants, and the goods created are distributed to retail locations for mass consumption. In a developed economy, the most successful structure of production is highly integrated, and the added value to these products increases with every stage over time.
In the case of Koch Industries’ “Structure of Social Change”, the “product” is the hearts and minds of young people, and the “value added” at each step of production is free market ideals, and conservative or libertarian values. What does a highly developed, highly integrated structure of social change look like for Koch Industries? An undergraduate could receive a Koch scholarship while in school.5 During the semester, a Koch representative might come on campus for a recruitment visit. The campus visit might encourage a student to apply for an internship in the Koch internship system. The Koch internship system places students in paid internships, co-op jobs, or part-time positions at a subsidiary of the Koch industrial conglomerate or other institution receiving Koch money.6 This internship could be with a political office, non-profit, or university center supported by Koch funding. These university centers with Koch funding can also have faculty funded by Koch Industries endowments. The faculty are encouraged to use Koch-approved syllabi, and in some cases, asked to collect data on the students within these classes.7
Thus, Koch Industries has built a pipeline to produce the next generation of free market, libertarian, and conservative leaders. Specifically, the aim is to create this pipeline within universities, long considered a bastion of liberal thought. The vice president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, Kevin Gentry, summarizes their strategy this way:
The [Koch] network is fully integrated, so it’s not just work at the universities with the students, but it’s also building state-based capabilities and election capabilities and integrating this talent pipeline, so you can see how this is useful to each other over time. No one else has this infrastructure. We’re very excited about doing it.8
In no uncertain terms, we know Koch Industries has an intricate system to evangelize the values of free market libertarianism specifically because they themselves have said so. Connecting these specific notions to historical context, we can see how entrenched the system stands.
Not only does the “structure of social change” mirror the “structure of production”, it also mirrors the way Frederic Hayek and the Chicago School of economic thought achieved attention and recognition in their discipline despite being the ideological minority. From the end of the Second World War to at least the 1970s, the demand-side theories of John Maynard Keynes held a consensus position amongst many economists. Hayek, who arrived at the University of Chicago in 1950, and the economists in his company, proposed a return to producer-centric model of economics. Universities like Yale, Harvard, and Berkeley all remained unconvinced by the Chicago School, and almost anyone who wished to defend supply-side economics could essentially only study with the Chicago School. Their graduates received appointments within their department, or set up their own enclaves to allow for counter-hegemonic thought. Businesses and corporations provided key funding to such groups due to their vested interest in dismantling labor organizing efforts and New Deal welfare policies. Jasper Crane of Du Pont Chemicals played a central role in funding for the Mont Pelerin Society, an interdisciplinary network of academics interested in advancing neoliberal thought. Lemuel Ricketts Boulwere of General Electric was another corporate leader in the 1950s who strategically invested money in an effort to fight the state-centric economics.9 To further support Chicago School ideas, corporations helped to establish extra-academic institutions such as the Foundation for Economic Education and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), maintaining a neoliberal intellectual oasis in the 1960s and through the 1970s. Departmental niches at the University of Virginia and Rochester also kept the ideas alive, and anyone looking to advance free market ideology and deregulate corporations had sympathetic colleagues and funding readily available within those spaces.
Decades after Hayek’s seminal book The Road to Serfdom, these selected think tanks, corporate leaders, and academic networks carried the Chicago School out of obscurity and into conventional wisdom. Financiers and outside investors kept their work well-funded and widely circulated. Political circumstances in the United States suddenly changed: the Iron Curtain crumbled, as did the credibility of collectivism and the idea of central planning. The economic depression of 1973 also greatly contributed to their ability to mainstream neoliberal thought. Through this heritage of economic thought, the Kochs inherit the tools and the strategies to elevate the logic of the free market, establishing well-funded silos in spite of and immune to the organic flow and development within academic institutions.
