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SEIU Panels Slams Koch College Donations

Union gave six figures to fund UW think tank

David Koch speaks in Orlando, Fla. / AP
May 7, 2015

The labor giant SEIU is advocating for an end to the Koch brothers’ higher education philanthropy even as it sends six-figure sums to sponsor its own university center.

SEIU Local 500 hosted "Educate. Agitate. Organize: Empowering Contingent Faculty to Reclaim Academic Citizenship," in April, a conference of part-time faculty members interested in organization and advocacy. The conference singled out Charles and David Koch, who have given millions to academic institutions, for criticism.

"In the last several years, the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF) and its partners have contracted ‘strings attached’ influence over faculty hire and curriculum control inside our public universities and colleges and are funding on-campus centers and institutes that push ‘free market’ research agendas in support of the corporatization of education, slashing RPS standards, eliminating collective bargaining, and union busting. This workshop will bring awareness to the Koch problem we face on campus and in the nation," the agenda said.

Samantha Parsons, head of the George Mason University chapter of UnKoch My Campus, held a panel dedicated to opposition research on the billionaire brothers. Kicking the Kochs off-campus would help eliminate the influence of free market ideals in American politics, according to Parsons’ panel description.

"The primary purpose is to teach organizers how to use coalition building strategies to integrate knowledge and research on the Kochs (and their influence in education) into the larger struggle against the corporatization of politics and the dismantling of student and union power," it said.

Parsons did not return a Facebook message seeking comment.

The Kochs are not the only ones who have used donations to fund academic positions and studies. SEIU and the Center for American Progress paid the University of Wisconsin nearly $120,000 to fund a "think and do tank" that has been used to provide local labor organizers with intellectual ammunition in political debates, including the minimum wage. The Center on Wisconsin Strategy has written liberal policy guides and academic studies directly influenced by the Washington D.C.-based SEIU Local 32BJ.

"Local 32BJ is engaging COWS to research, develop and advance a progressive local policy agenda for U.S. Municipalities and counties, to be used by COWS, Local 32BJ and the Center for American Progress," the contract said. "The precise policies to be included in the report will be decided upon by COWS in consultation with Local 32BJ."

Other labor groups have also used large donations to purchase professorships. The Restaurant Opportunities Center, a union affiliate, and its allies paid UC Berkeley a six-figure sum to hire its c0-director, Saru Jayaraman. Jayaraman has used the academic post to push out research that directly benefits the agenda of her organization and union allies.

Koch college philanthropy has already faced scrutiny and harassment campaigns from environmental activists across the country. A Koch-sponsored researcher at the University of Kansas is fighting a records request from a student demanding copies of his electronic communication. The target of the investigation, Dr. Art Hall, told the Washington Free Beacon in February that the request was an intimidation tactic.

"My overall objection is that the students are misusing open records law as a fishing expedition to sully my name," Hall said.

The SEIU did not return a request for comment.

Published under: Big Labor , Koch Brothers