One of the largest right-wing foundations in the U.S. is planning to award a significant sum of money to a prominent opponent of public health efforts to combat the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus.
Last week, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation announced that it is awarding Stanford University Professor Jay Bhattacharya, a health economist known for his opposition to pandemic lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates, with its 2024 Bradley Prize, a $250,000 award. Previous winners of the prize include former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Trump’s “judge whisperer” Leonard Leo, former attorney general and Reagan administration stalwart Edwin Meese III, and other prominent conservatives.
“Jay is a visionary who stands for the integrity of scientific debate and the promotion of sound public policy,” Bradley Foundation President Rick Graber is quoted as saying in the foundation’s press release.“During the most challenging times of the Covid-19 pandemic, he defended Americans’ abilities to make informed choices in the face of immense pressure. He did not conform to the prevailing orthodoxies about aspects of the pandemic that we now know were often fostered without full access to or analysis of data. Jay’s relentless pursuit of scientific freedom has benefitted millions.”
In addition to Bhattacharya, other recipients of this year’s Bradley Prize are Samuel Gregg, the Friedrich Hayek chair in economics and economic history at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian think tank also funded by the Bradley Foundation, and William Barclay Allen, who chaired the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under President Reagan and is now the emeritus dean of James Madison College and a professor at Michigan State University.
The Bradley Foundation, which was founded in 1942, describes itself as “the philanthropic legacy of two brothers, Lynde and Harry Bradley.” As the Center for Media and Democracy’s Sourcewatch page for the organization notes, Harry Bradley was reportedly an original charter member of the far-right John Birch Society along with Fred Koch, father of the infamous Koch brothers—billionaire right-wing power brokers Charles and the now-deceased David.
The Milwaukee-based foundation is no longer run by the family, but with assets totaling roughly $1 billion, it has been one of the largest funders of right-wing and pro-business causes since the 1960s. It has been a reliable and prolific funder of groups working to restrict voting rights and oppose green energy policy, and its coffers have been weaponized by far-right operatives on the board who wish to systematically expand and maintain their “infrastructure” at both the state and national levels.
Few organizations can credibly claim to rival the foundation’s influence and access on the Right. One of its board members, Cleta Mitchell, participated in Trump’s January 2021 phone call to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” enough votes for him to be declared the winner in that state.
Early on in the pandemic, as states were shutting down to combat the spread of the coronavirus, right-wing dark money groups aligned with wealthy and business interests began pushing to reopen the economy. The Bradley Foundation was no exception, using its vast financial resources to support these efforts. It dished out big money to the far-right FreedomWorks Foundation, giving $275,000 for “general operations” and another $100,000 to “support the Save Our Country initiative,” a joint project with the American Legislative Exchange Council, Tea Party Patriots, and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity aimed at rolling back states’ stay-at-home orders. FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots were also among the groups that backed anti-lockdown protests in various states.
Bhattacharya lent his voice to the Right’s initial demands to reopen and later to combat public health interventions. In late March 2020, The Wall Street Journal published his op-ed questioning whether Covid was really as dangerous as global health authorities were making it out to be and arguing that there was insufficient evidence to support disruptive lockdown measures. The following month, he was a lead author on an influential seroprevalence study purporting to show that Covid was significantly more infectious—but less deadly—than authorities were claiming. The study had a number of significant problems, including methodological issues and undisclosed funding by the founder of JetBlue, a vocal opponent of lockdowns, according to a Stanford whistleblower complaint. That month, Bhattacharya also penned an editorial for the Cato Institute arguing against Medicare for all.
A few months later, in October 2020, Bhattacharya co-wrote the so-called Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter advocating for a strategy of limited government interventions to control the spread of Covid, recommending instead that the virus be allowed to circulate to everyone but the most vulnerable to achieve herd immunity. The letter, which provided scientific veneer to an idea that had been percolating on the Right for months, was written and signed at a conference hosted by AIER. The Trump administration also had a hand in making the conference happen, allowing one of the co-authors to bypass international travel restrictions.
Once published, the declaration was heavily criticized by mainstream public health officials. The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called it “unethical” and 14 public health groups led by the American Public Health Association decried it in an open letter.
Bhattacharya has also expressed contrarian views regarding Covid vaccines and government mandates. He has suggested that for young people and anyone previously infected with Covid, the risks of getting vaccinated may outweigh the benefits.
Although Bhattacharya has claimed that he does not receive compensation for his speaking engagements, in just a few short years his contrarian advocacy has paid off. The Bradley award—and prize money—are just the latest examples of how the professor has profited from his extremist public health positions. Bhattacharya has a sinecure as the go-to “expert” on all things pandemic-related for the political Right in the U.S. and abroad thanks in large part to his Stanford professorship and medical degree.
Bhattacharya has had remarkable access to wealthy right-wing businessmen like Elon Musk as well as to GOP political leaders. He has had personal meetings with a sitting president (Trump) and key members of his administration to discuss Covid policy and has advised state governments on their pandemic responses as well. He has served as an expert witness before Congress and in court cases over Covid policies in various states—though with mixed results.
Several judges have questioned Bhattacharya’s credibility, including a U.S. district court judge who noted that he had “offered opinions regarding…a discipline on which he admitted he was not qualified to speak” and that “his demeanor and tone while testifying suggest that he is advancing a personal agenda.”
In the 2024 election cycle, Bhattacharya has been embraced by presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who has since dropped out of the race, and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy, Jr. Last month, the professor was one of the speakers at Kennedy’s vice presidential announcement event naming Silicon Valley attorney and major donor Nicole Shanahan as his choice for the other half of his ticket. Two weeks later, Bhattacharya hosted Shanahan on his contrarian public health-focused podcast, Illusion of Consensus. As part of the exclusive and friendly interview, she thanked him for speaking out against Covid mitigation measures and “weathering the storm” of backlash. Days later, Shanahan revealed on X—formerly Twitter—that she is against the Moderna Covid vaccine, is calling for it to be recalled, and is directing her followers to listen to the advice of two notorious anti-vaxxer doctors.
Since expressing his extremist views about public health measures, Bhattacharya has been showered with titles and given various roles at right-wing and libertarian institutions including the Hoover Institution, Hillsdale College, the Brownstone Institute, and Collateral Global. He has also had a huge microphone through right-wing think tanks and media outlets like Fox News. He has accepted various speaking engagements for right-wing groups like the influential Council for National Policy, a “shadow network” that author and investigative journalist Anne Nelson says connects “the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives.”
Bhattacharya has even benefited from free legal representation by a litigation outfit founded with seed money from Charles Koch to wage a legal war against the Biden administration’s limited efforts to combat online misinformation.
Winners of the Bradley Prize are chosen by a “selection committee” that chooses three recipients each year based on nominations from “persons prominent in their fields” solicited by Bradley’s president.
Bhattacharya will accept the Bradley Prize at the end of May but did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
This piece is published in partnership with Important Context.
This seems like unbiased reporting.
It does. Would like to see it circulated Much further and wider.