The Kochs & Villanova: An Investigation by Jack Flynn
Villanova University has been receiving money from groups with similar goals as the Koch brothers as far back as 2000, when the William E. Simon Foundation gifted the university with a paltry $200 before continuously gifting sums averaging $3,000 from 2002 to 2015.10 But it was not until recently that funding from these groups increased. I learned the Koch brothers were interested in influencing universities from political organizing groups like Common Cause, as well as Jane Mayer’s exposé Dark Money. I decided to investigate for myself whether Villanova was involved in the growing Koch network. In doing so, I stumbled upon an article which described how Catholic University of America (CUA) business school had received a $1 million contribution from the Koch brothers. My suspicions were raised when the article mentioned that educators from Villanova and other Catholic universities had criticized CUA for accepting the controversial gift from the Kochs. Catholic University responded to the criticism by observing that the educators seemed unaware their own institutions accept Koch money, too.11
With this in mind, I then went to the Charles G. Koch Foundation’s website and found a published list of universities that receive their funding (as of March 2016, they have stopped publishing these lists). I found Catholic’s allegation confirmed: Villanova University was listed as having received Koch money. According to older, archived versions of the page, Villanova has been receiving unspecified amounts of Koch money since at least October 2011.12
One of the goals of the Koch brothers was to fund the creation of institutions on campuses that push their libertarian, free-market ideology to students. As Jane Mayer reports in Dark Money,
[Koch advisor George Pearson] suggested that libertarians needed to mobilize youthful cadres by influencing academia in new ways. Traditional gifts to universities, he warned, didn’t guarantee enough ideological control. Instead, he advocated funding private institutes within prestigious universities, where influence over hiring decisions and other forms of control could be exerted by donors while hiding the radicalism of their aims.13
Recalling this, I turned my attention to institutions on Villanova’s campus. I did not rediscover the trail again until I was walking past Old Falvey, and noticed a message board advertising a Republican debate watch party hosted by the Matthew J. Ryan Center. I was more interested, however, in the full name of the center, displayed beneath: “For the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good.” George Mason University professor Clayton Coppin says of Koch advisors’ strategy for naming Koch-planted and Koch-sympathetic institutions:
It would be necessary to use ambiguous and misleading names, obscure the true agenda, and conceal the means of control. This is the method that Charles Koch would soon practice in his charitable giving, and later in his political actions. 14
Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors, reiterates the same warning, that “the Koch Foundation’s objectives are written so as to sound upbeat and cheerful, [but] they amount to code words.”15 Language promoting free markets, social good, and liberty is often used by Koch-backed organizations, and its presence in an organization’s name or stated mission could potentially signify a relationship with their agenda.
I found further reason to investigate the Matthew J. Ryan Center because I noticed some of the professors who work with the Matthew J. Ryan Center are connected to conservative and libertarian groups, such as the Jack C. Miller or Thomas W. Smith foundations, which are known to be linked to the Koch network of academics. Unfortunately, however, searching through Villanova’s press releases revealed no discernable link to the Matthew J. Ryan Center beyond those buzzwords, and there was no proof of any donations from the Koch brothers to be found anywhere on the center’s website. I continued searching all the same.
Eventually, I found a database that cataloged non-profit organizations which have received money from the Charles Koch Foundation. I searched for both “Villanova University” and “Ryan Center” in the database, but it did not produce any results. Curiously, however, a Ryan Foundation appeared; I would have dismissed it as coincidental if not for the fact that it was located in Wayne, Pennsylvania, not five minutes from campus. I found it rather unusual that an organization with so similar a name, so close to the university, was receiving money directly from the Charles Koch Foundation.
Following this lead, I searched “Ryan Foundation” on Google, which only provided various profiles of the organization hosted on websites dedicated to cataloguing information on non-profits. Each profile provided scant and hardly useful details, such as its location (which I already knew) and years of operation. After some fruitless searching, I found the Ryan Foundation’s profile on Guidestar.org, a website that stores tax documents for non-profits. The Ryan Foundation’s mission statement was given on its Guidestar.org profile, which reads:
The Ryan Foundation supports civic education programs for the purpose of establishing and maintaining projects and curricula that promote the study of free institutions, civic responsibility and related subjects.16
If the nearly identical language was not enough to solidify a link to the Matthew J. Ryan Center’s mission statement, the Ryan Foundation’s profile on nonprofitfacts.com also lists the executive director as Dr. Colleen A. Sheehan—the same individual who is director of the Matthew J. Ryan Center at Villanova University. While she teaches courses within the Villanova Political Science department, she does not appear to be officially employed by the University.
