A constellation of donor vehicles established by Charles Koch poured $90.8 million into 127 university and college recipients in 2023 to promote his business and policy interests, a Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) analysis has found. This brings the total Koch has spent to influence higher education to a whopping $549.5 million since 2018.
More than two-thirds, or $64.1 million, of the total was moved through Koch’s personal foundation, leaving it with $748.2 million in net assets, according to its latest IRS filing obtained by CMD. This is $11.5 million more than the multibillionaire funneled through his foundation in 2022.
Koch’s Stand Together Trust infused colleges and universities with another $26.6 million, with smaller donations from his Stand Together Fellowships ($48,000) and Stand Together Chamber of Commerce ($25,000) over the same period.
IRS filings obtained by CMD for 2023, the most recent year available, show net assets of $237.7 million for Stand Together Trust, $117.3 million for Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, and $429 million for Stand Together Fellowships.
George Mason University (GMU) was once again the leading beneficiary ofKoch’s higher education largesse, receiving just under $48 million in grants. This represents more than half of the total funding he doled out to institutions of higher education in 2023.
Of the $48 million, $16.7 million was designated for the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) at GMU, which is dominated by Charles Koch and his operatives. Koch serves as its chairman emeritus, Charles Koch Foundation Executive Director Ryan Stowers is its chairman, and Stand Together Chamber’s Chairman and CEO Brian Hooks is a board member.
The Institute’s founder was a “free-market fundamentalist” known for “calling taxes ‘theft,’ welfare ‘immoral,’ and labor unions slavery’ and opposing court-ordered remedies to racial segregation,” wrote Jane Mayer in her book on the Kochs, Dark Money.
Part of Koch’s 2023 grants to GMU funded both its Center for the Study of Social Change, Institutions, and Policy and Department of Economics, according to grant agreements published on the Charles Koch Foundation’s website. However, close examination of these grant agreements reveals that most of the $48 million is unaccounted for.
Utah State University (USU) received $7.5 million, the second largest amount of Koch cash given to a higher education recipient in 2023. Close to $5 million of this was sent to USU’s Center for Growth and Opportunity, which was founded in 2017 with a $50-million commitment from the Charles Koch Foundation and the Huntsman Foundation (named after Jon Huntsman, founder of the multinational Huntsman Corporation, a chemical manufacturer).
Koch operatives account for 50% of the USU Center’s board of directors, which includes Stowers and Derek Johnson, executive director of Stand Together Trust.
New York University ($3 million), Arizona State University ($2.7 million), and Duke University ($1.9 million) round out Koch’s top five university recipients in 2023.
Fifty years ago, Charles Koch made a presentation titled Anti-Capitalism and Business in which he urged members of the IHS board to avoid giving money to universities unless they would help advance business interests:
[W]e have supported the very institutions from which the attack on free markets emanates. Although much of our support has been involuntary through taxes, we have also contributed voluntarily to colleges and universities on the erroneous assumption that this assistance benefits businesses and the free enterprise system, even though these institutions encourage extreme hostility to American business. We should cease financing our own destruction and follow the counsel of David Packard, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, by supporting only those programs, departments or schools that “contribute in some way to our individual companies or to the general welfare of our free enterprise system.
“Charles Koch’s enormous cash infusions into higher education are all about trying to re-engineer America to advance his opposition to common-sense regulation of corporations or requiring corporations and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes,” said Lisa Graves, Managing Director of Court Accountability and Director of True North Research. Graves also serves as CMD’s board president.
“Unlike other billionaires who donate similar amounts to find a cure for cancer (like Nike’s Phil Knight and his spouse) or to reduce tuition costs for medical students (like Mike Bloomberg) or just to help a university to support students broadly (as with Marilyn and Jim Simons), Koch’s funding for higher education is deeply self-serving,” Graves said.
As chairman and CEO of Koch, Inc. (formerly Koch Industries). Charles Koch has a net worth $67.5 billion, according to Forbes.
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