Koch donations to universities; Brown University; Charles Koch Foundation; Ivy League 'beachhead'

George Mason was the Kochs' largest libertarian academic project but far from the only one. By 2015, according to an internal list, the Charles Koch Foundation was subsidizing pro-business, antiregulatory, and antitax programs in 307 different institutions of higher education in America and had plans to expand into 18 or more. The schools ranged from cash-hungry West Virginia University to Brown University, where the Kochs, in the tradition of the Olin Foundation, established an Ivy League "beachhead"....At Brown, which is often thought of as the most liberal of the Ivy schools, Charles Koch's foundation gave $147,154 in 2009 to the Political Thought Project, a freshman seminar in free-market classics taught by a libertarian, Professor John Tomasi. "After a whole semester of Hayek, it's hard to shake them off that perspective over the next four years," Tomasi confided "slyly," according to a conservative publication. Charles Koch's foundation gave additional funds to Brown to support faculty research and postdoctoral candidates in such topics as why bank deregulation is good for the poor. (189)