I trawled through the Ryan Foundation’s 2015 IRS Tax Form 990, a document the IRS requires nonprofits to submit annually that details income, expenses, and other financial information, in order to learn more about the organization. The Ryan Foundation has eleven employees, the ten besides Sheehan serving as directors on a board. The most recent 990 forms indicate that Sheehan spends five recorded hours a week working in her capacity as executive director of the Ryan Foundation and receives a salary for her time, while all others listed as directors are not working a single hour a week and are unpaid.17 The foundation’s total assets are listed at $130,589 by the end of 2015, and since 2010 (furthest date back that is listed on the 2015 Form 990), the foundation had received $417,584 in the form of “gifts, grants, contributions, and membership fees received,”18 all of which came from the public, as the foundation is registered as a 501(c)(3)—a public charity, private foundation, or private operating foundation.
Unfortunately, foundations do not need to disclose the identities of their donors if they fall under the 501(c)(3) tax classification, so it was unclear how much of that $417,584 was from the Koch brothers and similar groups. In addition, 990s do not require nonprofits to disclose how they spend their money, so there was not yet proof that the Ryan Foundation was giving any of that $417,584 to the Matthew J. Ryan Center. The Ryan Foundation likely has received money from other sources to fund some of their non-Koch or non-Matthew J. Ryan Center activities. If I was to figure out the exact amount of the Ryan Foundation’s total gift money that was from Koch and Koch-affiliated foundations, that was going to the Matthew J. Ryan Center, I needed to search through the 990s of known Koch organizations and their affiliated nonprofits to see whether I could track the amount of Koch money flowing to the Ryan Foundation (and later, I suspected, the Matthew J. Ryan Center).
My resulting investigation yielded far more than I could have anticipated. The Charles Koch Foundation began funding the Ryan Foundation in 2009, with a grant of $3,500.19 The funding steadily increased over the next several years, maxing out at a donation of $30,000 in 2014 and totaling $95,000 over the five-year period.20 The Charles Koch Foundation was not the Ryan Foundation’s only source of funds from the Koch network. The Ryan Foundation also received money from Donors Trust, an organization which shares the Kochs’ aim and to which the Koch brothers are among the most prominent contributors.
Donors Trust contributed $50,000 to the Ryan Foundation in 2011, and in a telling mistake on their 990 form, accidently wrote the Matthew J. Ryan Center’s address where the Ryan Foundation’s was supposed to be written. If their error was not enough to make clear the intended destination of the funds, Donors Trust also wrote in the “Purpose of Grant or Assistance” column, “Ryan Foundation in support of the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good.”21 The description leaves little room for doubt; the intended destination of the funds was the Koch beachhead on campus. Donors Trust also donated $25,000 to the Ryan Foundation in 2010.22
Beyond the flow of money from the Ryan Foundation to the Matthew J. Ryan Center, Donors Trust—with its companion organization Donors Capital Fund—has given money directly to Villanova for the purpose of establishing fellowships and financially supporting the Matthew J. Ryan Center. For example, the Jack Miller Center Veritas Higher Education Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship, hosted through the Matthew J. Ryan Center, was established with the help of matching $25,000 grants from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund in 2009.23 All told, both Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund have contributed a combined $150,000 to Villanova University expressly in support of the Matthew J. Ryan Center.24 Between the two organizations and the Charles Koch Foundation, an estimated $320,000 has gone to support the Center on campus. Contributions from the Thomas W. Smith Foundation, an organization with similar aims to the Koch network, has contributed an additional $450,000 since 2008,25 bringing the total to $770,000. Very recently, a new professorship position was introduced at the law school: the Charles Widger Endowed University Professor in Law, Business and Economics. The position is supported, in part, by the landmark $25 million donation from Villanova alumnus Charles Widger. But more significantly, the position was also established with the help of an additional $3.25 million from the Charles Koch Foundation. As it stands right now, the Koch brothers and company have sunk a cool $4.2 million into Villanova University. And note, this number is only what I have uncovered. With the university’s national reputation increasing by the year, it stands to reason that the sum may increase proportionately.
Undoubtedly, the influx of money provides a welcome opportunity for the university to grow and provide improved services for its students, and for pursuing this goal Villanova cannot be faulted. Besides, universities commonly accept large contributions from wealthy donors, and if the Koch brothers want to give to universities, why should anyone object?
But, recall, the Koch brothers have an agenda beyond funding education. When Fink outlined the Koch brothers’ strategy in the piece “The Structure of Social Change,” they sought to create support for their particular libertarian, anti-regulation ideology by grooming the next generation’s lawyers, policy-makers, economists, and lobbyists. Students who learn from Koch-funded professors and engage with Koch-funded institutions are exposed to climate change denial science, laissez-faire capitalism, and free market philosophy designed to engender support for the Kochs’ approach to business and politics. Grooming students with Koch ideology at the university level proves crucial to what the Center for Public Integrity’s Dave Levinthal calls “a massive organizational network fighting to enact deregulatory government policies and elect conservative political candidates,”26 that is to say, useful allies in the Koch brothers’ grand strategy.
