reeves, th

=inside higher edIn the past 20 years this core group of funders has, by many reports, built and strategically linked an impressive array of almost 500 think tanks, centers, institutes and "concerned citizens groups" both within and outside of the academy. It is particularly telling to observe the funding sources of these organizations during the first 10-15 years of their existence, when their ideological identities were being established. A small sampling of these entities include <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=51" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">the Cato Institute,</a>the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=153" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Heritage Foundation,</a> the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=19" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">American Enterprise Institute,</a>the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=198" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Manhattan Institute,</a> the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=311" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Hoover Institution,</a> the<a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=72" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Claremont Institute,</a> the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=16" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">American Council of Trustees and Alumni, </a><a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=207" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Middle East Forum, </a><a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=1374" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Accuracy in Media,</a> and the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=242" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">National Association of Scholars,</a> as well as Horowitz's <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=63" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Center of the Study of Popular Culture.</a>The absence of formal organizational linkages between the entities within these networks creates an illusion of independent analytical voices reaching similar conclusions about strategic policy issues, a technique known in the public relations industry as “astroturfing.” This network has developed an enormous capacity to generate “data” consistent with the targeted political agenda and world views of its core group of funders to quickly and redundantly represent these issues in the mainstream press by what appear to be the voices of independent analysts and to translate these viewpoints into public policy that serves the focused ideological agenda of this core group of funders. The Bradley Foundation under Michael Joyce's leadership has even established a publishing house, <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=98" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Encounter Books,</a> to ensure that grantees like Horowitz have a quasi-academic outlet for their viewpoints.The degree of interconnectedness within this network of organizations is considerable but almost invisible to the casual observer. For example, when ACTA’s president, Anne Neal, introduced herself to the Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, she presented ACTA as “a bipartisan network of college and university trustees and alumni across the country dedicated to academic freedom.”Full disclosure should have required some mention of the fact that ACTA (see funding sources above), which changed its name from the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=434" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">National Alumni Forum</a> in 1998, was established by the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=177" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Intercollegiate Studies Institute</a> in 1994. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute in turn evolved from William Bennett’s <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=525" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Madison Center for Educational Affairs</a> and the Institute for Educational Affairs founded by Irving Kristol, Michael Joyce’s mentor, and William Simon, the first president of the John M. Olin Foundation. Bennett and Kristol also sit on ACTA’s Board of Directors. The remarkably consistent record of funding across all of the incarnations of this organization and the high degree of redundancy with Horowitz’s own, highly partisan Center for the Study of Popular Culture is not consistent with Neal’s definition of ACTA as an independent, non-partisan organization.Another example illustrative of the quietly incestuous nature of this network is presented by an article by the Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young. The article is entitled <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/11/liberal_bias_in_the_ivory_tower?mode=PF" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">“Liberal bias in the ivory tower”</a> and by all appearances is an independent opinion piece written by a regular Globe columnist. At the end of the article Young identifies herself as “a contributing editor at Reason Magazine.” What is undisclosed in the article is that Reason Magazine is the publication of the Reason Foundation, whose <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=286" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">funding sources</a> are virtually the same as those funding Horowitz’s "Academic Bill of Rights" project and Neal’s ACTA.Young’s premise for the article is stated in her opening sentence: “Yet another study has come out documenting what most conservatives consider to be blindingly obvious: the leftwing tilt of the American professoriate.” <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/30/politics" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">The study that she references</a> was conducted by Stanley Rothman, now emeritus professor at Smith College; S. Robert Lichter, emeritus professor at George Mason University; and Neil Nevitte of the University of Toronto, and was published in the online journal Forum. This study was also cited by Neal in her testimony in Pennsylvania. Young does not inform her readers that Rothman is director of the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=1012" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Center for the Study of Social and Political Change,</a> a center with funding sources that are remarkably redundant with Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Lichter is also president of the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=573" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Center for Media and Public Affairs,</a> which again has funding sources that are redundant with those referenced earlier.In addition, a recent article in <a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2515" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting</a> is highly critical of Lichter’s research methodology. Another example of such conflicted interests is provided by Professor Thomas Reeves. When Reeves writes in strong support of Horowitz’s proposals on the <a href="http://hnn.us/articles/1731.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">History News Network,</a>he fails to note that he is a spokesman for the California Association of Scholars, a branch of the National Association of Scholars (see funding sources above) and that he is director of the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=368" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Wisconsin Policy Research Institute,</a> which was, again, brought into being by the Olin and Bradley Foundations.This manufactured drumbeat against “academic bias” is amplified by <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200310140905.asp" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Stanley Kurtz</a> of the Hoover Institution (see funding sources above), <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_college_follies.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Heather MacDonald,</a> a John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute (see funding sources above), and <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006149" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">Brian C. Anderson,</a> editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and a former research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (see funding sources above).