re: #73 BeachDem

Bankers are in on it too.

From 2011

John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T Corp. (BBT), admires author Ayn Rand so much that he devised a strategy to spread her laissez-faire principles on U.S. campuses. Allison, working through the BB&T Charitable Foundation, gives schools grants of as much as $2 million if they agree to create a course on capitalism and make Rand’s masterwork, “Atlas Shrugged,” required reading.

And from 2015

Banking on the Curriculum

One contract included the creation of an Ayn Rand “reading room” in the department, while others stipulated the development of a dedicated “center” of some sort — in some cases, just a website. Others funded faculty chairs or other professorships, contractually geared in some cases to ideological allies…some 42 institutions with Moral Foundations programs also had received donations from the Koch brothers’ charities. Both BB&T and the Kochs also have been major contributors to the Ayn Rand Institute.

insidehighered.com

Texas Tech is armpit deep in this kind of shit. Former chancellor and noted Reagan fossil Kent “Skeletor” Hance was hellbent on turning TTU into the global headquarters of Austrian economics. He spent millions on cheesy, over-blown Trump style decor for the administrative facilities, on the grounds that this was needed to impress fatcat donors. He also provided a job for former AG and torture advocate Alberto Gonzales where no one else would.