If Villanova wishes to maintain its integrity and academic freedom, then it must act in the interest of its students and faculty. The university must introduce safeguards against Koch-funded influence on campus. It has largely failed to temper the increasing Koch presence in the Matthew J. Ryan Center. Furthermore, as of October 2016, the Koch brothers have managed to fund the creation of the Charles Widger Endowed University Professor position, a position that has the ability to teach in any college at Villanova. Villanova Law has brought Brett Frischmann to fill the position. While there is no evidence of Frischmann having any direct connection with the Koch network of scholars, we would suggest remaining vigilant as a matter of prudence; Koch money paid for the creation of a position with unparalleled access to the university’s classrooms. The nature of this position poses a serious danger to the university’s academic freedom, especially if the Koch brothers had any influence over who filled this position, as it turns the entire university into an audience for a potential Koch mouthpiece. And we will never know for certain unless the university makes the donor agreement public.
Cautionary Tales by Kinjal Dave and Jack Flynn
Over the better part of the last decade, there has been a gradual and covert introduction of Koch money onto campus through the Ryan Foundation and Matthew J. Ryan Center. Now, Mark Alexander, Dean of the Law School, has directly solicited a Koch contribution of $3.5 million.27 Where does that leave us?
The influx of money from the Koch Foundation can be understood in the context of Villanova’s Campaign for the Greater Great, a $635 million fundraising initiative to transform the university. Combined with the new categorization as a “Research University”, Villanova needs money to grow, both in terms of physical expansion and institutional maturity.28 But to achieve the latter, let us be sure that our donors do not exercise undue influence on our institutional will. Villanova’s mission and core values remain its greatest attributes, but if those are abandoned chasing money, then new buildings and programs will be meaningless and indistinguishable from any other.
As the Campaign for the Greater Great moves forward, students have a right to know where the $635 million dollars is coming from, as well as the decision-making process behind spending the money. But how much control does the university—or its tuition paying students—truly have over where the new fundraising money goes?
Consider, as a case study, Charles Murray’s lecture at Villanova. Charles Murray does not publish his research in peer-reviewed journals. Instead, he is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). We described how AEI was founded in the 1950s to defend libertarian and conservative economic thought, created to produce scholarship which supported Hayek and Chicago School scholarship. Moreover, Sheehan herself has said in an email sent out to Villanova faculty:
Last year the Ryan Center received a new endowment for an annual lecture on American Political Ideas. The donor asked that this year the focus be on the issue of government bureaucracy and overregulation. Charles Murray’s new book, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, examines this topic in detail, and thus Murray seemed a very good fit for the lecture.
He is a good fit, indeed. The donor alluded to in the email who is interested in sponsoring a lecture on government “over-regulation” can safely assume their wishes will be carried out by the Ryan Center—donors such as the Kochs and others donate precisely to propagate ideas such as these. The Matthew J. Ryan Center would likely have access to Charles Murray, as they both exist within the same network of thinkers and institutions. And thus, Charles Murray can continue to land speaking opportunities and publish research, not through the funding of university institutions, but rather extra-institutional funding sources such as corporate donations, as well as conservative and libertarian think tanks within the self-sustaining non-academic ecosystem.
Money buys control and immunity from accountability. We would go so far as to say the Villanova University administration allowed Murray to come reluctantly, that he would not have come from the Villanova organically, and was allowed only due to an outside funding stream. It was the request from the anonymous donor, received by Sheehan and the Matthew J. Ryan Center, which asked for someone who wrote on deregulation, that led to his invitation. Neither parties are officially part of the University or subject to University accountability.
But what is to be said of the solicited $3.5 million grant to the Villanova Law School? The Koch donation comes under the press release headline of the Charles Widger donation for the establishment of a position in Business, Law, and Ethics. The (relatively) transparent association of the donor to the money is a step in the right direction—indeed, the origin of the funds is something that should be made clear for each donation. Without this openness, the sources of university funding cannot even be a topic for consideration. At the University of Florida, the Koch brothers crafted a donor agreement worth $1.5 million behind closed doors that gave them the right to veto faculty appointments for economics professorships in a program promoting “political economy and free enterprise.”29 Charles Koch himself was said to have made selections in the final round of hiring. In the words of Koch himself:
I’m not doing anything I’m ashamed of. You’ve gotta change the hearts and minds of the people to understand what really makes society fairer and what’s going to change their lives. And it’s not more of this government control.30
All the while, the arrangement was defended by University of Florida’s dean of the College of Social Sciences.