==In the past 20 years this core group of funders has, by many reports, built and strategically linked an impressive array of almost 500 think tanks, centers, institutes and "concerned citizens groups" both within and outside of the academy. It is particularly telling to observe the funding sources of these organizations during the first 10-15 years of their existence, when their ideological identities were being established. A small sampling of these entities include <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=51" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">the Cato Institute,</a>the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=153" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Heritage Foundation,</a> the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=19" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">American Enterprise Institute,</a>the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=198" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Manhattan Institute,</a> the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=311" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Hoover Institution,</a> the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=72" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Claremont Institute,</a> the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=16" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">American Council of Trustees and Alumni, </a><a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=207" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Middle East Forum, </a><a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=1374" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Accuracy in Media,</a> and the<a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=242" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">National Association of Scholars,</a> as well as Horowitz's <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=63" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Center of the Study of Popular Culture.</a>The absence of formal organizational linkages between the entities within these networks creates an illusion of independent analytical voices reaching similar conclusions about strategic policy issues, a technique known in the public relations industry as “astroturfing.” This network has developed an enormous capacity to generate “data” consistent with the targeted political agenda and world views of its core group of funders to quickly and redundantly represent these issues in the mainstream press by what appear to be the voices of independent analysts and to translate these viewpoints into public policy that serves the focused ideological agenda of this core group of funders. The Bradley Foundation under Michael Joyce's leadership has even established a publishing house, <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=98" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Encounter Books,</a> to ensure that grantees like Horowitz have a quasi-academic outlet for their viewpoints.The degree of interconnectedness within this network of organizations is considerable but almost invisible to the casual observer. For example, when ACTA’s president, Anne Neal, introduced herself to the Select Committee on Academic Freedom in Higher Education in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, she presented ACTA as “a bipartisan network of college and university trustees and alumni across the country dedicated to academic freedom.”Full disclosure should have required some mention of the fact that ACTA (see funding sources above), which changed its name from the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=434" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">National Alumni Forum</a> in 1998, was established by the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=177" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Intercollegiate Studies Institute</a> in 1994. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute in turn evolved from William Bennett’s <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=525" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Madison Center for Educational Affairs</a> and the Institute for Educational Affairs founded by Irving Kristol, Michael Joyce’s mentor, and William Simon, the first president of the John M. Olin Foundation. Bennett and Kristol also sit on ACTA’s Board of Directors. The remarkably consistent record of funding across all of the incarnations of this organization and the high degree of redundancy with Horowitz’s own, highly partisan Center for the Study of Popular Culture is not consistent with Neal’s definition of ACTA as an independent, non-partisan organization.Another example illustrative of the quietly incestuous nature of this network is presented by an article by the Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young. The article is entitled <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/11/liberal_bias_in_the_ivory_tower?mode=PF" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">“Liberal bias in the ivory tower”</a> and by all appearances is an independent opinion piece written by a regular Globe columnist. At the end of the article Young identifies herself as “a contributing editor at Reason Magazine.” What is undisclosed in the article is that Reason Magazine is the publication of the Reason Foundation, whose <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=286" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">funding sources</a> are virtually the same as those funding Horowitz’s "Academic Bill of Rights" project and Neal’s ACTA.Young’s premise for the article is stated in her opening sentence: “Yet another study has come out documenting what most conservatives consider to be blindingly obvious: the leftwing tilt of the American professoriate.” <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/03/30/politics" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">The study that she references</a> was conducted by Stanley Rothman, now emeritus professor at Smith College; S. Robert Lichter, emeritus professor at George Mason University; and Neil Nevitte of the University of Toronto, and was published in the online journal Forum. This study was also cited by Neal in her testimony in Pennsylvania. Young does not inform her readers that Rothman is director of the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=1012" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Center for the Study of Social and Political Change,</a> a center with funding sources that are remarkably redundant with Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Lichter is also president of the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=573" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Center for Media and Public Affairs,</a> which again has funding sources that are redundant with those referenced earlier.In addition, a recent article in <a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2515" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting</a> is highly critical of Lichter’s research methodology. Another example of such conflicted interests is provided by Professor Thomas Reeves. When Reeves writes in strong support of Horowitz’s proposals on the <a href="http://hnn.us/articles/1731.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">History News Network,</a>he fails to note that he is a spokesman for the California Association of Scholars, a branch of the National Association of Scholars (see funding sources above) and that he is director of the <a href="http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=368" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">Wisconsin Policy Research Institute,</a> which was, again, brought into being by the Olin and Bradley Foundations.This manufactured drumbeat against “academic bias” is amplified by <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200310140905.asp" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Stanley Kurtz</a> of the Hoover Institution (see funding sources above), <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_college_follies.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Heather MacDonald,</a> a John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute (see funding sources above), and <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006149" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Brian C. Anderson,</a> editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and a former research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (see funding sources above).The relentlessness with which columnists and experts with direct funding relationships with Olin, Scaife, Bradley, Koch and Coors level charges of academic bias and assert the need for legislative reform of higher education is remarkable. The goal of this narrowly focused and ideologically driven public relations campaign can only be understood in terms of its fostering of a political climate in which federal regulatory “reform” of what is universally recognized as the finest system of higher education in the world, will be tolerated.Indeed, as has been discussed, such regulatory oversight may already be in the offing. The academy stands today as one of the last spaces in America where the democratic ideas that shape the social, economic and political fabric of the nation can be openly and independently debated on the basis of their merits and without coercion or distortion from vested economic and political interests. It is certainly in the national interest that it remain such....