The author's electricity bill went up and his cat got stolen in part because his colleagues working under the university incentive systems (i.e. don't publish stuff that pisses off the interests that fund your lab) created work that legitimized those policy decisions so that those decisions could be made and the funding interests, whatever they may be, could benefit from them.
One wonders if there are similar incentives in the university ranking, administration and consulting that legitimize the university's otherwise questionable decision to engage in these seemingly irresponsible ventures.
The early nod to Agora Institute mission of “building stronger global democracy” Followed by bemoaning USAID cuts makes me wonder if the author is deliberately missing one of the most glaring examples of this.
How can we have a "stronger global democracy" if we don't currently have "global democracy" to begin with? Democracy suggests it is worldwide, whereas we know a number of countries out there are not democratic, or are barely democratic (due to corruption, war and other issues.)
"Nobody is waterboarding the money down their throat. They can say no. The actual question is: why don't they?"
Leaving aside that metaphor, the obvious answer is that they either like or need it. Most likely the former, because many of these well known universities are swimming in money already.
Because that's not what the GP was talking about. For example, say there is some controversial economic policy passed by one of the parties. Then a researcher goes out to research if the policy is working or not. But when they do the research, they find out that the policy doesn't work and has bad side effects too. However, the majority of the university votes and supports the party that passed the policy.
So the researcher intentionally changes some of the ways the data is collected and poof, it looks like the policy works. Extra funding comes your way but now you have committed academic fraud. Not that anything will happen to you for this, but still, you know you did it. That's what the GP is talking about and it happens quite a bit in the humanities and economics. Its why private economists and public economists almost seem like different species.
I (and I believe the person I responded to) were talking about the comment above yours, which was a statement that Hopkins basically sells control of its research outcomes to donors.
Your question didn't bother me in the least, but I don't see why people are so surprised that a school or any other organization would accept millions and millions of cash to upgrade their surroundings.
That's fair. I'm not surprised per se, I think the point is about the strings attached to accepting that money. At least that's how I've been reading this thread.
That is their point, and mine is that it's baseless speculation that is almost certainly inaccurate, probably originating from a similarly uninformed and angry internal source to the one that produced the article in question.
I'm not saying it can't happen, or even that it's never happened, but I see no evidence from personal experience or news in academia that would indicate it's anything other than extraordinarily rare at most, and it certainly shouldn't be assumed to be the case for all donations unless proven otherwise.
Yeah, a shiny object gets dangled in front of them. The Drew Pavlou case in Australia is very telling. The University of Queensland was pretty much in the pocket of the CCP, including having the local consul on its board. When Pavlou protested on Chinese human rights issues, he ended up suspended for two years. The UoQ obviously relishes Chinese students and investment, but wouldn't allow criticism of the regime.
I am all for criticizing the Chinese government, but that is not a remotely accurate description of what happened with Pavlou, nor particularly relevant to this article unless you have substantiated claims of that type of behavior at Hopkins (or even elsewhere in the US).