But despite the Villanova Law School’s welcome transparency, the potential for exploitation remains. Historically, an empty promise of “don’t worry” is not enough to prove that the Koch brothers won’t have a say where over $3.5 million dollars goes. It is not unreasonable to suspect that the Koch interests in business-first mentality will influence the guiding philosophy for that faculty member’s law and ethics. Will the money truly be no-strings attached? Especially if half the donated amount was enough to retain faculty hiring veto at Florida State?
If the Koch brothers merely wanted to contribute to universities to facilitate their capacity to foster learning in their students, then the Koch brothers’ presence on Villanova’s campus would not pose a threat. But Charles and David Koch have proven through their actions and their money that this is not their intended aim; Charles Koch once said in a 1974 speech at a seminar entitled “The Anti-Capitalist Mentality,” delivered behind closed doors to a room full of executives: “We should cease financing our own destruction […] by supporting only those programs, departments or school that contribute in some way to our individual companies.”[^31] In order to fulfill this vision, the Koch money necessarily rests on resisting accountability from the institutions that accept their money.
Where do we go from here?
The money Villanova fundraises will inevitably carry the biases of its donors. However, money from Koch Industries does not just reflect a bias. Rather, it reveals a history of manufacturing political ideology outside of the patterns of academia. Over the course of generations, the Koch brothers have strategically worked to revive an ideology with limited scholarly support outside the scholarship they themselves have manufactured. Their network of academics’ purpose is to evangelize young students into eventually preaching a philosophy intentionally designed to benefit their own economic interests. Any seemingly benign externalities of their funding do not change the structure, intent, and possible consequences that come with receiving their money. The Koch brothers have inserted their influence into hundreds of schools across the country, and now it is clear that they have done so to Villanova.
In order to preserve academic freedom and integrity on campus, the university must introduce substantive measures improving transparency and visibility surrounding the influence of outside donors on campus. Such measures may include establishing an oversight committee, maintaining a public record of donor details, and making public the donor agreements or intentions. Whatever comes about from outside funding is not above reproach or accountability by the Villanova community, and we deserve an education free of Koch influence.
Footnotes
[^31]Gibson, Connor. “1974 Charles Koch IHS Speech – ‘Anti Capitalism and Business.’” Greenpeace, 1974. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1302373-1974-charles-koch-ihs-speech-anti-capitalism-and.html.
- “Charles Koch.” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/profile/charles-koch/
- Williams, Joseph P. “Beyond the Boogeyman.” U.S. News and World Report. June 26, 2015. https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/06/26/the-koch-brothers-gifts-to-society.
- Levinthal, Dave. “Universities getting Koch cash for libertarian economics.” Al Jazeera America. October 30, 2015.
- Fink, Richard. “The Structure Of Social Change.” Philanthropy Magazine, 1996. http://archive.org/details/TheStructureOfSocialChangeLibertyGuideRichardFinkKoch.
- “Enhance Your Education.” KochCollegeRecruiting.com. http://kochcollegerecruiting.com/scholarships/index.html.
- “2018 Summer Intern Program.” KochCareers.com. Koch Industries. 2016. https://kochcareers.referrals.selectminds.com/KII/jobs/2018-summer-intern-program-%E2%80%93-information-technology-11584.
- Levinthal, Dave. “Why the Koch Brothers Are Funding Colleges – The Atlantic.” The Atlantic, October 30, 2015. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/spreading-the-free-market-gospel/413239/.
- Levinthal, David. “Koch Brothers’ Higher-Ed Investments Advance Political Goals.” Center for Public Integrity, October 30, 2015. https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/10/30/18684/koch-brothers-higher-ed-investments-advance-political-goals.
- Jones, Daniel Stedman. Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014. Http://centredelangues.ens-lyon.fr. Centre De Langues. Web.
- William E. Simon, “William E. Simon 990 Form, 2000, 2002-2012,” Conservative Transparency, accessed April 25, 2017, http://conservativetransparency.org/basic-search/.
