COLORADO SPRINGS — Acknowledging that 20 years and millions of dollars spent loudly and bitterly attacking the liberal leanings of American campuses have failed to make much of a dent in the way undergraduates are educated, some conservatives have decided to try a new strategy.
They are finding like-minded tenured professors and helping them establish academic beachheads for their ideas.
These initiatives, like the Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions at the University of Texas, Austin, or a project at the University of Colorado here in Colorado Springs, to publish a book of classic texts, are mostly financed by conservative organizations and donors, run by conservative professors. But they have a decidedly nonpartisan and nonideological face.
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Ideas for the new strategy began percolating in 2005 when the Philanthropy Roundtable, an association of foundation officials and big donors, met and shared their complaints about higher education. A few months earlier, Mr. Piereson wrote an article in the roundtable’s magazine warning donors not to endow university programs or faculty chairs. “Once the endowment check is written, the donor loses all control over the program he has funded,” he advised.
Conservatives have begun to realize, said Peter Wood, the executive director of the scholars’ association, that their contributions to colleges and universities frequently pay for what they see as left-leaning academic programs that run counter to their world views.
Instead of making no-strings-attached donations, he said, conservatives started asking “ought there not be some way that we could reach the donors and convince them that their donations to higher education could be more wisely spent?”
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I am going to update this in a bit.
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