- Stephanie Mencimer, “Scholars Protest Charles Koch’s Donation to Catholic University,” Mother Jones, accessed April 25, 2017, http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/12/scholars-protest-koch-brothers-donation-catholic-university.
- “Charles Koch Foundation » Higher Education,” October 11, 2011, http://web.archive.org/web/20111011084314/http://www.charleskochfoundation.org:80/giving/higher-education.
- Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, 1 edition (New York: Doubleday, 2016), 56.
- Mayer, Dark Money, 56.
- Dan Barrett, “Not Just Florida State,” Inside Higher Ed, June 28, 2011, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/06/28/not-just-florida-state.
- “Ryan Foundation – GuideStar Profile,” Guidestar, accessed April 25, 2017, https://www.guidestar.org/profile/41-2169151.
- Ryan Foundation, “Form 990, 2015,” Guidestar, 2015, http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2015/412/169/2015-412169151-0c0cdd32-9.pdf.
- Ibid.
- Charles Koch Foundation, “Form 990, 2009,” Guidestar, 2009, http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2009/480/918/2009-480918408-06a8ebb7-F.pdf.
- Charles Koch Foundation, “Forms 990, 2009-2014,” Guidestar, 2009-14, http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2009/480/918/2009-480918408-06a8ebb7-F.pdf http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2010/480/918/2010-480918408-07c8cd5b-F.pdf http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2011/480/918/2011-480918408-08b9e966-F.pdf http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2012/480/918/2012-480918408-09eaa056-F.pdf http://pdfs.citizenaudit.org/2014_12_PF/48-0918408_990PF_201312.pdf http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2014/480/918/2014-480918408-0c40722c-F.pdf.
- Donors Trust, “Form 990, 2011,” Conservative Transparency, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20151229180138/http://conservativetransparency.org/app/uploads/DonorsTrust-2011.pdf.
- Ibid., 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20151229180218/http://conservativetransparency.org/app/uploads/DonorsTrust-2010.pdf
- Donors Trust, “Form 990, 2009,” Conservative Transparency, 2009, http://conservativetransparency.org/app/uploads/DonorsTrust-2009.pdf.Donors Capital Fund, “Form 990, 2009,” Conservative Transparency, 2009, https://web.archive.org/web/20151229175408/http://conservativetransparency.org/app/uploads/Donors-Capital-Fund-2009.pdf
- Donors Trust, “Forms 990, 2009, 2012,” Conservative Transparency, 2009, 2012, http://conservativetransparency.org/app/uploads/DonorsTrust-2009.pdfhttps://web.archive.org/web/20151229175938/http://conservativetransparency.org/app/uploads/DonorsTrust-2012.pdf;Donors Capital Fund, “Forms 990, 2008-2009,” Conservative Transparency, 2008, 2009, https://web.archive.org/web/20151229175304/http://conservativetransparency.org/app/uploads/Donors-Capital-Fund-2008.pdf. https://web.archive.org/web/20151229175408/http://conservativetransparency.org/app/uploads/Donors-Capital-Fund-2009.pdf.
- Donors Trust, “Forms 990, 2008, 2014,” Citizen Audit, 2008, 2014,http://pdfs.citizenaudit.org/2009_04_PF/13-3258067_990PF_200812.pdfhttp://pdfs.citizenaudit.org/2016_02_PF/13-3258067_990PF_201412.pdf;Villanova University, “Villanova University’s Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good Receives Grant from Thomas W. Smith Foundation,” Villanova University, 2013.
- David Levinthal, “How the Koch Brothers Are Influencing U.S. Colleges,” Time, December 15, 2015, http://time.com/4148838/koch-brothers-colleges-universities/.
- Sloan, K. “Koch Foundation’s Law School Gifts Received with Open Arms.” Law.com. October 19, 2016. http://www.law.com/sites/almstaff/2016/10/19/koch-foundations-law-school-gifts-received-with-open-arms/?slreturn=20170109151605.
- “National University Rankings.” USNews.com. 2016. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities.
- Jaschik, Scott. “Who Controls a Grant?” Inside Higher Ed, May 11, 2011. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/05/11/debate_at_florida_state_over_grants_from_koch_foundation_and_requirements_attached_to_funds.
- Fisher, Daniel. “Exclusive Interview: Charles Koch On How To Save America.” Forbes. Accessed November 13, 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2015/09/29/exclusive-interview-charles-koch-on-saving-america/.